“No, definitely not.” Leo grinned, then his smile fell. “Ava is, more than anything, a survivor.”
“What do you mean?”
“She had to be. She heard voices her whole life—like the Irina do—but she didn’t know what they were. Her parents thought she was mentally ill. I think she still thinks that sometimes. She makes jokes about being crazy.”
“I think I remember that,” he said, recalling the password he’d typed into her computer.
“You hated it; I could tell. Max and Damien say she’s actually very powerful. They think it’s because she has so much power bound up from living a life away from magic. I always thought it was because she’s not like other Irina.”
Malachi frowned. “What do you mean?”
Leo shrugged. “Her parents are human. We never did figure out where she came from, but biologically, she shouldn’t be Irina. I mean, Irin are not entirely human or angel. We’re different. And Ava is definitely like us, but we can’t figure out how a human could become Irina.”
The answer seemed obvious to Malachi. “A lion doesn’t become a wolf, Leo, no matter how it might want to be.”
“So?” Leo crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“It means her parents are Irin. They have to be.”
The blond man smiled. “Our records—everything we could find about them—say they’re not.”
Malachi frowned. “But humans don’t give birth to Irin children.”
“No, they don’t.”
“So if they produced Ava, then they’re not human.”
“But they’re not Irin. We have a record of every Irin child ever born. If there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s keeping records.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Malachi murmured.
“What’s that?”
Malachi looked around the room filled with scrolls and tablets. Books and boxes were hidden in every corner. He turned back to Leo and said, “We’re an ancient race of angel and human hybrids that has lived under the nose of humanity for thousands of years.”
“And?”
“We may be good at keeping records, but we’re also good at keeping secrets.”