Bailey Morgan [2] Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“They just couldn't see that much power as female.”
    Eze,
I thought.
Eze.
    And then it came to me, from where I had no idea. “Holy freaking cow in a box,” I said. “She's Zeus!”
    “Very good,” James said. “And yes, she is.”
    I silently thanked him for not commenting on the fact that I'd just used the phrase “holy freaking cow in a box.” The expression on his face told me quite explicitly that part of him had wanted to.
    I forced myself to focus. “So if Eze is Zeus, that makes Drogan …”
    “Zeus's brother, of course,” James said. “If there was one thing the ancient Greeks did well, it was familial relationships. There were three siblings, who divided the world between them. Zeus ruled over the heavens, also known in this realm as the World of Light. Hades took the underworld …”
    “The World of Darkness,” I finished. Drogan as Hades. It was a creepy image. “What about the third sibling?”
    James clamped his mouth shut.
    “What?” I poked him in the side and blushed the second I realized I'd done it.
    “There is no third,” James said. “There are only two. Seelie and Unseelie, King and Queen. So it has always been.”
    Brainwashed,
I thought,
party of one,
but I didn't say it out loud.
    “And the others?” I asked.
    “Xane doesn't make any appearances in that particular mythos himself,” James said, obviously amused by that fact, “but you can think of him as a smaller, younger Hades. Axia was once known as Artemis, Lyria as Aphrodite.”
    Somehow, it was hard to picture shy-smiled Lyria as the goddess of love.
    “And those two?” I asked, gesturing across the fire. I realized a second too late that the girls were no longer there.
    “It's generally considered ill-mannered to point.” The
girls appeared on either side of the bench, seemingly out of nowhere. They had pale skin and lips the color of blood. Like James, they were redheads of sorts. The one who had spoken was a true strawberry blonde, her hair both pale and red. The other looked more like a lion, her mane a darker shade of James's red-brown. The two of them were incredibly thin—to the point that I felt easily twice as wide as the two of them together. Their eyes were deep-set, and their piercing blue gazes dug into me like talons.
    “Uhhhhh … hi, girls,” James said. I got the feeling that he wasn't so much caught off guard that they were there as he was uncomfortable with their proximity to me.
    “Hello, James,” the girls said in unison, and then they began to pet him, running their hands up and down his triceps and occasionally burying their fingers in his hair. If my entire life had been a movie, this moment alone would have been enough to change its rating to PG-13. Heck, I was almost eighteen, and I didn't feel old enough to be watching this.
    “Girls,” James said patiently, ignoring the fact that they couldn't keep their hands off of him, “this is Bailey.”
    “We—”
    “—know.”
    They finished each other's sentences, their bloodred lips savoring the words.
    “Bailey, this is Kiste.” James gestured to the girl with the darker hair. “And this is Cyna.”
    Kis-tee. Ky-nah.
The pronunciations hung in the air.
    So who are they?
I thought, trying to figure out which Greek goddesses would most likely be redheaded vampires.
    As soon as the word
vampire
crossed my mind, I spent several seconds wondering if there was such a thing as a vampire Sidhe, and if Kiste and Cyna were staring at me like that because I was on the lunch menu. With James beside me, I didn't feel scared, but the possibility still creeped me out.
    “We're—”
    “—thirsty.”
    With that pronouncement, the girls reached down and the mountain provided them each with a stone cup filled with the same liquid James had offered me earlier.
    “You want something, Bay?” James asked, and I couldn't help but notice that he shortened my name the way Delia and Zo did.
    “I'm fine,” I said, even though my tongue was