I came out of my trance around lunchtime. Honestly, I was expecting it to be later with all the running around, exploring, and talking to different aspects of myself that I had been doing while I was in my drug-assisted trance. When my eyes fluttered open and I found myself once again in the real world, it took me a few minutes to get my bearings.

The first thing that I noticed as my brain made the transition back to the real world was that my legs were asleep from sitting in the lotus position for so long. As soon as I tried to move them so I could get to my feet, I was bombarded by the annoying sensation of pins and needles, and I had to take several minutes moving, stretching, and bending my joints to get the feeling to pass. As I was doing so, I attempted to take a mental inventory of sorts.

I felt lighter somehow, and maybe that was because I made a conscious decision to accept who and what I am. Talking to the various aspects of myself had opened my eyes to a lot of things; it showed me what qualities I valued in myself and some things that I was reluctant to admit to myself as well. Penny wasn’t the only part of myself that made me come to realizations that I had been avoiding since my seal was broken, or for even longer in Penny’s case.

Denial had made a major impact on me as well when I talked to her, or rather, when I tried to talk to her. She clung to the idea that she could still have a normal, human life and just ignored everything else going on around her in a way that wasn’t healthy. It made me see what it looked like when I desperately hoped for the same thing and ignored all the weird and occasionally wonderful Paranormal stuff going on around me every day.

That made me realize that I was only hurting myself by clinging to the idea of a normal life that I would probably never have, knowing what I knew now. Penny was proof of that. Sure, I was a scared kid trying to deal with the fact that a Demon had attacked me back then, and I was so traumatized by it that Alice’s mother had to make me forget that it even happened, but trying to ignore the Paranormal and what I was would only lead to pain and suffering. Penny had already suffered enough because I was too scared to accept any of this, and I guess I had as well, since she was essentially a part of me.

In some ways, the damage was already done, but by making a conscious choice to face this and accept that part of myself, I wasn’t going to make it worse. Maybe this might even be the path to healing the mental damage I had already done to myself. So, yeah, I was feeling lighter, more accepting of my Paranormal heritage, and determined to stop lying to myself.

Maybe I wasn’t human anymore, and my life would probably always reflect that, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t have a normal life. Normal is relative, and my normal would be what I make it. I could still go to school if I wanted to, I could become a Hunter with Alice and Erin, or I could do any number of other things with my life. The future would be what I decided to make it, and I was in no rush to make any decisions now that I had made several mind-blowing mental realizations.

Other than feeling lighter, both mentally and emotionally, I could also feel Penny’s presence, both sides of her… of me. No, she wasn’t talking in my mind or anything like that, and she didn’t feel like a separate, fully realized person. It was more like a sense of both the darkness of my Demon side and the Light of my Valkyrie side at the back of my mind, and it was reassuring in a way.

Penny was a part of me, and yet separate, too. From what my aunt had told me over breakfast, the presence that represented them was my halo. If I wanted to and pulled on that presence to bring it outside of me, instead of keeping it inside, I could summon my halo. I would not be doing that, though.

For one thing, as things stood now, I would never be able to truly communicate with that part of myself while it remained a halo. It was an aspect of myself, but it was raw and instinctual, little more than a slave to my will in halo form. I didn’t want to consign Penny to what might be another form of prison, so I was content to let them peacefully slumber until it was time to forge my andivapn.

Aunt Lin had not yet told me what forging my andivapn would entail, but she did say that doing so would give the aspect that I had acknowledged a physical form, which usually took the shape of a weapon suited to me, or at least that aspect of me. She had hinted that the soul-bound weapon would be able to communicate with me as well, even when not summoned. That was a far cry better than what halos were capable of.

Just the thought of it made me feel a surge of anger toward the Angels and pity for their halos. They risked death to put themselves into a state where they could acknowledge some important part of their soul, enough to make it almost a new person, a soul-child in essence, but they cared for nothing more than the power it granted them. Those newly formed soul children were trapped as creatures of instinct and slaves to those who created them when they could be so much more. It seemed like a self-obsessed dick move to me, which seemed to support everything that I had heard about the male side of our species in general.

Aunt Lin told me that an andivapn isn’t just some magical weapon, they are a partner. They are another you, and they have a sense of self and an almost familial bond with their soul-bound partners. It was not something to be treated as a soulless thing or just a source of power.

