Chapter 4

• We moved to a large dining room. Large may have been understating it, I’d seen restaurants smaller than this room. There was a long, polished wooden table with chairs surrounding it. On the walls were portraits of ancestors, judging by the fact that the males in the room resembled the people in the portraits in one way or another.
• I sat there looking around at the seven men, still a little shocked they were brothers. What woman in her right mind would keep going after giving birth to the first few? Incredible, was my first thought. Well done, mom, was the second. Each one was a varying degree of good looking, from cute-baby-faced to ruggedly-hot. It seems the genes were good on this side of whatever they called it.
• “Sorry I’m late. Am I late? I think I’m awake at night instead of day, this past week has been hell on my system. I’ve been to more locations in this realm this week than I have in a hundred years.” A man said wandering in a different door than we had used. He was identical to the man Daxx was with, except he had a goatee. He looked like he’d just crawled out of bed. Not that I’d tell him, but half-asleep looked good on him.
• Walking toward the table, he stopped and looked at me and then around to the others. “What have I missed? We seem to have an extra body today.” He looked around again. “A female body.”
• “Nothing wrong with your observational skills.” I said quietly.
• He grinned, a real player’s smile at me. “And she’s sassy.” Holding a finger up, he winked at me. “Let me get coffee and wake up, then I can keep up with a bit of sass.” Turning, he went and sat down.
• I glanced to Troy. “How many brothers are there?”
• “There’s eight of us. This is Chase…” He shook his head. “Actually, there’s nine, but one we haven’t even met… the one from your side.” He motioned to Crissy. “She’s trying to find him.”
• Crissy nodded enthusiastically. “The man in the club I was looking for.”
• I nodded, remembering our last bizarre meeting in the club. My side and their side. Side of what, I debated on asking.
• Crissy pointed to the quiet Arius. “He looks almost identical to Arius, only with shorter hair.”
• I studied him for a moment. “I think I may have seen him at the club, but not recently.” A male as striking as that, you couldn’t help but notice.
• “I hope he hasn’t vanished again.” Crissy said with a sigh. “It wasn’t easy going through three hundred years of records to track him down.”
• “He’s three hundred?”
• She nodded.
• “I guess I’m not that old…” I stopped talking. It wasn’t like me to give away anything about myself. I didn’t know what was with this group, but as far as I could tell they were emotionless. I picked up a few spikes of emotions, but they were nothing compared to what I was used to. Instinct told me to run, but my mind was way beyond curious.
• “How old are you?” Daxx asked me.
• I studied her for a moment, not sure if I should answer.
• “Alona, it’s okay.” Crissy nodded. “
• I stared at her. “How do you know that name? I haven’t used it in—” I blew out a breath, trying to remember how long. “I don’t know how many years.”
• “Oh.” She bit her lip. “I don’t know how I knew, I just did.”
• “What name are you using now?” Victor asked as he wrapped his arm around Crissy’s shoulder.
• I still couldn’t see how those two ended up together, but he clearly cared for her. “I have been using Isabell for the last six months, before that it was…” I waved my hand around, it wasn’t important. “Another name.”
• Crissy looked at me for a moment, an odd look on her face. “You don’t look like an Isabell.”
• I smirked. “Most people don’t stop to see if you look like your name.” Not that I became well enough acquainted with most people to share my name of the moment.
• “Alona is your birth name?” Michael asked me, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms. He reminded me of a cop. Did they have cops here?
• “Yes.”
• He nodded for a moment. “Do you know who your parents were?”
• I shrugged. “I am assuming a man and a woman.” I crossed my arms and studied him. I didn’t know these people, I was not revealing anything until I knew what they were all about.
• He sighed and then seemed to drop the hard appearance. “I only ask because we are trying to figure out how residents from this side got over to the other side, and apparently frequently enough to have relationships.”
• “Getting a woman pregnant isn’t exactly a relationship.”
• “You knew your mother than?” Leone asked, his tone much more compassionate than his cop-like brother.
• “Yes, until she died from a broken heart when I was ten. Then I was shuffled off to the orphanage.” I shook my head. “I didn’t care for it, so I didn’t stay very long.”
• Chase snorted but didn’t say anything.