Okay, so maybe I overreacted a little because the truth was, I was only imagining things.

Oh, Georgie coming for me to get me back to the mansion was real. Just me thinking Roman said in a relieved voice of the "you're back..." thing, was, in fact, false. I mean, why would he even say that in such a relieved voice? Why? I really didn't know what came popping into my mind, that's for sure.

What Roman had actually said was, "And now she's back here again," which wasn't at all a very humble one at that. It was more of a sarcastic one, which you -- and especially I -- would know. And as I only held my tongue from biting out a retort of saying to him that it was not my intention coming home to this place, I thought of Georgie, who was so happy that I was home.

"Why'd you leave off like that, anyway?" Roman demanded, after I was silent the whole time.

His sister slapped his arm in a not-so-very-light way. "You should be glad she's home!" she exclaimed, her voice still echoing through the house. "You are such an ass, you know that?"

"Frankly," Roman intoned darkly, "I don't care whether I am a damn asshole or not."

"God, you are such a a jerk!"

Roman narrowed his eyes as he saw Gabriel give a little snort of laughter. Luckily, Roman's brother shut up before he could kill him on the spot. "Still don't give a fuck," he snapped at his sister, who crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "Now will you shut up?" Then, he looked at me, his amber eyes flashing darkly, turning into a deep fiery colour. "You," he hissed, "are a menace, you know that?"

"Oh, like it's my fault that I was turning demented when I was here?" I shot back. And then I bit my tongue, as I gave them a clue that I knew something was up about them and this mansion. But, unfortunately, I didn't care anymore, since I knew that they already knew what I knew. Which was not fully discovered that much yet, but I would know it soon enough. And so, I glared at him, as he did too, and then I poked my finger into his chest, and said each word with a hard jab, which I really regretted thereafter, because I thought that my finger broke a bone. His muscles were that hard.

"You. Are. One. Stupid. Asshole!" I yelled, my voice booming in the entire grand foyer, which echoed even more, because the ceiling was so high, that if I was up on the chandelier and dropped myself down on the floor, I would surely die. "I just got back here -- very unwillingly, if you must know -- and now, this is the welcome I GET?"

As I finished jabbing his strong chest, I curled my hands into tiny little balls, not because I wanted to punch him -- well, I wanted to as well, but that was not the point -- but because my finger hurt really bad. What was Roman's chest made of anyway? Steel?

"This is pointless," he said in a low voice. A hissing, low voice that is.

"Oh, my God!" Georgie shrieked. "It is pointless? POINTLESS? Ha! Oh, God. That is so --"

And then I yelled at her, regarding Roman, "What is the problem with your brother?"

"I really have no id --"

"Would both of you just SHUT UP?" Gabriel roared in impatience.

Roman and I stopped yelling and looked at Gabriel with shock, standing two inches away from us, his icy blue orbs flashing white and looking grim as Roman was, who also snapped his attention to his younger brother.

"Wo-o-ow," his twin said, her voice hanging open after she said that.

I just blinked. And blinked. And then blinked some more. Roman shook his head and sighed in annoyance. Not because of Gabriel, but because of his sister and I.

"Now," Gabriel bit off, "can we all go to the living room to talk in a more fashionable order?"

"It's all his fault," Georgie snapped, pointing her finger at Roman. But he ignored her completely. Naturally. "And --"

"Be quiet!" Gabriel threw at her, bitingly. "Just get inside the living room and sit there. And, I beg you, Georgie, just shut up for one moment, so that we can tell Venise everything she has to know."

Reluctantly, she complied. Then she huffed and spun on her heel, heading to the living room first. We heard her plop her bum on the settee, and then she yelled out loud, "WELL? I am not the only one who's going to stay here, am I?"

Gabriel gave me an apologetic look, and then he nodded at me, placed his hand behind my back, leading me to the living room. Roman was silent behind us. I actually didn't hear him walking at all, but when I gave a little quick glance, and he was. I took a breath, and as Gabriel opened the white door for me, he gestured for me to sit beside his sister, who was grumbling words that I could not make out of.

The two guys remained standing, Roman beside the fireplace, resting an elbow on the mantelpiece, and boring his golden-flecked amber eyes on the silent, hissing fire.

"Venise," Gabriel started, standing in front of me, his icy blue depths trying to see into my soul.

I tried really hard not to let him read me -- but failed to no avail. "Stop doing that, you're only hurting yourself," Gabriel snapped. I stopped, but I didn't look at him. "Venise," he clipped. "Look at me for a moment."

I chewed on my lip, and slowly returned my gaze to his face. Here it was: the sudden truth. I knew that they would tell me this soon, but now that it was suddenly laid in front of me, I just couldn't handle to know what they truly were. Both of Gabriel's siblings were silent, and Roman's eyes were still distant, just looking at the fire. Georgie had her arms crossed, her eyes were cast down on her white boots. This was truly hard for them to tell me about their real background. I understood them. I mean, it was not easy at all, by the way they all looked. Gabriel seemed a little tense too, except for his older brother though, who looked as calm as could be. I waited.

