by Lissa Kasey
Jamie cleared his throat as I was pushing my bowl aside. When I looked up all eyes were on him and Kelly.
“Kelly and I have talked about this for a while.” Jamie looked at Kelly who nodded. “And we wanted to announce this tonight, not to take away from the holiday, but as a symbol of upcoming growth.”
I blinked at them. Were they saying what I thought they were saying?
“We’ve decided to have a baby.”
The room sat in dead silence. Jamie smiled at me. “You’ve shown us how much we really want our own, Sei. We want our babies to grow up with yours, so Kelly and I are in the process of choosing a surrogate.”
“Will she be a witch?” My mother asked.
“Only if she gives up all rights to us,” Kelly replied. “The baby will be ours. In fact my older sister has volunteered to donate a few of her eggs, so the baby will be part me, part Jamie. We just need someone to carry our baby to term.”
“A water-earth mix?” Had that ever been done, I wondered? Would the baby inherit water since that was the stronger element? Baby. There would be more babies. I burst into tears.
Jamie was at my side rubbing my back in an instant. “I didn’t want to upset you. We were going to wait. But we really want our baby to be close in age to Mizuki and Sakura. We just don’t know how long...” Gabe would be gone. I knew what he was trying to say. No one wanted to wait on the unknown.
I let myself fall into his arms and just cry it out. I was happy for them. Really, I was. My babies would get to play with their babies, and they’d all get to grow up in one big happy family. Only Gabe was supposed to be there too.
The sting of his absence ached more than the memory of his decline. Jamie often reminded me not to dwell on the last few months before he’d gone to ground. Sam had said that Gabe wasn’t Gabe. And that was the truth as far as I could tell. Time eased a bit of the pain, but holidays would always be hard.
A bustle of activity came from the front of the house, and I heard Sam’s voice echo through the hallway. “Leave it to the witches to make things cliché.”
“Bastard,” I grumbled.
Sam entered the dining room followed by Constantine and Luca, looking like the street thug he pretended to be in tight jeans and leather. “Heard that, Ronnie,” He said. He set a stack of gifts on the counter. “Harvest stuff from us and Max. Seeds for the garden and toys for the twins. Gift cards for expensive shit for everyone else, ‘cause you know Max is an old rich white dude.”
Luca snorted.
“We chose the gift cards,” Constantine said. “So they are to places you all like.”
“Thank you,” I told them sincerely.
Mizu was nestled in my mother’s arms, and Ally was cleaning up Kura with a damp rag. Sam reached for Mizu who immediately cooed and wiggled himself into Sam’s grip. Sam took my boy and bounced him a little before settling him back to rest. The small smile on Sam’s face belied his tough exterior. He adored those kids and they adored him. He could spend hours lying on the floor, with them curled around him babbling incoherently, and he wasn’t at all bothered by their spit-up or dirty diapers. Part of the baby-gig, he told me often. But being with the guys had mellowed him a little.
“We’re walking with Hanna for the trick or treating,” Luca said. He was dressed in leather too, like a street fighter from an old video game. Con was much the same, though he’d put on a suit of fake muscles over his lean tattooed frame. “Think of us as security.”
I breathed hard, the anxiety of the reminder that I would be letting them out of my sight almost sending me into a panic attack. I missed the way Gabe had been able to soothe the attacks, but had spent enough time practicing my breathing to ease them myself now. The kids were safe. Even if the vampire and a room full of witches wasn’t enough, I knew my mother had guards watching the house and that they would follow Hanna and the kids at a distance just in case.
“We’ve got the babies, Sei,” Hanna told me. “If you need to go for a little while, it’ll be fine.” Everyone was nodding in agreement. My whole world was unraveling, had been for months, but here they all were, united, wanting to help. It just made me want to cry again. I’d lived alone a long time. Denied needing anyone, and then put all my desire, hopes, and dreams on Gabe. It had been unfair I realized, to put so much pressure on him. I was working on that. Finding my feet again.
