Cracks in the Window

It wasn't quite a flinch, but it almost was. She'd braced herself for it, known that his name was going to come up. She didn't want to hear it, and yet there she was, her daughter saying it like it was nothing. She didn't know though. She couldn't be blamed for not knowing, not when she didn't know because Natalia had kept it that way on purpose.

"It's a charm," Natalia said. "A very powerful one. It will keep him from finding you, if you keep it in your home. It's kept him from finding you all these years, but now that you're leaving..."

There was no way to keep it from him. He'd find out about them one way or another. She only had one charm, and no matter what, they'd have at least two, if not three homes.

"He is your father," Natalia said, even if it pained her. "And I kept that from you as long as I could. I didn't want you to know, and I hoped if I kept it from you, you'd be able to grow up just as vampires, without any demonic influence at all."

Maybe he wouldn't care. Natalia tried to tell herself that, but it was a pipe dream. She'd stolen his children away, hidden them from the lord of lust. When he found out she was alive, there would be consequences, and eventually one of their half-siblings would tell their father.

Natalia didn't even look upset by Alma's obvious anger. She stayed where she was, sitting in front of her, not standing in response.

"I stole you away," Natalia said. "So you wouldn't be raised in that environment. I fled when I was still pregnant, and Manta Carlos allowed me to hide here, and I did. To ensure you'd have a normal life, and a normal childhood. If he knew you existed, he would have wanted to bring you down to hell to be with him, I couldn't have that."

It was obvious enough to anyone what Alma was thinking, but to Natalia, her mother? She knew immediately, and she frowned.

"Don't come back for that reason," Natalia said. "It likely won't make a different in the long run. I hoped to put it off long enough that it would never happen, but on an island like this... it was going to happen eventually."

They couldn't put it off that much longer. Not with Aaron out there. Not with other people knowing.

Natalia flinched despite herself, the loud noise startling her.

She couldn't deny any of it. It had been shitty, and for a whole variety of reasons. The hospital, the backlash... Even so, with context, Natalia had to wonder how much of it had been real in retrospect. What were the odds that Aaron had gone off to school on Christmas day, happened to walk, and happened to get attacked? What were the odds he was being victimized for being a demon, rather than because he had an obvious aura that made people do things they didn't want to?

She left those thoughts unvoiced.

"Then you can stay here," Natalia said, "on your own terms. If you want your old room, that's fine. If you want to swap around, that's fine too. I'm not going to try and lock you in."

She was, in so many words, giving control to Alma. To ease her anger, and for other reasons.

They would never be normal. Not really. Natalia had accepted that years ago, when she'd first arrived on the island. Her family would not be a normal family, but she could fake it. She could get them as close as possible.

Natalia wrapped her arms around Alma, pulling her into a tight squeeze. She would pretend. It wouldn't be true, but she'd pretend anyway. She'd act like life was normal, like it'd always been that way, and everything would go back to how it was - a layer of normalacy, undercut by the sad truth of things.

"Of course," Natalia said. "You can go to bed whenever you want. We can have breakfast in the morning, and then school, and it won't be any different."

And it wouldn't be, because it had always been a little bit fake.