Quickening, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  “To human gestation,” he said with dignity.

  Oh Lord. “Bracken, my love, my due’alle?”

  “Yes, my precious, my due’ane?”

  “How many times have you read What to Expect When You’re Expecting?”

  “Enough times to know that pie is a horrible thing to eat before you go running, even if you’re trying to prove a point that you’re the same person you were before you conceived.”

  I closed my eyes and ate a saltine whole.

  “And how many times would that be?” I asked doggedly, after I’d chewed and swallowed. You know, there really was a lovely buttery-salty-wheaty thing going on with this food choice that I had never appreciated before. It was like a magic potion for my stomach. I was never going anywhere without saltines again.

  “Four and a half,” he replied shortly. “And I’m on my second go-round through The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy.”

  Holy gasping gods. “You know a lot of people consider those two books to be evil, sexist, and wrong, don’t you?” I asked, on what surely had to be my last saltine.

  He regarded me levelly. “No, Corinne Carol-Anne, I did not know that. Perhaps you could read one of those books with your fine mind and glean some much-needed information on what pregnancy really is like, and then make a decision about its worth.”

  “And I’d be doing this because….”

  “Because maybe you’d listen to the book when it tells you not to eat pie before going running!”

  “It doesn’t really say that, does it?” I needled, because yes, he did have a point. At this juncture, research into anything would be a useful and prudent endeavor.

  “You’ll have to read it and see,” he said, rolling his eyes. He’d won, and he knew it.

  “Later. Right now, I’m going to go down and eat myself a spinach-and-tomato omelet.”

  His wicked smile was totally worth giving in to the inevitable.

  WE WERE sitting at the table this time, because Bracken had insisted I settle down and eat a nice meal instead of bolt and go, when Green swanned in from the outside, wearing jeans and nothing else, and deposited himself in the empty seat adjacent.

  He smiled happily at me and reached without thinking for the sourdough toast on my plate, and I smacked his hand.

  He retreated, laughing, and looked at me for the first time.

  “No toast?” he asked, all innocence.

  “You were gone this morning,” I said darkly.

  He had the grace to look away. “Yes, well, Teague and company got in early this morning. I thought I’d help them with their luggage and brief them up on things.”

  I tried to sustain my glower, but he smiled winningly back, like the child he hadn’t been in almost two millennia, and I sighed and gave him my toast.

  “You know she only forgave you because you brought news about Teague,” Bracken said grimly, and Green gave him the same winning smile.

  “I know how to win my battles, mate. You should try some sugar on your tongue once in a while.”

  Bracken’s eyes narrowed. “She ate pie for breakfast before going running,” he growled, as though the more he said it the more people would gasp and point their fingers at me in shock.

  Green sucked in air between his teeth. “How bright was the puke rainbow, lovey? Do we have to worry about airplanes using it as a landing strip?”

  Oh Goddess—I couldn’t be mad. Not at Green. “Possibly,” I said soberly. “I’m pretty sure it can be seen from space.”

  He brushed my cheek with his knuckle and bent to kiss my shoulder. “Well, I’m pretty sure you won’t do that again,” he said softly, smiling that gentle smile at me. He smelled… green, as always. Clean woods in spring, wildflowers, blossoming trees. He’d been outside, and his skin was warm from the August sun. I buried my nose in his hair and breathed deeply, feeling the last vestiges of my nausea fade away.

  “No,” I conceded. “No. Bracken just maybe has a point.”

  Green let out a rather authoritarian grunt that did not bode well for our newly acquired peace.

  “Speaking of points,” he said apologetically. My eyes narrowed.

  “What? What about points?”

  At that moment, one of our newest residents and oldest friends wandered into the living room. I smiled at him with my best queen smile, in spite of the fact that about once a month he got to see me come completely unglued as a matter of professional course. Maybe it was the fact that he did see me come unglued that made me want to look as if I had it all together—I mean, I wasn’t thrilled about seeing a supernatural shrink anyway.

