As expected, hands shot up throughout the crowd. I was glad I wasn’t one of the people walking around the audience with a microphone, who got to choose who asked the questions. The enthusiasm running through the crowd made me think they might try to rush the poor people.
One of the people with the microphones arrived at a young, probably in her twenties, woman and decided to let her talk. The way she stared at me screamed stalker in my mind, without needing to jump in hers for confirmation.
“Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m really getting to talk to you,” she started, confirming my suspicions. “So I’ve watched all the videos from your other conferences and have to say you’re so inspirational. So many of my original questions have been answered, so I’ll just ask a basic one. Have you got any more of your memories back since the last one? I’m interested in seeing if you’ll be a different person once you get them all back.”
If there were going to be future conferences after my honeymoon, I was going to ask whether having oxygen on hand would be wise. The woman hadn’t taken a breath since she started rambling, and I was worried about her passing out. There were no immediate signs, but I didn’t want to be the cause of someone’s anxiety attack.
The story of my memories was one we shared with everyone early on, so we could explain why other people were doing a lot of the talking. We hadn’t really mentioned the fact that I became a sorceress as a result of giving them up, or where exactly my memories stood. We were still in the baby steps part of the process.
The public was aware of most of my abilities. The telekinesis and fire control were the first we mentioned. We then had to come up with a plausible excuse for me just appearing in different cities without taking a plane, so we mentioned I could teleport. People went crazy over that, but I hadn’t given a demonstration for obvious reasons. Bleeding on the stage to say a spell wasn’t something we were ready to explain.
“Thank you very much for asking. I haven’t been able to remember anything since the last conference. My hope is that someday soon, I’ll be able to remember everything, so I’m better able to answer some of the questions I have to look to my friends for responses,” I replied.
“I just want to add,” Nate said, after clearing his throat. “When she does get her memory back, we have no worries of her being some other person. The only thing that might change is she may treat her mother a little bit nicer.”
That got a nice laugh from the audience. A person on the other side of the arena got to ask the next question. It was another female, and I could already tell it was going to be another personal question. Most of the time, Charlie did such a good job of explaining that there weren’t a lot of questions about uniques. It also seemed like the people visited the website, because we didn’t see a lot of repeat questions.
There were a few people who were thick, and needed to hear the same thing ten times. I’d done an amazing job of not telling anyone they should clean out there ears and listen.
“Can you tell us more about uniques’ romantic relationships?” she asked. She was close enough I could see her cheeks turn a light shade of pink.
I laughed, not a mean laugh, just a short little chuckle. It was a question we got everywhere, even after already answering it.
“Contrary to what our opposition is telling everyone, we actually only have those types of relationships with other uniques. Phoenixes aren’t able to find a mate outside of our species. Most of the other shifters have no problem dating other uniques, but humans are out of the question because of that whole issue of us not dying. It makes for an awkward relationship, so we tend to avoid it.”
The Humans Unite group had been advocating that our men were just there to impregnate human females. I was pretty sure that wasn’t even possible, and we had a team of scientists working to prove that. The team consisted of both humans and uniques, just so they didn’t blame us for skewing the results.
Another woman was given the microphone. “Hi, Avery,” the woman said, not as shy or exuberant as the two before her. “I was just curious, I haven’t heard it announced anywhere, but I was wondering when you and Nate were getting married.”
“You’re right,” I said, dreading having to answer the question. We’d been able to hide the date because I didn’t want it to be turned into a media circus, and surprisingly no one had cared enough to ask. We’d said we were engaged a few too many times to hide that there would eventually be a wedding. “We’re getting married on Friday. We’ve been married in the past, so we’re having a small private ceremony at our house.”
“There will be professional photos taken of the event, even if it’s small, and we’ll share those once Avery approves them,” Nate said.
That unleashed the estrogen into the air evidently, because the next three questions were all about wedding plans. Mainly who was I wearing, what we were eating and where the honeymoon was taking place. People didn’t realize that with evil forces out there plotting your demise, you didn’t really get a traditional honeymoon.
I skated through those questions as delicately as I could without yelling, “who really cares” at the poor women. The next woman at the microphone was a pleasant surprise for me. I hadn’t expected to see a friendly face in the crowd.
“What do all the humans you’ve been friends with over the years have to say to you now that they know you aren’t human?” she asked.
I almost laughed at the way she made it sound like I had tons of human friends. I didn’t even need a whole hand to count them.
“Well, Ettie, that’s a very good question. I was hoping I’d bump into you while I was in the Chicago area, but you’ve been a little elusive. I know you haven’t known me for years, but you did know me prior to me telling the world I was a phoenix, so what do you have to say about it?”
