Tonight and Always

by Linda Lael Miller

  Gwen laughed. "I know it seems crazy to you, Mom, but Max and I get a big kick out of our little gift-giving tradition. I think he'd be disappointed if I didn't give him something really awful." She gasped suddenly and strode toward a long wooden table crowded with what looked to Bree like a lot of dirty, twisted metal. "I can't believe it!" Gwen cried, homing in on the weirdest statue Bree had ever seen. "It's an exact duplicate of the doorstop at Kristina's."

  Allison made a tsk-tsk sound and shook her head. "That is dreadful," she said.

  Bree agreed, and wondered what Eliette thought. "It's a valuable piece," said the man behind the table. He had hair sprouting from his ears and his nose, and Bree instinctively took a step backward.

  "Strange," Gwen murmured. "The thing feels warm to the touch."

  Bree looked at the monkey and wished her aunt wouldn't buy it. Gwen was already rummaging in her purse for her wallet, though.

  "How much?" she asked.

  "Fifty bucks, plus tax," replied the hairy man. He was dirty, too, and smelled bad. He wasn't like the other people who were selling things behind tables; they all looked pretty ordinary to Bree.

  "Thirty-five," Gwen countered.

  "Oh, Gweneth," Allison groaned.

  But the deal had been made. Aunt Gwen paid the man, and he put the monkey in an old Nordstrom bag and handed it over.

  Eliette and Bree looked at each other, imagining the doorstop under their tree on Christmas morning. Bree didn't know why, exactly, but she was scared. She wanted her daddy. And she wanted to leave the ugly monkey right there at the flea market.

  Some days, though, you just can't make a wish come true, even if you've been very, very good.

  "Don't you tell your father about this," Aunt Gweneth warned her nieces, her eyes dancing with happy mischief as she looked down at them. "I want it to be a surprise."

  Bree had no doubt that it would be. This thing was even worse than the moosehead—she just hoped she and Eliette wouldn't have to play this stupid game when they grew up.

  It was dark when Kristina and Max returned from their ride—they'd gone exploring in the nearby Cascade Mountains, and had made reservations at a secluded lodge for the following weekend. At that high altitude, the snow was deep and white, perfect for shaping into powdery balls and flinging at each other. They'd built a snowman and eaten a hot meal in a roadside restaurant before making the inevitable descent back to the real world.

  After a stop at a neighborhood supermarket where Kristina bought a huge bag of dog food for Barabbas, Max drove her home. The wolf met them at the door, making that mournful sound in his throat, wanting to go out, Kristina didn't try to stop him.

  Max carried the kibbles into the kitchen, then made the rounds of the house, in case of lurking bogeymen, as he had after the robbery. This time Kristina accompanied him.

  "I wish I could stay," he said twenty minutes later, when Barabbas was back inside and munching down on the dog food. Max had built a cozy fire in the family room, and now he stood beside the kitchen door, holding Kristina's chin in his hand.

  "Eliette and Bree are probably watching for you," she said.

  He nodded. "I've missed them."

  Kristina envied him for a moment, this man she so deeply—and so hopelessly—loved. What a glorious blessing it must be, to have children, eagerly awaiting your return, ready to fling themselves into your arms out of sheer joy. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

  "It was a wonderful day, Max. Thank you."

  He touched the tip of her nose. "Keep next weekend open for me," he said. "And if you need anything, if you're scared, either call me or come straight to my place. No matter what time it is. Understood?"

  Kristina rested her head against his shoulder for a moment. The cloth was chilly and still smelled pleasantly of mountain air, fir trees, and snow. "Understood," she said softly. But she had no intention of involving Max in her problems if she could avoid it. Only sheer selfishness had kept her from breaking off their relationship already.

  Soon she would have to do just that.

  Max kissed her again, this time with a thoroughness that left her swaying on her feet, said goodnight, and went out. A moment later she heard his voice from the other side of the door.

  "Turn the deadbolt and put the chain on, Kristina."

  Dutifully Kristina complied, though she knew it was a case of whistling in the dark. With the possible exception of the brass monkey-man, all her enemies were impervious to locks.

