I didn’t want to question why the universe had smoothed the way so much for us. Frankly, I didn’t want to think about anything except the life we had begun to build together. Because if I thought too much, then I’d start to wonder if this would all end, if the Reptilians might descend at any moment and snatch all our good fortune away. Better to sail through my days as if I didn’t have that particular sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
Once all the paperwork had been signed and the keys handed over to us, we drove to the house. Raphael surprised me by saying he didn’t want to go in via the door that led from the garage to the interior, but through the front door.
“Why?” I asked. Another storm had begun to move in, and although snow wasn’t falling yet, the wind had picked up and clouds blocked the sun. Even in my down-filled coat, I could feel the bite of that icy breeze.
“Isn’t it a custom of yours? To carry the wife over the threshold?”
“Raphael, we aren’t married,” I pointed out gently. Nor had there been any discussion on the subject. To be honest, marriage hadn’t seemed that important. We were committed to one another, and besides, I couldn’t think of anything more permanent than having our names together on the title for a house.
He placed his finger under my chin and tilted my face upward so he could kiss me. Just a soft press of lips to lips, but it was enough. I actually marveled at how much he liked to kiss — and how good he was at it. Making up for lost time?
“My love, we might as well be. And we should be sometime soon, if only to satisfy the conventions of your people. In the meantime, however, I would like to carry you over the threshold.”
What girl could argue with such a request? I smiled at him and said, “You’re right, Raphael. I’d be honored.”
In the next instant, his arms were reaching under me, and then he’d lifted me up off the ground, eliciting a startled laugh. Thinking ahead, he had the house key in his hand, even though the front door lock also opened with a combination. Only a little bit of fumbling, and then we were crossing over the aforementioned threshold and into the foyer, with its travertine floors and the wrought iron and alabaster chandelier overhead.
“There,” Raphael said, setting me down so he could close the front door. I suppose he could have kicked it shut, but that would have seemed disrespectful. “Now everything is official.”
“It was official when we signed the paperwork,” I pointed out.
“Perhaps. But it still did not feel real to me until now.”
I could understand that feeling. Actually, I wasn’t sure if the whole situation still felt all that real. Things had moved so very fast, but wasn’t that what you were supposed to do when everything seemed exactly right?
“Well, we’re here,” I said. “And it is starting to sink in. So let’s explore our demesne, shall we?”
We’d already walked over the house several times, but now it was different, because the place was ours. The movers had already collected my belongings from the casita at my parents’ house and brought them here, and Raphael really didn’t have much of anything except the few items of clothing and other sundries he’d accumulated during the few weeks he’d been here in Sedona.
The house felt new to us as we went from room to room, understanding fully that this was the home we would now share. Not forever, of course. Sometime in the future, twenty-five or so years from now, people would start to notice how we shared a perpetual youth that couldn’t be solely attributed to the wonders of plastic surgery, and we’d have to move on. In the meantime, though, we would have plenty to occupy us.
Starting with the bottle of Cristal that our real estate agent had left for us in the refrigerator. Some people might consider such a gesture generous, but really, compared to the commission from a house in that price range, it wasn’t all that much.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t help experiencing a little spurt of excitement as I retrieved the bottle from the refrigerator and set it down on the kitchen counter. “Now we just have to hope there are some champagne flutes in these cupboards,” I told Raphael as I started opening doors one by one.
“‘Flutes’?” he repeated, looking puzzled. His mastery of the language was, well, masterful, but sometimes the finer points escaped him, especially when they involved objects he would never have had any reason to use in the past.
“Glasses,” I explained. “Tall, thin — never mind.” The items in question were sitting on a shelf in the third cupboard I checked, and I brought them down and placed them on the counter.
“You require special glasses just to drink champagne?”
“Concentrates the bubbles or something. I’m not an expert.” Of course I’d had champagne on special occasions, but no one would ever accuse me of being a connoisseur. Which meant the Cristal was probably going to be wasted on me, but I wasn’t about to let that particular lack stop me from sharing the bottle with Raphael.
He’d picked up the bottle and was inspecting the foil on top. “Interesting.”
“Have you ever opened one of those things?” Not that I was an expert, either. On the other hand, at least I’d watched other people do it on numerous occasions.
“Of course not. But it seems like a simple enough procedure.” As he spoke, he removed the foil and set it on the counter, then ran his fingers over the little wire cage, as if attempting to determine its pressure points.
“Um, Raphael, that’s a really expensive bottle of champagne — ”
“Don’t worry.” He lifted the wire frame off the cork and placed it next to the discarded foil. “I think I have determined the best way to manage this.”
I decided to keep my mouth shut. If he fudged the whole thing, made it so he sprayed Cristal over the whole kitchen, then I’d just make him go out and buy me another bottle. Assuming you could even get Cristal in Sedona, a particular point I’d never had to contemplate before that moment.
His fingers, long and strong, worked at the cork. Despite my trepidation, I couldn’t help admiring those hands and the smooth light brown skin that covered them, or remembering the way those hands moved over my body with a skill that still astonished me.
Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, because all I’d accomplished was to get myself hot and bothered. I pulled in a breath and tried to think of something else, like the house-warming party I’d threatened Raphael with. Okay, that was better. It was a lot harder to be aroused when you were trying to figure out which day would work best, and what kind of food to serve, and whether to invite anyone outside your immediate circle —
Pop! The cork went flying out of the bottle and bounced off one edge of the coved ceiling, but it didn’t seem to do any actual damage. By some miracle, only graceful drifting fog swirled up out of the bottle, and not the geyser I’d feared. I hurried over to the flutes and held them out to Raphael so he could fill them up. He did so with care, waiting for the bubbles to subside before he continued to pour. For someone who didn’t know anything about champagne, he seemed to have a pretty good handle on its care and feeding.
Then he put down the bottle and took one of the flutes from me. “This is where we drink to something, correct?”
“Yes,” I replied. “We just have to decide on what it should be.”
“Oh, I know exactly what we should drink to.” His eyes met mine and held. Here in the brightly lit kitchen, I could see the swirls of warm brown and dark copper and even slate gray that combined in his irises, like muted but beautiful stained glass. He lifted his champagne flute, and I did so as well.
Smiling, he said, “To the future.”
* * *
We did have a housewarming party, but I decided discretion would serve me best, and so it was a small crowd — Persephone, Paul, Michael, and Taryn; Kara and Lance and my cousins, including Grace and Logan; my parents.
Apparently Logan had talked Grace down from resigning her position with the National Weather Service up in Flagstaff. He certainly looked in good health and spirits as h
e entered the house. I would have had a hard time believing he’d been so badly wounded in our raid on the Reptilian base if I hadn’t seen the whole thing unfold before my eyes.
“Logan didn’t want me to quit,” Grace told me as she sipped her chardonnay and glanced around the living room with a mixture of astonishment and envy. “He kept telling me he was fine, and you know, he really is. Those healing pods on Raphael’s ship must be pretty amazing.”
“It’s not his ship anymore,” I said, even as I wished we could have come up with some way to hang on to it.
Grace’s blue eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
I didn’t exactly sigh, but the breath that escaped my lips was a little bit more than just a simple exhalation. “When he decided to stay here with me, that meant he was no longer an agent of the Assembly. It’s really the Assembly’s ship. So he sent it back.”
“So he’s stuck here, just like your father and grandfather?”
Well, that was one way of looking at it. “Not exactly. I mean, he can’t come and go as he pleases, but he’s not totally stuck, either. If something comes up, he can contact his people, and they’ll send a ship for him.”
“Convenient.” She took another sip of her wine, eyes tracking across the room to where my father and grandfather were discussing something with Paul Oliver. What, I couldn’t tell from this distance, but from the way Paul gestured upward on more than one occasion, I guessed it had to be something sky- or star-related. Possibly our astronauts, still heading for home at speeds that would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago but which felt like crawling to me, now that I’d experienced the faster-than-light jumps Raphael’s former ship could manage. Grace went on, “Do you think they’ll ever relent? About your father and grandfather, that is.”
“I don’t know.” I’d wondered the same thing myself on more than one occasion over the past few days. After all, the Assembly had authorized the Mars raid. A small bit of interference, true, and not quite the same as helping to wipe out an entire Reptilian base — or getting an Earth woman pregnant with the child who’d have the ability to take such action — but still, it seemed to me as if the Assembly and its leaders might be softening slightly. What harm could it do, really, to allow my father and Gabriel to have some interaction with the world where they’d been born, even if Earth was now their home? “I hope so. My father did get his powers back, so that’s a start.”
Grace was silent for a moment. Then I noticed the way her gaze flicked toward Raphael, who was talking to Persephone, of all people. I would have loved to know what they were discussing. Was he apologizing for bailing out on her as her spirit guide? Whatever they were talking about, it didn’t seem to be too controversial, since she was nodding, while he wore that grave, subtle smile I loved so much.
“So….” For as forthright as a person as she tended to be, Grace looked downright uncomfortable. Her eyes didn’t quite meet mine. “You and Ott — I mean, Raphael. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.”
“You and everyone else.” What could I do except shrug? Deep down, I’d hoped Grace would understand, since she’d felt a similar pull toward Logan. Not the same as the soul-bond of the Pleiadians, more like attracting like, but still, she knew what it was like to feel an overwhelming attraction that came out of basically nowhere. “But at least my parents have backed off a little.”
She grinned, a flash of white teeth accented by a little dimple, the one I’d always envied, at the corner of her mouth. “Well, he is hot-damn gorgeous, especially for a guardian angel. Or whatever he was supposed to be.”
“Spirit guide,” I said. “A little bit different.”
Her only reply was another smile and a slight lift of her glass before she took another sip of chardonnay. Then she headed off toward Logan, who appeared to be deep in conversation with Lance and Kara. Talk about mending fences. They certainly appeared to have accepted him into their family. I didn’t really know what Grace’s long-term plans were for her hybrid lover, but I wondered if he would end up getting folded into the family business the way her younger brother Kevin had been. It did seem as if my Uncle Lance was always looking for new drivers for his Jeep tour company. And Logan, who’d been trained as a soldier, probably wouldn’t have too much of a problem taking orders from Lance. Within reason, that is.
