Banishing the Dark

by Jenn Bennett

  And oh, God, that’s right: my stupid phone alarm. Forgetting to take the Pill. And of course, we pretty much screwed like rabbits—before the coma, at least.

  I spun around to face him and nearly shrieked in surprise when I found him inches away. “You bastard!” I said, shoving him back. “You knocked me up!”

  “You helped!”

  We stood there for several moments, glowering at each other, until I started laughing. His face twisted in confusion. Then I burst into tears.

  His arms roped around me, and I fell against him, weeping into his shirt as the distant sound of a speeding car mingled with the crash of the Pacific surf.

  “What are we going to do?” I said, pulling back to see his face after I’d gotten a grip on my tears.

  He’d shifted back down, no horns, no fiery halo, just Lon, green eyes peering down at me over his brown and gray beard. With the pad of his thumb, he brushed away the tears beneath my eyes. Then he pushed my hair away from my forehead with one warm palm. “I don’t know.”

  “It could be Earthbound.”

  “Or human.”

  Or something else entirely. I looked down between us and put a tentative hand over my stomach. How could I not know? Surely that had to make me the worst mother ever already, and I hadn’t even started. I pulled up my T-shirt. “I don’t feel anything. I’m not showing.”

  “You’re only eleven weeks along, and you just got out of the hospital. But don’t worry. That tea I’ve been making you is a thousand calories a glass—”

  “Oh, my fucking God.”

  “—which you need. I can already tell from your face that it’s helping.”

  “But how do I even know the baby is okay?”

  “They did sonograms and tests and monitored you. Mick checked everything before he left for the funeral and said it was healthy and normal. That was a day before you woke up.”

  “I can’t believe he told you.” I felt a little betrayed. As if it wasn’t his business to share. As if they were scheming behind my back.

  “He didn’t have a choice, Cady. I had to sign the surgery release. He thought you might miscarry.”

  And how I had managed not to, after what I’d been through . . . I couldn’t even think about it. I just couldn’t. It was too awful. But in shunning one bad thought, I faced another. “I’ve been releasing kindled Heka without a caduceus all day.”

  “I told you to stop doing that!”

  “I didn’t know why! You didn’t tell me I could shock my own baby!”

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, calming himself. “Electrical tolerance is inherited, so I’m sure the baby is fine. And you saw the threads. They’re a supernatural marker, just like halos, and you know how a halo changes when you’re sick or unhealthy. But the baby’s thread looked as strong as mine, and I’m fine, so I think we can assume that means everything’s normal.”

  “Normal? Having threads in your palm isn’t normal.”

  He grabbed my chin and leaned closer to my face. “They are for you, because you’re extraordinary and special, and what you have inside you is, too. Not because of what you are—I don’t give a shit if you’re a goddamn alien or an average human being. You’re mine, and so’s that baby. And whatever it is, it’s beautiful.”

  Goddammit. I almost started crying again. Until I had a terrible thought. “Oh, God. My mother—”

  “Cannot find out,” Lon said firmly.

  She could drop down from the Æthyr and possess my body. She tried to kill Lon. What was to stop her from trying to take my baby away? “What if—”

  Lon shook his head emphatically and cradled my face between his hands. “Not going to think about what-ifs. We’re going to figure out a solution, and we’re going to live through it, just like we always do. You hear me?”

  “I hear you,” I said in a quiet voice. “And I love you. But I’m very, very scared.”

  “Me, too,” he said, pulling me closer. “All of the above.”

  We drove straight home from the wine bar. I pretended I wasn’t quietly panicking while Jupe talked my ear off and watched TV for a while. After Lon sent him to bed, the two of us headed to the covered back patio, where we could talk without worrying we’d be overheard. Where we could make a plan.

  Midnight was my new noon. I supposed I was doomed to keep bartender hours from now until God knew when. I shivered under a blanket and pecked at a tablet touch screen.

