Null and Void

by Susan Copperfield

  “They have sisters. Can I invite them, too?”

  Uh oh. How many royal children were there? One of the daughters was older, and as far as I knew, she was betrothed and going overseas to become a queen of some European kingdom. “They can come, too.” I hesitated, fearing the answer to my next question. “How many of them are there?”

  “Seven!” she chirped, and she sighed a happy sigh. “Adam’s so dreamy, Mom.”

  If my eyes widened any further, I ran serious risk of losing them. Could eyesight be restored if my eyes popped out of my skull? I’d have to look it up later, once I chased down my heart and restored it to its proper place in my chest.

  “You like Prince Adam?”

  “He’s so nice. He holds the door for me sometimes at school, and he asks me about my day. Sometimes, he comes to me for help with his science homework. He’s smart, but he doesn’t have anyone at home who can keep up with him. You’re smarter than his daddy, I’m afraid. His daddy tries, but he’s no molecular biologist. You, at least, can understand the base concepts with a little help. Adam’s daddy?” My daughter rolled her eyes. “He’s an idiot.”

  I covered my face with my hands, listening to my daughter describe the Texan king as an idiot unable to keep up with her. While I struggled to come to terms with my daughter helping a Texan prince with his science homework, I also faced the real problem of attempting to care for seven Mireyas at one time. A shudder ran through me.

  How hard could it be to feed eight kids and keep them from killing each other—or me? I swallowed and prayed for a miracle or three. Maybe four. I’d need four miracles, at a minimum, to contend with one daughter and seven royal children. “I have no problems with you inviting all seven of them for dinner, just remember what I told you. There will be no whining if they reject your invitation.”

  “You’re the best, Mom!”

  For my first miracle, I prayed the seven royal children would want nothing to do with having dinner at my condo. For my second miracle, I prayed they’d decline gently so her feelings wouldn’t be hurt. For my third miracle, I prayed it wouldn’t get back to the Texan congress my daughter had invited the royal children over for dinner. For my fourth miracle, I prayed for the wisdom and wit necessary to keep my child from taking over the world.

  Chapter Eight

  That night, as I often did after doing something profoundly stupid, I dreamed of Dylan Mason. My twisted psyche enjoyed replaying my day with him, although the pillow talk changed each and every time. Instead of a psychologist, I had him, and he was a surprisingly understanding figment of my imagination.

  Even in my dreams, I acknowledged my idiocy, and it reflected in Dylan’s laughter upon hearing I’d given Mireya the gold and titanium watch from the auction. I needed to take it to a jeweler for a new battery, but our daughter had claimed it, put it on, and refused to take it off.

  “I’m impressed you waited so long.”

  In my dreams, Dylan was as much of an asshole as he’d been in life, and fool I was, I liked it. “Wait until you hear what she asked for permission to do.”

  “Do tell,” he purred.

  How could I resist him when he made such sounds? I needed to see a real shrink, stat, to get over my one-time lover before I became even more of a mess. I’d withhold how I’d told her about him for the moment.

  I’d cry, and crying never ended well, even in my dreams. Dylan hated when I cried almost as much as I hated when I cried.

  When I cried in my dreams, things tended to catch on fire, then after he finished incinerating imaginary beds, panties, sheets, and anything else he deemed unimportant, he smothered the flames with wind, rain, or both. Then he’d find an outlet for his negativity, which meant more repeating of our night together until he left me a wrecked mess after I woke up.

  Yeah, I needed a good shrink. Until I got one, I’d make do with Dylan.

  “She wants to invite a herd of princes and princesses over, and she has a crush on one of them. He holds the door for her and, apparently, asks her intelligent questions—and gets help with his homework.”

  “I suppose I’m okay with her having a crush on a prince as long as he treats her right. Which prince?”

  “Adam,” I dutifully replied.

  “The Texan heir? My, my. She’s aiming high. Good for her. If he doesn’t treat her right, you let me know.”

