“What are you doing?” Darla was suddenly angry. “Get off of him. You belong to me.” She pushed her magic into me, the painful excruciating magic.
I fought it off. I peeled it back, like pulling away one finger of her fist at a time.
She shrieked in rage.
I shot our magic at her—the white-hot bolt of it.
But my aim was still shit.
It hit just next to her, pulverizing another piece of the wall, a piece right next to the door.
Darla used magic to yank me off of Lachlan.
Didn’t matter. I had his blood in me. The power was there now. Dragon and vampire mingling together within my body. I suddenly remembered the old book that I’d read. The stories about blond bonded couples. Whiteflame. I could feel it blaze bright, and I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I could only contain this much inside me for a short time.
So I gathered it all up and threw a bolt of it at Darla.
It caught her right in the chest and she writhed there, stuck by it. It should have reduced her to ash, but she was so powerful that it only knocked her out. When the bolt stopped, she hit the floor in a heap.
I waited for a minute, waited for her to move, to speak. She didn’t.
I crawled over to Lachlan. I touched his face.
His eyes fluttered.
“Lachlan?” I whispered. “You okay? You awake?”
He groaned. “Awake, yes. Wish I wasn’t.”
“Do you need blood?” I asked. I had just taken his. Had that weakened him?
He forced himself into a sitting position. “No, I’m okay.”
Movement.
My head snapped up to see that the men we’d shut out before were coming back into the room through the hole in the wall that we’d pulverized.
They clutched at their talismans.
I summoned my fire magic, breathed a ball of fire at them.
They ducked. They swerved. They kept coming.
I got to my feet. “Stop where you are unless you want us to do to your heads what we just did to that wall.”
The men faltered.
I reached down for Lachlan. He gripped my hand. I tugged him to his feet, using magic to bolster myself.
“We just want Ms. Tell,” said one of the men. “Let us come and get her, and—”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Darla Tell is a murderer, and she needs to answer for her crimes.” I pointed at her body, and it floated into the air.
“You can’t take her,” said the man.
I gripped Lachlan’s hand, making sure I could still touch our whiteflame. I addressed the men. “I gotta warn you, we don’t have the best aim when it comes to this power, so you might want to duck.” And then we unleashed another bolt of the fiery power.
It blew over the men’s heads, singeing their hair, taking out chunks of the ceiling.
The men all yelled, falling to the floor, covering their heads.
I started for the exit, still holding onto Lachlan, Darla’s body floating behind us. “We’ll be leaving now. Don’t try to stop us.”
No one did.
* * *
Christiane Dirk, the detective from Baltimore, was sitting at Lachlan’s old desk. She’d transformed it into a shrine to a pair of collie dogs, whose names were apparently Lala and Booboo. I could see that because the pictures had engraved frames. She surveyed us all, making a tent of her fingers. “I don’t know what to say, I have to admit.”
We’d met Jensen, Felicity, and Connor at the station about ten minutes ago. According to them, Caleb was already being transported to Roxbone, where he’d be locked up for good.
“You saw the video,” said Lachlan.
“Have you seen the video?” said Dirk.
“Well, actually…” I said.
Dirk pivoted and grabbed her mouse. Her computer screen sprang to life. She hit play on a video window that was up on her screen.
The video was grainy. It showed Alastair, standing in his cell. He was shouting at Darla, who was outside the cell, but there was no sound.
Alastair threw himself at the bars. They came to life, sparking. They were so bright that they whited out the entire image for several moments.
When the picture came back, Alastair was in dragon form. He was outside the cell somehow. Darla her hand inside his chest.
I’d never seen such a thing.
She yanked her hand back.
Alastair-the-dragon fell down on his side, not moving.
Dirk paused the video. “That’s about it. She leaves him there, and then she has some people come in and drag his body out.”
“Really?” said Lachlan. “But no one knew what had happened to him. Were they all lying?”
“She compelled them to forget,” I said. “I heard her say something like that earlier.”
“I don’t know if this is enough,” said Dirk.
“At the very least, you see that Lachlan and Penny are not guilty,” said Connor.
“Is Cooper dead?” said Dirk. “He’s not moving. That doesn’t mean he’s dead.”
“It matches the coroner’s estimate for time of death,” said Lachlan. “It’s done with magic, like the coroner thought. It adds up. It wasn’t us.”
Dirk pursed her lips. “Okay, I guess it wasn’t you. Still, I don’t know if it’s enough to arrest this Tell woman.”
“She’s already in police custody,” said Lachlan. “Doped up and heading for Roxbone. We better find something to charge her with.”
“No, I get that,” said Dirk. “That’s why I sent some uniforms out to that Order place to check it out. Look for more evidence.”
“You did?” I said.
“We thought it would be a good idea,” spoke up Felicity. “We thought you guys could use the help. It was before you showed up with Darla.”
