by Amy Lane
Three wolves, their bodies only an abstract suggestion as they formed the base, pointed their muzzles at a distant moon and howled. One, delicate and female, was colored a rich, exotic burgundy. Another, the taller one, was a blue slightly paler than indigo. The third was a translucent forest green.
The silence went on so long that Teague got nervous. “So. Uhm. It’s okay?”
Katy started squealing in some arcane pitch that made Teague’s wolf cringe—but she launched herself at him with a lot of enthusiasm, so he figured it was a good thing. Jacky hugged them both, and it was pretty damned maudlin there for a minute—and satisfying. Pretty damned satisfying.
Teague looked over to where Cory was being presented with what appeared to be miles of strings of preciously formed, cut, molded, or carved beads, one bead at a time. She caught his eye over the myriad heads in the sitting room and smiled sweetly, then nodded to Green. Green looked up and excused himself. The two of them had been sitting for most of the morning, being gracious and kind and hosting Christmas with the aplomb of an Arthur and a Guinevere. Teague wasn’t sure if Jack or Katy had noticed that Bracken and Nicky had been in constant, subtle attendance—with glasses of water or soda or eggnog, and small finger foods for breakfast—since Cory and Green didn’t seem to have had time to sit at the table and eat. Teague figured they were too busy for a conversation, so he was surprised when Green nodded him over.
Cory was busy talking to the tiny sprites. She held a stiffened piece of string straight in front of her, and the smaller fey were coming up and presenting her with one bead at a time before placing it on the string. At her feet there were dozens of “necklaces”—she had been doing this for more than an hour.
“Thank you!” she said. Although her voice was rough, her enthusiasm was just as bright as it had been that morning when the werewolves had come out for the breakfast buffet that sat on the kitchen table and the breakfast nook and the surrounding counters. Cory nodded soberly at the latest tiny creature, who looked like a cross between a gerbil and a bluebird with surprisingly human arms under her wings. “It’s beautiful. It’s completely different and precisely perfect. I will think of you every time I see that bead!” The bead itself was hand carved, with tiny little loops etched into its sanded wood surface. It was truly one of a kind—but then, so was every one of what must have been thousands of beads she’d received that morning.
It didn’t make her sincerity any less real, though, and Teague felt a surge of affection for her. Everyone was special. Everyone was cherished. Every gift was just that. A gift.
She stopped for a moment and looked at the next supplicant. “Hold on just a minute, okay? I want to give it my full attention. Just give me a sec.” She smiled as she said it, and a very humanoid little fairy, holding a bead like a dewdrop from a spider’s web, bowed patiently and waited her turn.
Cory looked at Green beseechingly. “I don’t think there are many more,” she said.
Green grimaced. “Don’t be so sure, beloved. But don’t worry. I’ll spread the word that you need a break, and you can join us when the queue finishes up.”
Teague felt bad. “I can come back—”
“No no no!” Cory interjected. “It’s just that Katy and Jacky got clothes from us, but your gift is bigger. You need us to show it to you! I want to be there too!” She sounded distressed, and Green bent down and kissed her cheek.
“We’ll wait outside for you, right, beloved? Don’t worry. You’ll get a chance to see his face when he ‘opens’ it.”
Cory nodded anxiously and then grinned and flashed the charm bracelet Teague had asked Katy to pick out for her. His exact words had been “Something girly, but us.” Every tinkling silver charm was either a wolf in a different pose or the moon in a different phase.
“Thank you. Make sure you let Jack and Katy know I love it!”
Teague flushed and bowed and then allowed Green to lead him quietly outside. As they were walking, Green looked significantly at Bracken’s mother, a four-foot-tall, charmingly beautiful little pixie who both floated and walked with equal kittenish grace, and Blissa nodded.
“They can wait until tomorrow, Green. They’re quite aware that she’s getting tired.” Blissa’s wings were rainbow-colored when they were still enough to see, although her hair was decidedly purple, but she sounded as matter-of-fact as any mother Teague had ever heard.
“Thank you, Blissa. She’d make herself sick if we let her. Tell her we’ll be outside at the old barn, okay?”