  Was Adam Texas’s heir? The thought shocked me awake, and I bolted upright, gasping as though I’d run a race. Several moments later, my alarm went off, and I considered throwing my phone across the room. Snatching the device, I silenced it and rolled out of bed.

  I needed coffee. I needed coffee, then I needed to look up the name of the Texan heir. If it was Prince Adam, I needed to figure out how the hell my wicked subconscious had known something I hadn’t. I had one logical explanation; I’d heard someone tell me, decided it wasn’t important, and ignored what I’d been told, not bothering to actively remember it.

  Alternatively, I was suffering from delusions of grandeur.

  Either was possible.

  For a rare change, I beat my spawnling out of bed, and I was halfway through making coffee when she stumbled in, rubbing her eyes. “You’re up four snoozes earlier than normal. Bad dream?”

  Damn it. I really needed to beat Dylan next time he showed up in one of my dreams. Without fail, he disturbed me enough I couldn’t sleep in at all. “I wouldn’t call it bad. It just startled me awake.”

  “That sucks. Did you brew coffee or liquid death this morning?”

  I narrowed my eyes at the pot. “Good question.”

  “Mom!” Mireya stomped her foot, glared at me, and threw her hands in the air. “Please tell me you didn’t try poking around in the fridge to make breakfast. I’m going to be so mad if I miss school today because you miss the ER doctors.”

  “Go take your shower and get ready for school, you brat.”

  “Don’t try to make breakfast. I’ll get out anything you need after my shower.”

  “You’re bossy this morning.”

  “My mother woke me up yelping. I thought you’d gone and done a stupid again.”

  “Maybe you’re the one who needs coffee this morning.”

  Mireya hissed at me and stomped off, and I resumed stalking the coffee pot. Ten minutes later, armed with black poison thinly disguised as coffee, I relaxed at the table, thinking over my dream, which I remembered with startling clarity.

  As always, I couldn’t visualize what Dylan looked like, and the sound of his voice was more impressions and feelings than sounds, but everything about him matched my memories of our day together. How could I still miss someone after so little time together?

  Then again, we’d worked together daily for three years. I’d just been too blind and stupid to treasure the chances I’d had to enjoy his company until it was too late.

  As she always did, my daughter blitzed through her shower, and when she returned to the kitchen, she toweled her dark hair dry. “Go take yours, Mom. I left the water on at room temperature.”

  Damn it. I got up and hurried to the bathroom before my daughter caused a Texas-wide water shortage. By the time I was finished, she had decided to feed us a breakfast of scrambled eggs, which she gave me and glared until I ate every bite.

  Kids.

  “Remember, don’t get snappy at Mr. Smithson because you’ve only had one cup of coffee, and be nice to any senators or representatives dumb enough to pay you a visit.”

  I snorted, scraped my plate, and rinsed it in the sink before bundling up for the trip to work. “How old are you again?”

  “Mom,” my spawnling complained. “You’re going to make us late.”

  I checked the oven clock to discover we were twenty minutes ahead of our usual schedule. I arched a brow and nodded towards the display.

  Lifting her chin, my daughter retorted, “We’re only early because of a miracle. Let’s go, Mom. Don’t ruin my chance to walk leisurely to the bus stop for once in my life.�
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  “You? Do anything leisurely? That’s funny.”

  “Mom!”

  “All right, all right. We’ll leave early, but it’s not my fault if you’re bored at the bus stop for an extra twenty minutes because you had to leave now.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Of course she didn’t. She was my daughter, and she’d learned to be stubborn from me. Some battles weren’t worth fighting, and I didn’t mind standing in front of our building for an extra twenty minutes if it made my daughter happy.

  My least favorite person in the world ambushed me the instant I arrived at work, and unable to help myself, I made several warding gestures against evil. Had I possessed magic, I would’ve offended Senator Forester, the chairman of the Royal Ethics committee. “We meet again, Senator Forester.”