For some reason, the thought made me a little melancholy. Not on Logan’s behalf; I guessed that he and Grace would be able to make things work, no matter what they ended up doing. No, it was more that I didn’t know exactly what I planned to do, except be the lady of leisure Raphael had described to me earlier. That sort of lifestyle had worked out well enough for my parents, but was that really what I wanted to do with my own life?
I didn’t know. For the moment, all I could do was brush the slight twinge of discontent aside, and go back to my guests.
* * *
Time flowed. It appeared that single twinge was the only one I’d be troubled with, because I did seem to be kept busy with all sorts of minutiae. I resigned my position at the wine-tasting room, and also backed off on my hours at the UFO Depot. It really wasn’t that big a deal; January was a dead time for retail anyway and they didn’t need me, although I could tell my aunt wasn’t terribly thrilled with me over my defection.
Raphael and I relaxed into one another, getting used to our rhythms, learning how to share a life together. New territory for both of us, since he’d never been with anyone else, and the few relationships I’d had were so fleeting and inconsequential that I’d barely gotten to the fourth or fifth date stage, let alone contemplated actually living with someone.
Logan did start working for Lance a few days a week, and the couple moved into a bigger apartment in Flagstaff. I had no doubt that Lance probably had the funds to help them buy a condo or something, except that wasn’t how my uncle operated. He was a firm believer in earning things for yourself, which meant he might loan them the money for a down payment in a few years…and would expect to be paid back at some point. Some people might believe he’d treat Grace that way because she wasn’t his blood, but I knew he’d expect exactly the same thing from any of his biological children.
And Michael went back to Flagstaff as well to immerse himself in his doctoral program, sending my cousin Kelsey into another fit of the blues. Both Taryn and I attempted to gently suggest that she should try dating someone — anyone — to get her mind off Michael, but she wouldn’t even entertain the idea.
“No way,” she said flatly when we all met for drinks at the local martini bar, although Taryn had opted for a glass of white wine instead of a martini. “It’s easy for you to give advice, Callista — you already have the love of your life. But I’m not going to settle just because Michael is busy with his degree.”
Taryn and I exchanged a weary glance. I’d had to bite my lip to keep from pointing out that Taryn certainly didn’t have the love of her life — or anyone at all, for that matter. But saying such a thing right then felt borderline cruel to me. It wasn’t that Taryn ever bemoaned her single state. No, she was pretty quiet on the topic, although I knew she hadn’t found anyone to replace Noah, her last boyfriend, as far as I could tell. Her single state made me think all the guys our age in Sedona and its environs must have rocks for brains, because Taryn was smart and beautiful and fairly low-maintenance, all things considered. But she was also a powerful psychic, and I had a feeling that singular quality was a pretty tall hurdle for some men to jump.
I also wanted to tell Kelsey that she’d never had a single word of encouragement from Michael, so it was a little silly to be pinning all her hopes on him. Of course he was friendly and polite to her, same as he was with me or Grace. Well, things were still a little awkward with Grace, because apparently they’d had the mother of all first date disasters a few years back. But Michael didn’t treat Kelsey any differently than he did the rest of the girls in our extended “family,” so I had no idea where she’d gotten the notion lodged in her head that t
hey’d have their own happily ever after once he was done with school and off being a world-famous astronomer, or whatever it was he planned to do with that degree.
Since I knew Kelsey would be all over me if I tried to say anything along those lines, I just swirled my pear martini a few times and took a sip. Once again Taryn had the same faraway look on her face that I’d noticed more and more lately. Several times during the past few weeks, I’d made a comment about her head being in the clouds, and she’d just smiled and said something about planning her transfer to NAU. Maybe that was the true reason for her distraction, but my sixth sense kept jangling away in the background despite her explanations.
Things had been all quiet on the Reptilian front, but the relative peace hadn’t calmed my nerves any. Actually, I could feel myself getting more and more tense, certain the other shoe was going to drop even though I had absolutely no idea how or where. The tension wasn’t quite enough to prevent me from enjoying my time with Raphael, but it did keep things from being completely idyllic. I was jumpy and nervous, having to ask him to repeat himself a good deal of the time, simply because I was thinking about what might happen next, rather than what was happening in the moment. Luckily, he seemed to understand the reason why I was so distracted, and didn’t chide me for it.
Focusing on Kelsey’s problems helped to take my mind off the situation, although I had to wonder if some of her current angst came from the realization that Valentine’s Day was coming up and she’d be spending it alone…again. Her fault, though. Personally, I admired Taryn’s more exotic looks because they were so different from my own, but I knew that my cousin’s blonde girl-next-door appearance was more the type to attract the locals. Lord knows she had turned down her fair share of dates in the past and would continue to do so until she got over this Michael crush.
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