Luke climbed back into the truck as I was riding the wave of another killer contraction.
“How many minutes apart?” His voice was calm and controlled, but the faint gleam of sweat above his upper lip gave him away.
“Five.”
In the backseat, Elspeth began to mutter under her breath. We knew better than to ask what she was saying.
“I fixed the flat. We can find the nearest hospital with my GPS.”
“Too late, too late,” Elspeth said. “The babe is nigh.”
“I don’t want to go to a hospital,” I said stubbornly. “I thought we had decided against it.”
“We’re not in Sugar Maple,” he pointed out. “Lilith isn’t here to help you. Your midwife isn’t here. I want you and the baby to be safe.”
We wouldn’t be safe in a human hospital. My magick had been running rampant. He knew that. Here one minute, gone the next.
Another contraction, this one longer, more powerful than the ones that had come before, and I realized with a start that my magick wasn’t running rampant any longer. It was gone.
I’d been warned it might happen, that my particular mix of mortal and magick might go missing temporarily during delivery, but nothing prepared me for the sense of loss that washed over me, the acute loneliness, and I gripped Luke’s hand and squeezed hard until I actually heard him suck in his breath.
“There’s no time for a hospital,” I said when I could speak again. “It’s too late for that now.”
He smiled at me and the look in his eyes told me that no matter what happened, I wasn’t alone.
14
LUKE
Even I could see we were on the fast track now.
Our daughter was about to be born in the back of my used Jeep and I wasn’t sure I remembered my own name, much less what the procedure was.
Chloe’s magick was down for the count. Elspeth tried to blueflame Lilith for some long-distance help, but the connection sputtered, then died.
We were on our own and I needed help ASAP so I did what any sane twenty-first-century father-to-be would do.
“YouTube?” Chloe asked between contractions. “You’re surfing YouTube while I’m in labor with your child?”
Actually I had done the surfing a few days earlier, searching out how-to videos on emergency childbirth procedures. I’m not saying that I was psychic or anything close, but I hadn’t been a Boy Scout all those years for nothing. I believed in being prepared. We had blankets in the back, both the traditional kind and the high-tech silver ones. Water. Heat packs for hands and feet. Nonperishable food. All the things any good New Englander knew belonged in a well-equipped car between October and April. I had two flashlights, an emergency medical kit, flares, and a crank dial radio.
Now all I had to do was evict Elspeth from the backseat and we were in business.
“And where will ye be putting me?” she kvetched. “Strapped to the roof like hunter’s kill?”
“Why don’t you try making yourself useful,” I shot back. “Grab the blankets while I drop the rear seat.”
That was the good thing about the Jeep. Instead of trying to maneuver on a short and narrow backseat, with a few moves and a little muscle Chloe had a roomy flat surface to lie down on with a thick blanket beneath her to help make her more comfortable.
The one thing I couldn’t give her was privacy.
“The babe will suffocate,” Elspeth pointed out, “unless she removes her trousers.”
I’d seen Chloe naked hundreds of times so why the hell was my face burning hot at the thought of pulling off her slacks and panties while Elspeth waved her hands and chanted something in what I guessed was Troll?
From the look in Chloe’s eyes, I knew I didn’t have time to waste.
“Sorry,” I said and tossed the wet clothes into the front seat.
Two minutes apart.
I fast-forwarded through the short video, praying I had absorbed the most important points and would remember the rest from police training.
The truck started to vibrate slightly, just enough for me to notice. Since I had turned the engine off to conserve gas, it got my attention.
“Knock it off,” I said to Elspeth. “We don’t need special effects.”
She glared at me through eyes the size of coffee mugs. “If you were half as smart as you are talky, ye would know ’tisn’t me what done it.”
And it wasn’t the wind or a truck roaring past us doing eighty. We were alone out there.
Chloe drifted back to us as her latest contraction faded. “Why is the truck shaking? We’re not driving, are we?”
“We’re not driving,” I reassured her.
Was I crazy or did Elspeth look a little scared? I tried not to think about that as I made sure I had some towels and blankets at hand ready to swaddle the baby. The first month or so of Steffie’s brief life was pretty much a blur. Steffie was a crier and I don’t think her mother and I clocked more than an hour’s sleep a night. By week two we were zombies. By week four we were calling week two the good old days. The only thing that worked to soothe her was wrapping her up like a baby burrito.
Steffie.
The grief cut through my heart, as sharp and devastating as it had been on the first day. Despite growing up Catholic, I’m not religious, but somehow I knew my firstborn daughter would watch out for her little sister. Or maybe that was the kind of thing a man wanted to believe when he was faced with delivering his own child on a deserted highway during a snowstorm.
CHLOE
I was terrified to be without magick. Even though it had been part of my life for only a year, magick had somehow become my safety net, my go-to destination when things got tough. I’d been warned about transition, that it hit magicks harder than humans and in ways nobody could explain, but I refused to believe it would strip me of my hard-won powers and leave me defenseless.
“I can’t do this!” I heard myself say. “I want to stop right now.”
