by Holley Trent
They stopped in front of the library. Although the corridor was quiet, he could sense a great deal of distress from the inside. Tess. He put his hand on the door and pushed it open without responding.
He fucking hoped that wasn’t the reason Lora had run.
“We gotta go to the secret birth place,” Nadia said, running past him.
“What?” he called after her, but she was a red-haired streak, already halfway down the hall.
“Do me a favor and see where Tess’s men are,” she called back. “They’d gone out to Fallon to try to smooth things over with the elders there and were on the way back. Tell them her water broke and to get their asses back here on the double.”
Jody stood in a stupor for so long that Mallory had to give him a shove.
“Go,” she said laughing. “The princess is arriving.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jody
“I’m not surprised she’s pretty.” Jody settled lower in the chair beside Tess’s bed and adjusted the wriggling baby in his arms. She’d been named April after their mother. She’d probably go through life explaining to people why she’d been born in August and named April, but that wouldn’t be much worse than a boy being called Jody.
He smoothed down the soft tuft of dark hair over her right ear and pressed his booted foot against the bedrail. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d held anyone’s baby. In fact, the last baby he’d held might have been Tess.
Tess scratched around the IV needle inserted into the back of her hand and let out a yawn. “I’m glad she’s huge and that the doctor wasn’t bullshitting me about that.”
Ollie, hovering nearby and probably waiting for Jody to look away long enough for him to steal his child back, chuckled. “I did warn you, Tess.”
“You’re not getting more. One’ll have to suffice.”
“I think Harvey might disagree.”
“I meant one for you. He’ll get one, and then the shop’s closed.”
“I think that’s reckless,” Jody said. “Your family tree needs to be broadened. Remember?”
“My job isn’t to be a baby machine.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“Nan only had two.”
“Nan almost died giving birth to Mom.”
“I didn’t know that!” Appalled, Tess tried to sit up, but quickly abandoned the venture with a pained groan. Her epidural was obviously wearing off. “Thanks for waiting until now to tell me.”
“Figured you didn’t need any new stress.”
Tess narrowed her eyes at him. “And speaking of Nan and Mom…”
“Yeah?”
“That math doesn’t add up.”
Jody chuckled and let Ollie scoop April out of his arms. His eldest son Matt had just stepped into the room looking like he’d been blown in by a tornado. His short hair somehow managed to be standing on end and there were creases on his face as if he’d been sleeping since June.
“Yikes,” Tess said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Matt said, arms already extended for the baby.
“You look like I feel.”
“You’re justified. I only got here this fast because Perry and I were in Texas. Been scouting out places to relocate all those fairies abandoning the realm.”
“Where’s Perry?” Ollie carefully set April into her brother’s arms.
Jody gave up his chair for the young man and retreated to the other side of Tess’s bed.
“In the hall,” Matt said. “You know how he is. He probably won’t come in unless you force him to. I think he’ll be afraid to transmit germs to April by mere proximity.”
“Yeah, that sounds like Perry,” Ollie said. “That guy’ll never change. I’ll go talk to him. While I’m doing that, your stepmother can tell you all about how she’s not giving you any more siblings.”
“Ollie, I’m going to—” Tess couldn’t get the whole threat out. Ollie had already left and closed the door.
Fortunately, Matt was too smart to broach the subject. Also, he was too busy examining the little fingers April had peeking out of the top of her blanket.
“What were you saying about Nan and Mom, Tess?” Jody asked her. She was looking on to Matt and April with something akin to adoration. Tess wasn’t a lady who was prone to demonstrating much outward softness. She’d trained herself as a child in the foster care system not to give up any emotion because people would use it against her. The longer she was in Norseton, though, the freer she was with showing it.
At first, she’d had a contentious relationship with Ollie’s older son, but Matt had gotten over himself once he’d understood what Tess meant to Ollie, and also understood Tess in general.
“Nan’s around seventy,” Tess said, still watching Matt.
“Yep.”
“Keith is thirty—”
“Okay.” Jody silenced her before she could get the rest of that age out. He was no spring chicken. He knew exactly what she was getting at.
She tapped her chin contemplatively. “Now, I know I missed a lot of school as a kid as I was being bounced around in foster care, but my math says that someone—or someones—started having babies much earlier than I did.”
“Yeah.” Jody lifted his hat and raked his fingers through his unruly hair. “Thing is, we don’t really talk about it. I mean, there’s a community knowledge of it—there’d have to be—but now, for the most part, no one thinks about it.”
“Who was it? Nan or Mom?”
“Mom. She had Keith at fourteen. I assure you, no one thought she was capable of that kind of scandal. She was the kind of kid who was afraid to sneeze too loud for fear of frightening someone.”
“Shotgun wedding, then?”
“Nah. Dad didn’t have anyone who’d sign off on the marriage license for him. He was sort of in between here and Fallon at the time. His parents were dead. He was kind of a drifter. He and Mom didn’t get married until after they had me.”
“I hope they actually liked each other. Fourteen is really young to find the love of your life.”
Jody shrugged. “We’re Afótama. Shit doesn’t work the same way with us. You know if you’re supposed to be attached to someone.”