"We..." Gabriel began again, placing his hands in his pockets, "thought it best for you to know what we're about to tell you. We want you to know this, because we think that you now have the right to know about...about our background. About who we are -- about what we are."

When he paused and didn't say more, since he thought I would say something, I straightened, my eyes wide. "G-go on," I stammered.

He took a deep breath, as if summoning up courage, and it worked. "I see things that show that my family and I are in danger." His icy blue eyes suddenly turned white, it scared me. His face turned hard and frightening. "Moreover, you are in danger. We have all observed you, Venise, and we have been seeing some changes in you." I watched and waited, then Gabriel began walking slowly back and forth. "But we still don't know how that happened, because we thought that no one could ever be like us anymore. Our kind is very rare this time around, and there aren't a lot of us that are living in this world. We never expected that you'd turn into one of us, because all of us know that we are born with...supernatural abilities, naturally."

"What, exactly," I said, blinking oddly, "is your kind, Gabriel?"

"The Daevas," he said. I couldn't quite catch up with this one, but Gabriel looked at me and tried to explain more thoroughly. "In years going back to the olden times, say, the Norman times or way far back, we have been called the Daevas. The people of our kind in those ancient times believed that there is a...great power behind the word in which they named our people. We used to be called demons, Venise. We're a class of demons. Ones with extreme supernatural abilities. But most of us broke off and chose the good path, but we could never separate ourselves from being what we truly are. Those who remained 'evil' are the Druj, or deceivers, but that's for another story."

I drank this all in. They were called the Daevas. It was an odd name, really. But as I thought of the word over and over in my head, it wasn't like a joke anymore. It held something ominous, and since I was...becoming one, or I already was one, I felt something surge in me that boosted me a bit. Not wholly, but it satisfied me.

"How many are there now?" I asked slowly. "The Daevas, I mean."

He knitted his brows for a moment, and then he shrugged. "Say, a hundred, more or less, with us included in that number already. We're not sure, but we believe that there is still more than a hundred -- lost Daevas in this world. But you see, we're already close to extinction. I told you that our kind's only rare. Before, it held thousands or more. There are things in which we find ourselves becoming weak to. Things that we may never know what it is, that may surely lead to our death." I winced, and Gabriel seemed to hesitate as he saw me, but he continued on. "You can call us immortals, to say the least, but I wouldn't count upon that."

"Why so?" I took the courage to ask.

"Because," Georgie interjected, letting Gabriel sit on a chair on her left, "we live and die like humans do. Some of us just say that we're all immortal, because we can live for as long as no ordinary human can. But our age limits can only range up to one thousand-plus, which is a long time. I mean, a hundred decades! But...since we die too, Gabe and I and the rest of the Van Allen family believe that we're just mortals like humans are...only with a very long age span, that is, which we are also ageless in appearance, by the way."

"And," Gabriel added, "as we compare some things about humans and us, the Daevas are born like humans do, and they die like humans do, but with a long age span, as Georgie explained. But we also have a special ability since birth." I set my eyes on him frantically, giving him a sign that I was too shocked to understand. "Meaning, like, for example, I was born in, say, 1745, but I still look seventeen even now, yet I can turn myself to look a little older, lime twenty-one. And you're seventeen, but something in you knows that you will live until you're one thousand and ninety-six. I don't know. I just know it, somehow. It's part of my ability."

Georgie nodded, looking at me.

"I...I...but..." I stuttered. I couldn't believe this. This was all too hard to believe, and I was losing track. But Georgie only gave me a faint little smile, placing her cold hand on top of my warm one. "But...how...how did I become one of you guys?" I demanded incredulously. "I was human. Or maybe I still am! I don't know! I could hear things from miles away, and I could see people's pasts, just by touching them! I could also hear voices in my head that give me warnings or clues to something that I don't even know what!"

"Then," Georgie said without preamble, "you're one of the Daevas. One of us. Venise, you have supernatural powers! Don't you see that? You're not human. No human can turn into one of us. What we can't figure out is how you became one." Then her eyes suddenly lit up. "We could ask Donny!"

Gabriel chuckled. "I knew you were going to say that."

"Who's...Donny?" I asked.

Georgie smiled. "Oh, Matteo D'Onofrio's one of us. He's, like, more than eight hundred years old now. I like to call him Donny, which is a nickname for his last name, but whatever. He's a psychic, who is much more experienced with his powers than Gabriel here."

"Of course," Gabriel said patiently. "He was born in 1126, Georgie. That makes him more experienced with his ability than I am."

She shrugged and let it go.

