by Amy Lane
“I still have a tail,” he mumbled, embarrassed, and to his intense discomfort, the entire family walked around him to check out his posterior.
“I had no idea you had one before,” Harry said, sounding as delighted as a child. “Is that why the trousers?”
“What’s it look like?” Francis asked. “Can we see?”
“No you can’t see!” Mullins found he was laughing even as he felt the appendage through his the seat of his eighteenth-century pants. He was as delighted to be in the center of his family, no runes, no protective spells, no formality of the summoning circle, as he’d always imagined. “It’s… it’s short with a little tuft at the end—like a boar’s.”
“Could be worse,” Beltane said seriously. “It could be corkscrewed, like a piglet’s.” He giggled. “We’d totally make you show us that, you know.”
Mullins fought the urge to cuff the brat playfully. God, he loved these people.
“I’m afraid not,” he said shortly, some of the giddiness fading. “I think it’s there as a….” He frowned, feeling his demon magic pulsing under his skin. Leonard had been reborn with no magic at all. Emma had needed to gift him with some of her immortality, which was why she’d needed to put her power in the boys as familiars. Those sorts of spells tended to take everything, if there wasn’t some of it in a “bank.” Leonard had learned more since, and his knowledge from his time in hell was impressive, but he’d never reclaim the amount of power he’d had as a demon.
Mullins still had that power. And he still had his tail.
“It’s not over,” he said, feeling the beat of little minds searching for him even as he stood with Edward in the circle of his arms. “We need to finish the hex bags, complete the ceremony. This is… a reprieve, I guess. I’m not sure why or how, but someone wanted me to spend some time as a human being before I….” He thought about his cell, the constant fear, the screams that never got less awful. “Before I ret—”
“You’re not going back!” Edward snapped, and Mullins looked… not down. Mullins the demon was about a foot taller than Edward. Perhaps it was the beastly head.
“We’re the same height,” he said in wonder, not wanting to think about his life if Edward was wrong.
“Lucky bastard,” Harry muttered—Suriel was nearly a foot taller than him, still. “Edward, I know he’s yours, but let us all hug him before we do anything else. God, Mullins.” Harry’s voice cracked a little. “Edward’s a lucky boy—you’re damned pretty as a human.”
Mullins smiled at him, affection beating against his chest. He opened his arms, and Harry, Francis, and Beltane surrounded him, Suriel coming a little more slowly.
Like that, he went from being alone, to having his boy in his arms, to being in a circle of brothers. For that moment all uncertainty, all terror of going back, all fear of never holding Edward in his arms like a man—all of it disappeared.
For a moment he let joy glut his skin and the family he’d seen from a summoning circle claim him as their own.
IT WAS Suriel who felt Harry wobble, backing from the group hug to scoop him up in his arms.
“Dammit, Suriel!” Harry muttered, struggling to stand.
“You need to sit,” Suriel said implacably. “You need to rest. I’m excited Mullins is here too, but we’re going to sit down and finish this conversation so they can spend time together and you can sleep.”
Harry scowled at his beloved. “This is so not fair—”
Emma walked by and casually swatted him on the back of the head, even as he sat on Suriel’s lap. “Shut up,” she snapped. “You’d think I’d worry more about the one in love with the demon, but no. You’re still the one making me old before my time. Edward, Mullins, take a seat—Suriel is right. We need to talk about elves.”
“We have a plan,” Edward said excitedly—not sitting down and not releasing his hold on Mullins. “We thought about this—Mullins said that the fey were the children of the Goddess and the other—he’s the force of chaos. So we figured we’d go….” Well, they hadn’t really finalized this plan. “We’d go create chaos,” he said, deflating a little. “And see if we could attract their attention.”
Leonard and Emma stared at him. Leonard spoke first.
“God, he’s pretty. Don’t you think he’s pretty, Emma? I think our son is pretty.”
“So pretty,” she said, without even the trace of a smile on her face. “I’m just glad he can rely on his looks when so many resources seem to have failed him, aren’t you?”
