Matyas and I shared a look. My mother glanced up the stairs. "What"s going on up there? Glen? Are you trespa.s.sing?"
My dad came loping down the stairs. In his hand he had a Tupperware container I recognized as holding all our bandages and antibiotic salves. "Jesus Christ, Estelle, there"s a supernatural battle going on upstairs."
Standing up and holding out her hand for the container, my mother shook her head. "What are you going on about?"
"You remember those floating lights in Poltergeist? It"s like that, except real. And here in this house. " My dad sounded genuinely freaked out.
"Benjamin is mostly harmless," I was quick to add. I wiggled my stocking toes closer to the fire.
"Except when someone messes with Vivian"s room," Matyas said.
"Who"s Vivian? Who"s Benjamin?" my dad asked. "How many people do you have living here, anyway?"
"Vivian"s dead, and so is Benjamin. I told you about him," I said, but they swore they didn"t remember, so I explained the whole axe-murder thing to them. Matyas interjected a few points, mostly designed to help make it a good ghost story. Just as we were wrapping things up, Sebastian came downstairs, and the oven timer dinged.
"Who"s up for spinach gateaux?" My father announced. Then to me, he asked, "You are still an herbivore, aren"t you?"
I nodded. Even though my stomach growled in antic.i.p.ation, I tried to catch Sebastian "s eye. He briefly met my glance but looked away. I held back while the others made their way to the kitchen so I could walk beside him. "Are you okay?" I asked.
He continued to avoid looking at me when he said, "Tereza is sleeping in our bed." Sebastian cringed like he antic.i.p.ated a bad reaction. When I didn"t say anything, he added, "It"s temporary. Benjamin decided to be stubborn. Well, I"m sure you heard."
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything yet.
"I promise she"ll go into the sunroom after dinner," he continued. "I would"ve put her there right away, but it"s not well-heated, and, frankly, if she wakes up, I didn"t want her to have that much access to all my alchemical work and magic books."
Everyone had gone into the kitchen but us.
His eyes searched mine with a hint of desperation. "You"re mad, aren"t you?"
"A little," I admitted. "That"s our bed."
"I know. G.o.dd.a.m.n Benjamin, anyway."
A cold, unnatural breeze tickled the back of my neck. I turned instinctively, sensing a presence behind me. I saw nothing, of course. "Don"t d.a.m.n him, okay? He"s grumpy enough."
Sebastian snarled a little. "I"ll fix this after dinner."
My stomach rumbled, reminding me I hadn"t eaten all day. "I know we invited her in, but my dad"s right. This is a full house as it is. She can"t stay." "I know. I know," Sebastian said with a worried glance toward the top of the stairs. "I don"t like her being here any more than you do."
The savory smells coming from the kitchen made my mouth water. I was really ready to go in and eat, but I paused with my hand on the swinging door. "Do you think she"ll wake up soon?"
Sebastian frowned. "I"d be surprised. Breaking the blood bond seemed to really suck the life out of her. Honestly, for a moment there, I started to believe that it really was going to kill her."
"It-" I started to tell him that it nearly had, but my mother interrupted by pulling the door open to stare curiously at us.
"We"re about to say grace. Come sit down."
Grace? Sebastian and I glanced at each other and then followed my mother in. "We need to talk about this later," I whispered.
My father had laid out a great-looking spread. The spinach cake, which seemed to be spinach and mushroom-stuffed crepes, sat steaming in a gla.s.s pan in the center of the table. There were fresh, homemade popovers in a basket, and tall, cold gla.s.ses of milk set out at everyone"s spot. Matyas sat at the head of the table nearest the back door. He looked a little incongruous among the white china and linen napkins my mother had set out. His hair was still wet and mussed from our adventures. It hung limply in front of his eyes, which twinkled above a twisted, sarcastic smile.
"Come say grace," Matyas echoed. "Really, let"s have a little happy family, shall we?"
"Matyas," Sebastian growled warningly. "Behave."
"Oh, yes, of course, Papa, I wouldn"t dream of anything else. How is Mom? Resting?"
"She"s fine," Sebastian said rigidly.
My father cleared his throat. My mother hovered at our elbows. "Now, Sebastian, you sit over here by me, and Garnet, have a seat over there," my mom pointed to a three-legged milking stool that usually sat in the corner.
Great. I got the kid"s seat.
"Sorry, honey," my mom said, no doubt noticing my look. "It was all I could find at short notice."
"It"s fine. Really," I said, avoiding Matyas"s deepening smirk.
Once everyone was seated, my dad bowed his head. Sebastian, Matyas, and I all shared an "are you going to?" glance.
Sebastian shrugged and joined in. That left Matyas and me staring at each other. My mother, who was sitting next to me, gave me a little poke with her elbow. So I laced my fingers and dutifully dropped my eyes. In his usual quick, barely devotional way, my father sped through, "Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let this food for us be blessed. Amen."