  “Master Hallow,” I said, trying to be gracious. “Come sit down!” Hallow was much like a taller Green—but instead of butter-colored hair, his hair was silver tinted. It made him look older, though in fact their sidhe features, with the wide-set eyes and long oval faces, were both extremely young in appearance. When Hallow assumed the glamour he wore as a college professor and counselor, he projected age and wisdom with astonishing ease.

  “Thank you, my lady,” he said, smiling warmly. “In fact, I do have some things I have to discuss with you about your coming semesters—”

  “Semester,” I said, frowning and trying not to panic. “We said semester—you know, one semester, eighteen units, all done. Degree achieved, I can be a business/literature/history major, and you know, help with the queenship stuff. So, you know. Semester.”

  “Zzz,” he said, looking at me levelly. “Semester-zzz.”

  “But—” I stood up abruptly, because this called for some histrionics. “—but we had this planned, right? I was going to take eighteen units and be done?” Oh, yeah. Some serious histrionics. Counting junior college, this was my fifth year of taking college courses, which normally wouldn’t have been that bad, but I’d been taking between fifteen and twenty-four units for the whole four years previous. (Well, one semester was twenty-four units. That was a mistake. Don’t do it. Bad for you. So bad for you.) I’d earned this degree, dammit—but because I hadn’t consulted a counselor before Hallow, I didn’t have enough units in the right places. I needed one more full semester before I graduated, and Hallow had assured me it was in the bag.

  “Yes, my lady, that was the plan,” Hallow said in his mild way. His emphasis on was had me racking my brains to figure out what had changed.

  Yeah. Yeah, I know. It hit me in the face like a big wet fish.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, no, no, no, no—Green! You can’t let him do this to me?”

  Green grimaced. “Actually, it’s less ‘I let him’ and more ‘I asked him,’” he said honestly. Well, they had to be honest or they threw up.

  “Why!” I could not even brain the depths of my betrayal. “Why would you cut my semester in half—”

  “Well, technically not in half,” Hallow said. “See, the way we have it now, you go three days a week for the first semester and take twelve units, which is still, you know, a sizeable load. And then you take six units the second semester, and….” He grimaced. “Well, technically you’re due in May—”

  “May?” I did the math on my fingers. “Wouldn’t that be April?”

  Hallow grunted and looked at Green. “We’re not sure. Sidhe carry for an extra month—women who carry sidhe are classically overdue. But you’re carrying twins, and they’re going to be large, and you are….” He smiled winningly. “Not. You are not large. And you’re carrying twins.”

  “So everybody says,” I bit out. “So if I do this, I’ll be popping the babies out just before graduation. Why does it make sense for me to postpone?”

  I was snarling at him. He hadn’t done anything but follow Green’s orders, but dammit. I was so close to the goddamned degree, and it was so fucking intrusive to my life! I just wanted it over—couldn’t everybody see that?

  “How are you feeling?” Green asked nicely. “After your run, beloved. How are you feeling?”

  I blinked at him and took stock. “You know. Better now
that I’ve eaten,” I said, thinking that was the truth. “Fine, energized, ready to start my—” Oh no. I wouldn’t. I could feel it coming on, but I wouldn’t succumb. I swallowed. “—day?” I squeaked, and then I tried not to crack my jaw on the yawn that came next. Oh, hell no.

  Green nodded, and so did Hallow, and I fought the urge to kick something.

  “What in the hell. You couldn’t have asked me, Green? You just call Hallow and try to take over my—” I yawned. “—life?” I finished weakly. Jesus, this was bad.

  “Well, I was going to tell you just now,” Green said, a hint of remorse in his voice. “But you’d just given me a bite of toast. It was a nice moment. I sort of wanted it to last.”

  I grunted in frustration and shook my head. For a minute—a deep breath—I thought about being mad at him for being an autocratic bastard. But he’d always been an autocratic bastard, especially about my well-being, and the stakes had just tripled. Love someone, love their flaws, and I definitely loved Green.

  “Green,” I said, feeling weak and sleepy, “I might have just said yes. Have you thought of that?”