I heard Elspeth’s grunt of disapproval from the front seat. “The humans are weak and fragile as glass.”
Luke unfurled a string of epithets that ended with a threat that would have had me thinking twice about opening my mouth again, but it took more than mortal rage to stop a troll.
“Mind your tongue, human!” she roared at Luke. “There be danger afoot, make no mistake about that, and I would be all that stands between herself and doom.”
As the herself in question, I wasn’t crazy about the word “doom,” but Luke’s explosion took my mind off it.
“The only danger afoot is the one I’m going to use to kick your—”
Nothing like a good, loud, horror-movie-queen scream to break up a fight. I even scared myself with the volume.
I had never given physical pain a lot of thought, probably because I had never experienced much of it in my life so far. A random toothache or cramps, sure, but Sorcha, my surrogate mother, had taught me the ways of healing and those ways had served me well.
Or at least they had until transition hit with all the subtlety of a rocket launcher. If this was transition lite, then my admiration for full-blood human females knew no bounds.
Rational thought vanished, replaced by terror and the realization that from this moment on it was all out of my control. It was out of everyone’s control. Luke couldn’t make it go away. Elspeth couldn’t cast a spell to ease my pain. I was caught up in forces as old as time and there was nothing I could do now to escape.
The dark, pulsing, rhythmic pain seemed to go on until I couldn’t remember my life before I stepped into this fresh hell. Everything I had learned about childbirth went flying out the window. Those endless Lamaze lessons Lilith had organized were downright laughable. Those little doglike panting breaths she had tried to teach me had been replaced by unearthly howls of agony, followed at odd intervals by embarrassing whimpers from what had to be the world’s biggest coward.
I can’t even remember what Luke and Elspeth were doing while I cursed na
ture, the gods, and males of every species. Come to think of it, I don’t even remember seeing them at all. It was like an impenetrable crimson curtain had dropped down in front of my eyes, blinding me to everything but what was happening inside my body.
The only thing I knew for sure was that my daughter and I were in agreement: we both wanted her born ASAP.
And then the pains stopped.
One second I was being split in two like an avocado and the next I was in a total state of bliss. It wasn’t exactly orgasmic but darned close. In fact, the bliss was so blissful that it took me a moment to notice that I wasn’t in the back of Luke’s Jeep any longer, a fact that probably should have upset me, but I was so happy to be pain free that the fact I was hovering ten or fifteen feet above it, looking straight through the roof at myself giving birth, seemed like business as usual.
Or it would be if something was happening.
I was lying there in the back of Luke’s Jeep with my knees up, supposedly in the throes of hard labor, and I looked like I was napping on a sun-drenched beach.
A ribbon of ice curled itself around my heart. Oh, gods, was it possible? I couldn’t be dead. I hadn’t seen the white light humans talked about or experienced the sensation of piercing the veil I had heard magicks discuss.
Maybe I just hadn’t looked close enough. I squinted and peered down at the scene below me. No doubt about it, I was as still as a department store mannequin. My shoes were on the front seat. My black maternity slacks and granny panties were on the floor in a sodden heap.
I would have thought I was dead except Luke and Elspeth weren’t moving, either. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign. The whole scene looked the way the TV did when I paused the DVR so I could race into the kitchen for some more Chips Ahoy.
The only problem was the fact that, at least as far as I knew, life didn’t come with a pause button.
Or a DVR, for that matter.
A minute went by and then another and by the time I had sung the Gilligan’s Island theme song twice through in my head I was starting to worry. Didn’t transition mean something should be happening? Weren’t we supposed to be moving (moving being the operative word) between one phase of labor and the next? Shouldn’t there be some serious stuff going on down there, like maybe Luke yelling, “Push! Push!” the way they do in the movies?
My heart did one of those lurches that made my breath catch in my throat. This definitely wasn’t the experience humans described. I had watched enough reality shows on Lifetime and TLC to know what happened when a mortal woman gave birth, and nobody had ever mentioned (1) suspended animation or (2) maternal levitation. I think I would have remembered.
Then again, none of my magick friends had ever mentioned those two minor points, either, so maybe it was just me.
I wasn’t a big fan of the just me option. A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck as I realized the pains hadn’t resumed. Was I still in labor? I didn’t feel anything at all.
Maybe there was a secret password I needed to say before we could proceed. Had I somehow missed the memo that explained exactly what I needed to do to give birth to the next generation of Hobbs sorceresses?
“It is as it should be.”
I spun around in midair, searching for the source of the musical voice whispering in my ear, but I was the only being on that particular cloud.
Great, I thought. So now I was hallucinating messages from the big Fortune Cookie in the sky.
I gasped as a woman dropped down in front of me like a golden spider dangling from a shimmering silken web. Her face was in shadow, but I knew instantly that it was Aerynn, the sorceress who had led the exodus from Salem all those years ago and created the safe haven that was Sugar Maple.
The Mother of us all.
“Do not be afraid.”
