by Kim Harrison
Nick’s eyes darted to a grimy, obviously not factory-installed lever under the dash before returning to the road. “Thanks. I wondered.” Slowly he rolled his window down a crack.
“No problem.”
I opened my mouth to ask, then closed it. Must be a guy thing.
“So-o-o-o-o,” Jenks drawled. “We going to your mom’s?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Want to come?”
He rose an inch as we hit a pothole, hovering cross-legged. “Sure. Thanks. Her Rose of Sharon is probably still blooming. Think she’d mind if I took some of the pollen home?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I will.” A grin came over him. “You’d better put some makeup on that love bite.”
“Jenks!” I exclaimed, my hand going to cover my neck. I had forgotten. My face warmed as Jenks and Nick exchanged looks in some asinine macho thing. God help me, I felt as if I was back in the cave. Me mark woman so Glurg keep his furry hands off her.
“Nick,” I pleaded, keenly feeling the lack of my bag. “Can I borrow some money? I have to stop at a charm shop.”
But the only thing more embarrassing than buying a complexion spell is buying one with a hickey on your neck. Especially when most of the shop owners knew me. So I opted for autonomy and asked Nick to stop at a gas station. Of course, the spell rack by the register was empty, so I ended up plastering my neck with conventional makeup. Covergirl? Don’t you believe it. Nick said it looked all right but Jenks laughed his wings red. He sat on Nick’s shoulder and chatted about the attributes of the pixy girls he had known before meeting Matalina, his wife. The randy pixy kept it up all the way to the outskirts of Cincinnati where my mom lived while I tried to touch up my makeup in the visor’s mirror.
“Left down that street,” I said, wiping my fingers off on each other. “It’s the third house on the right.”
Nick said nothing as he pulled to the curb in front of my house. The porch light was on for us, and I swear I saw the curtain flutter. I hadn’t been there for a few weeks, and the tree I’d planted with my dad’s ashes was turning. The spreading maple was almost shading the garage in the twelve years it had been in the ground.
Jenks had already buzzed out Nick’s open door, and as Nick leaned to get out, I reached for his arm. “Nick?” I questioned. He paused at the worried tone in my voice, easing back against the age-worn vinyl as I drew my hand away and looked at my knees. “Um, I want to apologize for my mom—before you meet her,” I blurted.
He smiled, his long face going soft. He leaned across the front seat and gave me a quick kiss. “Moms are terrible, aren’t they?” He got out, and I waited impatiently until he came around and jerked my door open for me.
“Nick?” I said as he took my hand and we started up the walk. “I mean it. She’s a little whacked. My dad’s death really threw her. She’s not a psychopath or anything, but she doesn’t think about what she’s saying. If it comes into her head, it comes out her mouth.”
His pinched expression eased. “Is that why I haven’t met her yet? I thought it was me.”
“You?” I questioned, then winced inside. “Oh. The human/witch thing?” I said softly, so he wouldn’t have to. “No.” Actually, I had forgotten about that. Suddenly nervous, I checked my hair and felt for my missing bag. My toes were cold, and the flip-flops were loud and awkward on the cement steps. Jenks was hovering beside the porch light, looking like a huge moth. I rang the bell and stood beside Nick. Please make it one of her good days.
“I’m glad it wasn’t me,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” Jenks said as he landed on my shoulder. “Your mom ought to meet him. Seeing as he’s bonking her daughter and all.”
“Jenks!” I exclaimed, then steeled my face as the door opened.
“Rachel!” my mom cried, swooping forward and giving me a hug. I closed my eyes and returned her embrace. She was shorter than I was, and it felt odd. Hair spray caught in my throat over the faint whiff of redwood. I felt bad about not telling her the full truth about quitting the I.S. and the death threats I’d survived. I hadn’t wanted to worry her.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, pulling back. “This is Nick Sparagmos. And you remember Jenks?”
“Of course I do. It’s good to see you again, Jenks.” She stepped back into the threshold, a hand briefly going to her faded, straight red hair and then her calf-length, sweater dress. A knot of worry loosened in me. She looked good. Better than the last time. The mischievous glint was back in her eyes, and she moved quickly as she ushered us inside. “Come in, come in,” she said, putting a small hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Before the bugs follow you.”
