"It's not normal," I went on, glaring at his back.
"Nothing about my sister is normal. Most of what I know about her defies logic. However, that's her story to tell. Not mine. Furthermore, you are both related to my son by blood. And unfortunately, the two of you are the most qualified to teach him what he needs to know," Ethan snapped as he tossed the statue into a wastebasket. "My child is six months old. He's the size of a four year old. He can turn people’s skin all colors of the rainbow, not to mention he can conjure Trolls and Gnomes." Ethan shuddered. "He's been kidnapped by Fairies and he needs to be trained to defend himself. Not sure how much clearer you need me to make this."
"Let me teach him to fight and send her back to the rock she lives under," I shot back. "He doesn't need to know his multiplication tables to kill a Troll."
"And that is where you are wrong, my friend," Ethan said. "His mind is a wonder. We need to feed it and keep it occupied so he stops animating stuffed animals that have death wishes."
"You're joking."
"No, I'm not joking. Not even a little fucking bit," Ethan ground out. "Have you ever been attacked and almost decapitated by an army of orange and blue teddy bears?"
I was speechless.
"I thought not," Ethan said wearily. "Add to that a fire breathing purple plastic dragon and a dagger throwing headless doll. My son thinks these sorts of things are funny."
"It actually is kind of funny."
The glare I received made me bite back the tasteless dragon joke on the tip of my tongue. Samuel was not just a Prince and the child of Astrid and Ethan. He was a True Immortal—one of nine. God was Good. Satan was Evil. Mother Nature was Emotion, her husband, the father of Satan was Wisdom. Hayden, the Angel of Death was Death. Elijah, the Angel of Light was Life. Dixie, Satan's daughter was Balance, and her half-sister Lucy was Temptation. Astrid was Compassion and Samuel was Utopia—a combination of all of them.
That kid had one Hell of a row to hoe.
"I knew this would be difficult," Ethan admitted, "but it is what it is. You’ll do this because I have asked you… and you will do it well."
"Yes, of course I will. But I won’t be responsible if your sister loses a few limbs."
There was no choice in the matter. I had no issue with training the child. I adored Samuel and it was an honor to have been asked. But getting along with his shrew of an aunt was difficult at best and impossible at worst.
"As long as it's not her head she loses, then I'm fine with that. Just don't do it in front of my child," Ethan said. "Clear?"
"Clear."
It was a promise I didn't know if I could keep.
Chapter 2
"Me can't eat pie. Me a Vampyre just like you," Samuel explained to Raquel as I watched from my seat at the desk in Ethan's newly renovated office. I pretended to be absorbed in a folder filled with fighting techniques, but in truth, I was fighting to keep my eyes off Raquel.
She was a witch and I was determined to break the psychotic spell she had on me. Clearly screwing her out of my system wasn't working. I'd been doing that for two hundred years with no clear end in sight. My pants were killing me at the moment. Embarrassing as it was, not even Samuel's presence could quell my desire.
The furniture in the office had been replaced with finds from yard sales since we had destroyed a small fortune due to our skirmishes. The ragtag desks and chairs looked ridiculous in the grand office with the marble floors and cathedral ceilings, but it was a wise move on Ethan's part. Raquel and I obviously couldn’t be trusted around priceless objects.
"It's not the kind of pie you eat," Raquel corrected him with a giggle and a kiss. "It's math. You can't eat math."
Why didn't she ever giggle at anything I said? Why in the Hell did I care?
I pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose and went back to the paperwork in front of me. Astrid, my only, and least favorite, cousin right now, had decided Raquel and I would work with Samuel together. She reasoned it would force us not to kill each other.
She was wrong.
I knew if need be, I could distract Sammy with something shiny and dismember my foe in two seconds flat. The major problem with the scenario was that she could potentially do the same. I might outweigh and outmuscle her, but Raquel’s rabid desire to maim couldn't be discounted.
She was equally dangerous to my concentration, my life and most definitely my libido.
"Do you remember what I told you about pi? What a big number it is?" she asked Samuel as she pointed to a passage in a book.
Sammy closed his eyes and slammed his chunky little hands over the numbers.
"The first fifty numbers in dethimal digits are 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510. Is me right?" he asked as he peeked under his hand.
"Um, yes," Raquel choked out. "How did you know that? We haven't learned that yet."
"Me debided some stuff in my head, silly Raquel." He laughed and pulled on her red curls as he popped his thumb into his mouth with satisfaction.
"Very good," she whispered as her eyes caught mine in shock.
Did this kid even need us? Well, he needed me, but his brain was a sponge. Maybe Raquel could go back to her dungeon and leave me to work with Samuel.
"Looks like he's smarter than you," I said as I got ready to duck in case the textbook came flying.