by Jane Cousins
Riya was torn between sympathising and taking affront at Gaia’s sharp, incredulous tone. It wasn’t that preposterous that she was pregnant. She’d been pursued by a lot of men in the past who had told her she was beautiful with her exotic half-Thai and half-English rose features.
Occasionally, if she had some spare time, she would even let them briefly catch her. But no one ever stuck around for long. Not just because of her eleven over-protective insane brothers. But because Riya preferred to focus the majority of her time and energy on building the exclusive reputation of her clothing design boutique, Un Peu de Magie.
“Gaia. Hi, enjoying the party? I must say I out did myself on Hadleigh’s dress. Have you seen it? Thank Heavens, Vaughn was around to get her to wear it. She looks like a dream and that man is beyond besotted.”
“Riya! What have you done?” Gaia’s hands came down to rest on ample hips as she stared up at Riya. Blue eyes flashed fire, mouth set in a mulish, stubborn line.
“Now, Gaia, there’s no reason to get upset.”
“Upset? Upset? I’m not upset, I’m happy for you.” Gaia’s voice was getting weirdly high and strained.
“This is what happy looks like, is it?” Riya knew she shouldn’t tease, but honestly, Gaia was getting out of control. “Funny, it looks a lot like the expression on my mother’s face.”
Gaia blinked, released a tightly held breath and appeared to relax. “Elisabeth knows about this? Oh, well, that’s okay then.”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“Come on, Riya, we both know how your mother feels. I imagine being a Grandmother isn’t exactly high on her agenda. She’ll make this go away.”
Riya was surprised at the flash of red hot anger that shot through her. Elisabeth wasn’t exactly maternal, but she never shirked her duty. She would be an unconventional grandmother, that went without saying, but Riya was damn sure she’d learn to love her grandchild. “Do you think I live my life to please my mother? Of course she’s not happy about my condition. She loves to be contrary, you know that. She considers my life too boring, safe and conventional. She berates Jules for never being around and five minutes after he does turn up she sighs with irritation, asking him when he’s leaving. And as for the Ten? She doesn’t think they have two brain cells to rub together between the lot of them. But the one thing my mother will defend until her death, is the right for her children to make their own choices.”
“I’m sorry, okay? It’s just, Serge and I have been trying for months… and with Hadleigh melded and Alma waving around the matchmaking magic like it’s going out of style, time is running out.”
Riya shook her head in exasperation. “Time is not running out. You are not in a competition.”
“Easy for you to say.” Gaia burst out, glaring at Riya and then down at her belly. “It’s so unfair, I can’t believe that you would go behind my back and cheat like this. Sorry. That came out wrong. I just… how, Riya?” Gaia’s blue eyes filled with longing were glued to Riya’s belly.
“Why is everyone determined to make this pregnancy about them? Look, it’s magic… time-travelling, Fate crap. All going well, by the end of today, everything will return to normal. Don’t worry, Gaia, your turn will come.”
“Have you sewn something for me?” Gaia looked painfully eager, hoping to hear news of a maternity wardrobe in her near future. A sign that Fate was stepping up to the baby plate.
“Not yet, but I’m sure once my little magical blip here disappears that it won’t be long before I’m back in the workroom, whipping up something special.”
“Ohhh.” Gaia’s blue eyes lit up. “Something unique, something silky and frothy for the bedroom. Something to conceive in. What a great idea.”
“No, that’s not what I said… I-”
“I’ll mock up some drawings and drop them by the boutique.” Gaia’s focus had clearly shifted, failing to register how pale and horrified Riya suddenly looked. “In the meantime, you work on… what’s ever going on here.” She waved an absent hand at Riya’s belly. “You did say temporary, didn’t you?”
Riya couldn’t help herself. “Probably. But this is magic, you never know. I’ll chat to you later, bye.” Riya saw a big enough opening in the crowd to slip through and made her escape, Gaia’s squawk of dismay drifting after her.