Another pixie appeared with Teague’s battered denim jacket and a newer fleece-lined denim jacket for Green, along with a hand-knit scarf in green and gold. Teague looked at the scarf with his eyebrows raised. Cory had given him, Jack, and Katy fingerless mittens—the better to wear while turning into a werewolf without shredding the knitting. He was wearing his pair now—and the work was finer and far more practiced, as well as more complex, than the rough, simple scarf. Green caught the direction of his gaze and smiled fondly.
“It was the first thing she ever made.”
Teague wanted to blush just looking at Green’s expression. Love that clean and simple almost didn’t belong on earth. “She does good work” is what he said, and as he and Green slid outside into the refreshing December cold, he was grateful for that work. It kept his hands a hell of a lot warmer than his pockets, which was what he usually used.
Green took him walking down the landing and across the drive, their feet crunching in the gravel and then crunching on the frost-ridden lawn. The property in this direction was simply short-cut grass, although Teague had heard that after Christmas, Green would let the snow that usually fell in this area gather everywhere but the crown of the hill with Adrian’s garden. About two hundred yards from the house in the hill were a series of outbuildings—there were three of them—that looked like old barns or maybe converted garages. Green led Teague to the far one.
It had a big green-and-red bow and a ribbon wrapped around the entire building. A smaller plastic tube—the kind used to hold architects’ plans—also wrapped in ribbons and bows, leaned against the front door.
“Merry Christmas, Teague,” Green said quietly. “This is from my family to yours.”
Teague looked at the old barn and saw a good foundation. Green opened the smaller door next to the big double front door, and Teague saw neat stacks of lumber, drywall, plumbing supplies, and tools, as well as buckets of clean, shiny nails, drywall screws, and the assorted paraphernalia used to convert a big barn into a family home.
“Wow.” That was all he had. “Just… shit. Wow. I….”
“You don’t have to move in right away!” Cory called, running across the yard in her T-shirt, sleep pants, and bare feet. The door above the landing slammed—they could hear it from where they were—and Teague watched as a formless blur that must have been Bracken came zooming across the yard.
“Goddamn it!” Bracken swore, materializing and slowing down in time to pick her up and run her toward them. “I swear, it’s like you were sneaking out on purpose.” He set her down on the frost-covered ground and wrapped her black pea coat around her, adding in a hooded scarf for good measure, and then swung her up into his arms.
Cory glared at him and, in spite of the fact that she was in his arms, ignored him, concentrating on Teague instead.
“We had a couple of floor plans drawn up,” she said earnestly. “You and Jack and Katy can pick which ones you want. And everybody will help. Because you’re not going to be doing werewolf shit all the time, right? It’s just….”
Teague looked at Bracken for permission, and Bracken nodded so he could drop a kiss on his little sorceress’s cheek. “It’s just perfect,” he said gruffly. “They’ll love it. I love it. Thank you.”
Cory grinned at him, and Green came over and took her from Bracken. She didn’t protest, and Teague could detect an air of penitence in the way she raised her arms obediently in the transfer. “We’re really glad you’re here, Teague,” she
told him. “We’re really really grateful for you and your family. You don’t have to worry about reaching for stuff anymore. We want you to have whatever you want. We want you to be happy.”
Teague nodded, not able to find any words. “I am,” he said after a minute. “I am. Could you… could you send them out? I want to show them….”
He wanted to be alone for a minute, was what he wanted. He wanted to absorb and enjoy. He had a home. He had a family. He had a purpose. All the things he could have become, and he’d become this. It was almost more than he could bear.
Cory pulled him down into an awkward hug, and Green dropped a kiss on his hair, like a father. “We’ll send them out in a minute,” she said softly. “We’re glad you like.”
He gave a watery smile. “Don’t like. Love. Thank you.”
She grinned back. Then they turned around and left him there, wandering in the wonder of the raw materials with which to build the rest of his life. He was still there, trying to visualize how they would use the vast space of the cold barn, when Jack and Katy got out there and stood with him in the dark, smelling the raw lumber and the cold steel.
