by Alexa Land
Ari came up to me and took me in his arms. “Happy birthday. I didn’t get a chance to say that yesterday.”
“Thank you. This is wonderful.”
“Nate and Nikolai have been cooking all day, I baked a cake, Ty and Laurie cleaned the house, and August and Tinder were no help at all, because they only emerged from their bedroom about twenty minutes ago,” Ari said with a grin. Tinder was sitting on his husband’s lap near the fireplace, and he chuckled at that.
Mateo handed us glasses of wine. “I’ve been getting drunk,” he informed me. “And I haven’t bitten August yet, so you should be proud of me.” I couldn’t help but notice the ‘yet’.
Just then, the doorbell rang. Ty untangled himself from his husband on the loveseat and called, “I’ll get it!”
Ari smiled at me and said, “That must be the rest of the guests for your party.”
“The rest? I only know like, three more people.”
“Exactly.”
I was floored when my aunts followed Ty into the living room, and Lilian yelled, “Happy birthday, Griffy! I’m so glad we get to celebrate with you twice!” She grabbed me in a hug and kissed my cheeks, then did the same to Ari, which of course left lipstick marks.
Nancy was carrying a big box with air holes, and she dumped it into my arms as she said, “Happy birthday, sweetie! Which one’s August? Your friend sent a limo for us, and I want to say thank you.” August and the rest of my friends piled on the charm as introductions were made.
Aunt Glyn held up a bottle of champagne. “Happy birthday, honey,” she said, as she wiped the lipstick off my cheeks, then Ari’s, with a linen handkerchief. “Let’s get this champagne chilling right away, so we can drink a toast to you.”
“I’ll do that,” Laurie said with a smile, as he took the bottle. I was happy to see he’d hidden his fangs for the occasion.
“Oh my, he’s a real looker.” Glyn tilted her head to check out Laurie’s ass as he headed to the kitchen. “I suppose he’s gay.”
“Yup, and married,” I said. “Um, why is this box moving?”
Nancy and Lilian hurried over to us and said, “Oh Griffy, we were heartbroken when Ari mentioned over the phone that Fig was no longer with us. The dog lived a long, long life. My God, talk about long. It was one for the record books! Anyway, we know he meant the world to you and nothing will ever take his place, but we thought maybe this would help fill the void.”
Mateo met my gaze and grinned at me as I crouched down and put the box on the floor. I lifted the lid to reveal a wiggly little puppy and exclaimed, “He’s so cute! Thank you!”
“He’s half Pomeranian and half Lhasa Apso,” Lilian said. “Our next-door neighbor, that ridiculous Judith Mendelson, has a show dog, Lady Golden California Sunset of whatever the hell. You know how bizarre those purebred names are. Anyway, the little tramp escaped and got herself knocked up by the dog down the street, so we got you one of the pups. It’s not too soon, is it? I was worried that maybe you weren’t ready for a new dog, right on the heels of Fig’s passing.”
I picked up the squirming brown-and-white ball of fur and cradled him in my arms as I said, “Your timing is perfect, thank you both. I think Fig would approve.” From across the room, Mateo raised his glass of wine in a toast, and I asked, “Does he have a name?”
“Not yet,” Nancy said, as she adjusted her chunky, turquoise necklace. “We thought we should leave that up to you.” She’d paired that with her favorite cat sweater and a pair of jeans, which meant she’d gotten dressed up for the occasion.
I held up the puppy and looked into his big, brown eyes. It was a nice change of pace when just a dog looked back at me. I murmured, “So, what would follow Fig?”
Ari suggested, “Newton?”
I grinned at that and said, “Newton it is,” as Mateo rolled his eyes.
Over the next three hours, the most wonderful and unlikely celebration took place. My aunts had no idea they were partying the night away with a bunch of vampires, and the boys were sweet and charming as could be.
At one point, as Newton napped on Mateo’s lap and we enjoyed the gorgeous cake Ari had made, Lilian said, “I almost forgot to ask how you liked your week in the desert.”