The hall light was on, but it did little to illuminate the shadowy green hallway. Pictures lined the narrow space, and I felt claustrophobic as she gave me another fierce hug, beaming as she pulled away. “I’m so glad you came,” she said, then turned to Nick. “So you’re Nick,” she said, giving him a once-over, her lower lip between her teeth. She nodded sharply as she saw his scuffed dress shoes, then her lips twisted in thought as she saw my flip-flops.
“Mrs. Morgan,” he said, smiling and offering his hand.
She took it, and I winced as she pulled him staggering into a hug. She was a great deal shorter than he was, and after his first startled moment, he grinned at me over her head.
“How wonderful to meet you,” she said as she let him go and turned to Jenks.
The pixy had put himself at the ceiling. “Hi, Mrs. Morgan. You look nice tonight,” he said warily, dipping slightly.
“Thank you.” She smiled, her few wrinkles deepening. The house smelled like spaghetti sauce, and I wondered if I should have warned Mom that Nick was human. “Well, come all the way in. Can you stay for lunch? I’m making spaghetti. No problem to make a little more.”
I couldn’t help my sigh as she led the way to the kitchen. Slowly I started to relax. Mom seemed to be watching her mouth more than usual. We entered the kitchen, bright from the overhead light, and I breathed easier. It looked normal—human normal. My mom didn’t do much spelling anymore, and only the dissolution vat of saltwater by the fridge and the copper spell pot on the stove gave anything away. She had been in high school during the Turn, and her generation was very discreet. “We just came to pick up my ley line stuff,” I said, knowing my idea to get it and run was a lost cause since the copper pot was full of boiling water for pasta.
“It’s no trouble,” she said as she added a sheaf of spaghetti, ran her eyes down Nick, then added another. “It’s after seven. You’re hungry, aren’t you, Nick?”
“Yes, Mrs. Morgan,” he said, despite my pleading look.
She turned from the stove, content. “And you, Jenks. I don’t have much in the yard, but you’re welcome to what you can find. Or I can mix up some sugar water if you’d like.”
Jenks brightened. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, flitting close enough to send the wisps of her red hair waving. “I’ll check the yard. Would you mind if I gathered the pollen from your Rose of Sharon? It will do my youngest a world of good this late in the season.”
My mother beamed. “Of course. Help yourself. Those damned fairies have just about killed everything looking for spiders.” Her eyebrows arched, and I froze in a moment of panic. She had a thought. No telling what it was.
“Might you happen to have any children who would be interested in a late summer job?” she asked, and my breath escaped me in a relieved sound.
Jenks landed on her offered hand, wings glowing a satisfied pink. “Yes, ma’am. My son, Jax, would be delighted to work your yard. He and my two eldest daughters would be enough to keep the fairies out. I’ll send them tomorrow before sunup if you like. By the time you have your first cup of coffee, there won’t be a fairy in sight.”
“Marvelous!” my mother exclaimed. “Those damn bastards have been in my yard all summer. Drove my wrens away.”
Nick started at the foul word coming from such a mild-looking lady, and I shrugged.
J
enks flew an arching path from the back door to me in an unspoken request for me to open it. “If you don’t mind,” he said, hovering by the knob, “I’ll just nip out and take a look. I don’t want them running into anything unexpected. He’s just a boy, and I want to be sure he knows what to watch out for.”
“Excellent idea,” my mother said, her heels clacking on the white linoleum. She flicked on the back light and let him out. “Well!” she said as she turned, eyeing Nick. “Sit down, please. Would you like something to drink? Water? Coffee? I think I have a beer somewhere.”
“Coffee would be great, Mrs. Morgan,” Nick said as he pulled a chair from under the table and lowered himself into it. I opened the fridge for the coffee, and my mom took the bag of grounds out of my hands, fussing with soft mother sounds until I sat beside Nick. The scraping of my chair was loud, and I wished she wasn’t making such a fuss. Nick grinned, clearly enjoying my disquiet.
