Bruiser’s eyes went unfocused and his thoughts turned inward as we reached the landing. “The last Dark Queen didn’t end so well. Alex found a record that suggested she vanished and was never seen again.”
“She must have timewalked into danger and died. Or timewalked and caused herself to never be born.”
“Impossible. If she was never born, then she was never the Dark Queen. Time-traveling paradoxes are likely multidimensional, creating new universes or interdimensional pockets, or even opening rifts between universes.”
“Yeah,” I said, crossing the central space, cool air drafts sweeping by, stirred up by the fans. “Like the rifts where the arcenciels fell through to Earth. But the office and power of DQ have to come with more than that. More than just timewalking.”
“I agree. But it might require blood.”
“Sweetcheeks, I don’t care if it requires blood, sweat, and couple of fingers.”
Bruiser burst out laughing. “You’re still calling me sweetcheeks?”
I flushed red. I wasn’t sure I had ever called him that out loud. “You have the best butt I’ve ever seen. Deal with it.”
“Oh, my love. I deal with it every day. It’s good to have you back.”
“Yeah. Depression and grief and dying suck.” We reached the TV room. To Alex, I said, “Update.”
Alex looked relieved and happy instead of like the young, worried kid he had been for weeks. Interesting. All I had to do to restore balance in the house was be demanding. I’d remember that. He said, “Molly said she’d talk to you about the danger when she sees you. She and Big Evan pulled into the drive while you were upstairs. They took the sleep charm off Angie and put it on Shiloh. Then they did some kind of stasis spell on the vamp so she doesn’t go bonkers with bloodlust. Eli put a stake in her belly, just in case, and he’s with her in the back of the van.” The Kid had a familiar—and recently missing—mischief in his eyes. “Clan Yellowrock’s in town and ready to fuck some shit up.”
“Alex!” I said. And then I burst out laughing. My face felt weird, creased up with a grin instead of down with pain. And my belly didn’t hurt nearly so bad.
On the main screen, the Everhart-Trueblood van pulled to a stop at the front of the inn and the side door opened. Angie Baby sprinted from the van and up the steps.
Because of the magic cancer, I no longer bent or bubbled time, but I made it to the front porch before Angie did and fell to my knees as she rushed into my arms. EJ—or Evan Junior or Little Evan, depending on who was talking—followed close behind, though my head was down and he probably didn’t see whom he was hugging as his arms spread out. I had them both.
Kitssss, Beast whispered deep inside me.
“Yeah,” I said aloud. “Kits.”
Eli appeared from the van, still in his cold coat, but now it was bloody. He bounced a sleeping vamp up over a shoulder. Shiloh. She was even more bloody than my partner. Molly stepped out of the van and reached into the back seat, her hands busy with the straps on the car seat. Big Evan stepped out and the van rocked. Molly placed the baby in his arms. The infant looked like a toy against his bulk.
“Love you, Ant Jane,” Angie said, drawing my attention back to them. “Is this your new house?” She pulled away to race into the middle of the inn. Stopped beneath the giant black wrought-iron chandelier in the vaulted high ceiling and turned in a circle, her head back, staring up, around, at the vast space. “I love this place, Ant Jane! It’s magic, right here!”
“Wuv—love—you An’ Jane,” Little Evan said. He popped a slobbery kiss on my neck and rushed to his sister.
“Yes,” I murmured to them, though they wouldn’t hear me, and were now running to see Alex. I stood and walked out onto the steps. Snow was still falling hard and the cold made my bones ache, but I waited there as Eli entered with Shiloh in a fireman’s carry. Dripping blood.
Climbing the steps behind him were Molly and Evan, the baby on his shoulder, bundled against the winter, asleep. My BFF was smaller than when I last saw her. She had lost a lot of the baby weight. Her red hair was longer and less curly. Snowflakes were melting in the waves.
“They were right,” she said. “You look like shit.”
I burst out laughing again—hadn’t laughed this much in months—and held open my arms. Molly, decorated by snowflakes, stepped to me and I closed my arms around her. Breathed in the smells of Molly, baby, milk, diaper cream, baby urine, and French fries.
“Is Shiloh going to be okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. Vamps were destructible, but not by bloodletting or being staked in the belly.
“Good. But son of a witch on a switch,” she whispered. “You’re nothing but skin and bones. You can’t be expected to fight a big bad ugly.”
“It’s okay. We have two days to get me well.”
Molly made a grieving laughing sound. “Well, in that case, no problem.”
I released her and led the way indoors, closing the big, well-balanced wooden door behind us. The door was carved with a grapevine heavy with bunches of wine grapes, the vine coiling on a wooden fence. I had fallen in love with the carving. I might be falling in love with the house now that the screams of children and the noisy stomping of running feet were echoing in the vaulted ceiling so far overhead.
Evan handed off the baby to Molly, and my BFF brought my namesake to me. Cassandra Evangeline Jane Yellowrock Everhart Trueblood was tiny. Cassandra for one great-great-grandmother, and Evangeline for another (not for her demon-calling aunt), and Jane for me. For all the weighty names, she was a little smidge of a baby.
Kitssss, Beast thought again.
Molly leaned in and snuggled the baby into my arms. “Say hi to your godmother, Cassy.”
Holding a baby always felt awkward, but Beast reached out and encircled the bundled baby into my/our arms and against my/our chest. My eyes filled with tears. “Hey there, Cassy,” I whispered. The baby was redheaded like her daddy, a bright copper-penny red, and her skin was peaches-and-cream. She would be nothing like me, not in looks or temperament, but I adored her and I adored that she carried my name.
Cassy opened her eyes. Looked right at me and smacked her lips. Something turned over inside me, something warm and joyous and full of life. Something that had been missing for a long time.
From the corner of one eye, I glimpsed Eli as he entered the elevator with Shiloh. I figured he was going to place the vamp in a tub. The blood would have a nice place to drain and no furniture would be ruined. And the kids wouldn’t see the body.
I grinned, holding the gaze of the infant. “Hey, beautiful,” I crooned. “You got your mama’s eyes and your daddy’s hair and . . . Well, I’m sure you got lots of something from them both.” Molly’s and Evan’s witch X gene, one from each side. I could see the witch magic coursing through her and it was waaaay too early. I glanced at Molly. “Really? Three of them? Three witches at once?”