by Holley Trent
He growled, having one mind not to answer, but did anyway. Marion did like butter pecan. He wouldn’t want her to miss it.
• • •
“Momma, what do you know about Charles’s mother?” She handed her grandmother two more clothespins and nudged the basket of wet linens with the side of her foot.
Momma draped a fitted white sheet over the line and bobbed her shoulders in the slightest shrug. “Probably not much more than you. I saw a picture of her once, though. Charles had a copy on his old phone. I wonder if he transferred it over to the new one.”
“What did she look like?”
“Why?”
Marion rested a hand atop her belly and nudged the baby’s foot from her sore right ribs. Maybe she shouldn’t have had the second cup of coffee. The girl was wriggling all over the place today. “Just curious. He told me a little bit about her yesterday here, and then some more at the cookout. I think he was going to tell me more but then we got interrupted by all those excitable Wolves.”
“Yeah, they’re funny that way. Damn good time, though. They throw a hell of a party. I was hung over for two days after the last one.”
“Momma!”
“What?” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve got a young body and get a wild hair to do stupid shit and reenact the olden days every now and then. Sue me.”
“I wish he hadn’t run off last night. We can never finish a damn conversation. Julia brought us back, Claude showed up from God-knows-where, and then they were gone again.”
“Probably got a call from one of their siblings in peril or something. I swear, them kids get in more trouble than—”
Bang-bang-bang-bang!
Marion turned toward the echoing woods beyond the two acres of meadow and squinted into the far-off trees. “What’s that noise?”
Momma blinked. “Maybe it’s a woodpecker or somethin’. We’re in the sticks. What do you expect?”
Marion cocked her head to the side and felt in the cloth sack for two more pins. When the sound didn’t repeat, she grunted and handed off a pin. “Maybe so. It’s just that it sounded more manmade than natural. Didn’t you notice?”
Momma fixed a clothespin at the corner of a kitchen towel and shook her head. “Live here long enough and you learn how to block out the background noise. It’ll drive you nuts if you go trying to catalogue every little sound. Relax, baby girl.”
Marion huffed. “I am relaxed.”
“What’s with the sour puss?” Momma took the clothespin bag from her and grabbed out a handful of pegs.
“I bet you know. If Charles’s mother was demigoddess, does that make him a demigod?”
Momma’s face went stony. “Why do you care?”
“You’re trying to distract me with backyard psychoanalysis. I’m not going to vent my spleen for you. I asked you a simple question, and I’m sure you know the answer. You said it yourself. He and the boys are the closest things to grandsons you’re ever going to get.”
Rolling her eyes, Momma turned back to the line. She bent and hauled one of the bathroom rugs out of the basket. “Of course I know the answer. I know everything, just short of the meaning of life. That doesn’t mean you should know it, too.”
“And why not? I’m not a child. I’m twenty-five years old and am eternally bound to a demon or two. That doesn’t give me the right to know some simple truths? If he’s a got fallen angel for a father and had a demigoddess mother, how did he get stuck with boring-ass me?”
Bang-bang-bang-bang!
There it went again. The echoes coming from the woods didn’t sound like bird beak against knotty pine. It sounded like fist against metal.
Clenching her teeth, she growled out some wordless frustration and ducked beneath the clothesline. Peering toward the treeline, she asked again, “What is that?”
“Cool your jets, little girl. Sound travels out here. Could be someone a mile away fixing their roof or something.”
Marion wasn’t sure if she believed her, but she let the subject drop. She’d have better luck squeezing blood out of a rock. Besides, she had other ways of getting information. Julia was probably at home, and when Julia got bored, she liked to talk. Sometimes, she forgot she was keeping secrets, and Marion hated to exploit the poor dear that way, but she’d had to become mercenary. Everyone else around her was, so why not her?
“Why don’t you go get off your feet? Your ankles look about as swollen as mine did before your kid’s grandpa turned me into this hot young thing.” Momma batted her eyelashes and fanned herself like a coquette.
Marion propped her fists on her hips. “Speaking of that, you let that guy get close enough to touch you and walked away better for it. I want to know about the woo-woo magic knife and what you did with it to freeze that guy up.”
“Why?”
“In case I need it.”
“Going somewhere?”
“Maybe.”
“Then no.”
Marion stomped her swollen foot and didn’t care if she looked bratty. “Why not? You afraid I’m going to use it on Charles?”
“No. That’s serious magic to be messing around with for what amounts to a mere lover’s tiff. I won’t teach it to you right now for the same reason it took me a year to teach it to Ariel. You’ve got to temper your righteous indignation with wisdom, because sometimes, too much knowledge makes people reckless.”
“I’m not going to go looking for a fight, Momma. I just want to be able to protect myself. I even left my own frickin’ knife in my truck. God, I had that thing since I was nineteen and that thing had a beautiful grip.” She sighed.
Momma rested her hand atop Marion’s shoulder. “The woo-woo magic knives are called athames. They’re not hard to come by, but you need to be deliberate with them. They’re not toys, not your typical knives. I’ll get you one.”