“You probably sent those cops to their deaths,” said Lachlan. “Get them on the horn and tell them to back off.”
Dirk furrowed her brow. “What? You serious? We need evidence to hold her. You get that right?”
“You have a video of her murdering him,” said Lachlan.
“Obtained by an officer on suspension,” she said. “Maybe if I had the testimony of the people who helped her move the body—”
“No, they don’t remember,” I said. “She compelled them.”
Dirk rubbed her temples. “This is crazy. I’m not even sure I’m following this. You’re saying that Darla Tell killed Alastair, but that… his soul jumped into her body? Like that bad Friday the 13th movie, where Jason was possessing people?”
“Not his soul,” I said. “Not exactly. I think she stole his power, but that she got some of his memories and personality at the same time.”
“Oh,” said Dirk sarcastically. “Well, that makes it better, then.”
“Don’t you have stuff like this happening in Baltimore?” said Lachlan. “You know, since you have a whole magical creatures unit?”
“We mostly deal with turf wars amongst drake gangs,” said Dirk.
“Which reminds me,” said Lachlan, “why are you still here? I thought you were just in town to investigate this case. After we were arrested, wasn’t your job done?”
“With you on suspension,” said Dirk, “they needed someone to do magical creature duty. I was available.” She picked up a walkie-talkie off her desk. “You really think that the men I sent out there are in danger?”
“Very likely,” I said.
Dirk pressed a button on the walkie-talkie. “Unit Twelve, report in.”
“Copy that,” came a voice from the walkie-talkie. “Can you verify the address?”
“Uh…” Dirk looked at us.
Felicity rattled off the address of the Order.
“You get that?” said Dirk.
“Yeah,” said the walkie-talkie. “You sure that’s right? Because there’s nothing here but an empty lot.”
My heart sank. The Order was gone? I knew, from the way that I had touched the magic that h
eld the place together, that it was possible for them to simply pick up stakes and go. But I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.
“That the right address?” said Dirk.
“They’re gone,” I said.
“Gone?” said Connor.
I nodded. “They can do that. The Order is more powerful than anything we could even imagine. They’ve decided to leave.”
“So, they’ve just abandoned Darla?” said Lachlan.
“Looks like it,” I said.
“So, no more evidence to be had, that it?” said Dirk.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Dirk shook her head. “I hope it’s enough to arraign her, Flint. I hope it doesn’t all get thrown out in trial because of your bias looking into this case.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
But as it turned out, it didn’t matter, because Darla confessed.
Once locked up in Roxbone, cut off from all her magic, she was immediately contrite about the entire thing. She cooperated fully, and apparently felt so guilty, she thought she needed to be punished.
I even got a note from her a few weeks later.
Sorry I got so carried away, it read. I really never meant to hurt you. I had the best of intentions, but they didn’t pan out. Please forgive my ridiculous threats there at the end. I don’t know what came over me. I would never actually hurt your child or your boyfriend. I do hope you can forgive me. I would like to be friends someday.
I wasn’t sure that I trusted anything she said. And I certainly wasn’t going to be her friend.
More time passed, and there was no word from the Order.
Lachlan went back to work. I got my network password reinstalled on the SCPD computers.
Connor helped Brian find an apartment, and the two remained friends. Connor said he still thought Brian was attractive, but he wasn’t sure if anything else would ever happen between them, not after all they had been through together. So, that meant that he was still single. But he was hardly lonely. It was the middle of summer in Sea City, and there was some hot tourist leaving the gargoyle’s room nearly every other day.
Before I knew it, the pregnancy was nearing its halfway point.
My stomach was actually rounded now. It stuck out a little bit and looked pregnant. I liked that, and I spent lots of time rubbing my belly, patting my little guy reassuringly.
He was moving around, and I could feel him kicking and doing somersaults.
If Lachlan and I shared blood, we could feel him reaching out for us, feel his love for us.
I had my twenty-week sonogram scheduled, and Lachlan and I went to the visit pretty excited. The only other sonogram I’d had, at eight weeks, had basically just looked like a blob. Now, the baby was bigger, and we’d be able to see the little guy.
“So,” said the ultrasound technician to us, when she came into the room. “You two excited to find out the sex of the baby?”
“Oh, we already know,” I said. “There was a blood test earlier on.”
“Excellent,” said the technician. “Then we’ll just be looking to make sure everything’s going okay, then.”
“Going okay?” I said, my heart suddenly in my throat.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “We just need to check that the development is on track, look at all the major organs, that kind of thing.”
I nodded.
She gestured to the cot next to the ultrasound machine. “You want to hop up here and pull up your shirt?”
Taking a deep breath, I did.
Lachlan was next to me, holding my hand. “Hey, stop it. Nothing’s wrong.”
I looked up at him with wide eyes. I couldn’t help worrying. There was so much about this baby’s conception that was abnormal. And he already seemed different than other children. More advanced. And that was beside the point, considering all my miscarriages.