And then, just risking a glance to make sure, Roman was still standing by the fireplace, but he felt my gaze. He straightened and said in an undertone, "Since I can see that you guys can handle this without my help, I'll be going up to my room now."

No one spoke, and he took that as an advantage to get out of the living room confidently.

"Georgie," I started, looking at her beautiful face. "I saw you...er...turn into a wolf the time when I was feeling much better, after the cold fever I had. And-l -- and I noticed the first time I stayed here that you can somehow control the winter."

Her face blossomed, her eyes glistening happily. "Yes!" she cried. "Well, except that I don't just turn into a wolf. I can turn into anything! I can even copy you, if I wanted to!"

She could turn into me, if she wanted to. Wow. So she could transform into anything. I never thought that she could do that. All I thought was that she could turn into a beautiful white wolf every two in the morning -- but I was completely wrong.

"And, yeah," she continued on, "I can control the winter. Remember the whispering wind that instructed you to come here?"

I blinked. "That was you?"

"Of course!" she exclaimed. "Gabriel knew that you'd be in danger way before trouble actually came into your way! But he didn't know what kind of danger it was, since he mentioned that it was all a blur, right, Gabe?" She turned to her brother, who was watching both of us quietly. He looked at her with those icy blue eyes of his, and nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "I saw something that showed you in the picture in my mind. But I really didn't know why you showed up, since I've never even talked to you, let alone, seen you. But my instincts told me that we had to get you safe, and so I told G to lead you here. Everyone knew in this house, the moment I told them," he explained further, "and you might be wondering why all of us were a little awkward toward you. Except my sister, of course. It's just that, we couldn't believe that you'd be living with us, and that we ought to keep you safe, which really made no sense before. But now, we know why." I waited.

Georgie sneezed, but she waved her hand frantically at me, who was about to get a tissue for her across the living room.

"No, no, I'm fine! Just sit down and listen," she said. Standing up and getting the Kleenex herself, then sitting beside me once again. "I'm not sick. I just sniffed some stupid dust, that's all."

I smiled. But as I swiveled my head toward Gabriel, he was looking distantly at the beautifully carved coffee table in front of us. "What's the danger upon us?" I asked shakily.

Georgie kicked him on the ankle with her pointy heels, and he sighed. "The man who's haunting you -- the one in all black -- is our...brother."

"Your brother?" I asked, stunned.

"A much older one, really," Georgie emphasised haughtily.

Gabriel nodded. "Nearly two hundred years old. He...he's different from us, Venise. His mind, I mean. His mind is just full of darkness. Mother said that he was born with vengeance in his blood. You see, women of our kind, when bearing a child, could tell what is and what's not wrong with their them. And Mother had feared what Alexander would be like when he grew up. He'd turn into a Druj."

I registered all of this. So that creepy man's name was Alexander.

"But -- why was he always following me? And why did he always show Roman in my mind, making me fear him so much?" I questioned.

The twins exchanged looks, but Gabriel told me, nevertheless. "Mother tried to change Alexander, and she and Father really did see progress toward his behavior. Even, as decades gone by, and as Alistair was born, everything went well. But when Roman came two years later...everything changed. Alexander...well...that darkness in him finally showed." I looked at him with questioning eyes. Now I knew why Roman went up. Why he was looking so distant. Because he didn't want to talk about this topic. Or, at least, that was the reason why. But why does he loathe Roman? I asked myself.

I forgot that Gabriel could read minds. "Alexander wanted what Roman had, the moment he was born."

"What is it?" I asked, furrowing my brows.

But the moment had ended, when the twins phones rang at the same time. They eyed the screen and placed their phones back inside their pockets. "Come, Venise," Gabriel said, reaching out a hand for me to grab. I took it and he helped me up, then looked at me for a while. But it did not last long. We followed Georgie out of the living room, reaching the hallway. We heard a car start.

"Looks like Roman's got an early text than the both of us," Georgie murmured. She took her coat inside the cloakroom, tossed Gabriel's his, and she handed me one too. It was a dark red, and it was beautiful. I held Gabriel's arm and squeezed it. "Where are we going?" I asked.

"To the hospital," he answered simply.

"Why?"

"To go and meet Alistair and Axel. I'll tell you everything later when we get there. But for now, let's just go."

I nodded, but I was reluctant. The twins and I got inside his car while Roman was already outside in his own vehicle, waiting for us. Gabriel opened the window beside me, and leaned a bit forward, facing the side where his brother was in. As Roman's black tinted window opened, we could all hear the blast of Three Days Grace from Roman's audio speakers. "You go first!" Gabriel said loudly. Roman gave him one nod, closed the window, and steered the wheel, covering our front view of the road. Gabriel soon followed.

I was a little too dazed with disbelief. Was this for real, or was I in some nightmare again?

I was now one of the Daevas.

I would no longer be the same, anymore.