“You couldn’t have stayed with them for long. They would have noticed your not aging,” he said.
“There were different tribes of Comanche; the Yamparikas, the Jupes, and the Kotsotekas, and they all had different bands.” She shrugged. “I moved around the various bands for a while, but no, I wasn’t with them for as long as I’ve moved around with carnivals.”
“And before them?”
Divine sighed and set her fork down. “Marcus—”
“Tell me . . . please,” he added softly, and then offered, “If you do I’ll tell you about myself.”
She stared at him briefly, then nodded and picked up her fork again; gathering some casserole on it, she took a bite, chewed and swallowed and then admitted, “Before the Comanches I was with the Romani.”
“Gypsies,” he said softly and she nodded.
Divine smiled crookedly. “They called me Nuri. It means Gypsy.”
“So even to the Gypsies you were considered a Gypsy?” he asked with amusement.
She smiled wryly. “Well, I moved around even more than they did. I’d travel with a group for five or ten years and then leave and find another. I traveled most of Europe with different Romani groups before sailing to America.”
“I’m surprised they let you travel with them,” he said quietly. “I understood the Romani didn’t embrace outsiders.”
Divine smiled with amusement and reminded him, “I’m immortal, and we can be very persuasive.”
“Ah.” Marcus nodded. “A little mind control, a little influence and bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, you’re in.”
“Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo?” she echoed, eyes wide with disbelief.
Marcus flushed. “There’s a little girl named Livy who was staying with a friend while I was there and she had a thing for Disney movies.”
“Ah,” Divine said solemnly, but she suddenly had an image in her mind of Marcus watching a Disney cartoon with a little girl in pigtails. She had no idea if this Livy wore pigtails, but that was the image that sprang to mind. It was a beautiful image. She thought he’d be good with children. What would their children look like, she wondered, and then pushed the fantasy aside. He might be her life mate, but she could never claim him as one so long as he worked with Lucian.
“And before the Romani?” Marcus asked now.
Divine considered him briefly, and then said, “Isn’t it time you told me a little about yourself?”
Marcus paused and then set his own fork down with a nod. “Fair enough.”
She was glad he didn’t argue the point . . . for two reasons. She really did want to learn more about him, but she also wanted to eat more of the delicious food on her plate, which was hard to do while she was talking.
Marcus took a sip of the water beside his plate and then set the glass down saying, “Okay. My grandparents are Marzzia and Nicodemus Notte. They were a part of the group of original immortals, the survivors of Atlantis.”
“Atlantis?” she asked with bewilderment.
Marcus stilled and tilted his head. “Has no one taught you the history of our origins, Divine?”
She almost lied again and said yes rather than look ignorant, but then sighed and admitted, “No. I’m afraid not. My childhood was rather . . .” She frowned and glanced away.
“Unconventional?” he suggested gently, and the word made her snort indelicately.
Covering her mouth and nose quickly, she peered wide-eyed at him over her hand and then suddenly lost patience with herself. She was no shrinking violet. She had taken care of herself for millennia, and would be damned if encountering a life mate she couldn’t claim, and recalling a childhood that had been a horror all around, was going to reduce her to the state of a blithering idiot afraid to say what she felt or meant or wanted. Her history was her history and that was that. She couldn’t change it, and he could accept it, deal with it, or just get the hell out of her life if he didn’t like it.
Letting her hand drop she said, “Unconventional does not begin to describe my childhood. For one thing, my parents were not true life mates.” His eyebrows rose at that and she nodded. “My mother, Tisiphone, was older than my father, Felix, and she wanted a child. My father was apparently very likable and easygoing and so she decided he would do.”
Divine paused to take a drink of water before continuing, “While my father couldn’t read Tisiphone, he knew she was older so thought nothing of it.” She grimaced and added, “Until Tisiphone claimed she couldn’t read him either and they therefore must be life mates.”
“She was lying?” Marcus asked.
Divine nodded. “Yes. She could read him . . . and control him too. She used both skills, plus manipulation and drugs, to make him think he was experiencing the infamous life mate sex.”
Marcus frowned. “Was your father young enough to still eat?”
Divine shook her head. “I gather she used mind control, or perhaps drugs too, to make him think he was hungry and that the food was the most delicious he’d ever had and whatnot.”
“And she did all this for a baby?” he asked with a frown. “Why not just manipulate a mortal into impregnating her? Hell, she wouldn’t even have had to manipulate one. They’d have been lining up to sleep with her.”
When Divine raised her eyebrows at that, he explained, “We apparently give off some chemical mix of hormones that makes us seem ultra attractive to mortals.”
“Really?” she asked with interest. Divine hadn’t known that. But it explained why mortal men seemed always to be making nuisances of themselves around her.
“Yes,” Marcus said, and then added. “Even if that hadn’t worked, she could have easily influenced any mortal to think she was gorgeous. Although, if you got your looks from her, she must have already been gorgeous.”
Divine felt her face heat up at the compliment and rolled her eyes at her own reaction. Seriously? Blushing? She was too damned old to blush, she thought, and then said, “Yes, she could have. But apparently my mother didn’t want just any baby. She wanted the baby of a man from a powerful family.”
“And your father, Felix? He was from a powerful family?”
Divine almost bit off her tongue as she realized that she’d given something away that might be dangerous. Trying to act as if she hadn’t, she shrugged. “Apparently, although I only heard all of this from a servant. And my mother had been a servant herself before she tricked my father into thinking he was her life mate.”
“Your mother was older than your father, immortal, and yet a servant?” Marcus asked with surprise.
Divine shrugged. “That’s what I was told.”
Marcus sat back and shook his head at this news, apparently finding it hard to believe. She could understand why. As an immortal Tisiphone could have controlled and influenced any number of wealthy mortals into marrying her, and with them under her control, they would have let her do whatever she wanted with their wealth. Heck, she could even have just used mind control to make them give her their wealth if she’d been of a mind to. That was certainly no less dastardly than what she’d done to Divine’s poor father. But the truth was she’d needed the power of Divine’s father’s family to get her out of servitude. Because she’d been a servant to another powerful, immortal family to pay a debt she owed for causing the death of one of their children.
Marcus cleared his throat suddenly and Divine glanced to him. He was about to ask a question, and she knew exactly what it would be. What was the name of her father’s powerful family? She couldn’t answer that, so quickly said, “Of course, her lies and manipulations couldn’t hold up forever. I was four when my father eventually figured out that she’d used him. Once he realized that, he apparently snuck out a message explaining the situation and asking for help with one of the servants, who was ordered to take it to one of his brothers.”