“Really?” Marion imagined she must have been grinning like a lunatic.
“After you wean that baby.” Momma poked a finger at Marion’s shoulder. “And don’t go rushing that. I know you want wandering room, and you’ll get it. Just be patient and let Charles do what he has to do. By the time the boys are done cleaning up, no one with ill intent will come within a mile of you.”
Marion opened her mouth to rebut, but Momma nudged her jaw up.
“Go get off your feet. I’m making sandwiches for lunch with that really thick country bacon you like.”
“With mayo and lettuce?”
Momma patted Marion’s head, turned her, and gave her a little push toward the deck. “And those big juicy tomatoes. Maybe I’ll even fry them.”
“Sweet Jesus.”
Marion entered the house, ascended the staircase up to the house’s new second story, and plopped onto her bed. She’d just crossed her legs at the ankles and reached for the remote control when the front door downstairs creaked open and banged shut.
“Who this time?” She pulled an extra pillow behind her back and depressed the power button. Ten o’clock. It was probably too early for gossip mongering disguised as news, but she could probably stomach a bit of courtroom snark. She flipped back and forth between Judge Mathis and Divorce Court and finally settled on the latter.
“Oh, this ought to be good.” She tossed the remote onto the bed and rubbed her palms. “Baby-momma drama and devastating secrets. I wonder why that sounds familiar.”
Claude’s lilting voice climbed into her open window, and although she couldn’t hear the words precisely, she could tell he was out back with Momma. He must have brought someone with him. That wasn’t unusual. If a day went by when a stranger didn’t romp through the house, Marion would likely fear the apocalypse was upon them. But if Claude was back, did that mean Charles was back, too?
She tamped down the television volume and concentrated on the gregarious discourse outside.
Footsteps sounded up the stairs, and then continued down the hallway toward her room.
She smoothed wrinkles out of her shirt as a tentative knock shook her
door.
“Come in. I’m decent.”
The door swung in, slowly, and Charles poked his head in. “Hi.”
Marion straightened up and ripped her raggedy bandanna off her head.
Maybe that wasn’t a good idea. She patted her hair down at the edges. Her hair had been short so long, that she didn’t know how to negotiate this growing-out stage.
Why’d she care, anyway? It was just Charles, and she’d looked worse last night.
But why did Charles always look so put-together when she couldn’t even manage to pair off her socks? He pushed the door open for her to see his crisp white shirt rolled up at the forearms, khaki shorts that revealed toned, tanned legs, and boat shoes that looked to be at least slightly broken in.
As far as she knew, the guy didn’t have an actual home base, so where was he keeping that expansive wardrobe? Maybe he just snapped his fingers and a perfectly matched selection of clothes appeared for his inspection.
She drew in a breath and let it out, willing her anxiety to blow away along with that spent air. It was those damned butterflies again. “Hello. Believe it or not, I asked Momma where you disappeared to just a few minutes ago, and she more or less gave me a pat on the head and sent me away with the promise of food.”
He nudged his loose hair behind his right ear and nodded. “We told her we’d be back today, but couldn’t promise it. Maybe she didn’t want to make herself a liar. May I come in? Brought you something.”
“You did? What?”
“Be right back.”
He disappeared from the doorway. His heavy footsteps sounded down the stairs, and then up them again a minute later. He returned with an armload of shopping bags and a sheath of paperwork tucked beneath his right arm.
The bags he deposited at the right side of her bed. The papers, he smoothed against the dresser edge and shuffled into order.
“I know we haven’t talked about it, but I got in touch with an old friend of my mother’s—”
“Old as in ancient,” she interrupted. The little she knew about his mother was that anyone associated with her likely would supernatural, too. Oddly enough, she’d married a human man.
“Well, I don’t know if she’d like being called that, but yes. She’s nearly as old as Agatha. Minor goddess of childbirth not too many people call on nowadays, but she’d be thrilled to help with our—your delivery.”
“You’ve been giving thought to that?” Hell, she hadn’t even given it much thought since her last appointment, what, five months ago? She didn’t want to think about it, and as long as the baby was moving around, she didn’t fret.
If she thought too hard, she’d worry. She’d seen enough episodes of A Baby Story during her long confinement to scare her off the idea of all natural childbirth. If there were a way to zap the little girl out via teleportation before the first contraction started, she’d pay handsomely for the service. She was no wimp, but she preferred her pain to come in small doses.
“You being trapped in a hospital room for two days is out of the question, so you’re looking at a home birth.” His forehead scrunched and he cringed. “That is, unless you’d like the nuns to oversee the delivery.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Figured not. Anyway, even with me and my brothers and Julia nearby, if you went to the hospital you’d be a sitting duck. Wide open. Anyone could teleport in or out and grab you before we could take a step toward you, and I’m not willing to risk that. Out of the question.”
“Well, I don’t particularly relish the idea of someone else making decisions about my body. What if I want an epidural? Or to be knocked out completely? For all I know, this kid will try to claw her way out like that creature in Alien and if that happens, I don’t want to be awake to witness it. Just wake me up when it’s time to go home.”
