by Holley Trent
“Yeah, when it was time for them to die.”
“We will not have that discussion again right now.”
“You never want to have the discussion, so when’s a good time?”
Ma narrowed her eyes.
“So, never? Cool. I appreciate you cramming a conversation with your only son into your busy schedule of meddling.”
“Silence!” Tarik barked.
Tito pantomimed zipping his lips.
Ma simply stared.
“If your goal is to protect your child—” Tarik said to Tito.
“He will,” Ma said pointedly, as if Tito were an aimless child, too, and not a being of over seven hundred.
“You’ll have to urge her mother to stay here until the situation is rectified. Necalli won’t be able to breach the protective magic around this property.”
“He doesn’t have to be able to step onto it,” Tito said. “Physical things can penetrate the magical wards just fine. Bullets, for instance. I hate the idea of Cruz being confined to the backyard on half an acre. Kids should have space to run around.”
Ma muttered some words in a Chichimec language that had gone extinct long before Tito had been born. For all he knew, she could have been telling Tarik her grocery list, but Tito suspected she was swearing. “She has to have an entourage wherever she goes. Hannah and Sean can’t constantly follow her around. They have jobs, and further, Hannah’s pregnant.”
“You kidding me?” Tito asked.
Of course, Ma would know immediately if a Cougar had gotten knocked up, but Tito hadn’t even caught a hint of Hannah’s maternal state. He hadn’t even smelled it on her. Usually, he was better at that. “She never said anything.”
“And probably won’t. Nor will Sean. Glenda never did, either, and that seems to be a trend with her daughters-in-law.”
“Hold up, that’s plural. Which ones? Who else besides Hannah?”
Ma glared at him.
Tito put up his hands. “Fine. I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’. I won’t say nothin’. I’ll pretend everything is normal until they tell me otherwise. Just tell me—do they know about each other?”
She nodded.
“Interesting.”
“I suggest you handle the situation with your cousin and his pack as quickly as possible to minimize disruption to everyone in your circle,” Tarik said. “Be aggressive and brutal if necessary. They would do the same to you, so don’t hesitate to strike first.”
“So practical,” Ma said in an undertone.
“At my age, what choice do I have?”
“I’m aware of your age, as you are mine. You may have some epochs on me, but I doubt in all that time you would have lost your sense of tact.”
“Says the goddess who used to paint the outside of her home with the blood of her enemies.”
“Feel fortunate, then, that your blood is not so easy to spill, fallen one. I wouldn’t paint with yours,” she said coolly. “I’d drink it.”
When Tarik took off his sunglasses again and pinned that metallic gaze on Ma, Tito started up the house stairs. The old ones liked to bicker, and after a long shift in a patrol car—mostly spent chasing down Were-coyotes with warrants—he didn’t have the endurance to be their spectator. He wanted to talk to December before Cruz woke, and he hoped she was like every other little kid in at least one way—that she’d sleep until the morning sun hit the windows on that side of the house.
At the staircase, he clucked his tongue, and tried to remember the layout of the house. His mother had owned the place for almost as long as Maria had been an incorporated town, but he’d only been inside a handful of times. They did most of their arguing in the great outdoors.
He thought the guest room was upstairs and to the left, and not in the bank of rooms downstairs and in the back. He put one foot on the step, only to halt at the creaking of floorboards in the salon to his right.
“Figured you’d be sleeping right now,” he said to December.
She shrugged and rubbed her eyes. “I couldn’t,” she whispered. “I kept trying to, but my mind was racing. Too many things to think about all at once.”
He grunted, nudged her back into the salon, and pulled the pocket doors closed. The air vent in the ceiling often allowed voices to carry to the upper floor, so he closed that, too.
“Tito, she usually sleeps until around eight.”
“You sure about that?”
“I don’t think she’d be able to fake it, but then again, who knows with her.” She shrugged in a way that hinted she’d given up on making sense of anything at all.
He felt like that sometimes, too.
“Here.” He gestured to the sofa. “Sit. If I fall asleep, though, do whatever you have to rouse me.”
“Why? Don’t want to miss breakfast?”
“Nah, I don’t want to miss you.”
She huffed out an incredulous snort.
“Mean it.”
She nodded slowly. “Right. I figured I’d be gone before you got off work, but time ran away from me. Funny how insomnia alters your plans for the worse.”
“What is this insistence you have of getting out of here? I get that you have to go back to work, but what’s a few days, Dee?”
“A few days may not seem like much to you, but you’re salaried and have probably have good health insurance and stuff through the county.”
“True.”
“I bet you don’t even need the health insurance,” she muttered.
“Can’t not have insurance. Suffice it to say, though, I’m a good person to have in a group insurance pool. The only doctors I ever see are the ones who make a big deal out of proper flossing and me wearing my night guard.”
She made that snorting sound again.
“What?”
“Demigods need night guards?”
“I grind my teeth. Always have. Believe it or not, insurance actually won’t pay for the device. I gotta pay for those out of pocket every time I chew them up.”
“Bet that’s frequent.”
“More frequent than the average guy, I guess.” He nudged a swath of dark auburn hair out of her weary face and tucked it behind her unadorned ear.