“It’s better than a blanket fort, right, Jacky?” Katy said, her voice a little bit lost in the awe of the gift.
“Who’s got a blanket fort?” Teague asked, sounding confused. Jack looked at Katy. He understood what she meant—Teague, thinking it could just be the three of them, not understanding that they had an entire hill of people who loved them enough to see them happy.
“Not us,” Jack said. Katy leaned her head on his shoulder, Teague pulled him in against his chest, and they stood there in the Christmas quiet and planned what their home would become.
Royal Betrayals
“YOU WANT to go where? How? Why?”
Teague had pulled me aside on the morning before New Year’s Eve. I’d picked up a teeny-tiny virus the day after Christmas. It was plenty easy for Green to heal me, which he did, but the resulting moratorium on me doing anything at all in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve had made me a little testy. I’d get to go running the day after tomorrow, and I’d been hoping Teague could join me, and, well, his request just didn’t make any sense.
“I need to leave the hill tomorrow, in the morning. I’d be back before dark. But I want to go alone, okay? Could you… I don’t know. Make up a reason for me to leave? Cover for me?”
Teague looked restless and unhappy to be asking me this, and I didn’t know what to tell him. He should be restless and unhappy to make a request like this. Of all the things to reach for, he wanted to reach for being alone?
“Can you give me a reason?” I asked, entertaining the thought of going along with him. It wouldn’t work. For one thing, nobody would let me out of the house, and for another, Bracken would have to come. Teague liked Bracken, but Bracken wasn’t Teague’s best friend. I was. It was flattering—and a terrible responsibility too.
Teague paced a little and looked around, seeing who was in the living room. Nobody, that was who. They’d all bugged out discreetly when he’d seen me knitting and walked in with that “can we talk” vibe radiating from him like a child’s fever. I’d actually breathed a sigh of relief. It was the closest I’d come to being alone since I’d awakened next to Bracken the day after Christmas—flushed, feverish, and coughing up a lung.
“I have this thing,” he said at last, blushing up along his Irish-pale neck and into his ears. “I…. Christ, Jacky doesn’t even know about this. I go up to Mokolumne Hill every year—and, well, let’s just say I give the old man the send-off he deserved.”
I blinked and swallowed, my throat suddenly sore and dry. “That’s a horrible-assed tradition to keep,” I said roughly. “That’s like us celebrating the time I almost died.”
“Maybe you’re celebrating the time you chose to live,” Teague said squarely, meeting my eyes with some resolve. I blushed and tried not to cough. Damn. Green leaves the hill for half a day and the damned virus tries to sneak back. I guess running in two days was right out.
“Maybe you need to start celebrating the day you leave all that behind you,” I said without dropping my eyes. “They’d want to be a part of that.”
Teague looked away, looked down at his battered working-man’s hands. He’d started roughing out the frame in the last week. Not too much work, because it was cold and we were still doing the holiday-vacation thing, but it had made him happy.
“They have to deal with my bullshit every day, Cory. Every fucking day, something comes up. Someone has to tiptoe around me, Jacky has to worry if I’m all right, Katy has to remind me I have a family now. It would be just a fucking miracle if I didn’t have to burden them with something this goddamned ugly, you know?”
I gave it up and released a cough, then glanced over my shoulder to see Bracken glaring at me from the doorway. “Tell me about it,” I pouted. “Teague, I’m the poster child for letting my mortal human bullshit get in the way. You want to know what I’ve learned from hard experience? I’ve learned that once you join hands and go skipping into the wild blue future with someone, they’re in it for the long haul, and they’re in it for the ugly and the clean. Asking them to go with you out to Mokolumne Hill will be the best Christmas gift you could give.”
I coughed again, and Bracken was suddenly at my elbow with a cup of honey tea he had apparently pulled fully heated out of his ass and put a hand on my forehead. “I’ll go get Lambent,” he threatened. “And then I’m calling Green.”
“It’s a cold, asshole,” I protested, leaning into that hand on my face in spite of myself. “Even mortal old me isn’t going to drop dead from a damned cold.”
