by Mark Henwick
“It’s—”
“Busy. I know.” Her lips made a thin line of exasperation. “Dangerous as well, no doubt. Oh, come on.”
We went into the café and sat down at a table in the window with our coffee. Pia sat a few tables away. A human wouldn’t have been able to eavesdrop, but Pia could, of course.
Not that there was anything to eavesdrop on.
“How are you?” we both said at the same time. It broke the silence and we could smile.
“Well,” I said. I felt awkward.
“You look tired,” Mom replied. She was being tactful.
“There’s a lot going on. Too much.” And so much that I couldn’t tell her.
Mom looked out the window at the stores outside. “This morning—”
“I’m waiting on a call,” I said, on the defensive. “Jen needed to do some shopping.”
“Yes, I could see that,” she said. “Essentials.”
She stopped, visibly biting off any more comments in that direction. She didn’t approve of rolling eyes, but she had this Mom way of doing it without actually moving her eyes.
“They weren’t for me,” I said. I winced inwardly. I sounded like a teenager.
That got the non-moving eyeball roll again. “I heard what she was saying, and believe me, Amber, those…” she waved a hand, “underwear things are for you.”
She bit her lip, her face screwing up as if she were about to burst into tears.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” I knew I was causing her worries, and I just couldn’t bear the thought of making her cry in front of everyone.
But she wasn’t hiding tears. She started giggling.
The relief at seeing that set me off as well, and then the pair of us couldn’t stop.
Curious looks from the other people in the café only made it worse.
“Oh, that’s better,” Mom said finally, blowing her nose. “Almost as good as a really good cry.”
“I miss you, Mom,” I said. “I really do, and I’m sorry I can’t be around more.”
“How are you really, my big little girl?” she said. The name she used to call me when it’d been just the three of us—Mom, Kath and me.
“Okay. Just okay. It’s hard at the moment.”
“I know.” She sighed and wiped her eyes with a tissue. “Your friend from the FBI stopped by.”
My heart missed a beat before she went on: “You know, Agent Ingram, that nice man from Texas.”
“What did he want?” If he was trying to pressure me by hassling Mom—
“Oh, it was a courtesy call. Isn’t he a wonderful old-fashioned southern gentleman?”
When he wants to be.
Mom didn’t see any of that. “He couldn’t tell me any more than you, of course. But he made a joke out of it—if ah tol’ you she was helpin’ with inquiries, you’d get entirely the wrong idea.” She got the accent quite well. She patted my hand. “I understand. You’ve gotten caught up in a federal operation because of that drug smuggling ring you helped the police with. Gangs and guns and big criminals. Horrible. You can’t say anything without breaching their protocol.”
I owed Ingram, big time. And he would know it. He hadn’t told her anything she couldn’t have found out reading between the lines in the paper, but because he’d said it, it was official.
“I suppose I should thank him for the extra security.” Mom’s eyes flickered across to Pia, who was carefully not smiling as she listened in.
“Ahh…yeah. Not everything is being provided by the FBI. Jen’s funding full-time security, and running that is one of my main jobs at the moment.” Well, not exactly a lie. I was officially Jen’s head of security, but Pia was not part of Victor Gayle’s security team.
“Well, that’s so much better than being a PI,” Mom said.
Hmm. My life had become much more dangerous than when I was getting half my income from tracking wandering spouses and the other half from reading clients’ account files to figure out where their money was being stolen from.
I let it pass.
“I suppose, after this is all sorted out, you won’t actually need to work?”
Mom made it a question, and we were back on awkward ground.
She meant that, as Jen’s partner, any salary I made would be insignificant against Jen’s money. If anyone else had said that to me, I might have bitten their heads off, but she was saying it because she preferred me to be safe. Trouble was, I’d be bored being safe, and that was something else I wasn’t going to be able to explain clearly to her.
But, on the other hand, she hadn’t come at this in the way my sister Kath had, calling me Jen’s whore.
“I can’t tell when it’ll be finished.” I evaded the question, which she noticed, but didn’t follow up on.
“I’m concerned you’re vulnerable at the moment.” The way she said it, so carefully, showed it was something she’d spent a lot of time thinking about. She paused to sip her coffee and looked away. “I don’t mean the physical danger, though God knows that’s bad enough. I mean you might be in a place, you know, emotionally. You could be making some mistakes because you’re confused.”
“I’m not confused about Jen,” I said gently.
“You’d think a mother would have some idea about her own daughter’s true sexuality—” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk about this. She sat up straighter. “It’s your decision, your personal life, Amber. I’m fully supportive of you. It’s just I didn’t see this coming.” She faltered a bit. “That you would end up in a…a relationship with a woman. And it’s fine, of course. I’m sure Ms. Kingslund is a wonderful person, despite what you hear.”
“Jen is a wonderful person.” It felt as if it should have been harder to say something like this to Mom, but with everything hitting me over the last couple of weeks, there was an element of becoming punch drunk. And for my Athanate, the issue was clear; there was no denying my kin. Not even to be kind to my Mom. “And I love her.”
I knew Mom would have difficulty understanding. From her point of view, I’d known Jen for a month and it would be very quick for a human to make a commitment like that.