“Coffee,” she said as she puttered about. “I admire a man who likes coffee with lunch. You have no idea how glad I am to meet you, Nick. It’s been so long since Rachel brought a boy home. Even in high school she wasn’t much for dating. I was starting to wonder if she was going to lean the other way, if you know what I mean.”
“Mom!” I exclaimed, feeling my face go as red as my hair.
She blinked at me. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she amended, scooping out the grounds and filling the filter. I couldn’t look at Nick, hearing the amusement in him as he cleared his throat. I put my elbows on the table and dropped my head into my hands.
“But you know me,” my mother added, her back to us as she put the coffee away. I cringed, waiting for whatever was going to come out of her mouth. “I’m of the mind that it’s better to have no man than the wrong one. Your father, now, he was the right man.”
Sighing, I looked up. If she was talking about Dad, she wouldn’t be talking about me.
“Such a good man,” she said, motions slow as she went to the stove. She stood sideways so she could see us as she took the lid off the sauce and stirred it. “You need the right man to have children with. We were lucky with Rachel,” she said. “Even so, we almost lost her.”
Nick sat up interested. “How so, Mrs. Morgan?”
Her face went long in an old worry, and I rose to plug the coffeemaker in, since she had forgotten. The coming story was embarrassing, but it was a known embarrassment, much better than what she might come out with, especially after having mentioned children. I sat down beside Nick as my mom started in with the usual opening line.
“Rachel was born with a rare blood disease,” she said. “We had no idea it was there, just waiting for an inopportune match to show itself.”
Nick turned to me, his eyebrows raised. “You never told me that.”
“Well, she doesn’t have it anymore,” my mother said. “The nice woman at the clinic explained everything, saying that we were fortunate with Rachel’s older brother, and that we had a one-out-of-four chance that my next child would be like Rachel.”
“That sounds like a genetic disorder,” he said. “You usually don’t get better from those.”
My mother nodded and turned the flame down under the boiling pasta. “Rachel responded to a course of herbal remedies and traditional medications. She’s our miracle baby.”
Nick didn’t look convinced, so I added, “My mitochondria were kicking out this odd enzyme, and my white blood cells thought it was an infection. They were attacking healthy cells as if they were invaders, mostly the bone marrow and anything that had to do with blood production. All I know was, I was tired all the time. The herbal remedies helped, but it was when puberty kicked in that everything seemed to settle down. I’m fine now, except for being sensitive to sulfer, but it did shorten my life span by about ten years. ’Least, that’s what they tell me.”
Nick touched my knee under the table. “I’m sorry.”
I flashed him a smile. “Hey, what’s ten years? I wasn’t supposed to make it to puberty.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that even with ten years sliced off my life expectancy, I was still going to live decades past him. But he probably already knew that.
“Monty and I met at school, Nick,” my mother said, bringing the conversation back to its original topic. I knew she didn’t like talking about the first twelve years of my life. “It was so romantic. The university had just started their paranormal studies, and there was a lot of confusion about prerequisites. Anyone could take anything. I had no business being in a ley line class, and the only reason I signed up for it was because the gorgeous hunk of witch in front of me at the registrar’s office was, and all my alternate classes were full.”
Her spoon in the pot slowed, and steam wafted over her. “Funny how fate seems to push people together sometimes,” she said softly. “I took that class to sit next to one man, but ended up falling in love with his best friend.” She smiled at me. “Your father. All three of us partnered for the lab. I would have flunked if it hadn’t been for Monty. I’m not a ley line witch, and since Monty couldn’t stir a spell to save his life, he set all my circles for me the next two years in return for me invoking all his charms for him until he graduated.”
I had never heard this one before, and as I rose to get three coffee mugs, my gaze fell upon the pot of red sauce. Brow pinching, I wondered if there was a tactful way to spill it down the garbage disposal. She was cooking in her spell pot again, too. I hoped she had remembered to wash it in saltwater, or lunch might be a bit more interesting than usual.
“How did you and Rachel meet?” my mother asked as she nudged me away from the pot and set a loaf of frozen bread to bake in the oven.