He squeezed my hand.
The technician began rubbing warmed jelly all over my belly. The way I understood it, they warmed the jelly so that the baby wouldn’t be scared away from the coldness. It felt a little funny, and there was a lot of it. I wondered if it was going to be easy to get off my skin.
The technician looked at Lachlan. “If you want to see, you’ll probably get a better view from here.” She pointed.
“Oh,” said Lachlan, letting go of my hand, and moving down next to the technician.
Wait a second. I was not going to have a good view from my position? Seriously? Who had designed this room?
But then the technician put the wand on my stomach, and I craned my neck to see the screen. It looked like nothing but darkness.
That was the inside of my body. Weird.
“Hmm…” She moved the wand around. “Where are you, little one?”
Come out, I coaxed the baby, feeling a little frantic.
And then there was a little hand, right in front of the wand. I could see it perfectly, all five perfect, tiny fingers. I gasped.
“There we go,” she said, adjusting, and the whole body of the baby came into view.
Tears filled my eyes. I could hardly believe how easy it was to see him. Sure, it was a sonogram image, so he was all white, and the image went through his skin, so it was possible to see his bones, so it wasn’t a perfect image. But it was crystal clear, no need for the technician to point out where his head was or his feet. He was moving around there, wiggling and flailing. He was beautiful.
Lachlan grinned at me, and his eyes were shining.
“Looks good so far, folks,” said the technician. “And, yup, right there. That’s a boy, all right.”
I giggled.
“I’m going to go in and look at his organs,” said the technician. “Then I’ll get some shots for you to take home for Grandma, okay?”
“Okay,” I said softly, even though this little guy didn’t really have much in the way of grandparents. My parents were gone, and Lachlan didn’t really seem in contact with his. Still, we had a family to show these pictures too, my own little motley bunch of people that I cared about.
I was excited about that.
* * *
“So, I have pictures now,” I said, spreading them out all over the table behind the pool that night.
“Ooh, let me see,” said Connor, grabbing for them. “I am putting these all over Facebook.”
“Don’t do that,” said Felicity, slapping at his hands. “The child’s not even born and there’s going to be pictures of his penis all over the Internet?”
I laughed. “There’s really only one penis shot.” I pointed.
Felicity and Connor crowded over it.
I laughed. “The blood test already revealed it was a boy, guys.”
Connor pointed at the picture. “So, that’s it right there?”
“That’s it,” I said. “These sonogram pictures are so clear these days.”
Felicity snatched the picture away from Connor. “Let me see.”
“I find it vaguely disturbing that both of you guys are so interested in my son’s genitals,” I said, laughing.
“I’m not interested,” said Felicity, throwing the picture back at me. “Way to make it sound horrible, Penny.”
I laughed harder.
“You’re awful,” said Felicity. “Here I am, spending all my time planning this baby shower for you, and you’re not even grateful. You’re just sitting here saying horrible things.”
I forced myself to stop laughing. “I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re horrible.” I picked up another of the sonogram pictures. “I just like some of these other ones better. Look, here you can see his little toes. He has tiny, tiny toes!”
“Oh!” Felicity grabbed for that picture. “Oh, Jesus, Penny, he’s perfect. I’m going to start crying.”
“I cried,” I said. “During the sonogram, I totally cried. I think Lachlan got misty-eyed too.”
“Seriously?” said Connor. “That is so hot that he’s all sensitive like that. Fucking A, Penny, you are the luckiest woman in
the world to have that man. He’s like beautiful and honorable and sensitive and the shoulders on him? Have you seen his shoulders?”
“Stop lusting over my baby daddy,” I said, sticking my tongue out at Connor.
“Can’t help it,” said Connor, shrugging.
“But you’re right,” I said. “I am lucky. I’m really lucky.”
“Whatever,” said Felicity. “The way I see it, it’s just the scale balancing a teeny bit in your favor. You’ve been through hell, Penny, and you deserve to be a little lucky. Hell, the universe could make you a lot more lucky, and it still wouldn’t pay up the debt of all the crap you’ve been through.”
“Everybody has tragedy, though,” I said. “We just have to keep going in the face of it.”
“Damn, you’re getting all deep,” said Connor. “Give me the toe picture.”
I picked up another picture. “This one has toes too. And fingers.”
“Oh man,” said Felicity. “You’re growing a little person in there.”
“And when he’s born,” said Connor, “you can leave him with me while you and his daddy go solve crimes.”
“At night, I am totally taking you up on that,” I said. “But you’re not going to be much of a daylight nanny, I’m afraid.”
“True,” said Connor.
Felicity backed away from the table. “Don’t look at me. I will love this baby because it’s yours, Penny, but I’m not the least bit maternal.”
I laughed. “Noted. Well, we’ll figure something out.”
“This is going to be good, isn’t it?” said Felicity, musing. “A little one around here? It’s going to be really, really nice.”
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