I looked over to Nate, wondering if he knew Ettie was going to be there. He had a smile on his face, but shook his head subtly from side-to-side.
“I have to say it’s pretty freaking cool. You opened my eyes before to see that the world was a bigger place than a little town in Montana, I just never dreamed how much bigger. I have a ton of private questions for you that I don’t think this is the setting to ask, because I know how private you are, but I have to say I was thrilled when I caught that original news program you were on,” she replied with a giant grin on her face, like she just figured out my biggest secret.
“You’re coming to the wedding, right? Your invitation didn’t get lost in the mail, did it? I know I should’ve hand delivered it, but I’ve been a little busy lately.”
“I’m flying out tonight. It’s one of the few events I wouldn’t miss,” she said.
The rest of the crowd looked at Ettie enviously. I hoped she wasn’t carrying her invitation on her, because I was fairly certain the crowd was going to try to take it from her.
“Great, you can ask me the questions then, I’m sure I already know one of them,” I replied.
I knew she was going to ask about Vinnie, and I also knew I was going to tell her the truth about his whereabouts. He was going to be at the wedding, and it’d be a fun little reunion for her to see what he looked like.
“That would be the first question on my list,” she said, pretending to read my mind as she handed the microphone back to the lady passing it around.
Finally, we got a gentleman asking a question, and I had a good feeling it wouldn’t be about the wedding or relationships. He was scowling, so I didn’t assume he had a high opinion of me in general.
“I just want to know why you think we’re actually going to let you just come and invade us without putting up a fight,” the man said.
Oh goodie, one of the Humans Unite representatives was actually given a microphone. Surprisingly, it was a first, but it did give me a chance to try to have a constructive debate with one of them. We’d been offering to meet with them personally, but none of the invitations had been accepted.
“Sir, I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but we aren’t invadi
ng anything. You make it sound like we’re some kind of aliens, but as I’ve already covered we aren’t. If you want to get technical, we were here first, millions of years before you were. The only thing that has changed is the fact that you know about us now,” I told him.
I had trouble believing the millions of years, even with some of my memories, but Nate assured me he really was older than dirt. Apparently, back in the early days our minds didn’t work like they did in the present, so time went by quickly, and we weren’t evolved into the creatures we’d become.
It was another level of confusion to pile on. Nate told me no one remembered the first few million years that well. We knew what we had been and what we became, but no one spent a lot of time delving into what it had been like to be simple fire organisms.
“That is highly doubtful,” the man in the audience replied, keeping the mic as the poor woman who’d handed it to him tried to retrieve it. “You guys have been visiting us for years with your probes and we aren’t going to allow you to just come down here and take over. We’ll find a way to defeat you.”
The arena’s security moved in to escort the man from the building. Not wanting to be stopped, he hurried to get out the rest of his tirade. “And you’re the worst of them all. You think you’re some kind of queen, but in reality it’s all a ruse. They’re just using you because you look appealing to human males.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, but I have a message for anyone who shares that man’s beliefs. We aren’t aliens from outer space. We have no plans to overthrow the humans who currently dominate this planet. That would just be silly on our part. There are newspaper articles and books you can read that have pictures of us during our former lives in them. Check those out, and then come back and try to have a civilized conversation with us,” I said.
I knew they had the argument that we’d planted the articles, but some day all humans would believe us. His comments about me not really being a queen didn’t deserve attention, so I ignored them. As far as I was concerned, most days I didn’t want to be a queen, nor did I feel like one.
“Thank you for coming, folks,” Nate said, taking over. “I’m sorry, but I think the atmosphere has become a little more hostile than we’re comfortable with. We put these together to try to give more information to you and I don’t like to see my soulmate being attacked, so we’re going to call an end to this appearance.”
There was a collective sigh of disappointment that rolled through the crowd. Nate was right, though, the mood wasn’t happy anymore and we weren’t getting very relevant questions anyway. The audience slowly started to trickle out and my group gathered around me again. That time not in a wall, just a general grouping so we could talk.
“We have a slight issue,” I heard Liam say as I glanced around and saw the majority of the auditorium was empty.
There were a few people still trying to get pictures of us. Part of Vinnie’s daily download included searching for any memes of me he found funny. I really hated the new celebrity status that people had put on me.
“I got him,” Rick replied. “He’s coming at us slowly, so let’s see if he’s willing to talk before we assume battle stations. There’s still some people around and I’d prefer they not capture the berserkers in crazy mode.”
With that, my wall of men surrounded me again, so I had no idea what the threat was. Dang it, I knew I should’ve made Rick give me the details earlier.
CHAPTER 5
I do meet the most interesting people