by Karen Ranney
Anything but have to deal with the woman again.
She was angry at me because I hadn’t acted on her intel. Her word, not mine.
Yes, I’d set her to watching the surveillance footage in the castle. Yes, she was to be congratulated for catching the woman entering Dan’s office Wednesday night. Yes, she was also to be praised for using Dan’s facial recognition program and correctly identifying the mystery woman as my mother.
I truly appreciated the fact that Diane had texted me what she found, then followed up with a voice mail. She didn’t know that Janet hadn’t given me back my stuff and I was using my old pre-castle phone. Nor did I bother pointing out to her that I’d called her. All she had to do was use that number, but she hadn’t.
Janet had finally returned my phone, my Kindle, and my brush. Well, not exactly. She’d had one of the castle employees deliver them in a box. No note of apology. I swallowed my irritation and kept saying, “Ohmmmmm,” until it worked, a little.
Trenton and Janet weren’t the only source of my annoyance. Opie still wasn’t talking. She hadn’t said a word since the night at the MEDOC warehouse. I don’t know what I did to irritate her, but she was also giving Kenisha the silent treatment. Not that Kenisha noticed. She was so involved with Mike that she didn’t see anything or anyone else.
Dan had given her an apartment next to Mike’s. I had the idea that we were probably going to have to tear down the common wall in a few weeks and just make it one big apartment for the two of them.
The phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket. Please don’t let it be Nonnie saying she couldn’t attend. But it wasn’t Nonnie. I listened to the recording from the jail, pushed the button to accept the collect call, and waited for my mother to say something.
Demi was in a special unit since she’d been turned. She was allowed exercise after midnight and kept in a shielded cell during the day. I couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say. Would it be along the lines of: sorry I tried to kill you - again? I doubted it.
“Marcie! It’s your wedding day! I’m so happy for you!”
I was a little taken aback. My mother had never been happy for me. In fact, I don’t think she’d ever said those words to me, even when I graduated from college.
“Are you?”
“I am. You deserve someone hunky like Dan.”
“I do?”
“Yes, yes, you do. Besides, he’s the baby daddy, I just know it.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute, maybe two. I had to clear my throat before I did.
“Opie?” I asked, very carefully.
“Yes! You’re so smart. It’s me.”
“You’re haunting my mother?” I asked.
“I seem to be. It took me a day or two to work it out. This is really rude, Marcie, but I have to say, your mother is not a happy woman. I let her out from time to time, but the woman is a pill. Of course, it’s a paradox, don’t you think? I mean, she killed me, and here I am, haunting her. Maybe it’s divine justice.”
I swear, I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.
“Otherwise, I’m in seventh heaven, Marcie. You can’t imagine what it’s like after being on all fours for weeks and weeks. But I miss you. And K-girl.”
“I’ve been worried about you,” I said, which was the truth.
“Just think of the ramifications! I’ve been mulling it over. I realized I don’t have to be a vampire to be immortal. In fact, I’m giving some thought to transferring to a different body now that I know I can. Who wants to spend years in jail? I need to talk to your grandmother because I think that’s how it happened this time.”
The night at the warehouse had been chaotic. Maybe Nonnie had been saying a spell that overlapped with Janet’s. What had William been doing in the parking lot? Had he been throwing spells, too?
Just when I think the world had stabilized a little, another layer of weird was added.
“How did you know?” I asked. “About my wedding day?”
“It’s all over the news. Evidently, Dan is quite a catch.”
Oh, goody. Maddock would know. The beep on the phone was a signal that the collect call time had run out.
“Can I call you back?” Opie asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And I’ll come and visit, if you like.” Although I wasn’t all that eager to tell Kenisha that her best bud was in jail.
“Would you? Oh, that would be wonderful. Happy wedding day!”
I hung up the phone, staring out at the horizon as night bullied day into vanishing. The wedding was timed so that Kenisha could be in attendance with Mike as her escort. Soon I would have to go and put on the wedding gown Janet insisted I wear, a frothy garment specially blessed by a couple of covens with health, wealth, and happiness spells. I didn’t need spells, but in the interest of family accord, I’d shut up and accepted the dress.
The internecine war that so worried Dan looked as if it might be in abeyance at least for a while. The Brethren that we’d met with had agreed to support us, plus we had the witches on our side. It turned out that Maddock wasn’t as popular as Maddock thought he was. He’d burned a lot of bridges over the years. But the one thing that might save us was Mike. Or what had happened to Mike.