I tried to put such thoughts out of my mind as I finally stopped feeling the pins and needles in my legs and got to my feet to leave the sunroom in search of my aunt. I found her in the dining room, starting lunch without me, and joined her since I was surprisingly hungry after spending all morning meditating. The plates at each of our seats boasted a large rib-eye steak, baked potatoes with all the garnishes you could want, thick slices of garlic bread, and a large chicken Caesar salad for each of us as well.

My aunt smiled as I sat across the table from her and said, “About time you came out of it, Kiddo. So, how did it go?”

“Hmmph,” I grumped. “You make it sound like this was supposed to be easy. My soul was a mess, just so you know. I have issues I never realized I had before, but I found an aspect of myself that I connected with like you instructed… sorta.”

“It was hard to tell time accurately back then, but I’m pretty sure I finished my soul journey in an hour or so once I had the tea, but then, I also had a very good idea of who I was and what I was looking for. All of this is new to you, so you don’t really have that luxury,” she told me gently as I started to fill my plate. “What do you mean by ‘sorta’, though? There is no room for second thoughts here, Raven, it’s why I told you to choose carefully.”

I paused loading my potato with sour cream and bacon bits for a moment as I considered how best to explain things before finally telling her, “I did choose carefully, and I felt like this is the aspect that most fits who I am, and who I want to be. It felt like it was probably the most powerful aspect of my soul, too, but they were kind of imprisoned.”

One of Aunt Lin’s delicate blonde eyebrows rose and was then followed by the other. “Imprisoned? And what do you mean by ‘they’, Raven? As far as I know, only one aspect can be acknowledged.”

As I finished loading my potato the way I wanted it and poured myself a glass of orange juice, I shrugged. It’s not like I understood what was going on any better than she did. “Yeah, well, what can I say? The inside of my soul is a weird place. Lydia mentioned an incident to me after my seal broke. I guess I was attacked by a Demon when I was little, and it was very traumatizing. I’m guessing here, but maybe I was so scared of the Paranormal and Demons in particular, after that incident, that I locked away part of that aspect of myself.”

“Wait, are you saying that you acknowledged multiple aspects?” my aunt asked with a confused look on her face as I cut into my steak and savored the first bite. It was delicious.

“That’s where it gets weird,” I replied after finishing my mouthful. “They looked like twins in my soulscape, but one clearly represents the Valkyrie part of me while the other represents the Demon part. It was the Demon part that was imprisoned, but they were connected, literally by a chain. They seem to be two parts of the same aspect of me, so the Valkyrie part was stuck outside the cage and could only sit there suffering with her sister, while the Demon part was imprisoned. They’re separate and yet almost the same person.”

“I have no idea how that will affect your andivapn,” she told me with a pensive frown. “Oddrún was fairly simple, all things considered. She increases my speed and reflexes when summoned, and as you can see, she’s straightforward and very sharp.”

The last was said as a sword materialized in her right hand. I was no expert on weapons, but it looked like a longsword, a long and slender blade with a silvery sheen to the metal and a simple but practical-looking guard and hilt. As swords go, even compared to those I had found in my basement, the blade was almost beautiful in its simplicity. She held it… No, her, casually and comfortably, as if she hadn’t just made a sword appear out of thin air at the dinner table.

“Umm… hello, Oddrún, it’s nice to meet you,” I offered hesitantly. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what proper decorum would be when meeting my aunt’s andivapn for the first time. I didn’t know much about her or how much she could interact with my aunt or the outside world.

“She is pleased to meet you as well, or at least, that’s the sense I get,” my aunt said with a smile. Then she went on to explain, “She doesn’t truly speak to me; mostly, I just feel emotions and have a vague idea of what she might be thinking. When I was young, I heard of a few of our kind who claimed that they could speak with their andivapn properly, outside of a deep meditative trance like the one you were just in. Whether they merely shared a closer bond than I have with Oddrún or they had some method of creating such a close bond, I will probably never know now that we are the last of our kind.”

She then dismissed the weapon almost as casually as she summoned it, prompting me to inquire, “What’s it like for her when she’s not summoned? Doesn’t it get lonely for her?”

Aunt Lin laughed and shook her head. “When she’s not in her material form, Oddrún shares my senses. She sees, feels, and hears what I do… when she wants to and isn’t sleeping, anyway. Honestly, she’s never been the most social girl; she’s happiest when we’re fighting or driving too fast, and she’s quiet most of the rest of the time.”