  “Nothing in Los Angeles,” I confirmed to Lon. “When I look up ‘Wildeye’ and ‘private investigator,’ I get one hit in Golden Peak, California.”

  “That’s a little resort town in Big Sur, maybe three or four hours south of us.”

  “Robert Wildeye . . . huh.”

  “What?”

  I peered at the screen. “He’s got a website. Says he’s in Golden Peak and gives a phone number. No street address. No e-mail. No nothing. Just says, ‘Private Investigator. Confidential. Twenty years experience. Licensed and insured. Premium rates for premium service.’ Oh, interesting. Nox symbol.” Two interlocking circles that indicated the business was Earthbound-friendly.

  “Any reviews on other sites?” Lon asked.

  I backed out of the page and searched again, using the full name. Only scam sites trying to get you to fork over your credit-card number in exchange for a bogus background check. “It’s like he barely exists,” I said, shivering again.

  “Maybe he only exists if you have enough cash.” Lon padded over to the control panel to turn on the heating in the cement flooring.

  “Luckily, you do. But I think we need to be careful about contacting him. What if he tries to give us the slip? Or what if he was friends with Dare?”

  “Dare didn’t have friends. The town’s not that big, and it’s the off-season. Bet we can ask around and figure out how to find him.”

  He sounded a lot more hopeful than I felt, but at least it was a place to start. One small thing decided. Now there was just the other enormous one to face. I set the tablet on a nearby patio table and sighed.

  We hadn’t told Jupe the news. Hell, I was still in shock myself. And feeling more than a little foolish. Seriously. Who doesn’t know they’re pregnant? Even Lon said he’d noticed I had missed a period in November, but he just chalked it up to stress, since I’d been busy working at the bar while juggling piddly magical jobs for the Hellfire Club in my off time. Then there was that horrible afternoon on the chartered boat. And the holidays spent chasing down the boys who robbed Tambuku while they were amped up on Dare’s bionic drug.

  Not to mention putting Yvonne in the hospital.

  So, yeah. I’d been under a lot of stress. But no use dwelling on the whys and hows. I was pregnant, and that’s all there was to it. I had choices, of course, but when I considered whether I was ready for something so life-changing, I knew my situation could be worse. I was an adult in a solid relationship. More than solid. I really couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. Couldn’t even imagine wanting to. Kar Yee joked about all the men she fantasized about. But no matter where they started, all my fantasies eventually led back to Lon.

  And maybe I’d never be a domestic goddess, baking pies and arranging tablescapes for dinner parties, but I was pretty good at handling Jupe. Better than Lon sometimes, but that was mostly because he’d been a single parent too long. If I had to raise Jupe alone, I’d lose my shit on occasion, too. All things considered, Lon was a damn good father.

  Financially, it wasn’t a problem. I had savings. Not a lot, granted, and I hoped Kar Yee wasn’t so fed up with me that she wanted to ditch our partnership in Tambuku. No, I couldn’t imagine myself slinging drinks with a baby bump, but she could manage just fine without me, at least for a little while.

  And Lon was more than financially stable. Maybe he was only rich compared with someone working-class like me, but he didn’t hurt for anything, and even if he decided to retire from photography, he had his inheritance.

  So, yeah. Logically, there was
no reason not to have a baby.

  And emotionally? God help me, but despite the chaos that seemed to plague my life before and after I’d met Lon, it was our baby. Us. Him and me. We made it together, no matter how foolishly. Hell, yeah, I wanted it. Fiercely.

  There was only the small matter of my murderous mother.

  “How’s that?” Lon asked. “You feel it warming up, or you want me to light a fire?”

  “No need. It’s much better,” I said, holding the blanket up so he could crawl under with me on a wide wicker chaise. When he stretched out and wrapped his arms around me, his warmth chased the last of the chill away.

  Lon often lounged out here, reading beneath the cover of the deep roof. From this vantage point, my gaze drifted over the wraparound redwood deck and the green lawn beyond, lush with palms and Monterrey cypresses. Past the cliffs, the moon-bathed Pacific spread out like a never-ending black carpet.