Everyone said "Amen" in chorus but me. I muttered, "Blessed Be," the traditional Wiccan closing. My mom gave me a sharp look, but I wasn"t going to be cowed. Wicca was my religion; I had a G.o.ddess piggybacking in my body to prove it.
My dad started dishing out the crepes. Mom pa.s.sed the popovers. No one really talked. Instead, there was a lot of clinking of plates and silverware.
With the evening"s blackness reflected outside the windows, the small kitchen felt even more snug and close. The overhead light was an antique bowl of frosted gla.s.s. The Formica countertops gleamed dully.
I could feel my toes starting to tap nervously. I stuffed crepe in my mouth to keep from blurting out one of my usual inappropriate conversation starters. The food, at least, was delicious. My father was a good cook, and he"d unearthed one of my favorite cookbooks, The Ovens of Brittany, which was a restaurant started here in Madison in 1970-something by a group of naturalistic, hippy types who considered themselves "flour children." Now, in the days of organic, shade-grown coffee, their approach seems like nothing special, but it was an early attempt to move away with cooking from cans and frozen foods.
"Yum," I said, figuring that was a pretty safe thing to say.
"Hmmm," Sebastian agreed around a mouthful of popover.
"You"re an excellent chef, Mr. Lacey," Matyas said without managing to sound too sarcastic, although I felt a stab of weirdness. Luckily, I knew it wouldn"t last.
"So, your mother is a vampire too?" My mother softly asked Matyas.
It hadn"t. Matyas actually looked to me for direction, so I answered for him, "Well, she is now. She used to be mostly dead, remember?"
"Your father and I were trying to figure out how this works. I mean, well, that is, we thought maybe there won "t be grandchildren if you married a vampire."
It was Sebastian"s turn to choke. He nearly spat up the milk he"d been drinking at that moment.
Matyas laughed. "Perfect timing, Mrs. Lacey."
My mother ignored Matyas. "You are going to give me grandchildren, aren"t you?"
I looked at Sebastian. Sebastian struggled to recover his composure. It wasn"t working. If anything, he looked greener around the gills. "Sebastian and I haven"t really talked about it."
"If it really is possible, you should." My mother sniffed. My father, meanwhile, intently ate his food without meeting my eye. He obviously wanted no part of this conversation.
Matyas chuckled to himself as he sopped up the spinach sauce with his popover crust. "Once they"re married, you"ll always have a stepgrandson," Matyas said, touching his fingertips to his chest. "You could take me to the park on Sundays."
Okay, this was getting surreal. "Speaking of the wedding," I said, trying to steer the conversation from its disastrous course, "somehow the rehearsal got scheduled for tomorrow night. Can you make it? I think I"d better call everyone first thing tomorrow."
"Well, how did that happen?" My mother tutted. "There certainly seem to be a lot of things going wrong with this wedding."
You could say that again.
"You could cancel the whole thing," my father muttered.
"I second that motion," said Matyas.
My father looked up, and he and Matyas seemed to have some kind of strange bonding moment over the fact that neither of them wanted to see me married to Sebastian.
"The wedding is cursed," Sebastian said. "But we"re not going to let that stop us, are we, Garnet?"
I smiled. "No, we"re not."
Surprisingly, the rest of the evening pa.s.sed without incident. My parents decided the roads were clear and headed back to their hotel. We even managed to relax a bit in front of the fire. Sebastian read the Times, and I caught up on the latest celebrity gossip in In Touch. Matyas intermittently dozed and glared at us from the couch. It was much like old times.
Finally, I yawned one too many times. "I"m headed to bed," I announced and then promptly remembered that someone was sleeping in my bed already. "Oh c.r.a.p, where are we going to put Tereza?"
After some debate, we decided to set Tereza up on a cot in the bas.e.m.e.nt. The sunroom, Matyas had pointed out, would be a fine place until morning, when Tereza would be fried. Outside of wedging her into the hall closet, there didn"t seem to be another place dark enough. The only drawback to our plan? We were all terrified of that bas.e.m.e.nt.
Bas.e.m.e.nts are generally creepy places and a haven for all sorts of multilegged horrors and dust and mold and general unpleasantness. But Sebastian"s bas.e.m.e.nt was the bas.e.m.e.nt of a haunted house. Something down there was wrong. Maybe it was the uneven dirt floors that seemed ripe for buried bodies or the crooked pa.s.sageways that led to multiple, tiny, odd-shaped rooms, but the whole thing just screamed Silence of the Lambs.
The three of us stood in the kitchen staring at the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Sebastian had a folding cot under his arm. I carried sheets, and Matyas had a comforter and pillows. We each looked warily at the other, as if daring someone to touch the doork.n.o.b. No one moved.