Somehow, I managed to keep a straight face, but it wasn’t easy, because that totally made sense, hilariously even; she was a part of Aunt Lin after all. She was trying for me, but my aunt hadn’t exactly been the most social person I’d ever met since I found her. Sure, she was nice to people unless they did something to piss her off, and even caring to the hotel staff and others under her protection, but from what I’d heard from the people at the Ninth Ring and seen for myself so far, she seldom went out of her way to socialize unless she had a good reason.

I was honestly a little bit surprised that she had agreed to meet Lydia, Alice, and Erin tonight, given how she almost seemed to be trying to avoid it yesterday. Maybe she had to work her way up to it, or she just wasn’t in the mood to meet people yesterday, and I guess that made sense with how emotional she got when she saw my mother’s old Corvette in my driveway.

I had also noticed that she suggested we all have dinner at the hotel as well, but I couldn’t be sure if she had suggested that to have some control over things or whether she wanted it to happen somewhere she felt more comfortable and relaxed. To be fair, though, she had only recently learned that her sister was dead, and that she had a niece she didn’t know about. If I were dealing with all that, I would probably be reluctant to visit the home where my sister spent the last years of her life, building a life without me, either. Especially so since she seemed to blame herself for not being there when Mom died.

Yeah, looking at it that way, I’d probably nope out on that bit of potentially awkward and uncomfortable drama too, if given the choice. I tried to put the thoughts out of my mind as we ate lunch, and she started telling me about the plans for embarking on our trip tomorrow morning. Well, as much as she was willing to tell me before we were on our way, anyway. She was keeping a lot of the details close to the vest, but I guess that made sense with how secretive she was being with the whole Valkyrie training thing in general.

I was so nervous while I waited for Lydia, Alice, and Erin to arrive, and honestly, I wasn’t even sure why. I just really wanted them and my aunt to get along, and I was terrified of some sort of huge argument happening between them. I was pretty sure that Erin was chill enough to just take things as they came and not take offense to anything, but she was also the one that I would have been least worried about, regardless. Alice was potentially my girlfriend, and Lydia had raised me, though, and I wanted them to get along with my aunt, the only blood family I had in the world.

Lydia was going to be the hard sell, of course. She was already resentful and seemed to worry about Aunt Lin trying to take her place in my life. The way that she had reacted to my first and only ‘flying lesson’ and my new look made that very clear to all of us.

She didn’t seem very happy when I called home earlier to set this dinner up either. Alice had told her about the idea, so it wasn’t like she was completely taken off guard; I just think having dinner here at the hotel made her feel threatened. Her mood wasn’t improved when I mentioned that I would probably have to stay the night in my penthouse so Aunt Lin and I could leave early the next morning for our trip.

I was mentally going through a list of topics to avoid so there wouldn’t be any explosive arguments, but honestly, there was only one that I could think of, and it was a big one. That potential conversational land mine was the PDA. Aunt Lin made no secret of the fact that she didn’t trust organizations like the PDA, while Alice’s parents worked for them, and she wanted to as well. Lydia seemed to have close ties with the PDA as well, since both of my parents had worked for the organization, and she seemed to trust them with my safety.

Yeah, it was probably better to avoid that topic entirely, especially since my mother, Aunt Lin’s sister, had died while working for the PDA. Aunt Lin already didn’t trust them, and I feared that might have soured her even further toward them. Dammit, this was a terrible idea. I felt like I was looking over a minefield instead of preparing for a family dinner of sorts.

I didn’t have time to change my mind now, though, so there was nothing I could do but go through with it as planned. The front desk had just called to let me know that my ‘guests’ were on their way up and they would likely arrive any moment. At least we were having dinner in my suite instead of my aunt’s, and now she was waiting in her suite until I called her to let her know we were ready to arrange dinner.

That had been Aunt Lin’s idea. She felt that having me host the dinner in a place that was effectively mine (even if it hadn’t been for long), rather than in her penthouse, would make for a good neutral location for everyone. The other option was to eat downstairs in the restaurant, but that seemed impersonal and far too public, and if things went badly, then anyone else in the restaurant would get dinner and a show.

Damn, why was all this social stuff so hard to manage? I was starting to pace around the living room when the doorbell rang and scared me half to death. I would have probably jumped out of my shoes if I had been wearing them.

Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I headed to the door and reached for the know to open it with a trembling hand. Once it was fully opened, I was faced with Alice in all her punk glory, Erin’s eyes darting frantically around as she tried to take everything in, and Lydia in her matronly grandmother form. Between them, they were carrying half a dozen large Ziploc containers with various baked Christmas treats inside.