His lips twitched at the corners, but somehow he managed to contain the laugh that had his shoulders shaking.
She was glad he found her amusing, but she wasn’t kidding.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, you’re entitled to that, and I’d want you to have it. I swear, even if it turns out to be a rather boring delivery. I don’t think any of the baby’s supernatural flavors are going to have her creating exits where none exists. Even if she had any power, she probably wouldn’t show signs of them until after puberty. Later, even. I was twenty. Anyway, I think what I have in mind for you would be just as good if you’re willing to give her a shot. She’s very unobtrusive. She’ll be there as much or as little as you need, and will make you comfortable.”
“Is she as good as the drugs?”
“I can’t answer that. All of the women I know who’ve called on her expertise gave birth before the advent of modern anesthesia.”
She opened her mouth to rebut, and he put up his hand. “I know. Will you talk to her at least? I think she’ll put you at ease.”
“Talking, I can do. I can’t promise beyond that. You may have faith in magic, but you all seem intent on completely shielding me from it. I can’t trust what I don’t understand or what I haven’t experienced myself.”
“You’ve experienced plenty of it, and probably didn’t realize it.”
Oh yeah. There had been that werewolf thing. That’d been pretty hinky. What had been stranger was all of them huddling around her like they were moths and she was the only light for a mile. She shrugged. “Like I said, I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” He looked down at the swath of papers he held, seeming to consider them, and tucked them into his back pocket.
“What are those?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he bent down to the bags on braided rug and picked up two. “Ariel said you’d like those.”
She reached for the handles and pulled, expecting the bags to be light given his deft handling of them, but they were heavy. She dragged them to the head of the bed and tipped them onto their sides. Paperback books spilled out, and Charles sank to his knees at the bedside, resting his elbows on the bed’s edge.
“She wasn’t specific, so I got all of them.”
“These are newer editions than the ones the library has,” she said, her voice a whisper as she thumbed through the glossy travel guides. Rome. Budapest. London. Tokyo. Buenos Aires. It’d be weeks before she got through them all. She read them like novels, pretending she was walking through the sites, seeing what the tourists saw, hearing the music of the land. She could only hope that if she lived long enough to see these places, that they’d live up to the standards set by her imagination.
“Thank you,” she said, piling them back into their bags.
“You’re welcome. Maybe I’ll take you to see those places in person soon.”
“And maybe someone will discover a cure for cancer.”
He sighed.
She put up her hands. “Sorry. You didn’t deserve it. What else did you get?”
“Ariel was very specific about these. No wiggle room. Sent me the item numbers and everything. Some jeans and pajamas and that sort of thing for you. Said you didn’t want to spend the money since you only had a few weeks of belly left.”
“She told you that, huh?”
“She said it was the absolute bare minimum I could do.” He rolled his eyes. “Marion, you can ask me for anything. I’m not going to tell you no, especially for minor things like this. You should be comfortable, and this is a drop in the bucket.”
She shook her head slowly. “I understand that you want to do stuff for me, but you need to understand that I’m used to doing stuff for myself. I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen, remember? I’ve never had a guy want to do anything for me, and, well, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re sort of obligated to assist me. You knocked me up. Obligatory gift-giving doesn’t exactly give me the warm-fuzzies.”
“I didn’t buy the things because you’re my child’s mother.”
She put up her hands. “Right. I know. I’m your—”
He tilted his head to the side the same wa
y Julia did. Shit, it was even cute when he did it. “My what, Marion?”
“Um.”
He edged closer and pressed a palm against the bed on either side of her thighs. Bending to her eye level, his breath tickled her face. His familiar scent flooded her nostrils, making her dizzy. She leaned back a bit to bring his bright eyes into focus.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she said and swallowed thickly.
What am I? “What am I?”
Was there an echo? No. Her, she was hearing things. It was like that banging in the woods. Her wits were just scattered.
“You heard that, didn’t you? I figured you would. That narrows down my list a bit.” He inhaled deeply, seemingly breathing her in, and stood up and away from her. He took two steps away and turned his back. “What about that time, did you hear me?”
What was he talking about? “Uh, no. I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Interesting. So it’s only when I’m close.” He turned back to her and resumed his former position at her knees. How about now?
She put her hands against his chest, pushed him back, and scrambled against the bed to put some distance between them. “Stop! How are you doing that?”
“I’m a psychic.” He shrugged, just as calm as he pleased. “The question now is, what are you, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I believe you. And by the way, you just touched me.”
No, she hadn’t, had she?
“I-I …” Heart racing, she clenched her hands into fists and pressed them against the covers as if that would take it back. “I didn’t, did I?”
She had. She’d pushed him.
“Oh my God.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said. He grabbed her wrists and kissed the undersides of them, one after the other one.
A delightful fluttering spiraled down her spine, and settled in at her gut. Gasping, she tried to pull her hands free, and he let her. “No, not all right! You’ll—”
“It’s fine,” he said, in a low, calm voice. He dropped to his knees in front of her and pressed his large hands against her thighs, rubbing up them slowly.
