by Holley Trent
Tito sat on the other side of the coffee table, staring at nothing in particular. He’d said he wanted to talk, but hadn’t said anything since they’d stepped into the house.
Usually, December was good at talking. Talking was how she earned her tips.
I haven’t forgotten how, even if he has.
She drummed her fingertips on the sides of her mug and tapped the toes of her boots against the hardwood floor. “So.”
His gaze focused.
“Your mother is a … goddess.” The word was still so hard to say, because there was still a part of her brain saying, Nuh-uh.
“Yep.”
“I guess you don’t take girls home to meet her every often.”
The laugh she’d tried to make sound light and carefree came out sounding like a choked sob, but she refused to let herself cry anymore. She’d already done enough crying for the day. Her sinuses were all dried out.
“I don’t take girls home at all,” he said. “Haven’t for a long time.”
“I was joking.”
“Would have been funnier if it weren’t for me and Ma’s history.”
“I think that’s what you brought me here to tell me.”
“Nah, Dee. I brought you here to tell you that I fucked up a long time ago and didn’t do what needed to be done with my cousin. I guess that’s a habit for me, huh? But that first time was a big shock. I was too soft—too forgiving—and now there’s this dude who’s probably known about my kid for longer than I have, making overtures that he wants to hurt her.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way shit happens in my world. Even with all the rules they’ve made for themselves, gods and goddesses still find ways to be clannish and petty. They’re constantly changing their allegiances, always in search of more power, more adulation. It’s no different for siblings in the same pantheon. We’re talking about my first cousin. That makes him Cruz’s cousin, too.”
“A … demigod, or like, a god-god like your mother?”
“Just a demigod.”
“Oh. Just.” She nodded a few times and hoped that some of the things people were saying to her would kindly allow themselves to be absorbed by her brain. “This conversation is ridiculous.”
He shrugged. “This is life for me.”
“How can you be so cavalier about it?”
“Because I’ve been coping for a long time. I was born to a hostile union. As you’ve learned, my mother is a goddess. My father was human. He cheated. He shamed her. Growing up, I saw lots of fighting, lots of magic, lots of curses being thrown around. She cursed my father. She made him a Cougar, and many others from his calpulli—his village, sort of. All the were-cougars in these parts are descended from those cats or have been changed by people descended from them. I’m sure if we trace far enough back, we’d find out the Foye kids are my very distant cousins.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Things didn’t start settling down for me until after my father died, and then there were just other issues. One of my uncles on Ma’s side of the family had a son, and he did something my mother punished him for. I don’t know what he did. She never told me—said it wasn’t important. But apparently, whatever he did was bad enough, and the punishment was severe enough, that he’d been carrying on this vendetta ever since. There was a time about six hundred years ago that I had a good reason to kill him, but I couldn’t. I’m not a killer, not even when I need to be. That’s why people named Foye run the cats around here, and not me.”
Tito had said a lot of words—which, combined, painted some pretty frightening pictures—but what stood out most in her mind, besides “vendetta” and “kill,” was “six hundred years ago.”
She furrowed her brow. “Tito?”
“Yeah, Dee?”
“How old are you?”
He grimaced. “We didn’t keep track of dates on the same calendar system currently in use. I could give you a rough estimate.”
“You don’t know your exact age?”
“Nah. I’m sure if I were to press Ma, she could tell you down to the exact minute. From what I hear, she was in a pretty salty mood the day I was born. My father was nowhere to be found, and a goddess is probably weakest when she’s giving birth. There’s like this dampening of power or whatever to make way for the kid coming out. If anyone had wanted to have a real go at getting rid of her, that would have been the perfect time.”
“Why would anyone want to kill a pregnant woman?”
“Not pregnant woman. Pregnant goddess, and one whose child happened to have a human father. There were, and still are, rules about that shit, and they’re violently enforced by whoever’s paying attention. We are not supposed to mix.”
We.
The personnel included in that pronoun were clear enough, even without him having to be specific.
“There are really rules?” she asked. “For goddesses?”
“Uh-huh.” He scratched his chin and, when Mrs. Foye poked her head into the living room and held up a beer bottle, he nodded.
“So many rules for everyone.” Mrs. Foye set a coaster in front of him and set the beer atop. “I don’t know how Lola or Agatha can keep up with them all. When they start talking about them, I’ve got to tune them out just to stay sane.”
“Lola is your mother,” December said to Tito. “But who’s Agatha?”
“Agatha is … ugh.” He clucked his tongue and leaned forward for the beer. “Supernatural family trees are so damn messy. Agatha’s one of Ma’s friends. She’ll pop in eventually, I’m sure. She can’t really stay away. One of her descendants is married to a Foye boy.”
December rubbed her temples.
The number of people on the ranch who were plain old human seemed to getting lower and lower.
“How old is she?”
“Agatha? The fuck if I know. She’s not in Ma’s pantheon. She came out of Eastern Europe or something.”
“No, the … ” She turned to Mrs. Foye. “Your daughter-in-law.”