  So were her friends and relatives, for when Kristina turned around, Maeve was standing a few feet behind her. The white wolf stood at her side, as though she were his mistress.

  Kristina was surprised to see her mother, given the Gideon-Dimity crisis. When her father stepped out of the shadows as well, her incredulity gave way to a stomach-fluttering fear. They had come to tell her something, and it wasn't good news.

  "What?" she whispered.

  Calder took Kristina's arm and guided her into the living room, where there was no fire burning. He seated her in a chair, while Maeve settled herself in its counterpart.

  Calder remained standing, too agitated to sit.

  "You have often told us that you wished to be human," he said.

  Kristina's heartbeat quickened. She sat up a little straighter in the chair and waited, still fearful, but beginning to hope. "Yes," she answered in a shaken whisper.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Maeve was weeping, silently and with dignity, but weeping, just the same.

  "I have examined your blood sample over and over again," Calder went on. "I have performed numerous tests, including a DNA analysis." He paused, his dark gaze fixed upon his only surviving daughter, and Kristina remembered that he had lost a child years ago, a little girl born of his first wife. "You are aging, Kristina. For all practical intents and purposes, you are mortal."

  At this Maeve covered her face with both hands and sobbed softly. She, too, had lost a loved one—her brother, Aidan, had forsaken the world of vampires to become a man again.

  Kristina felt several conflicting emotions—sorrow, joy, fear, exhilaration. To be mortal! "I will die someday," she said.

  Calder stood beside Maeve's chair, his hand resting on his mate's trembling shoulder. "Yes," he replied. His voice, though steady, was fractured as well.

  "When?"

  "I don't know," Calder answered, in his forthright way.

  "The process has begun—there's no telling how long it will take."

  Kristina was still for a while, absorbing that, considering the ramifications. Her mother's sobs subsided as Maeve gathered her composure.

  "That's why my magic has been so unreliable," Kristina mused. It was something of a relief, knowing she had no reason to blame herself. She hadn't neglected her natural gifts after all, but simply lost them.

  "You could, of course, be transformed into a vampire," Calder said. "But both your mother and I know that would not be your wish."

  "You're right," she answered distractedly. That life, with all its privileges and powers, was not for her.

  It was a strange feeling, knowing for certain that she would one day die. She would be subject to all sorts of human ailments—head colds, sore feet, weight gain. "Do you—do you think I can bear children?" She had never menstruated, but perhaps she would start. Perhaps she could be fertile after all.

  Maeve and Calder exchanged a tender look, and finally, tentatively, Maeve smiled. "If I did," she reasoned, "I see no reason why you couldn't."

  Kristina had been in shock ever since the startling announcement had been made; now she realized what it meant to her parents, and she was filled with love and compassion for them.

  "I won't separate myself from you, the way Uncle Aidan did, if that's what you're thinking," she said gently. "I love you too much."

  Calder's eyes glistened suspiciously. "We would have watched over you in any case," he said. "Ours is a selfish grief, no lighter for the fact that we share it."

&nb
sp; "Because I will die one day," Kristina said. She rose from her chair to embrace her father, then her mother. "Be happy for me," she pleaded softly, looking from one of her parents to the other. "This is what I want, what I've dreamed of as long as I can remember. I have no wish to live forever."

  Maeve laid cool hands to either side of her daughter's face. "There is much of Aidan in you," she said. "You are wiser than I, and not so greedy."'

  "Do you fear death, Mother?" Kristina asked quietly. She had always wondered, but never quite dared to ask.

  The queen of vampires considered. "Yes," she said. "I was raised, as a mortal, in an eighteenth-century convent, and the concept of eternal damnation is as real to me as the sky overhead and the earth below."

  "And what about you, Papa?" Kristina inquired, turning to Calder.

  "I have seen hell," he said. "It is called war, and it exists not in some subterranean realm, but right here on earth."

  Kristina went back to her chair and fell into it. She wanted to weep, and at the same time to shout for joy. She might live another fifty years, or awaken with white hair and fragile bones one morning next week.

