by Amy Lane
“It’s been that way since Beltane was born,” Harry replied. He smiled to himself. “I think I heard him say once that Bel was his reward for remembering how to be human.”
Edward grunted. “He doesn’t do that good a job being human. I think he should just get dessert or something.”
“That’s not fair!” Harry countered. He thought back to when Francis was a child, when Edward and Harry spent all their days working as hard as possible to keep him from the ugliness their lives had become. Francis had been wide-eyed then and perfectly happy to look away—a magician’s perfect assistant, the gullible audience, willing to be fooled. “He’s been fey his whole life. Bel was just… just the human he chose to live with, is all.”
“Is this about driving away the brownies?” Edward asked suspiciously. “They were drinking all of Leonard’s beer. And the hill in Foresthill is a better place for them—you know that.”
“I liked them,” Harry snapped. “They were good sports to hunt, and sometimes they hunted back. But that’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point? Why are you so pissed off?”
Harry glared at him, hurt all over again. “You made arrangements to go… go do whatever. Without me. I don’t get to hunt with you anymore?”
“That’s not what this is,” Edward said, his rolled eyes speaking to exaggerated patience. “Of course we want you with us. It’s the family business, Harry—you’re part of the family. We called Emma and Leonard because you’re using it as an excuse.” Emma had pulled to a halt, and she and Leonard got out and were stretching cautiously. In order to have Bel, she and Leonard had both given up a portion of their power. The magic that kept them from aging was not quite as strong as it had been so long ago.
“More like twenty years in a hundred,” Emma had said when she’d told the boys of their plan to conceive a child. “Unlike the ten or so you boys will continue to age.” Francis had regarded her with avid, crossed blue eyes, his tail twitching, since he’d refused to change forms for the family meeting. “Or five in a hundred, for those of us who prefer to be cats,” she’d added acidly.
Because Francis was Francis, his back leg had shot up, and he’d given her a pointed demonstration of his position on the subject.
But twenty years later, the results of that consultation could be seen. Emma, who had always been a mostly ageless-appearing woman in her late twenties, was now most definitely in her late thirties, with fine lines around her eyes and deeper grooves at the mouth. Her hair—still blonde and thick and lovely—now had a few strands of silver in it. She was still beautiful, and the kindness in her eyes, her smile, had never diminished.
But she appeared human now, vulnerable, and today she looked worried.
Her eyes sought out Harry as soon as she’d straightened from her stretch. She said a few words to Leonard, who eyed Harry up and down too and shook his head.
“I think she’s annoyed.” Edward clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done!”
“Look, if even one of you had said anything to me beforehand—”
And suddenly Edward wasn’t laughing anymore. “When, Harry? When you were throwing yourself at one job after another? When you were bleeding out? No job was too dangerous, remember? ‘We’ve got an advantage and a moral obligation to use it in the pursuit of justice and compassion,’ remember that?”
“Nicely spoken,” Suriel said warmly. “When was that?”
“Right before we took this one on,” Edward told him sourly. “Francis had done some scouting and reported over twenty guards and five vehicles. We were going to hold out for Emma and Leonard, but Hero here couldn’t wait for anybody, could he?”
Harry couldn’t look at Edward as his words came back to haunt him. “Damned hubris,” he muttered. “Always comes back to bite you in the—”
Edward shoved him. “Not hubris,” he said, voice bitter. “Self-annihilating pain. If Suriel hadn’t come to bail you out, we would have held the intervention ourselves.”
Harry looked away, unable to summon an argument for that. “I’m sorry, my brother.” He bit his lip and in that moment felt every mortal year of two lifetimes on his shoulders. “I’ll try to remember myself from now on. I shouldn’t put you and Francis into danger because—”
Edward swung at him, and Suriel stopped him, holding his fist before it struck home on Harry’s jaw.
“No,” Suriel said, voice of quiet thunder. “Not even you.”
Edward fought tears for a moment and then slouched in defeat, arm falling limply to his side. “Don’t be sorry,” he said after a few moments of absolute silence. “Don’t be sorry. Be happy. Find your joy, Harry. Live your long life with us and be happy.”
