“I’m afraid of what its snake blood could mean for it,” Tanis admitted quietly.
Naree nodded and eyed her, her cheeks stuffed full like a squirrel. “I get that.”
“No, I don’t think you do. My mother has snakes—like actual snakes—sometimes. Or daughters like me or—some of the other daughters have human shapes but are covered in scales or have retractable fangs and venom. Sometimes the genes aren’t compatible at all and it’ll hatch—right. Hatching. So it could be an egg. My mother has eggs, and they hatch, and the babies sometimes can’t sustain themselves. And sometimes, rarely, really rarely, it’s human up top and snake at the bottom. They die a lot when they’re kids, the True Daughters. Naree. If we go in to see a doctor, and it’s wrong on the ultrasound...”
“We’ll terminate,” Naree said. “If it’s wrong. I... an egg? Wait, you’re saying I could lay an egg?”
“Maybe,” Tanis confessed. Naree looked nonplussed as she grabbed her hash brown and bit into it. Tanis shifted on the couch. “...it’ll also probably gestate faster than a human baby. My mother’s clutches gestate in three days.”
Naree’s eyes got real big, her chewing stopped, and she looked down at the phone. One minute later, she was hash-brown-free and calling the doctor.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I CAN’T FIND my insurance card.”
A cancellation at the doctor’s office meant they could sneak in at four, which the secretary assured Naree was super-lucky because they were usually booked out, and with Naree not knowing how far along she was but actually showing, it was imperative that she see someone as quickly as possible.
Tanis waited by the door, holding Naree’s My Little Pony pocketbook while Naree tore through the house. She wasn’t the most organized girl; her personal stuff was sorted into neat stacks, yes, but neat stacks of everything: junk mail, important documents, video game discs. Her diploma was in there next to a print-out from the internet of a guy in a unicorn costume next to pizza delivery coupons.
“Ha! Got it. Okay, cool.”
Naree flourished it like it should have been gilded. Tanis offered her the purse and held the door. It was raining out, one of those sky-piss ordeals in Florida that lasted a half-hour and went away without touching the humidity, and so they ran to the car. Along the way to the doctor’s office, they stopped for iced teas from a drive-through, both of them quiet. Naree looked out the window, stroking the straw in her plastic cup with a faraway expression on her face. Tanis watched the road and stewed. She and Naree had never discussed kids because kids were, as far as they both knew, off the table. Now she was not only looking down the barrel of being a parent, but there was the distinct possibility she’d implanted a monster in the woman she loved.
Stop borrowing problems.
Even if they’re totally reasonable fears to have about a baby that’s a quarter snake.
“We don’t have to,” Naree blurted. “Have it, if you don’t want.”
Tanis opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. No sound. No witticism or assurance. What the hell was she supposed to say? “It’d be easier if we didn’t”? Sure, it’d be easier, but would Naree regret it? For that matter, would Tanis? It was something they’d made together, possibly a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Who knew if it was the single sperm that could? If they couldn’t do it again later, when maybe they wanted to, would they look back at their haste and mourn?
“I support you, whatever you want to do,” Tanis managed instead, taking a turn.
Naree frowned. “If it’s fine—normal—I still want to keep it, I think. You just look so miserable.”
Do I?
“I’m sorry.” Tanis licked her lips. “I’m worried about you. Not just the physical stuff. We’ll find out if that’s a thing soon enough, but my mother. She hates humans. I’ve told you that.” She could see Naree nodding from the corner of her eye. “Right, so if she finds out that one of her half-lamias can knock her up, giving her purer snake children, I’m afraid of what she’d do. To me. To you. You’d be carrying her line and it’d be... she’d see it as weak. Lesser.”
Tanis thought that’s all she had to say, but more came spilling out, like once she’d uncorked the keg, the spigot wouldn’t stop. “I worry that you’re saddling yourself with me, or some part of me, forever. I’ve watched my mother kill people. I’ve kidnapped for her so she can kill people. I’ve lied, cheated, and stolen. Shit, I have a body part in my freezer. I’m grateful that you put up with it, that you can see that I’m not all bad, but I’m not good either. I worry that this is another way to tie you to a really fucked-up situation. A fucked-up person.”