Mike was eating regular food, which was an answer to what he was. In fact, I teased him from time to time about being a goddess. He just frowned at me in that intimidating way of his and didn’t say a word. He kept vampire hours which was fine with Dan since he needed someone he could trust on the graveyard shift, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Mike and I might take turns giving a pint of blood away in a lottery scheme, but I hadn’t had a chance to talk about the idea with either Mike or Dan. It would keep all the various entities off our backs and give them an incentive to keep us healthy and happy. What we needed was a human volunteer, to see if he or she could become a Dirugu. The idea made me feel weird. I tabled it mentally for more thought and discussion.
Dan had turned the burglar over to the police, but he made a point of contacting the head of The Militia of God to let him know that he wouldn’t welcome any further “visitors”. Or, if they insisted on coming to the castle, they would be met with prejudice, Dan-speak for guns, cannons, knives, or medieval weapons of torture. Dan didn’t say anything about the burglar having developed a severe case of I can’t remember diddly-itis, to the extent the poor guy couldn’t even recall his middle name. Whatever he’d learned on his expedition here had been lost. It was handy having a wizard around who could just point his finger and make something happen.
In a week we would meet with the second contingent of Brethren, Paul’s relatives who were representatives for the werewolves. I wondered if Dan would use his power during that meeting. He’d already used his wizardly abilities to send out feelers for Nancy. She hadn’t yet been found, but I think it was only a matter of time.
My stomach hadn’t been upset for days and days, as if my child were content with everything. I wondered if it was also because he knew Dan was his father.
I still hadn’t told Dan about the baby, but I couldn’t go into marriage without saying something. Maybe a part of me was afraid that Maddock still was the father. Maybe I worried that Dan didn’t want to be saddled with a child right away. Whatever the reason, I had to be honest with him.
I felt him as he walked down the corridor and up the stairs to the roof.
“You wanted to see me, Marcie?” he asked, coming to my side. “Isn’t that considered unlucky on our wedding day?”
“I think we make our own luck,” I said, smiling at him.
He stepped in front of me and extended his arms around my waist. Heat flashed through me. His smile did something to my heart. I looked into his eyes and felt myself tumbling head first into love again. He did that to me.
I wasn’t prescient. I didn’t think I could foretell the future and now was a weird time to suddenly know what I knew. This was our land. This was our kingdom. Dan would reign, not as the chicken king
like his grandfather, but as the wizard who kept all the factions of the Brethren in their own bailiwick. No one segment, including the vampires, would rule over another. Neither the OTHER nor the human only organizations would gain a foothold. Instead, they would be kept in check by his wisdom and power.
Our children, as powerful as any ever born, would grow to adulthood in grace and peace.
I fervently hoped that what I felt was the future and not my own wishes.
“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” he asked, sliding his hands down my arms. I was instantly warm. Not because he was a wizard, but because he was Dan.
I shook my head. “No,” I said.
The next few minutes would be critical. How would he take the news? Would he be happy? Excited? Stressed?
I reached up and put my hand on his cheek.
“I have a secret, Dan,” I said. “A very important secret and one I need to tell you before we’re married.”
Epilogue
I’d been learning Were, a language I hadn’t even known werewolves had, separate and apart from whatever they spoke in their human form. Gladys, a new resident of the castle, was my teacher and she’d impatiently informed me that most werewolves, unless they’re very old or very talented, could not enunciate in their animal form. They’d devised a series of grunts, whistles, and back of the throat sounds to communicate.
Right at the moment, I was telling Dr. Fernandez what I thought of him in Were. He would have been insulted, but it made me feel better.
“Push, Marcie!”
“I am pushing,” I said, the words accompanied by a few more Were oaths. “Trust me, I’m bloody well pushing!”
My son wasn’t all that eager to emerge from his safe and warm home for the last nine months. I, on the other hand, was looking forward to being able to sleep without being pummeled from the inside, and walking more than four feet without having to go to the bathroom - again. Not to mention I was tired of being examined by Dr. Fernandez, who had taken an interest in vampire physiology and was determined to usher this first child of a vampire mother successfully into the world.
Dan was being a pain as well. Dan had been a pain since an hour before our wedding when I told him about the existence of our child. He hadn’t stopped staring at me for hours, doing the sweep from my face to my nether regions and back. I could tell that he was mentally comparing my boob size now to what he remembered in the gun range. Let’s talk luscious peach versus cantaloupe, shall we?