And with that he pivoted on his heel and stalked to the minivan, throwing himself into Emma’s hug without restraint.
Harry saw his shoulders shake for a moment, and his heart twisted a little tighter. “I haven’t seen him cry in ages.” Edward had taken lovers, two of them. Allan had died of a brain hemorrhage at sixty-two. Dorothy had died in a polio epidemic when she’d been only twenty-one. Edward had taken both deaths hard—had cried unashamedly on his family—and then, when his mourning was over, had spent years of time with Mullins, making things right again in his heart.
He was crying on Emma as though he was mourning Harry already.
“He can’t lose me,” Harry said in wonder. “He can’t….”
“This life you all live, outside the mortal boundaries—it’s hard on you in ways a mortal life isn’t,” Suriel told him.
Harry had heard this lesson a hundred or so times. “I must be very thick,” he realized. “I think this is the first time I really understood what that means.”
Suriel turned and wrapped his arms around Harry’s shoulders, and Harry didn’t fight him, didn’t ask why. He simply melted into Suriel’s touch and surrendered, an exhaustion so marrow-deep and heart-long he hadn’t known he’d borne it draining from his body.
“What am I going to do?” He was too tired and hurt to be anything but honest. “What am I going to do when I can never see you again?”
“Harry?”
Only Emma’s voice could have made him stir. Harry pulled away from Suriel and found his mother’s arms wrapped securely around him.
“Sorry to worry you,” he said gruffly. He looked over Emma’s shoulder and smiled apologetically at Leonard. “I know how much you hate to travel.”
Leonard rolled his eyes. “It’s more frightening when your mother drives.”
Some of his exhaustion fell away. He straightened and kissed Emma on the cheek. “You didn’t need to come down,” he said doggedly. “Suriel and the boys talked some sense—oolf!”
Beltane appeared out of nowhere and hugged Harry for all he was worth.
“Holy beefsteak, Bel Youngblood! You can let go before you crack my ribs!”
Bel stepped back and grinned, his outsized biceps and broad shoulders dwarfing Harry as he dwarfed Edward and Francis. In Harry’s day, the three of them were moderately tall, standing between Francis’s five feet five and Edward’s five feet eight.
Bel Youngblood passed Edward up during his first growth spurt. He passed his father—who stood over six feet tall—during his last one, at the end of what would have been high school, had he ever attended.
“All I know is that everybody’s mad at you,” Bel said blithely. “I know when everybody is mad at me, a solid hug always makes it better.”
Harry grinned up at him, entranced as everybody else had been over their baby, their perfect child. “When, in your entire life, has anybody been mad at you?” he asked teasingly.
Bel had the grace to look away, and Emma scowled furiously. Even Leonard looked irritated, and he was the family rock.
Harry’s family antennae perked right up. “What?”
“You tell him,” Emma snapped to Bel. “I just—” Her hands flailed expressively, and Harry read her loud and clear.
“Jesus, boy—tell us before she explodes!”
“I’m not going to Oxford,” Bel said shortly, glaring at his mother.
Harry’s mouth fell open. “But Bel—you… you told your mother years ago, you were going to spend five years at Oxford and then come home. There’s a wizard there who can teach you, and peers, on both sides of the divide. Why would you—”
“He can’t bring cats,” Emma muttered. “Of all the stubborn, shortsighted—”
Harry blinked at him and for the first time realized Bel’s handsome, rectangular face and deep hazel eyes could look stubborn and determined, much like his mother’s—or his father’s, for that matter.
“I won’t leave him,” Bel said. He scowled at Harry. “Are you going to try to talk me out of it?”
Harry shook his head and held out his hands. “I’ve had enough of that crap this morning to last me another two lifetimes,” he said, sincerity rocking from the bottom of his toes. “You make the decisions best for you and your heart, Bel. You know I’ll always love you.”
He and the others had listened to Bel making excited vowels as he lay on a play blanket in a sunny room. They’d helped him take his first steps, had played with him—mostly as cats—when he’d been restless or teething, and had helped him learn his letters, and his figures, and chemistry and biology—and magic.