“It was absolutely perfect,” I said, “and totally different than anything I’d ever experienced. The house was modern and gorgeous, and we spent almost all our time outside on this wonderful patio that had an outdoor bedroom. I wrote, and Ari sketched and painted, and I think we both felt very inspired there. If only every day could be like that.”
“It’s not like you can’t move to the desert,” Glyn said. “And by the way, I just knew modern architecture was your style.”
“I could never sell Roz’s Victorian. It would break my heart. I wouldn’t want to leave all of you, either.”
“So, don’t sell,” Lilian said. “Roz made some very smart investments over the years and left you a substantial nest egg, so you could easily buy a second home in the desert. If you moved out by Joshua Tree, that’s less than three hours from here. You could come back and visit all the time.”
I turned to Ari, who was paying close attention to the conversation, and asked him, “How would you feel about living in the desert?”
He grinned shyly and murmured, “I’d follow you anywhere.”
I shook my head and ran my fingertips over his cheek. “There’s no leading or following. There’s just us, side-by-side, for the rest of our lives.”
He smiled at me, and when I leaned in and kissed him, three flashes went off. I frowned at my aunts, and Nancy said, “You’d better get used to it. Lil and I already started a scrapbook called ‘Griffin and Ari, the early years’, and we’re gonna need lots of pictures to fill it up.”
Toward the end of the evening, I found August and Tinder making out in the kitchen. They stopped when I came in, and August said, “Oh hey, I have something to show you.”
He pulled up a picture on his phone and tried to hand it to me. I hesitated before taking it, but without any magic, my days of shorting things out were over. The photo was of a burned-out crater in the desert, and the caption read: Is local pilot’s discovery a sign of extraterrestrials?
“I’m going to call you E.T. from now on,” August teased, as I returned the phone to him.
I grinned as I poured myself a glass of wine from the selection on the counter, and asked, “So, what’s next for the two of you?”
August said, “A second honeymoon, somewhere private and tranquil. Our first was spent shagging in our vacation home on the coast. Tyler had just become a vampire, and his appetite was voracious.” He obviously wasn’t talking about blood.
Tinder squeezed his husband’s ass and added, “After that, I guess we’ll come back here and figure out our next chapter.”
“We were in crisis mode for so long that we’ve almost forgotten how to just be a normal couple,” August said. “Some nice, boring domestic bliss sounds heavenly right now.”
His husband exclaimed, “Boring! As if. There’s never a dull moment with me, and you know it.”
August grinned at him. “I stand corrected.”
Tinder put his head on his husband’s shoulder and said, “Seriously though, just getting back into a regular routine sounds great after all that chaos. Ty and Laurie and Nate and Nick can finally move back into their own homes, now that they don’t have to be on twenty-four/seven Tinder watch, and Nate can go back to art school. He quit so he could help us. I’m glad everyone gets to return to normal.”
August asked me, “What’s next for you and your boyfriend?”
I thought about that before saying, “I guess I’m just looking forward to discovering what our version of normal is.”
We decided to hitch a ride home with my aunts in the limo, since I no longer had a car. Around midnight, I put the last of our things in the trunk, then turned to August and said, “I hope you and Tinder come for a visit when you get back from your second honeymoon.”
“Count on it. I consider you a true friend, Griffin, and I don’t say that lightly.” He grabbed me in a back-slapping hug and whispered, so my aunts wouldn’t overhear, “I can never thank you enough for bringing my husband back to me. If you ever need anything, just say the word and consider it done.”
“I’m never going to forget what you did for me, either,” I whispered. “How many people would drop everything, fly to Arizona, break into a nuclear power plant, and battle wraiths for a friend? You’re a hell of a guy, August.”
My aunts raved about the party and my ‘handsome, charming new friends’ all the way home, and Nancy said, “It’s so nice to see you spending time with people your own age.” Since several of them could actually measure their age in centuries, it was all I could do not to laugh.