“Hey, everyone, come on in,” I encouraged with a shaky smile as I waved them inside. “This is my suite, so I can show you around if you want, and you can all get comfortable until I call my aunt over to introduce you all, and so we can eat.”

As I ushered them inside, Erin looked around wide-eyed before letting out a low whistle. “Holy crap, this place is swank. No offense to your little house, it’s cozy, and it feels like home after these past months, but this is definitely an upgrade.”

-Here’s the important question. Does it have a pool?- Alice teased.

“Umm… not unless you count the Jacuzzis in the bathrooms,” I replied nervously before quickly adding, “There is a salt-water treated pool in the hotel for guests in the hotel basement, though.”

-Good enough, and I’ll never say no to a nice soak in a Jacuzzi,- she jokingly responded as she looked around.

“It’s nice,” Lydia offered simply, but she was barely looking around. Was she feeling inadequate or something?

“It’s not home, though,” I told her, unable to look her in the eyes. “This… this doesn’t change anything, Lydia. You raised me, and even though money was tight sometimes, we always had enough to get by. I know how careful you were with the life insurance money and such, you worked so hard to make sure I could keep the house, the jeep, and Mom’s car, and to give me the life my parents would have wanted for me. That house is home, and you’re the reason why. Aunt Lin isn’t trying to take your place; she could never take your place.”

“She’s right, you know,” Erin added in a serious tone that I didn’t often hear from my best friend. “Family isn’t a competition, and nobody is going to take anyone else’s place. It sounds like you’ve earned your place in Raven’s heart, and she’s got a pretty big heart, so I think there’s plenty of space in there for you, me, Alice, and this mysterious aunt of hers. We need to give her a chance because, from the way I’m seeing things, she’s just trying to do right by a niece she has only just learned existed. She could have just agreed to train her and then be done with her, but she didn’t.”

Alice was quick to agree. -I think Erin is right. Hell, she could have just told Raven to pound sand, but she’s choosing to try to be involved in her life. She doesn’t need to give Raven, or any of us, a chance, but she is, because from what Raven told me, her sister was important to her, and that makes Raven important to her, too. Raven is important to all of us, and if Lin is willing to give us a chance to make Raven happy, shouldn’t we be willing to do the same?-

It was very quiet for a moment before Lydia spoke, her voice choked with emotion. “Show us where we can put these containers so I can give you a proper hug. Then, I guess, you can give us the tour of this place. We still need to meet your aunt, and knowing you, you’re probably starting to get hungry by now.”

My stomach chose that moment to prove Lydia right, causing everyone to laugh and dissipating the cloud of tension that had been hovering over all of us. “Uhh… yeah. Let’s go put those on the kitchen counter, and we can start the tour there.”

Things were starting to look up, and I was feeling a lot less nervous as I showed the three of them around the penthouse suite. I think Lydia was just slightly jealous of the kitchen, where I started the tour. Not only was it a lot larger and more spacious than what we had at home, but it looked very nice, and the appliances were all fairly new and had never been used before.

I guess that made sense, though, since Aunt Lin wanted to keep everything in good shape in case Mom ever came back, and the few times that I had been here, we had ordered in when eating. Still, the suite had a very nice and modern kitchen, should I want to make use of it, and I could tell by the way that Lydia was looking around that she wanted to explore it a little more thoroughly when I led them out of the dining room and then down the hall that hosted the smaller bedrooms.

The place was huge, and a bit much for one person, but I think there were things about it that all three of them liked. Erin was, of course, enthused by everything and even went so far as to call dibs on one of the bedrooms. She claimed it was in case we ever needed a place to lay low for a while, especially after I informed them that the hotel not only had wards similar to those my mother placed on the house, but others as well, including some that prevented magical spying on the people staying there.

As for Alice, she thought the bathrooms, both the main and the en suite for the master bedroom, were amazing. Honestly, she looked about ready to jump in the Jacuzzi when I had to disappoint her by finishing the tour with the master bedroom and leading us back to the dining room. I almost asked her to spend the night with me and head home in the morning, but I wasn’t quite that confident or brazen. Besides, she would need water to sleep in, and I wasn’t sure if one of the Jacuzzis would work for that.

After showing everyone a menu for the hotel kitchen, so they could decide what they wanted to eat, I called my aunt to let her know the time had come. I was still a bit nervous about the potential minefield of dinner conversations, especially with how secretive Aunt Lin could be about all things Valkyrie, but things were looking better than they did when everyone arrived. Now I just had to make it through dinner and hope for the best.