The first time he’d seen her, she’d been wearing pearls, and he’d accused her of being fancy. She’d crossed her eyes comically and said she wore them only so they wouldn’t get stolen. Her place kept getting broken into, and apparently those pearls were all she had left of value.
“What’d you do with the pearls?” He tucked more hair behind her other ear.
“You really remember those?”
“Yeah. If I bother paying attention, I don’t forget much. Selective attention is how guys like me keep our heads from getting too cluttered. There’s too much stimulus always being thrown at us. Too many names to learn. Faces to remember. Stories to commit to memory. Easier to not pay attention.”
“And to not ask questions?”
“Yep. You’re catching on.”
He skimmed his thumb along the edge of her jaw and down to her chin and its little cleft. He’d missed touching her, and didn’t want to stop touching her. If she left, he wouldn’t have a choice.
Gasping, she gripped his hand, and slowly nudged it away.
“T-the pearls are stuffed into the toe of a pair of socks I never wear and hidden in my spare boots.”
“The green cowgirl boots?”
“Should have gotten rid of them years ago. They’re ratty, but I guess I’m attached.”
“Why?”
He put his hand back to her cheek. Her skin was so soft—satiny. His calloused fingertips were probably irritating it, but she didn’t pull away from his touch. If anything, she leaned more into him. Eyes closed. Lips parted, like he’d hit some switch to get attention he didn’t deserve.
She swallowed. “Uh. They were the first ones I bought after we got to Arizona. I’d arrived in a pair of boat shoes and I outgrew them that summer. I figured the boots would be more versatile
than flats. They’re sort of my trademark footwear now, I guess.”
He skimmed his thumb across her lips, chuckled when her eyes went wide.
He felt those nagging tingles, just as sure as she did. They were an urging for him to collide with her, as if they were two parts of a thing that had both been smeared with tacky glue.
Together, not apart.
Together meant she’d be getting the short end of the stick, though. She’d get immortality, but it’d come with him and all the bullshit vendettas attached to him, and to Ma. December wouldn’t be an innocent if she were his mate. She’d be fair game. Complicit and guilty for all slights—intentional and otherwise—their legion of enemies could seek out retribution for.
There was a reason Ma didn’t try to make friends anymore. She’d lost too many who’d only been bystanders. They were all punished for being kind to her.
Even knowing what he did, he couldn’t pull away from December. The magic was making the glue that held them together tackier. He needed to move so she didn’t get hurt when he finally did push her away, but not yet.
“Ma used to wear cowboy boots for a while,” he said, “during the frontier days, back when we were still moving around a lot. She didn’t change her appearance much during that period. If we’d been in a place too long and folks started wondering why we weren’t getting any older-looking, we figured it was time to pack up and move on.”
She put her head on his shoulder and let him twist her hair around his fingers. “I can’t imagine her wearing street clothes. I mean, trendy stuff when she’s not in one of her disguises.”
“She does all the time when she’s working. She doesn’t work around here, though. Being able to teleport from one place to the next means she can commute to anyplace in the time most folks take to walk to their garages.”
“She walked past earlier. I don’t know if she saw me in here, but I saw that she was wearing her young face.”
“I’m sure she’ll put the grandma face back on the moment Cruz stirs.”
She sighed and ragged a hand across her eyes.
“If you’re tired, go ahead and sleep.”
“Maybe after Cruz gets up I’ll take a little nap before—”
“Before you drive home? Come on, Dee.”
“My sister can’t keep covering for me at the bar.”
“There’s got to be someone else who needs the work hours. Call them and ask them to take your shift.”
She chewed on the bottom corner of her lip, eyes lowered and said, softly, “I’ll think about it.”
The weight of her head against his shoulder became heavier, and he craned his head to look at her without dislodging her from his shoulder.
Asleep, just that quickly, with her eyes closed tight and lips parted.
“Damn. Gonna make me wanna sleep, too.”
His rubbed his eyes with the hand that wasn’t pinned beneath her body, and then shifted her head and neck onto his lap.
He scooted lower to put his feet up on the coffee table and let his eyelids drift shut.
“Just a catnap,” he lied to himself.
He was so tired from endless graveyard shifts and working so hard to maintain consistency in his appearance. Just tired in general, because men like him didn’t feel at peace when they were separated from their mates. As hard as he’d tried not to have December be that for him—so that she could have a normal life unimpeded by the chaos that accompanied the children of gods—he couldn’t erase the connection that had already been forged. Their bond may have always been there, even before he’d stepped one foot into that bar. Touching her had merely cemented their link. He hadn’t wanted her to be stuck with a ghost like him, but making a baby had made their bond shatterproof.
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
For too long, he hadn’t been living for much of anything. He’d been a purposeless drifter who dabbled in this and that—a man who hadn’t wanted to root himself anywhere for too long because that meant people would get attached to him … and the other way around, too.
But he couldn’t run from what and who had been meant for him along. December had probably always been fated to be his—even before he’d been with his wife. Being what he was, Fate shouldn’t have scared him so much.