We accepted an invitation to Sunday dinner, and after we dropped off Glynnis, then Nancy and Lil, Ari and I snuggled up in the back of the limo. Meanwhile, Newton woke up and looked around, and then he settled in on Ari’s lap and went back to sleep.
Mateo had been pretty quiet all night, and I asked him, “Are you worried about that Elias guy finding you, now that you’re no longer disguised?”
“He never tracked me to your house, so I should be okay. Plus, he doesn’t have any magical ability, and our mate bond only lets him sense me if we’re within about half a mile of each other. Let’s hope he left L.A. a long time ago.”
Ari asked, “Why don’t you like him?”
“Because he’s a rude, arrogant, self-entitled alpha douchebag who thinks he can order me around, just because I’m his omega. And okay, that is technically what it means to be someone’s alpha, but no! Just no! Also, I don’t believe in fate. I believe in choosing my own destiny and ending up with who I want, not some thug and criminal who was randomly assigned to me thanks to biology, or the universe, or whatever. Fuck all of that.”
“That really doesn’t seem fair,” I said, “especially if you don’t even like the guy.”
“The word you’re looking for is hate,” Mateo said. “Or despise, that’s a good one, too. I despise Elias Reyes so much that if he was on fire, I wouldn’t bother lifting a leg to pee on him.” I couldn’t help but grin at that.
Mateo fell silent for a while, until the limo turned onto our street. Then he glanced at me and asked, “Is it alright if I stay with you for a while, until I find a job and save up some money for an apartment?”
“Don’t even go there, Mateo,” I said.
He looked crestfallen and murmured, “Okay, I can be out by tonight.”
“No! I meant you’re not going anywhere, because the Purple Palace is your home. You don’t have to worry about money, either. What’s mine is yours.”
“Really?”
“You’re family,” I told him. “I thought that went without saying.”
“But you’ve only ever known me as Fig. You might not even like Mateo.” He seemed so lost when he said that.
“I love you like a brother, whether you’re on two feet or four,” I told him. He turned his head toward the window to hide the emotion in his eyes.
When the limo driver dropped us off at the Victorian, I patted my pockets and said, “You know what? My keys burned up with the Cadillac.” Mateo unlocked the front door with a flick of his fingers.
Newton went in first and started sniffing his way around the house. As we piled the ukuleles and the rest of our stuff in the entryway, I asked Mateo, “Do you want to hang out with Ari and me? We’re not going to bed right away.”
“No thanks. I’m totally peopled out,” he said, as he headed down the hall to the family room. “I just want to take off my pants and watch my stories. I’m days behind. I have to see if Julia dumped that cheating scumbag Rafael yet.”
I took Ari’s hand and murmured, “It’s nice to know some things never change.”
Chapter Eleven
The next day after breakfast, we left Mateo in front of the TV and took a cab to Ari’s warehouse. As the puppy rushed around on his stubby legs and sniffed everything, I turned to my boyfriend and asked, “Can we talk about the whole former angel thing?”
“Sure.”
Despite my best efforts the night before, I’d ended up falling asleep almost as soon as we went upstairs. That meant this was the first opportunity we’d had for a private conversation since the quick one in the desert, right after he’d saved me.
I followed him to the kitchen, and as he filled a teapot and put it on the stove, I said, “Obviously, I understand why you couldn’t tell me. I saw the consequences of that first-hand. On a related note, it’d be awesome if I managed to go the rest of my life without ever seeing another wraith, because those things were terrifying.”
“I hated keeping it a secret from you.”
I leaned against the counter and said, “I didn’t like keeping secrets from you, either. For the record, I planned to tell you eventually, but it just seemed like too much right off the bat. Like hey, guess what? I recently discovered I’m a warlock, and I have no idea what that actually means. Also, I might die on my birthday, but I’m dealing with that through a combination of denial and ignorance.”
“I wish I could have told you that you had nothing to worry about, but that would’ve led to a lot of questions I just couldn’t answer.”