He could remember his delight the first time Bel had changed shape, and Francis’s pique when the shape had turned out to be a big blond dog.
Francis had overcome his disappointment, though, and soon he and Bel had become legendary in their county as the white cat and the yellow dog, and together the two of them had probably had adventures that would age Emma twenty years in a night—if only they told.
“I love you too,” Bel said, giving his mother the side-eye. “And I’m not going to nag you.”
“Well, I’m very grate—”
“I’m just going to tell you that now that I’m grown, I have an abominably long time on the planet, and you are one of the people I count on being there for the entire damned millennia. Do what you have to for that to happen, do you understand? This is bullshit. Mom and I were in the middle of a rip-roaring fight and suddenly we’re tearing ass down the road. We haven’t even stopped for dinner! Or breakfast! Or snack! Or coffee! Or—”
Francis appeared at his elbow with a pink box full of donuts, and Bel shoved one in his mouth.
“Fixth ith,” he ordered direly as Francis pulled him away.
Harry watched as he and Francis helped Linda clean up the last of the breakfast and saw that Edward was getting information from John and Krista.
He sighed and turned to his mother. “Fine,” he said. “I already told Suriel I’d go, but I think you’re all—”
“I love you, Harry, but you’re full of shit. Leonard, give me your hand—the cabin by the house, you think?”
Leonard smiled. “It’s already stocked, dearest. Harry?”
“Leonard, I haven’t even had time to say hello to you—”
“I love you, son. Your mother’s right. Your mother’s always right.” Leonard stepped in and hugged him tight. “Love finds a way,” he whispered. “Through years, through death, through magic portals to hell. Believe in it, okay?”
“Of course.” Because Harry loved this man more than he’d ever loved his own father. “For you and Emma—”
Emma grabbed Leonard’s hand. “We’ll be there in four days. Suriel, try to stick around until then.”
“Of course, Emma,” Suriel said dryly.
Emma glared at him. “And if you actually do disappear forever, I will stalk into heaven and drag you out by the fucking ear. This isn’t goodbye. I don’t do goodbyes.”
Leonard cleared his throat and looked at Harry and Suriel, eyes dancing.
Emma glared at him too. “I do ‘see you later.’” She waved imperiously with her free hand. “See you idiots later.”
“Emma, this isn’t ne—”
Harry’s ears popped, and he yawned. When he recovered from the yawn, he opened his eyes and saw that, sure as the sun was warm and water wet, he and Suriel were in the family cabin. Placed a few miles from the house, it sat right next to a tributary stream and consisted of one room, much like the room the original house had started out as.
It was small, cozy, stocked with food and spare clothes, and bless Leonard, heated.
“Why didn’t she just let us drive back?” Suriel asked, yawning too. “That’s disconcerting.”
“Because this way she has the minivan to carry people around after they ditch the truck,” Harry told him sourly. “And also because she likes to show off, and she’s not great at doing that for herself. She disappeared for a month once, and Leonard had to scry for her. We ended up in the middle of a war zone in Central America to fetch her—he was pissed.”
“Probably best it was us, then.” Suriel looked around at the wood-paneled walls and the thick wool rugs under their feet. “Oh look! Emma’s watercolors,” he said with joy, seeing the complex, lovely artwork framed on the far wall. “She does love her seascapes.”
In fact, she made money in the summer selling her artwork—and her weaving and handspun yarn—in a booth in downtown Mendocino. It didn’t make her much, certainly not compared to the money she and Leonard brought in with investments, but it made her happy.
“I tried to paint once,” Harry said, gathering clothes. The cabin had a couch in front of a television on one end and a queen-sized bed with a dresser kitty-corner to it, all the woodwork simple and sturdy. Leonard was a craftsman at heart. The kitchenette—with a refrigerator and stocked shelves of dry goods—stood at the far end, near the door. The bathroom attached to the house, like a little pod with a tiled floor, shower, and a toilet—and a spa-sized bathtub, complete with waterjets and bath salts.