Mullins felt the heat of Edward’s face as he pushed against his throat. “Maybe that wasn’t the best thought out thing we’ve ever done,” he admitted.
Mullins kissed his temple. “I don’t know—I’ve been watching you five going on this scavenger hunt for weeks now—you’d think if we were going to attract the attention of chaos, that would have done it.”
“Oh hell,” Emma muttered, and next to her Leonard smacked his forehead with his palm.
Mullins could barely spare them a look. “What?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get to it,” Emma said dryly. “First, sit. Mullins, can I get you anything to eat or drink? We all had breakfast before we… you know, called you into the living room, I guess. Do you need anything?”
Mullins thought carefully. “I’m not fully… human yet,” he said after he took a moment to monitor his functions. “I think I can eat, but it’s not necessary?”
Emma harrumphed. “I’ll be back with food,” she muttered. “Boys. Why boys? A girl would be like, ‘Starving, thanks!’ Boys think they can reform the world on a granola bar.”
“Harry would like something too,” Suriel said politely.
“I would no—”
“Harry, shut up,” Emma muttered. “I’ll be back.”
Mullins felt Edward shift and looked around for the couch. The two of them sat, and Mullins said, “Did she just leave the room so she didn’t have to talk about elves?”
Leonard allowed his mouth to twist up fondly. “She was a couple of hundred years old when she found me,” he said, “but she still likes to pretend that I’m her first.”
All four of the boys—Edward included—struggled upright.
“We did not just hear that,” Edward said, horrified. “Did we just hear that, Harry?”
“No, brother, we did not. Bel, Francis? Did we just hear that?”
“Christ no,” Bel said, prompt and resolute. “Francis?”
“Fuck no.”
As a unit they turned to Leonard. “You understand”—Harry spoke for all of them—“we did not hear that.”
“Of course,” Leonard said mildly. “Just saying that makes it so.”
Mullins didn’t like Edward sitting so far from him. He wrapped his arms around his waist and hauled him back, his very human warmth sinking into Mullins’s flesh, seeping into his sinews.
“How very possessive,” Edward murmured. “I had no idea.”
“You… I need to feel all of you,” Mullins whispered next to his ear. “I had forgotten—being human. How much you crave touch and warmth.”
“You,” Edward whispered, turning his head.
Mullins moved forward, ready to claim his mouth again, regardless of the onlookers, when Emma bustled back into the room with sandwiches on plates. She made sure Mullins and Harry were served first, but there was plenty for everybody, and given how short a time she’d taken to prepare them, Mullins had to wonder if magic hadn’t been involved.
“So,” she said, as though the pause had never happened. “Since we know running around attracting chaos doesn’t attract elves—”
Leonard cleared his throat.
“—and we’ll discuss what it attracted in a moment, let’s talk about elves.”
“Yes, dearest,” Leonard said wickedly. “Let us discuss elves.”
Emma cast him an arch look. “We were not together when that happened,” she murmured.
“No—and even if we had been, I wouldn’t have sto
pped it,” Leonard said surprisingly. “There are consequences for meddling with the will of the Goddess, and this is one of them.”
“Oh great,” Edward muttered. “Now they tell us about the Goddess.”
Emma ignored him. “I assume Mullins has briefed you—as far as he knows.”
Edward nodded—of course he’d briefed Harry and the others. “The whole thing sounds like a big ugly adolescent fight,” he said crossly. “God’s children do magic this way, Goddess’s that way, and he’s not speaking to her, and she’s going out of her way to avoid him, and all because….” He couldn’t finish that sentence while being sardonic—he just couldn’t.
“All because he wanted to make a blood sacrifice of their child to protect his people, and she refused.” Emma’s voice was firm. “It’s not a black or white issue, Edward—faith and sacrifice rarely are. But it’s not our job to debate the politics of the God and the Goddess—it’s our job to talk about elves.” Her face washed bright with color for no reason Mullins could think of. “We’re here to talk about Green.”
“The color?” Beltane asked blankly.