“It is, but.” Naree reached over for Tanis’s hand, pulling it away from the steering wheel and locking their fingers. “I picked you. I love you.”
“I know you do. I’m just not sure why.”
Naree snorted. “Heard a saying once from my neighbor back in Connecticut. ‘Love’s where you find it, even if it’s up a pig’s ass.’ It doesn’t matter why I love you. I do. Every part of me. You’re mine, I’m yours. Your mother isn’t going to take that away from either of us.”
Maybe not. But she’ll try.
“YOU CAN TELL by looking at the genital tubercle,” Dr. Patel said. He was an older man, in his mid-to-late-sixties, with black hair fringed with salt, brown skin, and a birthmark on his temple shaped like Kansas. His pens were neatly lined up in his pocket, his lab coat was pristine white. His silvery mustache was the stuff of Tom Selleck dreams. “It’s parallel to the spine, so I’m comfortable saying it’s a girl. Ninety percent comfortable. Leave a little room for error.”
Tanis stared at the screen.
It’s a human baby. No egg. No weird snake tail. No deformities.
It’s a girl. A daughter. I have a daughter.
Dr. Patel lifted the wand from Naree’s stomach to squirt more cold gel onto the side. She squirmed and squeezed Tanis’s fingers, her eyes affixed to the monitor. She looked amazed at the small person growing inside of her. Also horrified, because he’d said during her initial exam, “You’re around four months,” and insisted they take a look with imaging, but she’d bled last month and the month before that, so the gestation was clearly very rapid. Sure, it was possible she’d been pregnant and bleeding at the same time, but Tanis had only honed in on her sweeter-than-normal scent for a day or two. She’d have caught onto it sooner otherwise.
Always trust the nose.
“Things are looking good. Let me print that up for you, and you’ll start on the supplements, like I said.” Dr. Patel hit a button on the keyboard and removed the wand. He used a soft cloth to de-goop Naree’s roundish middle. “The lab is down the hall to the right for your blood screens. I’ll follow up with you in a day or two. Make sure you stop by the front desk to schedule your next appointment.”
“I’ll have to call you,” Naree said. “I don’t have my calendar with me.”
“That’s fine.”
Dr. Patel offered his hand. “Nice to meet you, Miss Kwon. Miss Barlas.” He never batted an eye at either of them as he shook, standing from his short stool with its wheeled feet and excusing himself from the exam room. The picture of the in utero baby sat on the printer tray. Tanis picked it up, tracing her finger over the weird little alien with the too-big head and barely-there nose.
“I’m not going to make it to another appointment, am I?” Naree whispered.
“...probably not.”
Naree looked resigned. She looped her arm around Tanis’s waist and the two of them drifted down the hall together. Tanis started to turn toward the lab, but Naree shook her head and walked on, past the receptionist and out the double doors of the brick building and into the parking lot. The squall was already over, puddles amassing in the cracks and dips in the uneven pavement. With the humidity, they’d probably be there for another six years.
“I’ll have to lie,” Naree said. “To the hospital. I’ll say I didn’t know I was pregnant. How great is that
? Graduated magna cum laude from Yale and I have to pretend I’m one of those teenagers on a reality show who mistakes an in-utero human for too many burritos.”
“I’m sorry,” Tanis said, because she was sorry, and while a healthy baby was a good thing, it was also an immediate thing that they weren’t even a little bit prepared for.
We need to baby proof. And we need a crib and a high chair and diapers and formula and those weird bras that help leaky tits and a bazooka to keep my mother away and...
Naree ran her hand over her middle. “It’s just my pride. I’ll get over it. Man, I am... I have no idea what to think of any of this. My parents are going to shit themselves.”