“That’s true. Well.” She burrowed beneath the covers, cringing a bit as she did. “I always worry that I’m sullying her memory by being a depraved reprobate, so it’s nice to hear sometimes that she wasn’t absolutely perfect.”
“I think she would have thought you’re doing just fine. You’ve got a lot of Dad in you. She couldn’t love him and not love you.”
“Thanks.”
He shrugged again. “I hate to rush out of here, but—”
Tess waved a dismissive hand in his direction and closed her eyes. “Go. For this place to be such a secret, I seem to be swarmed with well-wishers. I know Harvey’s out there entertaining folks. Who else is here?”
“When I came in,” Matt said, “Perry was out there with Harvey. Lyman slowed down long enough to give me a hug and then he said something about picking up a pizza order. Nadia’s lounging with Jeff, and there’s a couple of wolf guards out there, too. Oh. And Ótama, Mrs. Hall, and Great-Aunt Maggie.”
“So, everyone except Keith, basically,” Tess said.
“Yep. And just so you know…” Matt grimaced. “Heath and Simone are on the way in with Thom.”
“As if I could stop Heath from meeting his cousin.”
“True, but you know how fairies are. They make a big deal out of births because they don’t have many of them. April may only be a quarter Sídhe, but given her legacy, she’s an important little kiddo.”
Tess yawned again. “She’s a squirmy little pink fragile thing who sleeps in a blanket burrito. Let’s not go full Rafiki on her and present her to the heavens, okay?”
Matt blew a raspberry.
“Love you, kid,” Tess said.
“Love you, too, Queenie,” Matt said.
Jody kissed the top of his sister’s head, waved to them all, and left th
e room. As entertaining as the extended family could be at times, they could be just as distracting, and he potentially had his own baby to worry about.
He passed Ótama in the bunker’s long corridor, calling out to her, “Getting back to work. I’ll return in a bit.”
“Wait.”
He stopped and turned to face her.
She lifted the hem of her long dress and hurried over to him. She always looked like such a cartoon princess when she ran, especially with those bright eyes and all that hair she kept twined in a knot just behind her left ear. “What are you keeping from me?”
Swallowing hard, Jody shifted his weight and pondered lying. He didn’t want to get the excitable woman worked up over nothing. “What do you mean?”
“You know something about Lora. Why are you not telling me? Why do you try to hide things from me?”
“I’m not. It’s just… It’s just hearsay, okay?”
“But it’s distracting you. I can tell.”
“I think it’d distract anyone,” he said softly. “Mallory said she saw Lora coming out of the midwifery hall at the clinic a couple of times. It’s not like I can go ask the lady what she was seeing Lora for.” Though he’d certainly been about to try to get some information from her, anyway.
“Why can’t you?”
“Because of medical ethics and probably the law. Unless Lora indicated in her paperwork that I could get access to that information, then…” Jody let his statement trail off upon noting the well? expression on his forebear’s face.
“That would be a clue in and of itself,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
He nodded and got moving again.
“You’ll tell me what you learn?” she called after him.
“Yeah, I will. The moment I learn it.”
“Oh! Dear one? It’s after midnight. Perhaps you should wait until morning?”
He stopped yet again. Annoyingly, she was right. With the day being so busy, he’d lost track of time. The clinic wasn’t going to be open and he certainly wasn’t going to go shake the midwife out of her bed for questioning.
“I’ll wait,” he called back and moved at a slower gait than before. “But for now, I’m heading to Lora’s. There has got to be something there I missed.”
“I was wondering when you’d show up.” Jackie, the midwife, straightened her glasses the following morning and pushed a file folder across her desk to Jody.
“Were you, now?” he snapped.
If Jackie were at all perturbed by his hostility, she didn’t show it. “Mm-hmm. I suspect Lora has her reasons for everything she does. What made you think to come to me? Didn’t believe her?”
“Lora didn’t tell me. I haven’t seen Lora since last week.” That wasn’t completely unusual for them. Jody had been in deep stealth mode for days hunting bogeymen with his uncle and Lora didn’t tend to want to bother him when he was working away from the compound. They weren’t phone people. They were we’ll-catch-up-when-I’m-back people. “She’s gone.”
The smug smile the woman had been wearing immediately fell off. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Like, fuckin’ bounced, excuse my French.” Jody lifted the top of the file folder and scanned down the top page to the pregnancy confirmation and estimated due date. He turned the page and read the next one, too. “She went off her birth control?” he murmured.
“Mm-hmm. I take it you didn’t know that either.”
“Nope.” He kept flipping pages, looking for any other information that might be useful.
“I have to ask. Are you…upset?”
“About the birth control and baby thing? No. Oddly enough, that implies intent which makes me feel better in a sick way.”
“Care to explain?”
“Not particularly.” Things still didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to him. It didn’t seem likely that she’d run in fear of the role the baby might potentially have to play as an adult if she’d gotten pregnant on purpose.
And she would have had to know that at some point, he was going to try to find his child. Once he or she started puberty and started sending off psychic pings, Jody would likely be able to home in, the same way the Petersen sisters were sensing their half-brother.