“No. Green the elf. They tend to have….” Emma smiled sweetly. “They tend to have names that reflect who they are. Green is simply growing and kind. He’s warmth and gentleness and the strength of an oak tree—or a lime tree. Green is his name—and it’s who he is.”
“Is he a king?” Edward asked eagerly, and she held out her palm.
“You need to listen,” she said, meeting his eyes. “This is important. Elves had one king, in England. For all I know, Oberon is still there, and his court is….” She shuddered. “Unhealthy. Green was fleeing from him, oh, about twenty years before I met Leonard—which was about twenty-five years before you boys came into our lives.”
Edward shifted in Mullins’s arms. “Eighteen fifty?”
“Mm-hm. Thereabouts. He had just come from England—and he brought with him two things. One was a shipment of fruit trees that he kept alive in the hold via pure fucking magic, as far as I could tell. He sold them for land and supplies, keeping a few to plant so he could sell fruit in the hard land. The other was a vampire—although I don’t think he’d been a vampire when Green met him. I think the young man chose that way of life so he could stay alive for Green.”
“So… immortal?” Harry asked.
Emma shrugged, her expression sad. “Ageless,” she corrected. “I… I understand that Adrian passed in battle, maybe five years ago. They loved each other fiercely—I can only hope Green survived.”
“Wait a minute,” Beltane burst out, surprising them all. “Elves? Vampires? You’ve spent our entire lives schooling us in magic and the arcane—how is it you’ve never once mentioned these things?”
Emma’s mouth quirked up. “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe because when I was young there was so much superstition around them, they were built up to be evil. As the ages passed, they were brushed off as child’s stories. They weren’t my field of study—I just didn’t feel as though I knew enough to verse you in them.”
“And she didn’t want you to know she spent a magic night with an elf,” Leonard said dryly.
“But I thought he loved a vampire?” Francis said, in a rare moment of curiosity. He hadn’t touched his tuna sandwich—he’d been listening to Emma’s story in rapt attention.
“He did,” she said with a quiet smile. “Elves aren’t often monogamous. They are, in fact, highly polyamorous—although I believe there are a few exceptions, Green couldn’t afford to be one of them. See….” She let out a sigh. “I met him in Sacramento, during the gold rush, and he was… well, so very bright and so very clever, but so out of his depth. He’d needed to leave Adrian behind on his mountain to guard it. By then, they had sort of an enclave of shapeshifters and a few vampires looking for peace and quiet, and even some local Goddess’s get and a few ex-pats, following in Green’s footsteps. He was, in fact, a little frantic. There were thirty or so people living on his hill, and some sort of land-rights bill had just been passed. He’d bought his land fair and square, but suddenly he had to file paperwork on it. He’d apparently seduced the first three assayers who came by to try to tell him the government wanted his hill, and he was a fair hand at fixing things—but he just didn’t understand the American hierarchy, was all.”
“Did he tell you all this?” Harry asked, puzzled. “I mean, he saw you were a witch and—”
She shook her head and bit her lip shyly. “I saw the ears,” she said, trying to mask a delighted smile. “He was wearing glamour. I was apparently the only person in the room who could see his ears, and the faint peach and green cast to his skin, and the way his eyes were too big and too wide set for a human’s. We were sitting in a pub, and one moment I was fending off advances, and the next moment I was looking on a dazzling man with long yellow hair who was most assuredly not human. He caught my gaze and smiled—it was a grand smile.”
Mullins looked around and saw that Emma’s sons had all put their hands in front of their mouths, hiding fond grins of their own.
“I helped him with the paperwork,” she continued, her eyes far away. “And we… talked.” She said it simply, like it surprised her. “I mean, there was the other thing—but that’s private. Mostly we just talked, and he was… kind. Very worried for his people—he already thought of them that way. His people. I looked at him and saw all of the dedication he had to keeping his lover, those people on his hill safe, and I told him he was already a king of the new world. And he got this… this odd smile on his face. Before I left the next day, he pulled three hairs off his head and wrapped them in a complicated knot, tied with thread. He told me since I was a witch, he knew things like this showed up in spells every so often, and he was grateful for the help. When it came time to free your father, I had them ready in my pocket.”
