Gypsy Rising (All The Pretty Monsters #5)(7)

Leaving the false bravado behind me, I hurry out to the awaiting, unique van the omegas apparently rented. Tiara adds my box to the back, and then we all pile in. I take the driver’s seat.

“I feel ridiculously stupid for unloading the van now, and then immediately loading it right back up,” Lemon comments. “It really does make us look stupid when we do things like that in front of Damien. I prefer him to think of us as cunning she-wolves. He respects the cunning. I’m fucking cunning. I am.”

She sniffs the air, and presumably strikes a ‘cunning’ pose. It looks more like an unpracticed, amateurish ‘fierce’ pose that would make the perfect backdrop for a ‘caption this’ meme.

“Everyone does something that makes them want to palm their face from time to time,” I tell her, trying not to smile when she deflates.

“Marta’s going to think we’re nothing more than Alpha’s ex-harem and try to force us out,” she adds on a sad sigh.

“You’re not being forced out,” I assure her.

A relaxing sound of seatbelts click in a wave, without anyone needing to be asked, and Tiara cuts up the music.

Just as I start driving, I see Ingrid pop up and climb over the back row to sit alone, relaxing like she’s happy to stretch out, and I smile.

“Stop!” half of them shout at once, as I stomp on the brake.

“What?” I ask, looking around at absolutely nothing but our van on the road.

“Wrong side of the road,” they all say in unison.

I feel my cheeks burning as I swap lanes. Guess this is my face-palming moment.

“Why does everyone else has to drive on the other side of the road?” I grumble, weirdly embarrassed.

“How very obnoxiously American of you,” Ingrid chimes from the back with a singsong voice.

“You hide under floors and behind walls. You don’t really have room to mock me,” I grumble, only feeling her grin at my back.

I roll the window down, letting in the cold, when Tiara starts sweating, since purebloods run warmer. Makes sense that I run colder, if I’m gauging myself off her.

Wolves are hot-blooded. Neoprys and Portocales are cold-blooded.

I’m just starting to relax, while they all discuss their trip over here, when my eyes narrow on a quickly approaching glass ball aimed right at the windshield.

The salt dives to the left like it’s steering the ball, and then darts into my window, before dropping to my lap. I lift it, studying it in stolen glances, as I keep most of my attention on the road.

A tiny crack, too small for even one grain to escape, is on the side, but it’s pristine other than that.

I’d given up on trying to call for one, certain all the balls had dropped and the grains had scattered out to sea.

I squeeze the fragile glass between my fingers, feeling it shatter. I’m impressed that this one survived well enough to travel to me.

A stone settles on my stomach when I feel the salt grains.

“What’s that?” Leiza asks from behind me, as I continue rubbing it between my fingers.

“Table salt,” I state quietly, my mind moving back to the first day I met Anna.

The day she rode in on my mother’s casket and jabbered directly to me like she knew I was going to meet her eyes.

“Why do you look upset about that?” Ingrid asks.

I glance down, not seeing even a hint of the subtle gray coloring it should have. “Because it’s supposed to be ghost salt.”

I should have noticed this sooner, but who actually pays close attention to salt?

The triplets didn’t leave behind ghost salt either…

What the hell is going on?

I add it to the bulletin board of things to process and deal with later, as I return my attention to the task at hand.

“What do I say to them?” I ask, briefly glancing over at Tiara.

She cuts down the music, and everyone goes quiet for a second.

“I’m trying to recall if any of the books I’ve read mentioned if they speak English or not. They were buried in Ireland, so one can presume they may speak some form of English,” Tiara says thoughtfully, tapping her chin.

“Unless they only learned Gaelic while here,” Mary states, not helping things out, as they all deliberately dodge my question.

“Gypsies traveled all over and were actually quite educated with languages of all kinds, a tool that often kept them alive, while also making them valuable, in the event someone kidnapped them instead of killing them on the spot,” Lemon adds. “It’s possible they know old English, but it’s still going to be a communication barrier. Fortunately, Simpletons seem to catch on quicker than others to languages.”

“Great. Let’s say they speak some form of English. No one has told me what I should say,” I state dryly to that long, detailed answer.

After a long beat of silence, Leiza clears her throat and glances around, as if she’s waiting on someone else to answer.

“Say hi,” Tiara states in a way that suggests she finds it to be profound wisdom.

“I’ll come up with something on my own,” I mutter, as a thousand things run through my mind of what to say and how to say it.

Mom says it’s about delivery. She’s more passionate than I am, though. She’s loud and insistent. I’m quiet and easygoing. My delivery always sounds like an aw-shucks sort of thing when I try too hard.