  “Quite frankly, no,” he said, not even bothering to apologize.

  I opened my mouth to argue, then remembered how we’d gotten to this place. “Well, with some discussion and some planning—”

  “Which we don’t have time for,” Hallow said, holding out a pen. “School starts soon, and unlike prior years, you need to drop your classes in the first week or they’re considered a failed class. We’re essentially dropping your Tuesday-Thursday classes. Since you have Monday off the first week of school, this way, you won’t have to go in on Tuesday.” Since Sac State was a forty-mile drive, this was no small consideration. He held out my add/drop forms and gestured with the pen again. “Please, my lady. I’m going in today for a department meeting, and I can get this taken care of. I need your signature here, here, and here—then the matter is done, and you’ll only have a couple of classes next semester as cleanup.”

  I signed numbly, trying to hammer my priorities into a shape I could handle.

  When I was finished, he smiled happily. “Excellent. Now, if you wanted to, you could go through the graduation ceremony at midyear, since you only have six units to….”

  I was glaring at him so fiercely I was surprised something didn’t catch fire.

  “Of course not,” he finished, as though I’d said what I’d actually been thinking.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I said, irritated and actually, dammit, feeling a little bit wobbly in the emotion department. I’d had plans. I was going to be the first person in my family to graduate from college, and I was going to do it this semester.

  Except I wasn’t. Because I could barely keep my eyes open at eleven o’clock in the morning, and apparently the queen of every-fucking-thing couldn’t pull off one lousy job without needing a nappy-poo.

  Fuck. Me.

  I turned and stalked out the front door, aware that both Green and Bracken had followed me.

  Usually when one of us was pensive or pissy or out-and-out full of rage, we went up to the top of the hill to the Goddess grove that Green, Adrian, and I had created with one of my first uncontained bursts of power. But Adrian wouldn’t be there in full daylight, and I didn’t feel like sitting and contemplating my navel.

  I felt like stalking around kicking big rocks, and since there were some good-sized ones on the driveway, that was the place to start. I didn’t stay on the gravel driveway, though. I took my handful of rocks and kept kicking them down the cross-country track that twisted around the hill. The first part led through a rose garden, then to a small grove of lime trees that met by a small pond overshadowed by a great sentinel oak.

  I loved this place. The night Green, Adrian, and I had first made love, we had started out here. Once, Bracken and I had a truly memorable fight here that had turned into lovemaking under one of the lime trees. It didn’t possess the cathedral-like stillness of the Goddess grove above the hill, but it was simple and raw and unchanged.

  Unlike, say, myself.

  I got to the center of the grove and stopped, tired, and leaned against one of the lime trees. I still had a handful of rocks, and I irritably chucked one into the middle of the pond.

  I was unprepared for the green-skinned hand, covered in pond weeds, to pop out of the center and catch it.

  And then throw it back irritably, now changed to a truly scorching neon color.

  Green and Bracken drew up abreast of me, leaving me standing with a bright neon green rock by my foot.

  “Two years,” I said, eyes huge, “and I never knew that thing was in there.”

  “Roderick?” Green asked, as though I’d know who Roderick was. “Yes, he’s in there. He’s a kelpie, so we really just leave him undisturbed. Otherwise, well… if you see a black horse running through the property, don’t hop up for a ride, are we understood?”

  I nodded, chin wobbling. Thank you, Roderick, for underscoring how very much I still needed to learn about the fuckin’ world.

  “I won’t bother you,” I whispered to the ripples in the center of the pond. Carefully I slid down the tree, wiping my face. Green and Bracken, both of them wearing clean jeans and not much else, slid down by me.

  “It’s just that fast,” I said, trying to explain the anger and fear that drove me. “One minute I’m completely in control of my destiny, and the next minute I’m completely in control of eating before I throw up. And that’s it. That’s all I get. Suddenly Green and Hallow are organizing my life, and Bracken is organizing my meals and… all that control, I just lost it, and I don’t know how to get it back, or how much of it I’m supposed to have. And suddenly….”