“Hardly ancient, at least not compared to me. Ellery is around thirty.”
“Oh. So she’s not … weird like … ”
“Like me?” Tito said.
December closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She gave up. There was no use trying to be tactful. The people around her were speaking a language she wasn’t fluent in, and already, too much was being lost in translation.
“Yes,” she said. “Like you.”
• • •
Tito’s heart ached at the tiredness in December’s tone, but the little bit of knowledge they’d laid on her so far was a drop in the bucket—just a primer before the advanced lesson. He’d never even told his wife the things he’d have to tell December. His wife hadn’t known what he was.
Maybe if she’d known, she might have lived longer.
He rotated the beer bottle between his palms, and then scratched at the corner of the label.
“What is she?” December asked.
It took Tito a moment to remember what and who they were talking about. Not his wife, but Mason’s.
“Without getting too technical, Ellery is too far removed from the ancestral fount to have demigod status, but she’s got just enough magic to be witchy. Same kind of magic as Agatha, just watered down a lot. I know plenty of folks like that. Folks who aren’t quite anything in particular. Ellery’s got a bunch of brothers-in-law who are half angel. Or half demon, maybe? Hell, I don’t know what their father’s allegiances are anymore.”
“There’s no such thing as angels.” December didn’t even open her eyes.
She’d have to learn that sometimes, sometimes truths were scarier when people couldn’t see. The truth wasn’t afraid of the dark.
“They exist, sweetheart,” Glenda said.
“Then where were they when I needed them?”
Glenda didn’t have an answer for that. Before retreating to the kitchen, she gave Tito a consoling look.
He was on his own again.
Finally, December opened her eyes, the bags beneath them suddenly looking profoundly heavy. He knew what tired felt like, and she was beyond that—she was weary, and he had no reason to doubt most of the fault was his.
So much was his fault.
“Listen, Dee—”
She took a deep breath, as if bracingly, and he couldn’t even lie and tell her everything would be all right. He had to soldier on through all the hard truths. If he hurt her—and he probably would—he could fix her later, maybe, if she let him get near. He had to try.
“I know this all seems like a lot of flimflam and fantasy talk, but it’s best you hear everything up front before someone pops in out of the blue and—”
The flash that interrupted his inarticulate monologue wasn’t blue at all, actually, but blinding silver-white.
“Shit.” He rolled his eyes and slouched low in the sofa as two pseudo giants of former angel affiliation materialized in front of the upright piano. “Of course you’d fucking pop in right now, huh? What happened, were your ears burning?”
December, clutching the front of her shirt—eyes round as saucers and tanned skin suddenly paler than his blond beer—made some clicking noise in her throat.
“Breathe, Dee.”
He didn’t think she did or if her heart was even beating, because she went even paler.
He stood, because Dee being that pale couldn’t have been good, but she put up her hands and shook her head hard at him.
“No.”
Tamatsu barely looked at her before striding into the kitchen, likely in search of the leftovers that never lasted for long in Foye homes.
Tarik remained, however. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and fixed his golden gaze on December. “That is her?”
“What have you heard? I can never tell with you guys. You have a weird knack for getting information that hasn’t been volunteered. Why are you here?”
The better question might have been why they couldn’t have waited for just a little while.
“For once, you can count me as a volunteer.” Tarik looked away from December to the piano, and then laid his sword across its bench as if the giant blade were just a toy and not a magical weapon older than mankind. “I spoke to Steven moments ago. He needed me to open a portal for him so he could talk to a few damned souls.”
“About … ” Tito cut a brief gaze to December.
She was zoned out—rocking with her head on her lap, and holding pillows against her ears like muffs.
“Necalli and those bozos in his pack? He was asking about how they got out.”
Tarik nodded and cut his gaze toward the doorway when Glenda appeared in it.
“Don’t ask me for anything to eat,” she said. “Your buddy can’t even say hello, but he’s leaning into the fridge and has already found himself half a roast chicken I’d forgotten was in there. You’ll have to wait until dinner if you’re hungry.”
“I don’t have an appetite.”
“But he does?”
“Our afflictions differ in this realm.”
“What the hell?” came December’s muffled whisper.
“Dee?” Tito waited for her to sit up. She didn’t. “December, that’s Tarik. He and the hungry one, Tamatsu, are fallen angels.”
“That’s what they look like, huh?”
Not that she was doing any looking.
Tarik grunted. “I forget at times the effect we have on humans. She’ll become less … ” He made a dismissive swoop of his hand. “Dazed in time.”
“How come you’ve never bothered me when you pop in like that?” Glenda asked.
“Likely because you were a shifter’s mate. I am certain that your resistance to our essences is a good deal stronger than that of most.”
“So that trauma Floyd put me through for all those years was good for something besides raising the four hardheaded children?”
“Appears so.”
“Well, hot damn.” She returned to the kitchen, yet again, probably to ensure Tamatsu didn’t get into dinner prematurely.
“What are your plans?” Tarik asked Tito.
“He was going to tell me how old he is or some other far-fetched fact,” December said in a quiet voice. “And then there was a flash.”