“I know.” After a pause, I said, “You mentioned putting yourself in my path to check on me. I assume that’s how you ended up with a job at my favorite coffee house.”
“That’s right. I thought working there would give me an opportunity to keep an eye on you in the weeks leading up to your birthday. I was worried about what would happen when your powers came in, and whether the spell I’d cast would be enough to contain them. Turns out, it wasn’t even close. But the funny thing is, you stopped coming to the coffee house right after we met.”
“I used to hang out there for hours on end because I was lonely. But once I met you and we started spending time together, that wasn’t the case anymore.”
He took my hand and said, “I need you to know the rest of this wasn’t some calculated ploy to watch over you. Maybe it’s odd given our history, but when we met again at the coffee house and I found myself attracted to you, I didn’t want to fight it.”
“I actually love the fact that you’re who saved me from the fire. It makes me think you and I were always meant to be incredibly important to each other.”
“We were. I really believe that.” After a moment, he told me, “I always hoped I’d made the right choice by bringing you to Rosalind Vale. I wasn’t sure, given her age and the fact that she didn’t have any experience raising children.”
“You made the perfect choice. I’m curious, what made you think of her at the time?”
“Even though they’d drifted apart, your mom had fond memories of spending time with her as a girl, back when Rosalind and your grandmother were best friends. She even called her Aunt Roz. Since you didn’t have any living relatives, Rosalind seemed like the next best thing.”
I asked, “Did you ever check on me?”
“Not until later. I felt horribly guilty that I couldn’t save both you and your parents, so for a few years, I put a lot of distance between myself and L.A.”
“Where did you go?”
“I traveled aimlessly around Europe for a few years, and then I decided to distract myself by studying art in Paris. Eventually, I made my way back here and decided to put down roots once and for all. This was about seven years ago.
“At that point, I went to check on you. It happened to be your eighteenth birthday, and your aunts were throwing you a party in your backyard. It was obvious you’d grown up surrounded by love, and that made me happy. I saw Fig was still with you too, so I knew you were in good hands.”
“What did you do after that?”
“I bought this warehouse and waited for your twenty-fifth birthday to roll around, because I had to make sure you were going to be okay.”
As he placed teabags into two mism
atched mugs and poured hot water over them, I said, “You just waited around for seven long years?”
He added some honey to both mugs, then handed me one of them as he grinned and said, “When you’re as old as I am, seven years is nothing.”
“You know, I once asked you how old you were. You told me to guess, and then you said it was a good answer. In other words, you totally dodged the question while managing not to lie to me.” He grinned as he filled a bowl with water. As I followed him out into the courtyard, I asked, “So, how far off was I?”
“A few millennia, though I actually have no idea how old I am. Time worked very differently where I came from.”
I sat down across from him, and as Newton bumbled over, flopped down, and took a drink from the shallow bowl, I murmured, “You mean heaven.” He gave me a single nod. “What was it like?”
“I wish I knew. When you choose to leave, you don’t get to take your memories with you.”
“Really? You don’t remember any of it?”
“I remember being unhappy there because my life wasn’t my own, and I know leaving was my choice. I think they allowed me to remember those things, so I’d always know I was living with the consequences of my decision. I also know it took a very long time to decide to leave, since it was a one-way trip. Fallen angels don’t get to change their minds later and go back home.”
He paused for a moment before continuing, “The only other thing I remember is the light. It was so beautiful. Sometimes I wonder if they allowed me to remember that too, so I’d regret my decision to come here.” He seemed so vulnerable as he said that, and when I thought about the way he was always turning his face toward the sun, it made my heart ache for him.
I realized something then, and I twisted around to look into the warehouse, with that gorgeous, seemingly abstract painting on every surface. “You painted heaven,” I whispered. “You tried to create something beautiful for yourself, to match the only memory you had of your former home.” When he confirmed it, a lump formed in my throat, and I asked, “How can you stand it here, after being someplace so extraordinary?”
