laughed. “I wasn’t thinking of anything quite so—well, quite so whatever. I was thinking the bottoms of the feet.”
“It wouldn’t be too intimate or personal a question if we were to ask to see the bottoms of your feet, would it?” Declan teased.
“Knock yourselves out,” Alessande said, sitting at the foot of the bed and lifting her legs.
They all stared.
And then they looked into her eyes.
“What?” Alessande cried.
“Shapeshifter,” Barrie said softly. “You may be Elven, but you were also born to be a Keeper for the shapeshifter community.”
“She’s right. It’s faint, but the mark is there,” Declan said.
They all backed away, still staring at her. “Your mother never told you that your father was a shapeshifter Keeper?” Sailor asked her.
“No! I thought it wasn’t even acceptable for Others to…well, you know, have relationships with different races of Others until just recently,” Alessande said.
“Acceptable or not, I’m sure it’s happened throughout time,” Rhiannon told them. “People have always intermingled—whether it was socially acceptable or not.”
“And,” Sailor added thoughtfully, “while we may all want to believe we’ve magically become openminded, the play Avenue Q has it right. Everyone is a little bit racist.”
Alessande winced, her lashes veiling her eyes. Yes, she admitted to herself, it was true. She herself had been down on Mark Valiente for being a vampire.
“Do you think they hid their relationship, afraid of what other…Others might think?” Barrie asked.
“My mother died when I was seven. Maybe she meant to tell me when I was older,” Alessande said. “Maybe she didn’t want me knowing—afraid of how I’d be accepted in the Elven world if I let it slip.”
“If you think about it, this is really a great thing,” Barrie said. “You have the power of the Elven and the power of shifting, too.”
“I can’t shape-shift. Whatever happened was a total accident. And that’s bad—really bad,” Alessande said.
“No, we’ll work on it. You need to practice, learn to concentrate,” Mick told her.
“You have Mick, Declan and me. We’ll help you,” Barrie assured her.
Alessande looked at them. And then the magnitude of what was happening slowly swept over her. She hadn’t known how to mind read or teleport as a small child; she’d learned from her mother and then from her stepparents. It was like learning to walk, to talk… .
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