  “We missed you yesterday,” he announced, narrowing his eyes and circling me, unashamedly embracing his shark-like tendencies.

  Wow. I turned in a slow circle, checking the lobby of the building for evidence of the end days. Everything looked normal. “I’m sorry, did you just say you missed me?”

  From all accounts, congress held a party when I missed a session.

  The middle-aged man, with the first hints of gray in his hair, cracked a little, a smile flitting across his mouth.

  I checked for the apocalypse a second time just to be sure. Everything still seemed normal, which worried me. Since there was no way the senator would willingly make the trip to the office to see me, I made the logical assumption he wanted to meet with my boss for something. “I doubt Mr. Smithson is in yet; he usually arrives within half an hour.”

  “Fortunately for me, I’m not here to see Douglass. I’m here to see you.”

  I tensed, staring at him through narrowed eyes. “That doesn’t sound promising, Senator Forester.”

  “I always knew you were a smart one. You surprised us when you were absent from the session. Douglass was there on your behalf, looking rather disappointed he had to put up with us for three whole hours.”

  “It was my daughter’s birthday, sir.”

  He smiled again, and the pleased expression startled me. “So we heard. Can I impose? There’s a little problem you might be able to help us with.”

  “Us?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “The congress.”

  Uh oh. I nodded and led Senator Forester to the elevators, waving at the security guards to indicate everything was okay. “I’m afraid you have the advantage.”

  “Not for long,” he promised.

  I took him to my office, unlocked the door, and gestured to one of the two seats in front of my desk. “Have a seat, Senator. How can I help you?” I circled my desk, set my purse on the floor, and sat, careful to avoid my usual boneless plop.

  Senators tended to get annoyed when I flopped onto comfortable chairs, and I made a point of slouching every congressional session to drive them up the nearest wall. Once, I’d gotten Representative Dorothy Hughes of Dallas to blow literal smoke out of her old ears over my complete disregard for her superiority as an elite.

  I leaned back in my chair and waited, pressing my fingertips together and trying my hardest not to smile at what looked like a promising start to my day.

  When senators came to me for favors, I always, always got something I needed out of their stingy hands on the null rights front. Always.

  He looked like a shark, but I was a legislative piranha waiting for a chance to chew him down to the bone.

  “You’re going to laugh me right out of this building when I tell you, then you’re going to reach into that drawer of yours and demand passage of every single one of your pet projects, and because you’re you, you’ll probably get what you want.”

  My eyebrows took a hike towards my hairline, and I leaned over, grabbed my keys out of my purse, and opened my locked drawer, grabbed the folder of current null rights violations, and slapped it on the desk in front of him. “I’ll be generous. Take a look, Senator Forester. Is what you want worth my wish list?”

  My wish list would guarantee me at least limited rights to see my daughter if someone took her away from me. If I got everything on my list, I’d be guaranteed equal visitation. Actually, if I got everything on my list, no one but her father could take her from me without biological evidence they were blood relatives on the paternal side and proof of Dylan’s death would have to be provided.

  It would likely take the rest of my life before that measure passed, but I’d take equal visitation rights.

  That Senator Forester quietly picked up the folder and began leafing through it promised he hadn’t come for leisure, and I wondered what I’d missed at yesterday’s congressional session.

  “You’ve been preparing to play hardball, I see. This is going to take a lot of work to pass, Miss Little.”

  “I expect the paternal DNA test requirement won’t stand a chance of passing, nor would the proof of death clause, but I’m not budging on fair visitation rights.”

  “I can try to pass a mandatory one weekend a month visitation if I include it with a clause that demands equal split of time with the second parent otherwise, so if a null child was with their null mother for ten years, it would be a minimum and maximum of one weekend a month until majority age. Otherwise, there’s no chance I’ll be able to get it passed through the congress as is. I can work with the foundation, but it’ll have to be modified.”