Eyes suddenly wide, I shook my head in warning at Nick. His eyes flicked from me to my mother. “Ah, a sporting event.”
“The Howlers?” she questioned.
Nick looked to me for help, and I sat beside him. “We met at the rat fights, Mom,” I said. “I bet on the mink, and he bet on the rat.”
“Rat fights?” she said, making a face. “Nasty business, that. Who won?”
“They got away,” Nick said, his eyes soft on mine. “We always imagined they escaped together and fell madly in love and are living in the city’s sewers somewhere.”
I choked back a laugh, but my mother let hers flow freely. My heart seemed to catch at the sound. I hadn’t heard her laugh in delight in a long time.
“Yes,” she said as she set her oven mitts aside. “I like that. Minks and rats. Just like Monty and me with no more children.”
I blinked, wondering how she had jumped from rats and minks to her and Dad, and how that related to them not having any more children.
Nick leaned close and whispered, “Minks and rats can’t procreate, either.”
My mouth opened in a silent, Oh, and I thought that perhaps Nick, with his odd way of seeing the world, might understand my mother better than I did.
“Nick, dear,” my mom said as she gave the sauce a quick, clockwise turn. “You don’t have a cellular disease in your family, do you?”
Oh, no, I thought in panic as Nick answered evenly, “No, Mrs. Morgan.”
“Call me Alice,” she said. “I like you. Marry Rachel and have lots of kids.”
“Mom!” I exclaimed. Nick grinned, enjoying it.
“But not right away,” she continued. “Enjoy your freedom together for a while. You don’t want children until you’re ready. You are practicing safe sex, yes?”
“Mother!” I shouted. “Shut up!” God, help me get through this night.
She turned, one hand on her hip, the other holding the dripping spoon. “Rachel, if you didn’t want me to bring it up, you should have spelled your hickey.”
I stared at her, my mouth agape. Mortified, I rose and pulled her into the hall. “Excuse us,” I managed, seeing Nick grinning.
“Mom!” I whispered in the safety of the hall. “You ought to be on medication, you know that?”
Her head drooped. “H
e seems like a nice man. I don’t want you to drive him away like you do all your other boyfriends. I loved your father so. I just want you to be that happy.”
Immediately my anger fizzled to nothing, seeing her standing alone and upset. My shoulders shifted in a sigh. I should come over more often, I thought. “Mom,” I said. “He’s human.”
“Oh,” she said softly. “Guess there isn’t much safer sex than that, is there?”
I felt bad as the weight of that simple statement fell on her, and I wondered if that might change her opinion of Nick. There could never be any children between Nick and me. The chromosomes didn’t line up right. Finding that out for sure had been the end of a long-running controversy among Inderlanders, proving that witches, unlike vamps and Weres, were a separate species from humans, as much as pixies or trolls. Vamps and Weres, whether bitten or born to their status, were only modified humans. Though witches mimicked humanity almost perfectly, we were as different as bananas from fruit flies at a cellular level. With Nick, I would be barren.
I had told Nick the first time our cuddling turned to something more intent, afraid he would notice if something didn’t look quite right. I had been almost sick with the thought he would react in disgust about the different species thing. Then I almost cried when his only wide-eyed question had been, “It all looks and works the same, doesn’t it?”
At the time, I honestly hadn’t known. We had answered that question together.
Flushing at such thoughts in front of my mother, I gave her a weak smile. She returned it, pulling her slight body up straight. “Well,” she said, “I’ll go open a jar of alfredo, then.”
Tension drained from me, and I gave her a hug. Her grip had a new tightness to it, and I responded in kind. I’d missed her. “Thanks, Mom,” I whispered.
She patted my back, and we stepped apart. Not meeting my eyes, she turned to the kitchen. “I’ve an amulet in the bathroom if you want it, third drawer down.” She took a breath, and with a cheerful face headed into the kitchen with quick, short steps. I listened for a moment, deciding nothing had changed as she chattered happily to Nick about the weather while packing the tomato-based sauce away. Relieved, I thumped down the shadowed hall in my flip-flops.