  "What am I going to do?" she whispered.

  Maeve stood beside her and laid a gentle hand to her hair. "Live," she said. "Make the most of every moment."

  "But I could die tomorrow!"

  "Just like any other mortal," Calder put in quietly.

  At that, Maeve and Calder joined hands and. without another word, disappeared.

  Barabbas laid his large head in Kristina's lap and whined sympathetically. She stroked him, staring into an uncertain future, wondering whether to celebrate her newly discovered status as a woman or to mourn. After an hour or so, still undecided, she went upstairs to get ready for bed.

  In the morning she awakened early, with cramps.

  At the age of one hundred and thirty, Kristina Holbrook was having her first period. She rolled over onto her side, drew up her knees, and groaned. She'd never expected it to hurt.

  After a few minutes wholly dedicated to wretched suffering, she groped for the telephone and punched in Daisy's home number. With any luck at all, her friend would still be there, and not out solving a case.

  "Hello," chimed the voice Kristina most wanted to hear.

  "Help," Kristina moaned. "I'm human."

  "What?" Daisy sounded alarmed, and who could blame her. It had been a strange thing to say.

  "I'll explain later," Kristina managed to gasp. "I have the worst cramps—this has never happened to me before—''

  "I'll be right over," Daisy said. "Will the housekeeper from hell let me in?"

  "She's off this week. Use the spare key," Kristina murmured. "It's under the ceramic frog by the back porch."

  "Great security," Daisy scoffed, but with gentleness. She obviously understood what Kristina was feeling and empathized. "Listen—just give me a few minutes to get Esteban settled with the new nanny, then I'll make a quick stop at the drugstore and come right over."

  Kristina choked back a whine. If this was what being mortal was all about, maybe it wasn't so terrific and fulfilling after all. "Hurry," she whispered.

  "Sometimes a warm bath helps," Daisy offered, and then hung up.

  She arrived within half an hour, but to Kristina it felt more like all sixteen years of the FDR Administration, complete with retrospectives. She was still lying in a fetal position in the middle of the bed, clutching her abdomen and gritting her teeth.

  "This stuff usually works," Daisy said, ripping the cellophane off a blue and white package. She had a brown paper bag with her, too, but she went into the bathroom, filled a glass with water, and returned. Two pills rested on her outstretched palm. "Swallow these and try to relax. Tension only makes it worse."

  Kristina sat up, took the tablets, and swallowed them.

  "What's going on here?" Daisy asked, settling into Kristina's reading chair.

  She received a baleful look in reply before Kristina said, "Last night my parents broke some startling news to me. I'm completely mortal. And this morning, I woke up with the proof."

  Daisy interlaced her fingers and sighed. She wasn't wearing her baseball cap, but otherwise she was dressed in the usual casual-camp way. "Nobody ever said it was easy being human," she pointed out. "Especially being a female human." She reached for the brown bag with the pharmacy logo printed on its side and tossed it to Kristina. "Here—you'll have to figure these out for yourself."

  Kristina looked inside, saw a box of tampons, and groaned again, flinging herself back onto her pillows. Twenty minutes later the pills had worked, and the tampons were in their place on a bathroom shelf. Daisy returned from downstairs where she'd prepared a pot of herbal tea and toasted a couple of English muffins.

  "Feeling better?"

  Kristina nodded sheepishly. This was an experience most mortal women endured month in and month out, and she'd carried on as though she were having an appendectomy with no anesthetic. She had a new respect for the female of the human species. "Thanks, Daisy."

  Daisy grinned. "After you've knocked back some of the tea and wolfed down a muffin, you should get up and move around as much as you can. Get dressed and take Barabbas out for a walk or something."

  "I should go down to the shop."

  "Why? Isn't there a construction crew there, fixing the door and replacing the glass in the jewelry counter?''

  "Yes," Kristina said. "And I want to make sure things are going okay."

  "You've heard, of course, that it was Benecia who took the brass monkey?"

  Kristina hadn't heard exactly, though Dathan had presented the theory, the night of the robbery, when both he and Valerian were squared off in her living room. They'd all but bared their fangs.