He should have expected to get knocked around.
Floorboards creaked overhead, and then the stairs.
Soft footsteps that may have been too soft for anyone else to hear. Even if he hadn’t heard her, the little girl’s scent announced her arrival. A tropical, floral scent with hints of heavy rain and the barest traces of smoke. Cruz probably had a little fire in her, like her grandmother.
He pushed his eyelids up to find her leaning against the pocket door’s frame, watching—not that there was much to see.
Cruz didn’t say anything to him. He didn’t have anything to say to her, either, except for a lame, “Good morning.”
She padded into the room and climbed onto the seat near Ma’s ancient CRT television.
“I don’t even know if that thing’s remote control has batteries anymore. You can try it, though. See if you can reach. The remote’s on top of the mantle.”
She slid down and shuffled in socked feet across the hardwoods to the glossy wooden shelf. She ran her hand along the edge, unable to see what she was touching.
“Not there,” he said, when her fingers bumped a book.
She pulled down the clothbound volume and Tito rolled his eyes, knowing immediately what the book was. December would probably throw it at his head once she thumbed through the pages. The book contained his mother’s legend, penned by a Maria local, and had chapters fully explicating the roles of important members of the Cougar glaring. The story was fantastical, though not at all a fairy tale.
Cruz stared at the plain cover and then the spine, tucked the book under her arm, and then kept feeling for the remote.
“Just a little more to the right.”
“This thing?”
“Yep. That bump right there.”
She pulled the device down and blew off the dust. “She must not watch TV very much.”
“Nah, not down here. Sometimes, she watches in her room, though. Old westerns and stuff. She likes to critique them for accuracy.”
“What’s that mean?”
“What, critique?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Mmm, nitpick. Find all the stuff that’s wrong.”
“Oh.” Cruz hit the red button, and wonder of wonders, the television turned on with a click and then a bombastic hoot as Ducky the Dealer shouted out his newest used car deals at the lot down at the corner of Third and Iglesia.
December jolted upright, flailing her arms and with eyes wide and round, and Cruz hit the down arrow for the volume.
Ducky’s damned voice abated, and December clutched her chest, staring at Cruz. “Lord.”
“My apologies.” Ma eased into the room wearing her wrinkled abuela face and leaning on her cane. “Sometimes I can’t hear it.”
Ma could probably hear a flea sneeze. She’d probably had the volume turned up loud to hear some program while she was in the kitchen doing something else.
“Suddenly not sleepy anymore,” December said, dropping her hand from her chest.
“All the same, if you’d like coffee, I made some. The percolator is being kept warm on the stove. The kettle is also on for tea.”
December looked at Cruz, who didn’t look back. She was in her chair again, pointing the remote at the television, and quickly rejecting programs. She was also still clutching that book.
December looked at Tito and canted her head toward the kitchen.
Ma took a seat in the wingback chair nearest the fireplace and laid her cane across her lap. “I believe I would like both cream and sugar.”
“All right, Ma.”
“Take your time.”
He pointed his gaze to the book Cruz held and hoped Ma got the gist. He couldn’t tell if she did. Her expression
gave nothing away.
“Perhaps put mine in a mug,” she said. “Give the coffee some time to cool. Maybe I’ll tell Cruz a story while you’re gone.”
Yeah, she saw it.
December left the room, and Tito followed, only for Ma to project telepathically, “And Yaotl?”
He paused.
“Farther is better.”
He got moving again. He suspected whatever she needed to say to Cruz wasn’t meant for December’s ears.
December was at the counter next to the ancient stove holding a handmade mug in her hands and already glaring at him.
“What, Dee?”
“We’ve got to be more careful.”
“What do you mean?” He didn’t bother pouring Ma’s coffee. If she really wanted some, she’d get up and pour it herself. She was too picky to ask him to serve her with any genuine intent. He did find a box of teabags for December, though.
“Cruz walked right in and saw me with my head on your lap.”
“Not like it hasn’t been there before.”
She set down her mug and swatted his arm hard. “Tito.”
“Shit,” he said, rubbing his pained shoulder. “What?”
“She’s two rooms away.”
“So what? She can’t hear us.”
The television was still too damned loud, and there was no way in hell her hearing was as good as Ma’s. While Cruz may have had some unique abilities specific to the women of the line, he seriously doubted her hearing was better than his.
“You need to behave,” December said.
“Wait, you lay down on me. All I did was make you a little more comfortable. I wouldn’t have thought that was such a bad thing, me wanting to take care of you.”
Sighing, she pulled the sugar bowl closer. “I don’t want you to take care of me.”
“Here we go again.”
“I’m serious. I can take care of myself, and have been for a long time. We have to be careful of the impressions Cruz may pull away from seeing us together.”
“What kind of impression do you think she’ll possibly have from seeing me do something nice for you?”
“You don’t understand. For as long as she’s been alive, I’ve never brought a man home for her to meet. As far as she knows, I don’t even have friends who are men other than my brother-in-law. She’s never seen me … ” She cringed, trashed her teabag, and then splashed some milk into her mug. “You know, affectionate with anyone. I never took home the guys I dated.”