“So he wasn’t a king?” Edward said, like he was trying to keep things straight.
“Oh, but he was,” Emma said confidently. “His kingdom was very small at the time, but he was definitely someone who took care of his people. Someone who would sacrifice anything to keep them safe.” Her smile went nostalgic. “He was, in short, everything a good leader should be—if anyone could make themselves king by virtue alone, it would be Green.”
Edward, Harry, and Francis all snickered at the same time.
“I’m sorry?” Emma asked, affronted.
They shook their heads, still trying not to laugh. “It’s not you,” Edward said, trying hard to keep himself under control. I swear it’s not you. It’s….” He glared at his littler brother. “Francis, you snot—how could you project that!”
“I was thinking it too!” Harry howled.
Emma tilted her head. “Boys?”
Beltane shrugged at his mother. “I’m sorry, Mum. I heard what Francis thought at them, but I don’t understand what he meant.”
“Well, what did he say?” she asked, humor quirking at her mouth.
“It’s a spell,” Bel told her, still staring at the boy convulsing with laughter on his lap. “But I don’t get it. He said, May your many arms have enough work to amuse you, may you go somewhere you find no fear. May you inhabit a kingdom that values your worth, you furry brown drinkers of beer.”
Mullins’s eyes popped open.
He knew this. Edward had told him this story.
For once he was not the stranger called into the circle. For once he was in the circle, looking out.
Helplessly, he dissolved into laughter, Edward in his arms, as Emma and Leonard rolled their eyes and Beltane and Suriel demanded to be in the know.
Eventually the story poured out—Edward, Harry, and Francis all taking a sentence or two in the telling—and Emma closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Mullins knew from experience that never made anything go away.
“So, you sent the brownies to Green’s,” she said seriously.
“Can you think of anywhere else they’d go?” Edward as
ked, just as serious.
“No, no. I’m just… I’m impressed, is all. You didn’t even know who he was.”
“But we knew they looked to somebody,” Edward responded. “They wanted things to do. I mean… ten years, we didn’t have to clean a damned thing. I almost forgot how to hang up my own jacket.”
“And you little shits couldn’t have sent them to the kitchen once?”
“Sorry, Emma,” Francis mumbled.
“Sorry,” Edward seconded. They all looked to Harry, but in the space of a heartbeat, he’d fallen asleep.
Suriel stood, and all traces of laughter fell away. “So,” he said, situating Harry tenderly, head against his shoulder, in a way that belied the tremendous strength that apparently had not been stripped away with his wings. “Emma, I take it you know where this Green might live?”
“I do,” she said, eyes gentle on Harry.
“Two days,” he murmured, kissing Harry’s forehead. “Mullins, do you think we have that long?”
Mullins moved from Edward’s side and bent to pick the forgotten mirror up off the floor. In its frame, he could see his old cell, as still, quiet, and unchanging as it always had been. Nobody knew he’d gone. It hadn’t been a summoning; there hadn’t been a spell. He’d been simply scooped up, and the remaining demon trace of him was probably as faint as the last mark of it on his skin.
His tail twitched slowly—but it didn’t tingle.
“I think so,” he said, hoping this wasn’t just wishful thinking. “I… if you have wards, I suggest you set them up—”
Her soft laugh indicated the place had been warded since its inception. “Every drop of sweat, every tear, every bit of blood shed here, Mullins. Do not worry about our land—it’s wired to our flesh. If anything tries to get in, I can boomerang you and Edward where you need to go.”
“And us!” Francis demanded, sitting up suddenly from his perpetual sprawl over Bel.
“All of you,” she conceded. “I do understand that sending any but the full complement of Youngbloods will start a family crisis. But I think two days will be fine before you all drive there. If nothing else, it will give us time to purchase a new—” She sighed. “—minivan. Anyway, Edward. The original cabin, yes? Since yours isn’t close to finished?”