“We need stuff,” Tanis announced, easing the car back onto the road. “Lots of stuff. Baby stuff. And a plan. Because when this gets out—”
“If it gets out. You’re not sure yet,” Naree interrupted.
“No, I suppose that’s true, but we should have a contingency plan ready. Like, an actual place for you to go, that kind of thing.” Tanis slipped a cigarette between her lips and promptly stopped herself from lighting it because not three feet away from her was the woman carrying her child. Second-hand smoke was bad for both her and the baby, and open windows would only do so much.
Everything has to change. Everything.
She put the cigarette back into the pack, slurping on the last vestiges of her iced tea instead, which was really just sun-warmed brown water after an hour in the car.
“I’ll make a list,” Naree said. “Of stuff. Some of it we can get from secondhand. Like, clothes and maybe the furniture. But we’ll need diapers and formula. Jesus Christ, this is really real. Likely really, really real.”
“Yeah it is,” Tanis said.
And isn’t that swell.
Naree was hungry, so they stopped to get her a burger, and then she was tired because pregnancy apparently made you tired according to Google, and she wanted a nap. When they got home, Tanis tried three times to talk to Naree about the aforementioned contingency plan, but every attempt was met with resistance. Naree would talk over it or outright ignore it to continue making a shopping list of baby supplies.
“Why don’t you hit Goodwill and see what they have while I’m asleep? You know how random it is. I’d hate to miss out on a crib if there’s one on the cheap.”
“I don’t like leaving you alone,” Tanis said.
Naree looked annoyed as she got up from the couch to pad down the hall to their bedroom. “I get it, Tanis, but, like, I need you to lay off, please? This is stressful enough. If they’re going to come, there will be groups of them, like you said about that chick that ran off to Arizona. Not a whole hell of a lot you’re going to do against four people who are as strong as you.”
“I’m worried,” Tanis said, following her down the hall.
“So am I, but I’m not leaving you no matter what you say, and you’re not going to hover over me for the rest of my life and the life of our kid. That’s not how this is going to work.”
Naree shut the door and turned on the fan, probably as much to drown out Tanis’s objections as to get the bedroom cooler.
“What would you like to do about it?” Tanis said through the door. “Because ‘nothing’ isn’t an acceptable answer to me. I love you, and I’ll probably love our kid, so I’d like to know that we’ll get through this.”
“You’ll probably love our kid? Good times. That’s reassuring. If you’re that freaked out, maybe we should take the risk and move, but I’m not talking about it right now. I’m tired.”
That tone suggested that the conversation was over unless Tanis wanted to find herself in the middle of screaming match, which wasn’t really a two-sided thing so much as Naree losing her temper, yelling a lot, and Tanis staying unflappably calm and making Naree angrier. It never went well, and with Naree being pregnant, riling her was a bad idea in every possible way. It was annoying, though, and Tanis gritted her teeth and strode through the apartment, locking both locks on the door like that would do any good keeping angry lamias away from her girlfriend.
Family. My family.
“Jesus Christ.”
She slid a cigarette between her lips and leaned forward, staring at the odometer in the dash as she reconciled all that had happened, all that could happen, and all that certainly would be.
It was only a little terrifying.
GOODWILL HAD A high chair and one of those baby sling wraps you used to tie your kid to your chest so you weren’t stuck carrying the little goblin around all the time. It also had a stroller and a single nursing bra in her size. There were cribs, too, but looking at them, Tanis couldn’t decide what Naree would want, so she waited. It wasn’t like they were going to run out anytime soon; they had a dozen on display. Cribs were one of those things that were used for a couple of years and quickly not needed anymore. Everyone wanted to get rid of them.
She was about to pack her loot into the trunk of the car when she realized she was being watched from inside the store, near the window. She raised her head, narrowing her eyes. There was a woman there she’d never seen before, small and dark-haired and dark-eyed, staring at her, a cell phone attached to her ear. Tanis frowned at her, but the woman kept right on looking despite Tanis’s unspoken challenge.
It could be coincidence.
She sucked in air through her nose.
Not a familiar scent.
