The bathroom was now closed off, and the furniture was brand new. But this place felt like her home. She had never in her wildest dreams thought that she would see this picture again.
Her hands trailed over the leafy fronds of a fern. These weren’t her plants. Her plants were lost in the fire. But they were as familiar to her as a dear friend that had been lost for far too long.
“How?” she whispered quietly.
“Jasper has a photographic memory. He was in your apartment once and was able to make it nearly the same.”
“He did better than I could have.” Her voice was raw as her emotions ran rampant. “This is too much.”
“This is what family does.”
“Family?” She nearly choked on the word. “Jiminy, I can’t-”
“You can.” He strode through the room to lift her up into his arms. Her legs wrapped around his waist as she held onto him for dear life. “Family is what we are. You mean as much to us as anyone else in this world. No crying.”
His thumbs found the tears on her cheeks and wiped them away as though they never had been there in the first place.
“But all of this?”
“We’d do it for anyone. You just happen to not be just anyone. Not to me. Not to them.”
“Because of the prophecy.”
“Are you ever going to grow out of that?” He scrunched his nose and leaned in to rub the scruff of his face against her jaw. She shrieked. “We’re doing it because we happen to like you. Now say thank you.”
“Thank you, Jiminy.” She leaned down to give him the sweetest kiss she was capable of. “Thank you for everything.”
“Now thank Jasper for the memory and Lyra for decorating.”
“What?”
She looked up to see the goliath and the tiny woman standing in the doorway. Jasper gave her a sheepish grin and a wave as soon as he saw her eyes on him. Lyra had no such worries as she strode into the apartment as though she owned it.
Wren figured the other woman knew the apartment better than she knew it. Lyra had been the one that set it up after all.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely as she tried to disengage herself from Burke’s arms. He wasn’t having it. Instead, he tightened his arms around her even further.
Lyra rolled her eyes. “Don’t even try. He’s not letting you go any time soon.”
“Burke,” she complained.
“Jiminy,” he corrected her.
“Jiminy!” Lyra crowed as she plopped down onto the couch.
“You aren’t allowed to call me that.” He glared at the offending Siren who was now putting her feet up onto Wren’s coffee table. “And you aren’t allowed to do that.”
He put Wren down to go bother Lyra. He shoved her feet off of the coffee table and moved past her to open a cooler Wren hadn’t noticed. Of course, Lyra put her feet right back onto the coffee table as soon as he wasn’t looking.
Wren took the beer Jiminy held out to her and settled onto the arm of the couch. Around her, the others settled themselves down with a beer as well. Was this what it was like to have a family? Sitting around in an apartment where there was nothing else to do but talk to each other?
Oh, she wasn’t going to be good at this. She held the bottle up to her mouth and swallowed a gulp of beer. She then nearly choked as she realized that this wasn’t beer at all. This was some kind of fairy drink that was far stronger and far sweeter.
She grimaced and held the bottle in front of her as the other three started laughing at her.
Jasper toasted her and smiled. “Welcome to the family.”
“I didn’t ask to join. But it means all the more that you’ve welcomed me in.”
“I don’t do this sappy shit,” Lyra said as she tossed the drink back with surprising speed. “You in?”
“What do you mean?”
“We all know that we’ve got a lot of work in front of us. You’re part of a bigger picture, and we’re going to need your help.”
Wren was slightly confused, though she should have guessed that Lyra would push her buttons. She knew that this was going to come up at some point. She simply hadn’t expected to have to answer this so quickly. She had almost died for goodness’ sakes.
“What do you want me to do? I can’t find the other people in the prophecy. I can’t do magic.”
“We’ll see about that,” Burke interrupted. “E and I have a few ideas about that one.”
“What?”
“Pitch said you might be able to control a minimal amount of things that a Djinn might be able to. E confirmed that it absorbed the original creature that would have controlled your body. So theoretically, you should be able to do what the creature could do. In a manner of speaking.”
“Well.” She drank from the sicky sweet drink again. “That changes some things.”
“You’ll start training the end of the week,” he added.
Lyra immediately jumped in. “See? You’ve got a little bit more power already. Now do you want to help?”
“I don’t know how I can.”
“First of all, you’ve got a lot of knowledge in that noggin of yours. If you can give us even a fraction more than the enemy, then that’s a lot more than we already have. Plus, you already beat Malachi once.”
“I didn’t beat him. I overwhelmed him,” she shuddered. “I won’t lose anymore innocent souls preserved inside of E just to beat him. It killed them.”
“Well, scratch that then. Everyone has their limits.” Lyra seemed to think for a few minutes before she shrugged her shoulders. “At the very least, any newbies we drag back kicking and screaming will know that we aren’t going to kill them.”
Wren snorted into her drink. Then she started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. The laughter bubbled up from inside of her soul and pushed