"I don"t know if this is such a good idea," I said. "I still say she"d be happier out in the barn"s cellar."
"She might be safer too," Sebastian murmured.
We"d all had strange things happen to us when we"d ventured down to do the laundry. Mostly, I"d felt a malevolent presence watching me. It made my skin crawl, although Lilith rather liked it. She was, after all, Mother of Demons. Even so, I hated walking through the cold spots. All the hostility emanating from the bas.e.m.e.nt made my shoulders hunch every time I went near it. In fact, I could feel them rising even now.
"Shouldn"t she be in the house?" Matyas asked Sebastian. "I mean, wouldn"t you feel better knowing she was here?"
"I don"t know," he said, his lip curled at the bas.e.m.e.nt door. "I wouldn"t sleep down there. Not if my life depended on it." "Me neither," I agreed.
"Yeah, I wouldn"t either," Matyas said. "Okay, let"s haul her out to the barn"s cellar. But no locks."
"Are you kidding? What if she makes another break for it?" Sebastian said.
"She doesn"t have anywhere else to go," Matyas said. "Besides, you saw her. She"s in no condition to do anyone any damage.
You sure set her back. I"m wondering if she"ll even wake up from this."
"Of course she will," I said rea.s.suringly. "Tereza is strong."
Matyas sneered at me. "Don"t talk. It"s your fault she"s like this."
I was about to deny it, but then I remembered Athena and how she"d raised her shield between Sebastian and Tereza. Had Matyas sensed that? "I"ve never wanted her hurt," I said truthfully. Gone, yes, but not hurt.
"Let"s not waste time arguing. We need to get Tereza somewhere safe before morning."
I took the cot from Sebastian, and he went upstairs and gathered up Tereza in his arms. It was very Bride of Frankenstein to watch him move down the steps with her head lolling to the side. I had to agree with Matyas; she didn"t look good. Her face had aged. There were stress lines around her mouth and wrinkles on her forehead. Veins bulged out in her neck. In the way of a vamp in dead sleep, her eyes were open and gla.s.sy.
"She"s gone into torpor," Matyas observed with some concern.
"I think it"s a healing torpor," Sebastian said, as they waited for me to put on my outside gear. Sebastian studied Tereza"s face for a moment and then nodded his head as if deciding something. "She"ll wake up on her own in a matter of days, I"m sure of it."
"And if not?" Matyas wanted to know.
"Then she needs more sleep," Sebastian said. "The body has a way of regulating these things, even undead ones."
I"d finally struggled into all of my various mittens and hats and such, and we took her out to the barn. We made a comfy nest for her. Matyas even provided a candle and one of Sebastian"s older books, a Bible written in German, and left them by her side.
Watching Sebastian tuck the blankets around her shoulders gave me a pang of jealousy, but I reminded myself that he"d willfully broken his blood ties to her.
"Come on," he said to me as he stood up and squared his shoulders. "Let"s go to bed."
While Sebastian fussed in the bathroom, I quickly slipped into my s.e.xiest nightie. It was a low-cut, black silk chemise with spaghetti straps and a bit of lace around the bottom. I didn"t bother with the matching panties. Then I arranged myself in what I hoped was an alluring, come-hither pose and waited for him to come in.
As I lay there listening to the sound of the faucet running in the other room, I knew I was being a little petty about wanting to have s.e.x with Sebastian right now. Thing was, Tereza had been sleeping in our bed. I needed to claim it as mine again.
The expression on Sebastian"s face was priceless. At first, he didn"t seem to notice me. He just tossed his jeans into the laundry hamper. Then, turning, he caught sight of me. He did a cla.s.sic double take.
I couldn"t help but smile when his jaw dropped in surprise, and his eyebrows rose in appreciation. I love being able to do that to him.
"I feel a little underdressed," he said, giving a tip of his head in the direction of his usual cotton pajama pants. He "d chosen a pair I"d bought for him. One of the novelty shops on State Street had them on clearance: dancing elves dotted the fabric.
"Actually, darling," I purred. "You"re way overdressed for the occasion."
Sebastian gave me a long, slow smile. "Am I? Well, let"s see what I can do about that."
He surprised me by walking over to the dresser to where the MP3 player perched. The sound of Duke Ellington "s trumpet flicked on. To my curious look he said, "Mood music, plus this way Matyas can"t complain about the noise."
"How considerate," I said.
"Hmmm," he agreed, but instead of coming to bed like I expected, Sebastian swayed his hips slightly to the music and toyed with the drawstring of his pants. "Do you want to take these off me, or shall I?"
Both options excited me, but I felt devilish lying on the soft cushions like a princess. "I"d like to see you do it," I said wickedly.
"As you command," he said, trying to look demure, but I could see the flash of fire in his eyes.