Contemplating, he drummed his fingers atop the desk. “When was her next appointment supposed to be?”
“Not for nearly another month. When did she leave?”
“Sometime in the past three days. That’s all I know. I was out of town around that time. She left a note. We have no idea where she is.”
“That doesn’t sound like Lora.”
“Yeah, that seems to be the consensus.”
“I hope wherever she is, she’s getting her prescriptions filled. Poor thing couldn’t keep much of anything down. I had to prescribe her something for nausea.”
“Do me a favor. If she calls in—”
“I know.” Jackie put up her hands in a gesture of defeat. “If she calls, I call you.”
“Thanks.” Jody moved to the door but before he could cross the threshold, she said, “Oh, wait. Here’s a copy for you. Lora scooted out of here before I could tuck that into her purse.” She slid a square envelope across the desk. Printed in neat hand at the top was Moller, L.
As he headed toward the street, he ran his finger under the flap and wriggled it free.
Seeing the black-and-white images in the packet, he stopped again, and carefully slid them out.
“Ótama?” he projected hesitantly as he leafed through them all and read the ultrasound tech’s terse notations on them.
“Yes, dear one?”
“She’s…having a girl.” A little girl. Exactly what the clan needed, and she didn’t even know.
“Well, of course she is. The question now is where will she be having her?”
“What if I can’t find Lora? I don’t want to wait until this child starts puberty to find them.” He’d been sick to his stomach before over Lora being gone, but suddenly, that urgent feeling of nausea got three times worse.
“We’ll find them and bring them home.”
Tucking the envelope into his back pocket, he stepped into the street and looked toward the mansion. He couldn’t go back there and pace and rack his brain for any morsel of information he might have overlooked. He needed to keep moving—to keep asking around.
“What do you mean we’ll?” he asked Ótama.
“I’m somewhat invested in the matter, am I not?”
He grimaced and started for the Mollers’ house. He wondered if she’d told them she was pregnant. If so, their response may have been why she left.
“I’d like all my babies where I can see them,” Ótama projected.
“I think their mothers might have some say in that.”
Ótama conveyed a mental flash that translated into something like a hmph.
“Where are you right now?” he asked her.
“Holding April.”
“Do I need to ask where?”
“No need to be rude, child.”
“Did you take her?”
“As if I’d do such a thing.”
She would. She’d done it before, in fact. Ótama was what he and Nadia had started calling a “baby magpie.” If any woman in the community made the mistake of letting her hold their baby, Ótama would drift away with the child. She didn’t mean any harm. Having never been able to hold her daughter, holding other babies had become reflexive for her.
“Inform me before you make any moves,” she said.
Jody wasn’t going to argue. Ótama may have been sweet, but she’d been a daughter of a powerful chieftain, and her decisions were always measured and logical. She wasn’t a woman to be trifled with.
“Yes, ma’am,” he projected before breaking into a jog. Waiting wasn’t his best skill.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Idylton, Nebraska
Lora
Giving Lora a final assessing glance, Dr. Moore pulled out the earpieces of his stethoscope and l
et the device dangle over his shoulders. “I think we’ve got you all caught up.”
“I can’t believe I’d be keeping this much information from myself,” Lora murmured and pulled the plackets of her blouse closed to button it.
The doctor went to the sink and soaped up his hands. “I gotta tell you, you’re the first one who’s come to us pregnant, and I think the first one who…” He grimaced. “First one associated with…who you’re associating with.”
He was so careful. Whatever the privacy scheme was in that town, he was obviously well versed in it.
“And would you happen to know where I’m from?” she asked anyway.
“Oh, you’re not gonna get that from me. You’re gonna get me in trouble.”
“Like I said. I simply can’t believe I’d keep these sorts of secrets from myself if my wellbeing was at stake. Isn’t it smarter for me to know more?”
“Memory is a funny thing. You can’t selectively forget some things and remember all the rest.”
“So, I threw out the baby with the bathwater, is what you’re saying.”
“Yep. You’re a smart lady. You know that?”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.” Lora finished buttoning her shirt and, gripping her hospital gown around her unsettled tummy, slid down from the exam table. “I’m not feeling very smart.”
“That’s just because you haven’t had a chance to get settled in very well.” Dr. Moore leaned against the counter and casually placed his hands into his lab coat’s pockets. “I know that seems the opposite of what you want to be doing, but I think making yourself comfortable while you’re here will eliminate some of your anxiety. Just treat it like going off to college and getting your dorm room set up. It’s not yours to keep, but you can make it yours for as long as you have it.”
“I don’t even know if I’ve been to college.” She didn’t even know her last name.
“You went.”
“Which one?”
He wagged a finger at her and clucked his tongue. “Not gonna go scouring alumni directories based on something I said. No, ma’am. Nice try.”
She sighed and grabbed her pants from the back of the chair.
“Look, Lora, you knew what you were doing. You didn’t just jump into this with five minutes of warning. You made plans and got all your ducks in a row. Everything’s gonna work out.”