  “Eleven weeks,” I murmured. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It means the baby’s the size of a shrimp.”

  He held up his fingers to demonstrate. This made my stomach flutter nervously.

  “We’ll find an obstetrician,” he said, brushing my hair aside to tuck his chin in the crook of my neck.

  “When? Before or after the Moonchild spell deteriorates my humanity? Before or after my mom realizes she’s got another living target?” I didn’t mean to sound so bitter, but goddamn. It wasn’t fair. How the hell was I supposed to find a spell my mother had used in some black-magick sex ritual during my conception twenty-five years ago? One that didn’t follow any of the original medieval Moonchild spells?

  Priya had alluded to the possibility that my mother had constructed the spell herself, compiled from different sources. What if she was the only one who knew the details? And even if someone else could re-create the spell, it might take years of research, decades of trial-and-error. If they’d tried a different version on my deceased brother and failed, then God knew how many versions they’d experimented with before they conceived me.

  She’d murdered an eight-year-old boy.

  Her own child.

  I pressed my palm against my belly as a slow, hot panic dripped down my spine.

  “She can’t find out,” I whispered.

  “We’ll go find the PI tomorrow.”

  What if tomorrow wasn’t soon enough? Curled up with my back against Lon’s chest, I could easily drift into a lazy daze in minutes. If she tapped into me tonight, would she poke through my brain and see my knowledge of the shrimp-sized baby inside me?

  I turned in Lon’s arms to face him. “I can’t take the chance.”

  “Cady . . .”

  “You’re willing to risk it? I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “I would lay waste to the entire state and everyone in it before I’d let anything happen to you or that baby. And I would gladly kill your mother a hundred times over. Should’ve done it in San Diego when I had the chance.”

  I shook my head. “It was my choice to give her up to the albino demon. And it was the wrong one.”

  “No use thinking about that now.”

  “What if Priya’s right? What if she finds a way to cross over, takes possession of me, and disappears with my body and the baby?”

  Lon didn’t say anything for a long time. He was upset. So was I. And the longer it took him to come up with a logical argument, the more panicked I got.

  “We know she can tap into my thoughts,” I said, thinking aloud. “I don’t know how deep she can go, but when I had those dream conversations with her, you were there in those dreams, lying next to me. And she clearly remembered you from San Diego. She remembered you, and she knew we were together, because she wanted to hurt me by killing you.”

  “Yes,” Lon said impatiently.

  “By that logic, we can assume the only reason she didn’t know about the baby already was because I didn’t—not when she was tapping into my dreams.” I sat up in the lounge chair. “She doesn’t have some all-seeing omnipotent power, Lon. She could only see inside my head. Like you, when you’re transmutated. Or . . . maybe more like Arturo.”

  “Memories.”

  “Exactly. So if I don’t know I’m pregnant, neither will she.”

  “But you do.”

  “But you know a way to change that.”

  Lon sat up, brows drawn together. His eyes flicked back and forth between mine. Then his face fell. “The book of memory spells.”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Why?” I challenged. “You’ve tried two of those spells, and they both worked. You retrieved my lost memories from childhood, and you wiped Riley Cooper’s memories.”

  “That was a permanent wipe.”

  “But there were other spells. Temporary ones. Think about it, Lon. You could remove my memory of the baby just until we have a chance to track down the PI or fly down to Florida or whatever we need to do to stop my mother.”

  “Those spells are hundreds of years old. What if it wipes your memories for months?”

  “Well, you did say the baby’s healthy.”

  “It is, but—”

  “And you said you wouldn’t let me do this alone.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Which means you’d be with me, so you could stop me from doing anything that would put the baby in danger.”

  “But—”

  “And it can’t last forever. Spell or no spell, I think I’ll eventually figure out something’s up when my stomach starts ballooning. Hell, if you’re afraid I won’t remember, you can just tell me about it.”