“Questions like that will serve you no good purpose,” Tarik said.
“I want to know.”
“To what end, Miss Farmer?”
She sat up then. Her green eyes were rimmed with red and cheeks splotchy.
Tito had never seen her in such a state. He’d only ever seen her happy, but of course, he hadn’t stuck around to see her through her low points. He’d thought he’d been doing her a favor by keeping her from getting inextricably bonded to a being like him. He was a pathetic example of a demigod. He’d tried to live as though he weren’t one and that he wasn’t a part of that world, but it caught up to him anyway, and when it did, he let it run roughshod over him. She’d been sunshine and optimism, and he was fatalism and self-mockery.
He wasn’t the right mate for a woman like her. She needed someone she could count on to take care of her and Cruz. Someone boring and … safe.
“How do you know my name?” she asked Tarik.
“Angels have ways of knowing different things. I know names.”
She shook her head slowly. “No, that’s not weird at all.”
“And Cruz … ” Tarik’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What of her? Is she weird?”
“My daughter’s a perfect little girl.”
“I believe you are sidestepping my question.”
“Do you know something I don’t know? Because I just met you and, as far as I’ve seen, you haven’t met her. She’s not the kind of kid who knows how to keep secrets.”
Tarik moved his shoulders in one of those elegant shrugs that always made him look like he was dusting the weight of the world off his shoulders and the world only weighed a pound. “I don’t have to meet her. I know who her grandmother is.”
“And who her father is?”
Tito expected her gaze to be cold when he looked at her, but it wasn’t. It was sad and watery. She hurt, and he’d hurt her. He was hurting her with every new revelation.
He didn’t look away until she did because he deserved the way he was feeling, and probably worse.
“One thing has nothing to do with the other,” Tarik said. “He’s just a messenger. She was the message.”
“That may be the suavest way I’ve ever heard someone discussing sperm meeting egg,” Tito said.
“She’s made in your mother’s image, Tito, not yours. Any daughter you have likely will be the same. That’s what makes you dangerous to some people—because of what you can make.”
“And to think she always said she never cursed me.”
“Cruz is not a curse!” December flung a coaster at him, but he had the reflexes of a cat and snatched the disc out of the air before it could hit his chin. “How dare you say that?” She tossed another and another to no avail, and then stood and stormed toward the door.
Tito got there first because he could move faster than the human eye could see when he was motivated, and given the circumstances, he was pretty fucking motivated.
“Move!” she snarled at him.
He sighed, and his breath made a couple of her long curls dance atop her shoulders.
He’d loved pulling those curls.
He’d loved how she used to patiently watch him tug and reshape them over and over again for no good reason except he needed to touch her and he was obsessed. He’d hoped time and distance would cure him of her.
They hadn’t.
Closing his eyes, he let out a breath and leaned against the doorframe. “If you take everything I say personally, you’re gonna be storming out of a hell of a lot of rooms.”
“And that’s my prerogative.”
“You can leave if you want. I doubt Ma will let you take Cruz, though. Not if she won’t be safe.”
“She doesn
’t get to decide.”
“Yeah, well, the thing about Ma is that she won’t necessarily believe you should have a say in the matter. Obviously, she doesn’t give a shit about many of my opinions, either.”
“You know, I could almost forgive you for being absent and for never calling me after all those times I sent messages through Sean to you. I could almost forgive you for not being around to help out. But I won’t forgive you bullying me.”
He opened his eyes only to narrow them. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re talking about taking away my kid!”
“Nuh-uh, I never said that. I said that Ma has a peculiar way of forcing issues, and she isn’t gonna let you take Cruz anywhere unless she goes with you. I know her too well.”
“I should have never brought her here.”
“You don’t mean that,” Tarik said.
She spun on her bootheel, stormed over to the uptight angel, and gave his chest a hard poke.
He raised a querying eyebrow.
“Don’t you dare tell me what I mean or don’t mean. You’re not in my head. You don’t know how I feel.”
Gently, he removed her finger from its place against his sternum. “Of course you’re right, Miss Farmer. I can’t say for sure what you’re thinking or feeling. I only know that I’ve witnessed countless women like you who refused to make concessions when they mattered.”
“Are you saying this is my fault? Almost six years of being a single mom and struggling every damn day is my fault because I didn’t make any so-called concessions with the guy who’s so obviously ambivalent about his daughter that he can’t even be bothered to be in the same room with her for more than a few minutes? Nuh-uh. I don’t even think so.”
“Hold the hell up.” Tito pushed away from the doorway. “You don’t want Tarik trying to do a read on you, so do me the courtesy of not trying to do one on me, either. You don’t know what’s going through my head.”
“You’re right. You’re so right. All I know is what you’re saying and how you’re acting. Even with all the spooky stuff that’s happening right now, the magic and paranormal crap isn’t what’s scaring me most, but the fact all that stuff is just going to end up being distractions for you. They’ll be reasons you won’t connect to Cruz, and I already know what’s going to happen. I don’t want to hang out here to witness the inevitable.”