"So you're like a vampire?"
The word hit just a little too close to home. "Not exactly."
She moved to the window, but when she pulled the shade down, it fell.
Gray sunlight spilled across the bed.
With a curse, Talon shot into the corner, narrowly missing the pale sunbeams.
"Sunshine, I..." Starla's voice broke off as she entered the room and caught sight of him standing naked in the corner. She eyed him in an odd, detached way, as if he were an interesting piece of furniture.
Talon and modesty were strangers, but the way she stared at him made him damned uncomfortable.
In spite of the sunlight, Talon grabbed the pink blanket off the bed and clutched it to his middle.
"You know, Sunshine, you need to find a man like that to marry. Someone so well hung that even after three or four kids, he'd still be wall to wall."
Talon gaped.
Sunshine laughed. "Starla, you're embarrassing him."
"Oh, believe me, that's nothing to be embarrassed over. You ought to be proud. Strut it. Trust me, young man, women your age would love to have some of that."
Talon snapped his gaping jaw shut. These were the strangest women he'd ever had the misfortune of being near.
Gods, get him out of here.
Starla looked up at Sunshine in the window. "What are you doing?"
"He's allergic to the sun."
"It's so cloudy outside, it's almost dark."
"I know, but he says he can't be in it."
"Really? So you brought home a vampire? Cool."
"I'm not a vampire," he reiterated.
" 'Not exactly,' he said earlier," Sunshine said. "What's not exactly a vampire?"
"A werewolf," Starla said. "With his aura, it makes sense. Wow, Sunny, you found yourself a werewolf."
"I'm not a werewolf."
Starla looked really disappointed by the news. "What a pity. You know, when you live in New Orleans, you expect to meet the undead or damned at least once in a while." She looked back to Sunshine. "You think we should move? Maybe if we lived over by Anne Rice we might catch sight of a vampire or werewolf."
Sunshine replaced the shade. "I'd be happy to see a zombie."
"Oh, yeah," the older woman concurred. "You know, your dad said he saw one out on the bayou right before we got married."
"That was probably the peyote, Mom."
"Oh. Good point."
Talon's jaw went slack again as he looked back and forth between them. Mother and daughter? They certainly didn't act that way, and Starla didn't look that much older than Sunshine, but there was no denying the similarities of their features. Or the oddity of them both.
Oh yeah, insanity ran deep in the roots of that family tree.