  He lifted his chin in reluctant acknowledgment. But he wasn’t entirely convinced. “Memory spells are tricky, and you’ve just recovered from major trauma. You had multiple concussions. I could fuck something up. Turn you into a vegetable.”

  “If we’re weighing risks, better that than endanger the baby. Plus, you said that I healed myself—miracle, remember?” I tried to smile, but neither of us was in the mood for humor. Something else crossed my mind. “Maybe the reason I didn’t remember I was pregnant until I saw the threads in my hand was that my body was trying to protect the baby from me.”

  He made a small, miserable noise and pushed himself off the chaise. I watched him pace the length of the patio, bare feet arching beneath the hems of his jeans. When he made it to the deck, he leaned against the railing and stood there for several minutes, looking out at the dark, glittering ocean. Thinking.

  I was thinking, too.

  I didn’t want to be wrong about this. But when I considered other options—not doing anything, trying to hide myself with portable magick, summoning unknown Æthyric demons until I could barter with one who was brave enough to take out my mother in the Æthyr—it still seemed like our best shot.

  Dare was gone, so Jupe would be safe if we had to leave him in the Holidays’ care until we sorted this out. And surely if the shrimp inside me weathered a brutal beating, it could tolerate a little more magick.

  Surely?

  I wondered if the baby had a halo and what color it would be—a thought that nearly sent me into another fit of weeping. Jesus. We had to do something, or the moment my mom reconnected with me, she’d know everything. I might be a natural at lying to other people, but I was total shit at lying to myself.

  Over the next few hours, Lon and I talked circles around the problem. We talked until he refused to say another word about it. He poked around the internet looking for information on Wildeye. Made us breakfast. Cleaned up. And as I waited for sunrise, staring at the TV, a golden glow fell over my arm. I glanced up to find Lon standing in front of me. That I hadn’t noticed him transmutating probably said a lot about where my thoughts were.

  “You haven’t changed your mind,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  He reached down, and I placed my hand in his. Flaming light danced around his spiraled horns as he sighed.

  “Let’s
do it now,” he said in a weary voice. “Before I lose my nerve.”

  My head pounded something fierce. I squinted into warm, strong sunlight and blinked until my eyes adjusted. Living room. Stack-stone fireplace, leather sectional sofa, glossy wood floors, black-and-white photographs of a curly-haired toddler.

  Lon Butler’s home.

  What the hell was I doing here?

  I groaned, struggling to remember as I pushed a fuzzy gray blanket away and stood. It was quiet. All I could hear was the muffled tick of a clock on the mantel telling me it was two in the afternoon and the distant sound of the surf pounding against the rocks below the cliffs. Was no one home?

  Jupe would be in school or on his way home with the Holidays. Lon would be . . . ?

  A sharp feeling akin to déjà vu hit me. I knew this house well. I’d been staying here, but I couldn’t remember why. A flood of fuzzy memories floated in and out of my aching head. Father Carrow introducing me to Lon. Lon saving me from my parents in San Diego. Lon introducing me to Ambrose Dare. Me killing Dare. Waking up in the hospital. Waking a month later in Lon’s bed with the sigil painted on the ceiling. Talking to Arturo about the PI in L.A.

  All these solid memories, but everything else around them was as soft and weightless as packing peanuts. Just like this house. So familiar but foreign. It felt as if I’d spent a lot of time here, but I couldn’t remember all the details.

  Wait. I was here because of my mother. Yes. I definitely remembered her tapping into my dreams and Priya warning me to undo the Moonchild spell. I also remembered Priya appearing in the alley by Arturo’s wine bar last night. I got upset about . . . something. Lon brought me back here afterward. Wait. Wine bar. Did we get drunk? Because that would explain a lot.

  My face heated as embarrassment blazed through me. Drunk with Lon. That wasn’t a good idea. All my clothes seemed to be on except my shoes. What a freaking relief. I don’t think I could face him if I’d done something stupid like hit on him.