  Green seized my hand, and Bracken seized my other one, and both of them held just tight enough for me to not feel adrift.

  “You have a marvelous body, luv,” Green said softly. “I know you try hard not to think ‘too broad here’ or ‘too flat here’—but the truth is, you’re amazing. I could catalog your finest parts, but I don’t even want to break them down like that. I love them all.”

  I smiled faintly. A girl really didn’t get tired of hearing she was beautiful. “Thank you,” I said, truly grateful.

  “You’re welcome,” Green replied, kissing my knuckles. “But I need you to remember that as marvelous as your body has been, you’ve been taking it for granted. You want it to go and go and go, with piss-poor fuel and as little sleep as possible. And that’s fine, mostly, when there will be days to catch up and Bracken and I to help you rest—which we’ll be here for, don’t worry. But your body can’t do those things anymore. Not now. Not with twins. Not as fast as you’ll be growing. And yes—I’m going to cross the line again and again with this. And I’m going to be overzealous and overprotective, and I can’t apologize for it. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, and the lip wobbled some more, and the tears came. Not even tears of sadness or frustration or anger, just tears of emotion—some nameless, useless emotion that made hearing that I was on Green’s priority list the thing that would reduce me to rubble.

  Awesome.

  Well, I thought as I came undone on his shoulder, at least falling asleep won’t be a problem.

  BETWEEN MY repeated skirmishes with my body and my psyche, letting the new kids get used to our world, and waiting for Teague and the werewolves to get used to living in their own little house across from the great big house that was Green’s hill, it took more than a week before we got to have the big living-room powwow about the big scary fucking thing out there that might be trying to invade and kill us.

  We didn’t sit idle during that time—not really. Although it felt like I was one big speed-eating nap, I sent out feelers into the community. Everybody had contacts, from people they hung with in the mini-marts to the customers that came into many of Green’s businesses. So far the wolves had been avoiding anyone with Green’s mark, but somewhere out there, somebody had to have seen something—we needed as much inf
ormation as we could get, and we made sure everybody knew it.

  I also spent time with Cami, Dylan, and Connor during the day, and boy wasn’t that a clusterfuck of pain. Green spent time with all three of them as well, but the twining of Cami and Dylan’s early friendship and Dylan and Connor’s painful, panicked love was something only Green could untangle—and he spent a great deal of time doing just that.

  I found it hard to resent the time he spent with them—they were hurting and confused, and we needed them for information they were traumatized about giving. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t miss him. After a few months of relative peace between Christmas and Redding, Green, Bracken, and I were now one unresolved issue—one that was growing in my body every day. I missed that equilibrium and steadiness. I was still a member of the team—team leader, in fact, if our adventure at the county jail was anything to judge by. However, the day afterward, the day when I’d slept and eaten and vomited my way through the complete upheaval of my school year and personal plans, that left me in no doubt that I was going to have to prepare for the moment when I could no longer go out in the field. I’d have to plan and strategize and leave the implementation up to….

  Who?

  Who in the fuck was going to take over for me when I was gone?

  The logical answer would be Bracken—but we’d tried that after Thanksgiving and, well, the result had been a whole lot of dead werewolves and a fire, and Teague had needed to rip someone’s throat out with his teeth, and generally bad shit. Just… bad, bad shit.

  No. Bracken might help run the show, with me in his ear for good measure—and me eating my heart out the entire time he was away, because dammit, as the only elf on the hill who could bleed to death, he sure did get shot and stabbed and shredded an awful fucking lot—but he couldn’t be the “me” out there doing the job.

  Nicky wasn’t a leader by any stretch of the imagination. Max didn’t know enough about the resources at his disposal to do creative thinking. Arturo usually only went on a whim or to protect me, and Lambent had to work hard not to set the world on fire just to laugh while it burned. Marcus and Phillip were barely functional right now, and Grace was more comfortable ordering people around in the kitchen or on the hill than she was in the field. Not that she couldn’t do both, really—but it wasn’t where her heart lay, so why force it?