“How about I drive? You look a little shaky. Maybe talking to Gabe will help,” Kelly offered.
I hesitated because it had been a long time since I’d spoken to Gabe. Was that what I needed? “But the twins…”
“Are fine. They have plenty of family to take care of them. I bet you have nooks in that fancy pocket on your kilt. You’ll have to tell me where you got that, by the way, ‘cause I want one.” Kelly pointed to the kilt.
I dug out the nooks, and wanted to protest, after all it was Samhain. I wanted to be with my kids on their first Halloween, even if they couldn’t really understand it, but my head was still swimming with the craziness of too much change at once. How did anyone become equipped to deal with this sort of thing on their own? Or were we born with the ability, only to lose it when we found someone to depend on?
“You’ll take lots of pictures?” I asked Hanna.
“Of course. And we won’t be out long. Just down the block and back.”
I kissed my babies, holding each one for a few moments before breaking away to breathe. I headed for the door, thinking maybe it was okay to talk to Gabe tonight, avoiding him for months meant I’d earned it, right? It was okay if he didn’t respond. Sometimes therapy was what I let go of rather than what I held on to.
Kelly’s new car was much smaller than the minivan. I knew it was big enough to hold the kids, but I’d never been a passenger in it before myself. The car steered nice, and didn’t smell like babies, which just made me sad.
It was a long drive back to our house, which was dark and silent, a mausoleum really. Technically we should have been going to the big vampire graveyard on the opposite side of the city. Gabe had an official tomb there in which we let the government think he’d gone to ground, even if the truth was more complicated than that.
Once at the house we headed inside and toward the back. Kelly gave me a tight smile. “I’ll wait here. Take as long as you need.”
The arboretum in the back of the house had been restored, fully expanded, and bloomed like an entire forest of magic plants. The fairies had taken over. Fruit trees decorated every few feet while flowers and ivy covered the walls and climbed up to cause nets of green. The flickering orbs of lights weren’t bugs, even if sometimes they felt that way.
Near the entry, down the stairs and off to the left was a patch of roses. They still bloomed, months after first appearing. At first they’d been red like blood, but after a few days had turned black and had been black ever since. It worried me, though the earth felt no different.
Gabe wasn’t technically there beneath the soil. Part of the truth that vampires hid from humanity is that truly going to ground meant being reabsorbed by the earth only to regenerate later. It was a power that would have terrified mankind. Godlike, and immortal. Only vampires weren’t really immortal.
Sam spoke about breaking up the energy of a vampire. True death, he called it. I read books Max had provided, most of which was philosophy that I needed to ask questions to understand. I could have asked Max. He offered. But I avoided him. That last day still fresh in my mind. Max was Titus. Gabe’s Titus. The man Gabe had died for all those years ago. The reason Gabe had become a vampire. Had Gabe known?
More questions I wanted to ask Max. Yet feared the truth. If Gabe hadn’t known, but came back, would it be to me or to Max? We were polar opposites, Max and I. Him sophisticated, tall, dark, and muscular. Me, small, delicate, and broken.
“Hey, Gabe,” I whispered to him opening the bond between us. As always I felt nothing, just that endless void that couldn’t tell me whether he was still there at all or not. “I miss y
ou.”
I drew in the dirt, tracing my name and his together in a heart. Then I added Mizuki and Sakura to the list. “Your babies need you. I need you. But I suppose you know that.”
Gabe was a vampire with more than two millennium of life lived. He’d warned me when we first met that sometimes things happened. Sometimes the pressure and memories became too much. I’d known only vaguely about redouts, and what they were. I knew vampires could go to ground, sometimes for years, even centuries.