He had been overprotective to the point I’d finally gone to Janet and enlisted her help in convincing him that I was better than fine. I was gloriously healthy and ecstatic about being in love, being married, and being pregnant. Janet, who had decided that I was the gift who kept on giving, would have done anything for me at that point, and lectured Dan sternly. He’d relented a little by not following me around everywhere.
I surprised everyone by refusing to have him in the delivery room with me. Our sex life, up until a few months ago, was glorious. I didn’t want to freak him out by introducing him to the miracle of birth. He was with me up until the moment our son was imminent, and then I banished him to an outer room where Mike and his buddies promised to try to get him drunk.
Good luck with that. Being a wizard affected Dan’s metabolism in a lot of odd ways. Neither of us were cheap dates anymore. It took gallons of bubbly to make me frisky. That’s okay, I really didn’t need an incentive around Dan.
Nonnie and Janet were in the next room as well. I could feel the power they exuded with their good fortune and perfect health spells.
Only Dr. Fernandez and I were in the delivery room and that was fine with me. I wanted to make sure my son wasn’t fangy before anyone saw him.
“Just a few more pushes, Marcie.”
Five minutes and several hundred Were swear words later, my darling son was plopped onto my stomach where he opened his beautiful green eyes and stared straight into mine.
Correction, please. Not a son, but a daughter.
How the hell had that happened?
When I’d had an ultrasound, I wanted to know about fangs more than appendages. Dr. Fernandez hadn’t been all that familiar with where things were supposed to be, evidently. I told him our child was a boy and he hadn’t quibbled with my diagnosis.
My daughter squinted up at me, then at the humming and glaring florescent lights. They sputtered and went out. I was one savvy goddess. I didn’t need a brick to fall on me.
“Stop that,” I said gently. “You’re too young to do stuff like that.”
She smiled at me.
We’d chosen the name for our son. Gordon, a family name and one that had no negative connotations. As I stared at my incredible daughter, her name occurred to me. Frankly, I didn’t know if I’d come up with it, or she somehow sent the name to me mentally.
Antonia.
When I whispered it, she smiled again.
“You don’t have fangs, do you, Antonia?”
She giggled, a sound that prompted Dr. Fernandez to pop up from between my legs and stare at her.
I had a feeling he was going to do a lot of that in the next few years. The staring, not the popping up from between my legs part.
I exchanged a smile with my daughter and couldn’t wait to introduce Antonia to her father, the second most powerful wizard at Arthur’s Folly.
Also by Karen Ranney
THE MACIAIN SERIES
In Your Wildest Scottish Dreams
Scotsman of My Dreams
An American in Scotland
THE MONTGOMERY CHRONICLES
The Fertile Vampire – Book 1
The Reluctant Goddess – Book 2
Pranic, Pregnant, and Petrified - Book 3
THE CLAN SINCLAIR SERIES
The Devil of Clan Sinclair
The Witch of Clan Sinclair
The Virgin of Clan Sinclair
Return to Clan Sinclair
THE SCOTTISH SISTERS
A Scandalous Scot
The Lass Wore Black
THE LOVED SERIES
My Beloved
My True Love
THE HIGHLAND LORDS
One Man’s Love
When the Laird Returns
The Irresistible MacRae
To Love a Scottish Lord
So in Love
THE TULLOCH SGATHAN SERIES
Sold to a Laird
A Highland Duchess
A Borrowed Scot
STAND ALONE NOVELS (HISTORICAL)
NOVELS SET IN ENGLAND
Tapestry
Above All Others
My Wicked Fantasy
Upon a Wicked Time
After the Kiss
NOVELS SET IN SCOTLAND
A Promise of Love
Heaven Forbids
Till Next We Meet
An Unlikely Governess
Autumn in Scotland
The Scottish Companion
The Devil Wears Tartan
A Scotsman in Love
A Scottish Love
STAND ALONE CONTEMPORARY NOVELS
Murder by Mortgage
The Eyes of Love
What About Alice?
NOVELLAS AND SHORT STORIES
The Greatest Gift
A Dance in the Dark
Scottish Brides
Flash Fables
The Unmentionables
About the Author
Karen Ranney wanted to be a writer from the time she was five years old and filled her Big Chief tablet with stories. People in stories did amazing things and she was too shy to do anything amazing. Years spent in Japan, Paris, and Italy, however, not only fueled her imagination but proved she wasn't that shy after all.
Now a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, she prefers to keep her current adventures between the covers of her books. Karen lives in San Antonio, Texas and loves to hear from her readers at [email protected].
For more information:
@Karen_Ran
ney
WriterKarenRanney
karenranney.com
[email protected]