Bracken seized my face in his hands and forced me to look into his pond-shadow eyes. “We’re in it for the ugly and the clean, beloved. You’d best learn to take what you dish out. Now, you stay here with that blanket on your lap and finish your little chat with the wolfman, and then you’re done. No audiences with sprites, no planning next semester, no nothing. We’re putting in movies, and you’re sitting in my lap like a good little mortal, and we’ll forget that you spent four hours this morning on the computer helping Grace with inventory without your slippers on, shall we? I’ll get you some tomato soup for dinner, and we’re done.”
I closed my eyes and felt his breath on my face. It sounded lovely. “Agreed,” I conceded, and he kissed me softly on the lips, because we both knew he wasn’t coming down with a damned head cold, was he?
He left, and I met Teague’s eyes ironically. “I think he just made my point,” I said mildly, and Teague shrugged, looking away.
“And I think you just made mine. No. It would be best if I do this alone.”
Ha! Like I was going to let that happen.
I had to sneak away from Bracken and Teague. I told them I was going to the bathroom and then to pick out some more yarn for a project, and managed to get down the hall and knock on the door to the werewolves’ shared room.
Katy was asleep already, curled up on her side in the dark of a lamp. She worked bakers’ hours—it didn’t surprise me. Jack was awake, and he answered the door in his sleep pants and a T-shirt, holding a book I was pretty sure he’d borrowed from me. He frowned when he saw me, because honestly, I’d been avoiding him since he’d all but rattled my teeth from my skull. But I tried not to be a coward about these things, so I put that aside.
“Hey,” I said quietly, standing in their doorway. “You need to know that Teague’s taking a trip tomorrow morning. He’ll probably try to sneak out after Katy goes to work and before you wake up. It’s fine if he goes, right, but, well. You may want to find a way to be with him.”
Jack blinked. “I’m surprised you’re not going,” he said. The tone of his voice made me suck on my teeth.
“I’m not his beloved, okay? You are. And if you want, I can help you sneak into his car, but only if you’re not a complete bastard to me in the meantime.” I masked a cough, because Green wouldn’t be back until later tonight
and I was still sick, and glared at Jack to force him not to make a big stinking deal about this.
Jack swallowed and blushed and made an effort not to be an asshole, then said, “What did you have in mind?”
The next morning, I made sure I was up before Teague, waiting in the breakfast nook as he came walking past the living room on his way to the stairs.
“Hey, Teague!” I kept my voice low. There was something about being up that early in the morning that made loud voices sort of obscene, especially when it was cold. It was like Mother Nature needed you to observe the sleep of the world with silence. He looked at me and pulled on the mittens I’d made him, then followed that up with the hat I’d finished for him the day before.
“There’s a picnic lunch down in the car for you,” I said, keeping my eyes on him and very carefully not watching as Jack ran down the stairs in his wolf skin. There was a change of clothes and Jack’s coat, gloves, and hat down there too, but I didn’t mention that. “And we replaced your cell phone and the charger, so don’t freak out. We also have a new contact out at Angel’s Camp. I put the number in your phone, so look for ‘Elm’ if you need to get a hold of anyone, okay?”
Teague nodded at me tersely, and I gave him an impromptu hug. Hopefully I’d given Jack enough time to get his clothes on. He’d have a better chance of staying in the car if he was fully clothed with boots and everything by the time Teague got down there.
“Don’t be afraid to reach for us,” I told him softly. “Don’t be afraid of how you’ve changed. It’s okay, right?”
His arms tightened around me, and I could feel the need in them. Not for me—for somebody while he did this. I thought maybe I’d done the right thing in sending Jacky down there. Teague could do this alone. He didn’t have to.
Teague kissed my cheek and turned silently toward the stairs to the underground garage, and I held my breath.
In about five minutes, I saw the lights from the Mustang as it crunched its way across the icy gravel drive, and then the house was as silent as it ever got. The vampires were still awake, but they were mostly downstairs in their own common room. I gave a little sigh of relief and made my way back to bed. Green was there, looking at me reprovingly from the edge of the bed, while Bracken continued to sleep, unaware I’d even left.