“Oh yes?” Suriel looked over his shoulder at Harry and smiled. “I didn’t know this.”
Harry shrugged. “I had no knack for it. Emma’s work was so… so delicate. So lovely. I didn’t want to paint if I couldn’t paint like that.”
Suriel’s brows arched together again, that thoughtful line appearing. “Harry….” Then he took in what Harry was actually doing. “You’re going to take a bath?”
“A shower—I’m feeling a bit grimy. You can have it after me if….” He frowned and noticed Suriel’s wings for the first time that day. “Do you, uh… I mean, you wanted to jump in the watering hole, but… uh, I’m not sure where you are in your, uh….”
Suriel’s smile turned mysterious. Sultry. “Go shower, Harry. I assure you, I’ll fit fine.”
“I’ll be out in a few,” Harry said uncertainly.
Suriel’s eyes did that thing where they widened at the outside corners. It made Suriel look… well, less than angelic, really. “You do what you need to do,” he said blandly.
Harry regarded him with deep-seated uneasiness. “You’re plotting something. I don’t know what it is, but we’ll discuss it when I get out.”
Suriel nodded as though that was perfectly acceptable. “Of course. But while you’re in there, I want you to ask yourself something.”
“Fine. What?”
“Exactly what did I tell you was going to happen this week?”
For a moment, Harry saw him—him. Long, elegant body, square jaw, pointed chin, warm, fathomless brown eyes. He wasn’t an angel anymore, he was a man, and he’d kissed Harry senseless not twelve hours earlier.
His entire body flushed hot, his neck sweating,
“Nungh!” Harry rushed to the bathroom, within an arm’s breadth of Suriel himself, in an effort to get out of there.
He ran the water and stripped quickly, then found a bath sponge and some of Emma’s homemade bath soap in a bottle. Emma—bless her—had ceded to living with five men and become an expert in finding smells that weren’t too flowery or overwhelming.
This one smelled like leather and ambergris, and the irony was not lost on Harry.
He’d soaped everything twice and was rinsing his hair when a burst
of cool air made him blink against the water. The shower door had opened, and a warm male body, one taller than average when Harry was shorter, slid into the cubicle behind Harry.
“It’s me,” Suriel said unnecessarily.
Harry swallowed, throat dry. “I knew that.” He closed his eyes, and Suriel wrapped warm fingers around his hips and pulled him back, unresisting, until he could feel all of Suriel’s long, fine body along his backside.
Disregarding the pounding water, Suriel lowered his mouth to Harry’s ear. “Are you nervous, Harry?”
His whole life, he’d never been anything but honest with this man. “Yes.” He shuddered, and want raced down his nerve endings.
“Why? Why would you be afraid of me?”
Honesty. It would kill him.
“I….” He took a deep breath and tried again. His family had accused him of fear—he needed to speak his heart unafraid. “I wanted you,” he rasped. “I wanted you that first night. But I was a whore, Suriel. And I didn’t want that thing… that thing that was done to me to be anywhere near you.”
Suriel held him tighter, arms wrapping around his chest. “I know Emma taught you better than that since then.”
Harry smiled slightly. “Of course she did. Sex can be really amazing.” He closed his eyes and remembered John, how beautiful he’d been as a youngster, what a kind man he was now. “But it’s… it’s not something I’ve ever done with someone I could care for. Because I knew I could lose that person. And now….” His voice trembled, broke. “Now you’re asking me to… to….”
“Make love,” Suriel whispered in his ear. “We’re going to make love. It’s like having sex, but I’ve loved you since you were a confused tomcat on a very eventful night. I’ve had the privilege of watching you grow into a beautiful man, of watching you strive hard to do good every day of a very long life. Do you think I love you less now than on that day?”
Harry could hardly breathe. “I only wanted to be worthy of my angel.”
“You’re so worthy.” Suriel’s voice wobbled too. “You’re worth falling. You’re worth pain. You’re worth giving up my station in heaven and coming down to live a mortal life, if only I’m allowed. Please, Harry—believe me. I’ve never met a more worthy man.”