Gypsy Rising (All The Pretty Monsters #5)(4)

“Shera?” Mom asks in an unusually high octave, staring at me in horror, as Emit walks out with twitching lips, dressed in a muscle shirt and thin athletic pants.

Glad he’s amused. Lovely.

Briefly, Damien appears in the corner, grinning as well, before winking at me and disappearing from sight. It’s as though he also wanted me knowing he’s enjoying my mother clutching her heart as she says a bunch of things in a language I don’t understand, talking to herself, it seems.

“The bloody Vampyre beta to the coldest monster in existence, aside from Idun? That’s who is with your father right now?!” Mom says in her loud, arguing-talk tone.

“She’s actually quite good with him. She’s handling the store as well, because she’s a workaholic machine,” Leiza says with her eyes still lowered, all of them noticeably standing close to me and keeping me between her and them.

Smart wolves.

“I’ve only been missing for seven damn months, and you’ve only been in that town for four of them, Violet. Why are there wolves and vampires living in my house?” Mom snaps.

“It’s my house, since you technically died and left it to me, and I’m keeping it as payment for all your lies and stuff,” I tell her, as Tiara scampers outside behind Emit, following him.

“This is why I hid my money from you. I knew you wouldn’t give it back,” Mom grumbles as she narrows her eyes on me. “Why is Tom with Shera?”

“Because Arion released him into my custody with the stipulations that he be kept under supervision,” I deadpan, carrying on as her eyes widen even more. “After Dad stabbed him through the heart with a stake.”

She staggers back like she just got lightheaded, and I cut off the heat to my pots, annoyed with the consistency of the liquid.

Mom’s mouth opens and closes a few times, and she finally walks over to a corner. Wordlessly, she lowers herself to a chair, shaking her head slowly.

“I was just dead for seven months, right?” Mom quietly asks, as though she can’t fathom how things escalated so quickly in her absence.

I glance at the paper Lemon is discreetly holding up, and I skim its contents quickly.

Is that Marta Portocale?!!!! OMG! You really should have warned us!!!

“H-how did he manage to put a stake through Arion’s heart?” Mom asks on a worried whisper, her eyes still slightly dazed.

“I assume it’s because he’s a stocky construction worker, who has a lot of experience with driving stakes into things,” I point out. “Shera said humans need a certain amount of physical fitness to injure—”

“Violet, you know damn well that’s not what I mean,” Mom bites out, her impatience and frustration building.

“I’ll give you the specifics later. I have to focus on this right now,” I tell her as I go to toss out the useless batches. “Maybe I can find a recipe for one of you to follow, since you’re more normal than me and no recipe works the same for me as it does for others,” I tell the quiet omegas.

“Or you could use some of the Gypsy Magic apple products we brought for you,” Leiza says, as Tiara comes back in with a couple of boxes in her arms, along with Emit, who is loaded down with them.

“We’re good omegas,” Mary tacks on with a broad grin.

“Yes, you are,” I murmur under my breath, as my own smile grows.

Dusting off my hands, I round the counter, as Mom prattles on about how it’s impossible for life to have changed this much in her absence.

“Maybe you’ve been the weighted shackle holding her back,” Damien chimes in, earning a little side-eye from me, since he’s now visible again.

Mom doesn’t even acknowledge him, lost in her own headspace, as she rambles about how wolves and vampires don’t share a space with a Neopry monster in a Portocale gypsy’s house. Something about laughable blasphemy in there too.

I tune her out so I can see what all they’ve brought. “We even carted over your new apple toothpaste. And we racked up a little more debt on Alpha’s card to clothe them all. We knew he wouldn’t mind,” Leiza says directly to me, as Emit’s head drops back, a sigh passing through his parted lips.

“Just a little debt,” Mary says, pinching her fingers together as Lemon nods.

Ingrid makes a series of taps under my feet, and Leiza stomps like she’s trying to silence her.

I arch an eyebrow, and Leiza gives me a nervous little smile. “A little debt on your card, too, because we had some things we needed to buy you—”

A loud series of taps under my feet get stomped out by Leiza again, while Tiara gives me a mischievous wink.

“And we needed things as well,” Leiza grudgingly tacks on. “We couldn’t come without proper footwear, now, could we?”

“I’ll reimburse you for whatever they spent. They’re supposed to be my wards,” Emit says from some room he’s apparently disappeared into in the past five seconds.

He hasn’t been still very much since I woke up, and Damien hasn’t been visible much. He’s currently invisible again.

I feel like they’re semi-ignoring me because they’re mad, without wanting to be obvious about it, since that would be childish and all.

“You brought your harem to live with my daughter?” Mom asks Emit like he’s finally crossed a line she can attack him for, now that she’s processed this fresh information a little belatedly.