  One weekend a month was better than no weekends a month, and despite the tightness in my chest, I nodded. “I don’t like it, but…”

  “Some time is better than no time.”

  I sighed. “Right. And the child support payments?”

  “That’s going to be an easier clause to pass; the congress won’t have grounds to restrict visitation rights of null parents without compensation. Even the most conservative will not be able to argue that it’s fair that one parent pay the burden of raising a child. I can even sweeten the pot and ensure any null parent who has lost custody will never be liable for child support payments. I’ll remind the more prejudiced we do have ethics in Texas despite your constant reminders we don’t.”

  Whatever had brought Senator Forester to my office was a big deal, because the top two items on my wish list would be settled after a ten-year battle. “Proof of relations clause?”

  “I’m going to tie it with an anti-child trafficking motion and point out that the kidnapping of a child from their blood relations is not a Texan family value. I might be able to swing it, but I expect we’ll need a case study to pass it showing undue duress to a null child stolen from their family. It’ll take time, but I’m game to play ball with you on it. I think I can order a stay on custodian changes to non-parents as a temporary measure assuming I can find an appropriate case. Happen to know of any?”

  I reached back into my drawer and pulled out a five-inch thick folder containing every case of lost custody I knew of from the past two years. Hefting it up, I let it go, smiling when the senator winced at the desk-shaking thump. “I might know of a few.”

  “How many pages per case?”

  “Four. One on the mother, one on the father, one on the child, and one on the new guardians of the child. This contains every known null custody case in the entirety of North America for the past two years. Most of the cases involve children taken from families by non-familial individuals seeking a child, be it for cheap labor in the family business or an unconventional heir to prevent elite power plays and protect familial interests. There are twenty-five cases of custody loss resulting in death.”

  “Excuse me, but did you say death?”

  I sighed, flipped open the folder, and flipped through the tabs until I found the first black-marked set of pages. “A progenitor brings a great deal of prestige to a family line, so there are those who will claim custody of a null child and try to unlock their magical talents. It’s almost always lethal, and there have been no known cases of these methods resulting in the creation of a new magic line.”
/>   “And you said you have twenty-five of these cases in that folder of yours?”

  It took me a few minutes to hunt them all down, but I stacked them in front of Senator Forester. “Keep them. I have them in my digital records. Honestly, I was waiting for when I was annoyed at a session to try to break the podium smacking it with the folder, but I’ll accept the loss of my fun if it means we can get some of these motions passed.”

  “I’m going to try for all, but I can’t promise all. I can promise passing most in some form. Even if it’s only one day a month, the custody bill will be passed.”

  “All right. You’ve talked me into your favor, and I’m going to regret this, I’m certain, considering the concessions you’re making. Spill, Senator Forester. What do you want from me?”

  “I need you to head a committee.”

  Chapter Nine

  I laughed so hard I cried, and once the hiccups started and I couldn’t laugh anymore, I oozed off my chair, curled under my desk, and writhed, clutching my stomach as I tried to remember how to breathe.

  Senator Forester wanted me to head a committee?

  Someone—or many someones—in the Texan congress had lost their minds, and when I finally regained control over myself, I’d ask him why. Control would be a problem. Every time I tried to gasp out the question, the giggles started again.

  Me, the only null individual ever to speak in front of the Texan congress, lead a committee?

  “I should be angry over that reaction, but honestly, half the congress did the same thing when it was proposed. Then the ultimatum landed, and everyone stopped laughing. The entire Texan congress is being held by the balls, Mackenzie, and you’re the only one who can get us out of this mess intact.”

  I regained enough composure to choke out, “Only half the congress has balls, Senator.”

  “Well, a little more than half, and I’m starting to think you ladies have the advantage right now.”

  “I don’t count.”

  “Now you do, Miss Little. We already voted to confirm you as the head of the committee. It was a unanimous vote.”