She climbed into the car and backed out of her parking spot. As she eased onto the curb, the woman trotted from the store, craning her head like she might be trying to read Tanis’s rear license plate. Florida only required the one, so the front of the Caddy had the name of the dealership where she’d bought the thing still attached. That, she could change out. The rear plate, not so easy.
Not today, Satan.
Tanis checked the rearview. Seeing no cars, she backed up along the empty road, not into the lot next door, but the one after that, Mitsy’s Diner, her wheels screeching and kicking up dust as she swung the car around as fast as the big ol’ boat would go. Instead of going home the way she came and potentially driving past the woman, she took off in the opposite direction from Percy’s Pass, away from Naree, to see if someone followed. The Glock was with her, tucked into the glove box, and she reached for it, sliding it beneath the bag of baby clothes so it was nearby in case of emergency.
No cars behind her. No cars in front of her. She was alone on the street.
She took a turn off onto a side road that would take her to a parallel route to the one she’d been on. It added some minutes to her drive, but she couldn’t be too careful, not with two different species of snake women potentially spying on her with psychic powers. Not with her girlfriend at home sleeping off the trauma of finding out that she was impossibly pregnant and on an impossibly short timeline to give birth.
Naree’s right. This isn’t sustainable, and I need to take care of her instead of saddling her with my paranoia.
She smoked another cigarette as the adrenaline drained from her body.
Only for it to rise right back up again at the four-stop intersection at the center of Percy’s Pass. It was a man, this time, on the fat side, with fair hair; he wore a blue T-shirt, a baseball hat, and a pair of jeans. The moment she stopped at the light, she glanced over at him and his pasty, unremarkable face. He promptly lifted his phone, aimed it right at her, and snapped a picture.
Oh, hell no.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TANIS DIDN’T EVEN shut off the engine. She grabbed the gun and climbed from the car, leaving the Caddy idling at the four-way stop.
“Who are you?” she demanded. The blond man’s eyes widened beneath his hat brim, and then he took off. With that long a start, he should have been able to outrun most people, but not a lamia; Tanis closed the distance easily, her arm looping around his waist. She yanking him between two brick buildings, an empty store front with a For Rent sign and a dry cleaner with laundry lining the windows.
She threw him against
the wall, the gun against his temple, her forearm pressed against an Adam’s apple big enough to double as a baseball.
“Drop the phone,” she snarled.
His eyes, cold and blue, showed no fear. She saw his jaw working, which didn’t seem particularly strange until she heard a cracking sound. He swallowed, and the air—which had smelled of garbage and cat piss—had a new scent, a pungent, powdery suggestion of bleach. A smile spread across the stranger’s as she figured out what he’d done. She grabbed his jaw and pulled down. Debris littered his tongue—white powder that could have been salt or sugar, but wasn’t either. He convulsed once, there was a clatter as his phone dropped to the ground, and he bucked against her like they were fucking. His eyes rolled up, his lids fluttered, a trace of spittle flowed from the corner of his mouth.
“No. No, you fuck. Who are you?”
She shook him and pounded his shoulders back against the brick, but it did no good. Ten seconds was all it took for whatever he’d ingested to hit his blood stream, then his brain, and finally his heart. He slumped against her, dribbling down the wall, a fleshy sack of useless that spilled out over her olive-green sneakers. Tanis kicked his corpse in frustration, and was about to do it a second time, when his phone beeped. She picked it up and swiped her thumb across the screen, grateful that he didn’t password protect.
It was a text message from a random number, no name accompanying it.
Visual confirmation?
Tanis desperately wanted to text back FUCK YOU but that’d alert whomever—maybe the goodwill store bitch—that something had gone awry sooner than necessary. She scrolled through the phone, to blond guy’s pictures, deleting the one he just took and looking to see if he’d somehow managed to send it while he ran from her. No messages, no emails, no nothing. The phone was practically empty, other than the apps the phone company always installs when you sign up. It was new to him, issued perhaps hours ago for him to do his reconnaissance on her.
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