She could only pray that keeping Gaia focused on the competition would distract her from sketching a little number that she could conceive in. Riya so did not want to have to sew that item and be hit with any glimpses of Gaia and Serge’s Fate in the bedroom department.
Forty minutes later, Riya was sitting at a table by herself, staring at her as yet untouched glass of champagne. Only one or two bubbles drifted to the surface, it was basically flat. Damn, she had really wanted some alcohol to numb the reality kicking her in the belly button every five minutes.
Yet, even as she was ordering it, Riya knew she wouldn’t be able to drink it. She’d just wanted to feel normal. Raise a glass in celebration to her cousin Hadleigh’s official melding. Unfortunately, thanks to her time-travelling baby, she couldn’t even do that.
Although on the bright side, one day in the far… far future, when Riya genuinely was pregnant, there would come a day when she was about seven months along when the baby would take a little vacation to the past, and she could line up shot glasses and down them to her heart’s content. Sadly, it was difficult right at this particular moment to appreciate that fact.
Grrr. All she’d wanted to do was hold the damn glass in her hand, look, and act normal. But she’d been kidding herself. Thanks to the baby bump she was an oddity. All her relatives wanted to do was pat her belly and ask her awkward - impossible to answer - questions. And all Hadleigh’s visiting Valhalla cute male relatives had wanted to do was talk about the battles they had won and show off their war wounds… ick.
“Looks like it’s just you and me kiddo.” Riya drummed her fingers on the table. The words suddenly striking a deep chord. Some day soon she was going to be a mother to the child she was carrying. Perhaps the reason the baby was so darn curious was because the father wouldn’t remain in the picture long. Heavens, was she really ready to be a single mother?
Mother. The word struck Riya as so final. She’d been so busy focused on getting her boutique up and running. Sewing clothes every spare moment to fill her store that she had kind of put the idea of having a man in her life, having kids, on hold. Always assuming that some day… eventually… probably, that she would meet a nice guy, and all things going well, they’d have a kid or two.
But here, now, with reality pressing on her bladder in a rather uncomfortable manner, Riya was suddenly consumed with dread. Was this her life? In the early days of opening and growing her business, things had been hectic. But now, her everyday day life was pretty much routine.
She got up, ate breakfast, worked for a few hours in her design room, located in a large studio at the rear of her shop, overlooking the picturesque Haven Bay Beach. Then she would open the boutique. Deal with customers. Close the store. And more often than not find herself back in the studio, sewing until she got sleepy. Stumbling off to bed upstairs in the apartment she maintained on the first and second floors over her shop.
When she wasn’t designing or actually making clothes, Riya would zip off on quick buying trips, India for silks, Milan for leather. In and out, via the family Transportal system, no time for sight-seeing or chatting. She was always in a rush to get back to her workroom. Even when Riya made time for drinks and dinner with her girlfriends, she still had a tendency to leave early so that she could get a few more hours of work in before the day was done.
Heavens, when had she become such a workaholic?
It was a good life. Fulfilling. Riya had helped hundreds, perhaps thousands of people to make the correct, crucial, life decision when they came to a Fate changing crossroads in their life. All those people out there, taking chances. Taking risks. Some would succeed. Some would fail… but they’d be
stronger and wiser because of it.
Personally though, what was she achieving, or risking? Her daily life was routine, potentially bordering on the staid. With absolutely no high drama or adventure in the offing. Two things Riya had deliberately eradicated from her life.
Her childhood had been over brimming with chaos and hourly surprises. Surrounded as she was by ten brothers who kept running around setting everything on fire, including each other. And another brother who had a tendency to pop out of the time line, only to re-appear seconds, hours or days later, unable to share exactly where he had been and what he had been doing. A mother who climbed the highest peak in the world for sheer fun. And a father constantly waging an environmental war against polluters, loggers, and big business.
Sweet Lady, had she taken things too far? Cocooned herself in so much routine and practicality that she’d sucked all potential risk and therefore all potential reward from her life? Was she really going to just drift along and let life happen to her? No, it was time she starting embracing life. Sought out adventure. Took risks. Had fun. Succeed or fail, it didn’t matter. She would live.