  She wondered why the warlock had not come to her with the trophy, the ugly doorstop, as soon as he'd retrieved the thing. It wasn't like Dathan to miss an opportunity to score a point, especially when there was something he wanted in return. "I hadn't heard," she said softly. "Who told you?" The question was a formality, escaping her lips before she'd thought.

  "Valerian, of course. Dathan couldn't resist letting him know that a warlock had succeeded where a vampire could not."

  Kristina's heart, now all too mortal, was hammering against the base of her throat. "Where is it—he—the monkey, I mean?"

  Daisy's gaze was solemn. "Benecia refused to tell. She means to use it against you if she can."

  Kristina set her tea tray on the bedside table and leaned back against her pillows. "How did Dathan respond to that?"

  "He was enraged, of course, but he dared not destroy the little demon because the knowledge of the doorstop's whereabouts would go with her. I suspect he found their lairs, Benecia and Canaan's, I mean, and gave them a sample of warlock blood. According to Valerian, everyone in the vampire world heard their wails of fury when they awakened, deathly ill. They had probably been fed just enough to serve as a warning of Dathan's vengeance. Let's hope they are wise enough to heed it."

  Although she still felt a little dizzy, Kristina's pain was mostly gone. She got out of bed, somewhat shakily. She would take a shower, get dressed, and concentrate as hard as she could on summoning the warlock. Max and his children were in more danger than ever before, now that Kristina, too, was mortal and had no magical means to protect them.

  Daisy touched her arm. "I'll check on you later. Right now I've got to see how Esteban is making out, then make a run downtown to the agency."

  "Thanks for everything," Kristina said, mildly embarrassed that, at her age, she'd had to have the basics of menstruation explained to her.

  When she'd showered and dressed, again in jeans, with sneakers and a blue cable-knit sweater to complete the outfit, Kristina hurried downstairs. The bottle of pills Daisy had brought were clasped in her right hand; if the pain came back, she wanted to be ready.

  She had barely sat down at the family room table and set herself to concentrating on Dathan's arrival when he appeared. Kristina
realized, with a touch of sadness, that it was his magic that had alerted him to her need, and not her own. Hers was gone, and she was going to miss it, even though she'd wished it away for as long as she could remember.

  He was dressed like a gentleman who has just attended the opera, most likely one in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. He sported a short cape, a gleaming black top hat, and very elaborate shoes, with ornate buckles and square heels. Like vampires, warlocks were facile at time travel.

  Dathan approached Kristina, hardly sparing a glance for Barabbas, who gave a low, throaty growl but did not rise from his resting place on the hearth rug. Taking her hand and sweeping off his top hat in the same grand gesture, Dathan placed a warlock's kiss on her knuckles. She withdrew rather abruptly.

  "Why didn't you tell me, instead of Valerian, what you had found out about Benecia Havermail?"

  "Because I could not present you with a fait accompli, my dear," Dathan said, looking and sounding surprised that anyone would question his judgment. "A situation is not resolved until it is—well—resolved."

  Kristina lowered her head, thinking of Max, of the way he laughed, the way his eyes told her so much of what was in his mind, the way he made love to her. As though she were a goddess, powerful and worthy of worship, and yet fragile, too. She must give him up and make her way alone, as she had always done.

  Dathan curved a finger under her chin and raised her face to look deep into her eyes. "You are so troubled, beloved," he said with inexpressible tenderness. "Why? I will protect your Max, as I promised to do, even though it breaks my heart to know how you love him."

  She was surprised again; Dathan, for all his intuitivepowers, hadn't discerned that she'd changed and become as mortal as her lost Uncle Aidan. When she told him the truth, he would no longer want her for his bride and queen—a fact that came as something of a relief.

  "Yes," Kristina said. "I do love Max, very much."

  "But someday—"

  "No," she interrupted, shaking her head. "Dathan, I have no powers. I am mortal."

  "Nonsense."

  "It's true. It's part of the reason I've bungled so many spells lately. My magic is gone. I am a woman, and nothing more."