I suppose I never thought that Gabe, who had always been a rock of strength and stability, would have to take a time out. He’d been prepared, as he was for most things. Accountants and lawyers came to me for decisions, all while I juggled two brand new babies, a fairly stressful job, and the responsibilities that came with being the Pillar of earth. Max had taken control of a lot of the business things, managing the mad tangle I hadn’t even really known existed before. More than just the bar, Gabe had a dozen businesses and over a hundred properties, a lot of which generated income, but I had no idea how to run. Max’s company specialized in management. So I’d hired him to figure it all out. So far the accountants gave me glowing reports, and Sam insisted he was keeping an eye on things as well. Mike took over the bar, but more than that was beyond him as he now had six newer vampires to watch after as well. It was a lot for anyone and I was grateful for the help. Even if I still didn’t trust Max.
“It was really crappy timing you know,” I told him and sat down on my ass in the dirt, and folded my legs beneath me. “You could have waited for the twins to be a few years old. Or maybe even out of college. Or maybe after we were married? What a way to get out of that.” I laughed tightly at the thought. We’d put it off originally, planning to do it after the twins were born, but then everything had gone to hell.
He’d been so far gone. Almost a revenant when finally committing himself to the earth. I remembered the expression on his face that day, the pure blood lust that turned his eyes red, skin ashen, arm eaten away by my magic and refusing to heal. The last bit was a hint that the magic which held him together was unraveling. Gone had been the affection and sweet smile I loved so much. Gone was his patience and understanding. Instead he’d compelled me several times, trying to force his will over mine. Then ravaged my neck, cast away only by my Father Earth power.
In all our time together, he’d never shown me that side of himself. Sure I knew subconsciously it was there, all vampires had it, but Gabe always seemed so human to me. I think that’s why it hurt more when he was suddenly staring at me without recognition, like I was food. He’d apologized in those last moments before sending himself into oblivion, told me he loved me. I hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye or tell him that I loved him.
“I wish I could at least hear you in my head. Feel your mind or something. Anything other than this endless silence.” We sat together for a while, and I remembered how he’d always massage my hands. Sometimes he’d just hold me for hours and neither of us would need to speak. If it weren’t so cold, I might have been able to imagine him holding me.
“Sam is doing good. Happy. The three of them work well together even if their teasing drives me nuts. Hart’s been taking good care of him in your absence. That was one thing you didn’t plan for.” His abandonment of Sam, forcing Sam to go revenant was still something that hurt. But Gabe’s tie to Sam had struggled since the moment Sam had reawakened as a vampire. Too much power in that little fire witch for a very tired vampire. “Hard to believe he’s fire, right? No wonder his temper burns fast and hot. You should see his phoenix form. It’s pretty. Not at all like the pictures, but he’s getting better at mastering the form, turning the heat off and on. Doesn’t hurt him at all to change either, no matter what time of the month it is. I wonder if that’s a vampire thing or because he’s a siphon. There is nothing in any of Max’s books about siphons changing shape. I’m still searching the archives at work.”
I laid down and pressed my cheek to the dirt, wishing I could feel him there. The arboretum was always warm, soil moist and full of nutrients, work of the fairies and my strong bond to the earth. I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of soil, flowers, pollen and earth. For a while I dreamed of changing to my lynx form and just letting the simplicity swallow me whole. Being human hurt and sometimes I just got so tired of hurting and being alone.
I’m sorry. The whisper was so faint I wasn’t sure I heard it. I love you.
Was it him? Or just wishful thinking?
I lay there a while longer, curled up amongst the black roses, eyes closed while whirls of bright colors still zipped around me. Life constantly evolving, moving, living, and dying. Something brushed my cheek like the softest fluttering of lips. I opened my eyes, expecting one of the fairies, but there was nothing.
Tears blurred my vision again. I wiped them away with the back of my hand and got up, feeling a chill wind around me like the faintest of hugs.
I’m sorry. I love you.
I blinked into the distance of racing fairy orbs and greenery lit only by moonlight and stars. Was it an outline or wishful thinking?
“Gabe?” I felt a caress along my skin like so many memories of him touching my face. The link between us wide and open, down the distance there was a tiny spark, so small, barely the flicker of a candle. Was it him? Finally after months of silence would I at least hear him again?
I love you.