Unconsciously, Riya reached out to grip the champagne glass. Here was to life, and living the damn hell out of it. She raised the glass in a silent toast… a silent promise.
Epilogue – Marcus
Marcus made a half hearted attempt to turn his snarl into a forced smile as the elderly couple standing next to him apologised for bumping into him for the third time. The couple, who were in full on flirt mode, barely appeared to notice. At their age? He didn’t know whether to be appalled or applaud.
Grrr, he attempted to shift further away from them. But the party was crowded, and space, especially around the bar was at a premium. Withholding a sigh of frustration, Marcus focused once more on his top of the line - wouldn’t even be released to the public for another three years – tablet computer. He was running over three dozen search criteria at once. And though he’d set the parameters to flag even the slightest anomaly, he couldn’t help but feel that if he studied the data, he might see something that a machine wouldn’t.
It was a false hope. His search parameters had been impeccably coded. He’d done them personally. And for an extra layer of security, he had six world-class hackers back at Maat Tower, performing their own highly unique, highly illegal searches. It was pure frustration causing him to act so unfocussed and irrational.
He was taking this personally. Marcus knew better than to let emotions take over. But it had been almost five months now since Hadleigh had learnt that Serena, an Earth Witch, friend, and sidekick on their paranormal reality show, Para-Exterminators, had been kidnapped by the sons of the God of Chaos; Sek, Mot and Bal.
Initially, the trio had wanted Serena for her blood, intending to use it in a ritual to resurrect their father, Apep. But Serena had proven a tricky prisoner and during one of her escape attempts had killed Bal.
His brothers, Sek and Mot, wanted revenge on Serena. Intending to imprison and punish her slowly and painfully for the rest of her very long life. It was Marcus’s job to find out where Serena was being held. Currently, he and his hacker team were combing through the supply and acquisition forms for every prison, hospital, institution, and holding facility in the State of Texas.
The demi-god dickheads might be able to hide Serena or change her name, but records were set in stone. Accounting systems were rigid and demanding. Bed numbers, room inhabitants, medication, food orders, they were all automated, collated, and had to add up. Somewhere, there was an anomaly just waiting to be identified.
Of course finding Serena was just priority number one on the list for Marcus. Identifying the location of Sek and Mot was a close second. Fuck, the idiots were dragging around their father’s corpse, a mummy in a sarcophagus. They should have been easy to track, but the duo was proving elusive and cunning.
Marcus couldn’t help but feel he was letting his fellow Warriors, his brothers-in-arms, down. It was foolish and a waste of time to let guilt gnaw away at him. But there was so much at stake, not just Serena’s life, but all of humanity if Sek and Mot succeeded in resurrecting their father, the God of Chaos.
Discovering their whereabouts was Marcus’s responsibility. It’s what he’d always done. Gathering information, dissecting it, seeing the patterns, making leaps of logic. He provided the direction. Then Rafe and Drum would strategize their approach. Vaughn, their Captain, would take point and lead them into battle. To victory. Ensuring the magical community didn’t spill over and create havoc in the mundane world.
It was their job. Their duty. Their life.
Just over a hundred years ago, Maat, the Goddess of Truth and Balance, had trawled the timelines and found seven men who had died as they lived, enforcing justice and righting wrongs.
She’d made each of them an offer. Upon their death they could travel onwards across the river Styx to the afterlife. Or, they could have the memory of their earthly life wiped and be re-born in the sun, to serve in Maat’s name as Elite Warriors. Semi-immortals. Her Staff of Righteousness. Her four Spears of Justice. And her two Seekers of Chaos.
Their mission; to seek out injustice and chaos where ever it might be. To keep order amongst the magical community and ensure the mundane world remained in ignorance. A reality TV show was the perfect cover for their off-camera activities.
Funny, no matter how terrifying an incident was, as soon as one of the team turned up in their Para-X uniform to deal with the trouble and then proceeded to ask people to sign a release form to appear on television, everyone instantly relaxed and assumed the whole thing was a hoax.