Easy for her to say. She wasn’t watching herself trying to give birth in the back of a Jeep. I tried to speak, but I had no voice in this dimension. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I had heard her words or imagined them.
Was this actually happening? When it came to the world of magick it was hard to be sure. So much of the time reality was up for grabs.
But oh, how I wanted this to be real. This was the sorceress whose life had made mine possible, the young woman who had led the endangered from Salem to the Indian village of Sinzibukwud, which, over time, became known as Sugar Maple.
She drifted closer to me, then closer still. Her scent made me think of starry nights near the ocean and I reached out to touch her hand. I needed to make contact with her. I needed to make sure my daughter was connected with all who had come before, but no matter how hard I tried, Aerynn remained out of reach.
I caught movement along the edge of my peripheral vision, but when I turned to look I saw nothing but shimmery fog. For a moment, a nanosecond really, a sense of foreboding rose up inside my chest, a feeling so intense the world threatened to go dark. I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with nakedness but with fear. I quickly turned back toward Aerynn, but she was gone and I was in the back of Luke’s Jeep with my knees pulled up to my chest and my hands grabbing the seat restraints while our daughter tried to push her way into the world.
15
LUKE
“One more push!” The baby’s head was crowning. “Just one more, Chloe!”
Elspeth was spinning in crazy circles up and down the length of the dashboard, muttering more of those Troll incantations. Hey, whatever. If it was keeping us all safe, go for it.
Chloe clutched my hand in a death grip. Her eyes locked with mine and then she let out a scream they probably heard back in Lake Winnipesaukee.
“She’s coming!” Chloe cried. “Oh, gods, she’s—” The rest of the sentence was lost in a long, low groan as our daughter emerged in a slippery rush of blood and fluid and pulsing cord.
There was nothing that could prepare you for the sight of your own child being born. This was my second time and I was still overwhelmed by the miracle of watching the woman I loved deliver the baby we had created.
She was long and skinny like her mom, with a full head of silky blond hair, also like her mom, and I knew I would give my life to keep her safe and happy. Same as I’d do for her mom.
“Ten fingers,” I said, laughing through tears as our daughter let out a howl any baby would be proud of. “Ten toes.”
I let out a yelp as the umbilical cord sealed itself, then disappeared, along with the afterbirth and all signs of delivery.
“I warned you this might happen,” Chloe said.
“’Tis our way,” Elspeth concurred.
Chloe was right. She had warned me this was done to keep the magick from falling into the wrong hands and I understood that, but trust me, it was still unsettling as hell. But right now I was too freaked out to ask questions. I had a newborn to tend to. I swiftly wiped her down, then wrapped her like a baby burrito in the softest blanket I could find.
She was so damn tiny, so helpless. And even though I had some experience handling infants I was scared just the same. My hands felt like big clumsy boxing gloves as I delivered her to her mother.
Chloe opened her sweater and I placed the squalling, hungry infant against her chest. And yeah, I’m not ashamed to tell you I cried.
“Oh, look at you . . . ,” Chloe crooned in a voice I had never heard her use before. “You’re here ... I can’t believe you’re here. . . .”
Chloe shifted position and undid the front hooks on her bra, then guided our daughter’s tiny mouth to her breast. The baby made suckling noises, then suddenly latched on, and Chloe laughed out loud.
“She’s a genius,” she said, looking up at me with an expression of such pure, unguarded love that I could only nod my head in response.
The lump in my throat was the size of a hubcap. The rush of love I felt for Chloe and our daughter almost brought me to my knees. If you had told me this time last year that in twelve short months I would meet the woman of my dreams and that together
we would bring a beautiful baby girl into the world I would’ve asked you what you were smoking. If you’d told me happiness was right around the corner I would’ve said you were in the wrong neighborhood.
And if you’d dropped the words “magick” or “sorceress” into the conversation, I just might have hauled you in for questioning.
Now I knew that anything was possible. Even building a new life from the wreckage of my old one.
Elspeth was still spinning in happy circles atop the headrest. Hell, I felt like doing the same thing.
“I think she looks like you,” I managed over that lump I mentioned.
“She definitely has your mouth,” Chloe said. “Maybe your nose, too.”
There were so many things I wanted to say to her, to our daughter, but they would have to wait until we were home and warm and dry.
Except we were warm and dry, even though the back of the truck was wide open to the snow and the fifteen-degree wind chill. Chloe’s magick had abruptly gone AWOL, the baby was still trying to master sucking, and the best I could do was rub two sticks together and start a fire.
Elspeth was the likely culprit.
Two things occurred to me as I helped Chloe and the baby into a less comfortable but safer position for the drive home.
The first thing was maybe the foul-tempered troll wasn’t all bad.
And the second was maybe now she would go back where she came from.
I was smiling as I slid behind the wheel for the trip home.
It had been one hell of a good day after all.
CHLOE
The baby slept the whole way home. Her tiny face was pressed against my breast while her impossibly small fingers curled themselves around the edge of my sweater and held tight. She smelled sweetly familiar and I let myself get drunk on her scent as we rode through the gathering dark.
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