Or just wishful thinking. I rose to my feet and dusted off my pants. “I have to get back to the twins. You should see them. They’re growing so fast. Walking soon I’m sure.” I stared at the flowers a bit longer, the one at my feet was edged in white. Odd. I’d never seen a black rose with white tips.
“I’ll try to come more regularly,” I promised. I’d been avoiding the garden—too many memories—buried myself in work and my children, gave the fairies free reign over the yard and arboretum. It pulsed with life that gave me energy and connected me to the earth, even when I hadn’t set foot inside until today.
I’m sorry. The voice was so faint I really couldn’t tell if it was my brain trying to comfort me or something from that tiny spark that linked us together. I headed back into the house and found Kelly scarfing down bacon in the kitchen.
“Don’t look at me like that, it’s bacon. I’ll take bacon any day over pumpkin soup. Even your pumpkin soup which is amazing. Tradition I get, but bacon…”
I laughed, feeling a bit lighter. Even if Gabe wasn’t coming back yet I wasn’t alone. “A baby, eh?” I bumped his shoulder as we headed back to the car. “You ready for that yet?”
“No, but I get where Jamie is coming from and I think there’s enough of us to handle it.”
“I’m happy for you guys,” I finally told him when we were back on the road. “Excited for Mizu and Kura to have a new playmate.” Worried about the pressure that would put on Kelly who was in college full-time, struggling through the magic studies program that I’d barely just survived.
Kelly reached over and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly. “I’ve had your babies as a trial run, you know. It won’t be easy, but nothing worth having is. Sam, Con, and Luca help a lot. It’s nice having everyone in one place and still having enough space to be alone if I want it. The training I had over the summer…the time with Jamie, that cemented a lot for me.”
The two months without them had been hard. I’d been afraid they wouldn’t return to Minnesota.
“My home is here with you all, even the bastard vampire who always has some sarcasm to throw at us. I know I have someone to call when I need help and fuck if Sam hasn’t been helping keep my powers in check. He’s a quick study when it comes to magic.”
Training Sam to use and control his element helped his amplifying power as well. I suspected Max had a lot to do with his control as I often sensed the vampire when I knew he was obviously not around.
“He looks all classy dressed up for work in a suit. Like a civilized person or something,” I said.
“
Then comes home and every other word is fuck.”
“Or pussy,” I pointed out.
“He’s a jerk,” Kelly said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. But so were we all.
“Sam was complaining about the twins glowing eyes again,” Kelly said. “Do you think my baby will do that?”
“Bryar said all babies have glowing eyes.” I really had no idea. Normal kids didn’t do that. But my kids weren’t normal.
“Maybe fairy babies.”
“Or really powerful witch babies.” Kids didn’t normally develop their witch powers until mid-to-late teens. My kids were already sparks of earth energy.
“What are we going to do?”
“Raise them. Train them. It’s all we can do.”
“They’re pretty powerful,” Kelly pointed out.
“And I’m Father Earth.” Sam reminded me all the time. Not much different than the vampires, he said. Immortal. Only the earth could retake me whenever it wanted to. Vampires too, as they were creatures of the earth no matter what power they had. It was a matter of faith, judgment, and balance. When humanity tipped the balance, the earth responded. When Tresler tried to usurp the circle of life the earth tore him apart, with Sam’s help of course. The earth was life and death. It was also full of judgment.
Was I doing the right things? The earth would let me know if I wasn’t. With or without Gabe I was going to be the best damn father I could be. Papa bear and mama bear all in one. After all, the future never had brighter prospects than my beautiful twins.
“Let’s get back to the twins. I hope they’re still awake. I’d like to dance with them under the moonlight.” I thought about the waves of energy and tugging I felt of renewal as the veils thinned. Did they already feel it? Would they understand it at all? I’d have Bryar keep a close eye on them. He could travel through the veils without effort, tracking them if necessary.
“Dance sounds great,” Kelly agreed, and we headed toward the family, my heart lighter and filled with hope.