“Of course,” she changed tack, “after meeting Alexander, and getting along so well with him, I have to say I thought you two would have been good together. And it’s great that you’re still friends, that you share interests. You should never turn your back on friends.”
What she meant was that when I came to my senses, Alex would still be there. I could see the tracks in my mother’s mind. Jen gets tired of me, Alex and I pick up. Little church marriage, white picket fence, grandchildren. Bang, bang, bang. Result.
Damn. This part was going to be even harder. There were things I couldn’t tell Mom. Alex is a werewolf. I’m a vampire. But there were things I could tell her, difficult as they were. And better that she found out directly from me, rather than Kath picking up some gossip and telling her.
“Yeah. About that. About Alex.” She looked at me as I hesitated. “It’s not that simple.”
“Simple!” She stopped herself from snorting and finished her coffee.
“No. You see, I love Alex as well.”
“You can’t. Oh, Amber! I mean, I understand that you think you love two people, but it’s not possible. It’ll only—”
“No, Mom. I’m different, okay? It’s not one or the other. It’s both. I can’t explain. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the way it is.”
“Everyone goes through a phase of thinking they’re different. This is crazy. This sort of thing can’t work. I mean, does Alex know? What does he think of it?”
“Both of them know, and they both understand.”
Well, that was true as far as it went. I was working on the rest.
But Mom didn’t understand. And it looked as if I’d convinced her I was unstable.
I should be telling her that I couldn’t have children. I knew that would be her next question. But I was lucky; I was wrong about that.
> Instead, her eyes strayed across to Pia. She edged her chair closer to the table and dropped her voice.
“I read up on it, you know,” she said.
I missed the connection and blinked in confusion.
“PTSD,” she said the initials slowly, with the carefulness of unfamiliarity. “And I looked up lots of information on women in the military, too.”
I sat back with a little hum of acknowledgment. I guessed this meant that she accepted that Kath had been lying when she’d told everyone I had never been in the military. But where was she going with this?
“I understand things happen to women in the military.” She hurried on as I started to frown. “Also that combat experiences affect women badly. And how some unscrupulous groups recreate the sense of regulation to take advantage of the institutionalization of some veterans.”
“Whoa, Mom. Hold it. Please.” I reached across and took her hands. “Listen. I wasn’t raped in the army. I loved my life in the unit. Yes, there was something that happened in combat, but like all the operational stuff in my unit, I can’t tell you anything about it. I wish I could, but I can’t.” I felt a prickle of sweat on my brow. This was getting close. “I can’t say it hasn’t permanently affected me, and it’s part of the reason I’m living an…unconventional lifestyle. But I’m okay with that. And I’m not in the clutches of some weird cult. Honestly.”
She squeezed my hands, tears glistening in her eyes. I felt them too. I wanted so much to tell her everything, knowing she’d find a way to reassure me it would all end up well.
“I know how hard this is for you,” I said. “Believe me, it’s hard for me, too. I know I don’t say it often enough, but thanks for just being you. Thanks for going and reading up and finding ways to fix your crazy daughter.”
She managed a smile at that. “You’re so strong,” she said. “I’m worried I’m no use to you any more.”
“Mom, if I’m strong, it’s because you always were.”
“I wasn’t strong. When Blane died, you were always the one—”
“No. All I did was work hard. I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t known there was something there to work for. Us. I knew you were there, all the time, holding us together.”
It hurt that she was so upset, and it hurt even worse that I couldn’t do anything about it, and the feeling that the distance would grow between us, unless I could tell her.
I couldn’t tell her, and I wasn’t going to outright lie either. The best I could do at the moment was to control the flow of bad news.
I took our cups for a refill while she sat there. I glanced across and saw sympathy in Pia’s watchful eyes.
The whole situation made me angry, and even more in favor of Emergence. If I could explain to Mom about being Athanate and the changes I’d gone through, at least she’d know the reasons why I was acting the way I was.
“That wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about,” she said when I returned.
I suspected that there was only one other topic that would be on her mind, and I was right.
“What’s happened between you and Kathleen?”
“We had a discussion about her recent behavior. It’s best if we don’t talk to each other. Same goes for talking about each other.”
“It’s not just that. She’s stopped talking to me as well.”
I shrugged and avoided her eye.
As far as I was concerned, that was an improvement on spreading lies about me, but it would be upsetting for Mom. I knew I should be more upset, that I should do something, but Kath had gone too far.
“I think she’s drinking again.”
She never stopped, I thought. Just drinks less sometimes.
It’d never gotten to be a problem at her work, but I’d been aware for a long time that she drank too much.
Despite my silence, Mom knew what I was thinking. “No, Amber, listen to me. She went through this once before. It was just after you left to go into the army. She was so upset about that and she fell in with the wrong crowd.”
“She snapped out of it,” I said. However badly she’d fallen behind in her schoolwork that year after I’d joined the army, her final results were excellent.
Despite my outward indifference, this conversation was upsetting me, and I could see Pia was picking up on that, shifting nervously in her seat. This wasn’t at all what Bian had suggested I should be doing.
