There was more chatter about us being angels, what with Jarvis’s winged appearance and the doctors’ and nurses’ description of me glowing when I healed Jarvis’s burns. But that died down when Barbara Walters asked me during her interview who my sweetie was. Was it Dontaine or someone else?
My answer was that it was several someone elses. That I was in committed relationships with Amber, Dante, and Dontaine.
As the big studio cameras zoomed in on each of my men as I pointed them out, I could almost feel the collective pulse of watching America skitter in appalled and scandalized titillation.
That pretty much cut down the talk about us being angels.
The interviews that followed focused almost entirely on the sexual relationship of Monère Queens and their warriors. I might have answered the questions with maybe a little too much frankness. Our interviewers couldn’t seem to get away from the sex part of it and the fact that three lovers was considered uncommonly chaste for a Monère Queen.
All in all, the people who flew out to meet us and interview us in person considered it well worth their effort, with record ratings for their shows.
The location of our hotel was discovered on the third day. Frankly, I was surprised it had taken that long.
I saw FBI Agent Jim Carmichael again when he and his men showed up with some local police to keep the crowd of reporters and gawkers under control. Agent Carmichael and I agreed that staying at the hotel would no longer be possible. Just as well, it was getting pricey at seven hundred bucks a day for two suites.
Money was leaving our briefcase at a very steady and alarming rate.
We bought a used van with sixty-one thousand miles for a little over half the price a new one would have cost. After all, why pay for something brand new when there was still no guarantee we’d be sticking around?
So far, so good. The U.S. government and I had an unspoken understanding. We would play nice as long as they did. Why rock the boat? They were getting tons of information about the Monère from us, freely and willingly given. But I didn’t know how long I could trust that to last.
Quentin found a furnished six-bedroom home for us to rent an hour away from DC. It ended up being a third less than what staying at the hotel would have cost us. That it was in a gated community was even better. Still, even with the added distance, reporters kept climbing up the side of the hills where it wasn’t fenced, and hiking in. We had to hire a private security company recommended by our law firm to not only patrol around outside the house and escort trespassing reporters back out the front gates, but also to sweep the house on a daily basis for bugs. We’d found quite a few of them.
We had taken the first step. People knew about us now.
Those same people were still clueless that the same supernatural race that had generated their tales of angels and werewolves were the same ones spawning their mythology about demons and Hell. And I wanted to keep it that way for as long as I could. Preferably until the Monère gained legal rights.
Was it reasonable to expect humans to live alongside people who could crush their skulls with a simple flexing of their fingers? That was an argument already being aired.
My rebuttal back was: Wouldn’t you want to know who and what we really were instead of living next to us in ignorance, as many were doing even now? To have us not only protected by the same rights but also restricted by those very same rules?
There was also talk about how our talents and abilities could benefit everyone. A huge untapped resource, people were saying.
It was a start. A good start even.
Now we had to see if we could finish it without screwing it up.
Titles by Sunny
MONA LISA AWAKENING
MONA LISA BLOSSOMING
MONA LISA CRAVING
MONA LISA DARKENING
MONA LISA ECLIPSING
LUCINDA, DARKLY
LUCINDA, DANGEROUSLY
OVER THE MOON
ON THE PROWL