An idea they at Maat Headquarters had deliberately fostered, ensuring that their weekly TV show, featuring generally a highly publicised, but decidedly non-magical incident, bordered on the cheesy. Shaky camera work. Flashing strobe lights. Confusing heat and ultra-violet filters. Always shooting after dark and ensuring there were lots of heavy shadows as the team tried desperately to find some conclusive scientific proof that the supernatural was real…. not.
Marcus rolled his shoulders, wincing slightly. He tried to match his gym hours to off set the amount of time he spent hunched over his computer, but with Serena missing, and Sek and Mot out there, doing who knows what, his priorities had shifted lately. Wearily, Marcus rubbed at his eyes, he needed to cut down on his screen time, maybe look up once and a while and enjoy the party, or not, grimacing as the couple bumped him for the fourth time.
Crap, he really wasn’t in the party mood. Oh sure, Marcus was happy for his Captain and friend, Vaughn. He, and the gorgeous, bloodthirsty Hadleigh made an exceptional couple. It’s just that there was so much intel to trawl through.
Information was the key. Everything came down to ones and zeroes these days. From the tips that came into the Para-X website. To the constant search of the dark web and the internet for even the slightest hint of supernatural gone wrong, anything that would require the intervention of the Elite Warriors of Maat.
And if that weren’t enough of a workload, also requiring constant vigilance were the complex financial spreadsheets Marcus maintained overseeing Maat Enterprises’ extensive holdings.
Speaking of which, wasn’t there a warehouse in Chicago he’d been contemplating purchasing with a view to turning it into condos? He tapped the screen, bringing up the information. Hmmm, it was probably a better time to sell, than buy. The infrastructure wasn’t quite there yet. Probably another four to five years before tenants would be attracted to the area. Hold on, the warehouse looked decidedly familiar. Marcus scrolled through several photos, before enlarging an overhead shot. Bloody Hell. No wonder the place looked familiar. He, Maat Enterprises, already owned it and were trying to offload it.
So, it was official. He was burnt out. Marcus clenched his teeth to prevent a cutting remark from escaping as the couple next to him bumped him yet again. Snapping closed the tablet he scooped up his whiskey, the ice long melted, and pushed his way through the crowd.
Fuck, he just needed some space. For an outdoor party it sure was crowded. Halting at the edge of the dance floor, Marcus couldn’t help but smile as Vaughn and Hadleigh danced by, eyes only for each other.
Must be nice. To find your other half. The perfect complement to you. Marcus wondered if there was someone like that out there for him. She’d be smart of course. Interested in the same things he was; computers, information gathering. Deadly, that went without saying. Perhaps a Warrior accountant, or an Amazonian legal eagle. She’d be uncomplicated and drama-free. And she would fit into his life seamlessly, like the last piece in a puzzle.
And if she happened to be stunningly beautiful, well, that would just be icing on the cake. And if Marcus had anything to say about things, she’d look an awful lot like the gorgeous woman seated by herself off to his left. Silky, long, straight black hair that fell to her shoulder blades. Amazing eyes, hazel but overlaid by a web of pure green threads. There was just the slightest tilt to the edges, suggesting an exotic heritage in her lineage. A cupid bow shaped mouth that was surprisingly wide. Honey golden skin, with the faintest smattering of freckles across a narrow nose. And her cheeks were naturally suffused with a soft pink colour that made her glow with health and vitality.
Marcus found himself striding towards her. Not because he was interested in talking to the gorgeous woman, but because she was sitting alone at a table for eight and he was in dire need of a peaceful place to sit and work. Maybe in the last two minutes and fourteen seconds his search engines had come up with some information to help locate Serena, or Sek and Mot.
Brushing past a few party-goers drifting off the dance floor, Marcus instinctively slowed his stride, his internal alarms ringing. Crowded party? Woman sitting alone at a table for eight? More concerning, the no-man’s land of cleared space surrounding the table. Everyone was giving her a wide berth. Damn, there had to be something majorly wrong with her.