Why was it so annoying? Because I didn’t want to be concerned. I didn’t want to care about whatever mess my sister was making of her life. And it wasn’t quite that easy.
“Or maybe you talked her out of it, last time,” I added as an afterthought.
“I had the chance then, because she lived at home. I never got to the bottom of it all, but I know it was something that was set off by your leaving.”
“All my fault, then?” the demon in my throat said childishly.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Pia take a call.
“No!” Mom said. “Stop that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it.”
Mom took a deep breath. “It wasn’t your fault, but she missed her big sister so much she made some bad decisions.”
And when her big sister came back, what did she do? Made even worse decisions.
“Mom, she’s a grown woman now. I’m not my sister’s keeper.” I felt awful for saying it. Not for Kath, but for Mom. “I’m not responsible for her. She’s done everything she could to drive me away.”
“But can’t you see? She was so worried, she got that nice psychiatrist you’re seeing—”
“No!” I snapped. “She had me abducted off the street—”
“Amber!” Mom’s face stopped me from blurting out everything that had happened. Waking up strapped down to a gurney with that ‘nice psychiatrist’, Dr. Noble, leering at me.
“It was just a deprogramming treatment he recommended. They didn’t abduct you really. You’re upset and you’re exaggerating. Kath was only doing what she thought was best for you.”
I was upset, but I wasn’t exaggerating, and I couldn’t talk about this anymore.
“I wasn’t seeing Dr. Noble about psychiatric issues. And he wasn’t nice in any sense of the word.”
Pia had finished her call. She stood and tapped her watch.
“Mom, I’ve got to go,” I said. There were tears in her eyes again, and that hurt. It hurt even more that she was trying to hide how upset she was from me.
However upset I’d been today, I loved her and my heart ached. I needed to fix this, but I couldn’t until I got out from under everything else, and maybe not even then.
“I’ll talk to Kath when I can, but that’s not going to be soon.”
I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Or maybe I did. I didn’t want to talk to Kath, and I wanted soon to mean any time up to the slow, cold death of the sun. I’d made it worse by saying that; it would have been better to say nothing. I was losing the art of talking to my own mother. Did all Athanate go through this?
Right now, I had Naryn to worry about.
“I’m sorry,” I said, which felt completely inadequate. “Love you.” I gave her a kiss. It made me even more miserable.
I had to turn my back on her tears.
Chapter 6
We met Jen and Julie coming back, turned them around and trotted to the car.
I turned my cell back on. Missed calls, one of them from Agent Ingram.
I grimaced. He’d want some payback for releasing Keith and talking to Mom. I was okay with that.
It had become clear to me that Ingram was considerably more senior in the FBI than he let on. Diana had identified him as a possible ally in the plans for Emergence—someone who could get us meetings with senior levels of law enforcement, and ultimately to a meeting with the president. I needed to keep him happy, but there wasn’t much more I could do without Diana.
A couple of calls from Olivia about an hour ago.
The other call was from Ricky, Ol
ivia’s lover, and it was followed by a text message.
URGENT! CALL ME!
As well as being Alex’s friend, Ricky was one of Felix Larimer’s lieutenants, and an urgent message from him was something I needed to respond to. Beyond that, I also felt I owed him. I’d encouraged Alex’s secretary, Olivia, to act on her feelings for Ricky, and then Alex and I had recruited Olivia into our pack, which had to have put Ricky in an awkward position with Felix. It hadn’t been intentional; Olivia was one of those werewolves who were unable to change and I’d promised to help her. That, and her being present when Alex and I formed a pack, had sealed the deal for her.
Pia was driving, so I had time to call Ricky. Whatever was urgent wouldn’t trump explaining myself to Naryn, would it?
“It’s Olivia,” he said immediately when I called. “She’s in danger.”
Pia had just taken the car up the ramp onto the interstate. I signed her to keep it slow; we might be coming right back off.
“Tell me,” I said to Ricky.
“She got into an argument with some of the pack.”
“They wouldn’t hurt her, would they?”
Pack on pack? They were rough with each other, but not dangerously so. And which idiot in the pack would antagonize Ricky?
“They wouldn’t have, but she panicked. She couldn’t get hold of you or Alex, I’m out of town, and Felix and Silas are busy.”
“Where did she go, Ricky?”
“Nick Gray.”
I laughed. “Good call. She’ll be fine. Nick won’t let anyone hurt her.” It’d take a lot of pack members to threaten the skinwalker. His Kodiak bear form must have weighed in at half a ton.
“No, it’s not good.”
I knew this was only going to get me into more trouble, but Olivia was part of my Were pack and my Athanate House. I couldn’t ignore this.
“Tell me where to go,” I said, “then explain why it’s a problem while we get there.”
Talking pack issues made me open my Were senses. I’d kept them suppressed, afraid that it’d trigger something in me. Opening up, I got an immediate touch on my pack’s Call.
The Call was a communication that a pack shared. It had a vague sense of direction, and emotions leaked through it. Emotions like the fear that Olivia was feeling at this moment. And Nick was there too; more a presence than an emotion, but touching me through the Call.