Read How (Not) to Soothe a Siren (Cindy Eller Book 9) Online
Authors: Elizabeth A Reeves
How (Not) to Soothe a Siren (Cindy Eller Book 9) (15 page)
I
missed the birth of Jessi’s baby.
If I had thought practically about it, I must have known deep-down that she could wait on me, just so she could give birth.
Still, it stung a little to return home to find a plump, rosy cheeked baby in my best friend’s arms—a baby
girl
at that, complete with her mother’s halo of curls already standing up all over her head.
I shook my head as I stepped into the room. “Dang it, Jessi! Couldn’t you wait for me?”
Jessi snorted. “Yeah, just you wait until it’s your turn. You’re going to realize just what a ridiculous comment that was. Why don’t you come and meet Ella?”
I bounced Asher on my hip as I walked to the bed to get a look at the newest addition to our big, happy family. “Oh, she’s precious, Jessi. She looks just like you, thank heavens.”
A deep chuckle alerted me that we were not alone.
I whirled around, an excuse already on my lips, but I was too busy picking my chin up off the floor to remember to say anything.
“What?” I managed.
I looked from Jessi to Alecto… to Jessi and then Alecto again. One, two, three… three babies?
“Triplets?” I shrieked. “You didn’t wait for me to come back and you had triplets? Some friend you are!”
Jessi chuckled. “Believe me, I am as shocked, if not more so, than you are. I went from having one kid to four of them. That’s like having a litter! Not to mention the whole newborn adjustment thing, with three babies.” She shook her head. “I guess we know why I was so sick.”
“What are their names?” I asked. “Wait! Are they all girls?”
“Two girls, one boy,” Alecto said, proud papa written all over his face. “You’ve met Ella, now meet Ally and Miles. We’re already calling them the Troublesome Trio.”
“What does Jonah think of his new brother and sisters?” I asked, leaning over so Asher could get a look at the sweet little newborn faces.
“Right now, he pretty much ignores that they exist,” Jessi said. “Though I did catch him trying to put a diaper on Ally. I have a feeling he’s going to be a great big brother. Oh! And did you hear who else didn’t wait?”
I shook my head, confused.
“Silly Goose is now Mother Goose,” Jessi said. “Tansy is trying to put them all to sleep as we speak—her brood plus nine of the cutest goslings you’ve ever seen. And they have golden feet.” She yawned deeply. “We missed you, you know. I did try to wait.”
I kissed her on the forehead. “I know. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
Jessi nodded. I had a feeling she was asleep before I could tiptoe out of the door again.
I stopped in front of a large mirror, which hung in hallway outside of Jessi’s room. Asher grinned as he caught sight of his reflection.
With the mirror between us, I took a moment to really stop and look at my son.
Anyone would have thought that he was a full year old, not only a few months! On the journey back home, he had displayed a new talent for crawling, and he had spent his first hour back at the castle trying to pull up and creep around the furniture.
I had to admit it; my baby wasn’t much of a baby anymore. He was growing up. He already had four teeth, with more threatening like storm clouds to come in just when the moment was the least convenient.
I leaned my head against his little curly one and kissed his nose. “I love you, Asher,” I said. “Mama really loves you.”
“Mama,” Asher said, pointing to the mirror and then to me. A wide grin spread across his face, making his dimple pop into view as if they were shouting, ‘here we are! Look at us!’ “Mama!”
I hugged him hard.
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m your mama.”
*~*~*
I
f it hadn’t been for Asher’s growth, returning home would have been just like waking up from a dream. I had seen so many places, so many new people and things. My mind didn’t know quite what to do with it.
I couldn’t shake the story of the siren and the Huntsman from my mind. I had no doubt that he was her sworn love, the one that hadn’t kept his promise, but I also felt in my heart, that nothing would have kept him from meeting her there—nothing except the strongest Magic.
How had he become the Huntsman in the first place?
It wasn’t a bedtime story, wrapped up neatly in ribbons and bows, ready to be settled to sleep like an infant.
My story wasn’t done yet.
And, I had a feeling there would be no ribbons or bows for me, either. Life didn’t work that way.
But, life did hold onto its mysterious ways.
I leaned on Timothy’s stomach as we got ready for bed. A breath of spring whispered through the window, bringing it the promise of warmth and new life.
“You know I love you, right?” I said.
“Promise?” Timothy’s eyes twinkled at me.
I swatted at him. “Nice one.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know you love me. I love you, too.”
“And Asher,” I said, a statement, not a question.
Timothy nodded. “Absolutely, Asher too.”
“I know someone else you love, too,” I said sleepily.
“Who’s that?” Timothy asked, his words interrupted with a huge yawn.
“The baby I’m having in August.”
Capture Moonlight, Carry a Rainbow
Tame the Tides that flow
The tears of a man who is not a man
Sing the Siren’s song
~The End~
E
lizabeth A Reeves is a mother, a sister, a daughter, a wife, and a writer. She tries to balance all the aspects of her life. She is the author of
Adrift
(The Last Selkie), Running, and the Cindy Eller Cupcakes series. She is also the author of the
Goldie Locke and the Were Bear
series
She is a very prolific author and has nearly twenty titles under her belt at this point—with up to six titles per year currently released.
You can reach her at the following links:
Website: http://ElizabethReeves.com
Twitter @SelkieHorse
Blog
: CindyEller.blogspot.com
Cindy Eller Series
How (Not) to Kiss a Were Bear
(Cindy Eller #6/Goldie Locke and the Were Bears #4)
Cindy Eller Short Stories
Goldie Locke and the Were Bears
How (Not) to Kiss a Were Bea
r
(Cindy Eller #6/Goldie Locke and the Were Bears #4)
Goldie Locke Short Stories
Karma’s Witches: (Written by Elizabeth A Reeves, Hope Welsh and Lanie Jordan)
Life’s a Witch
(Karma’s Witches Book 1)
Love’s a Witch
(Karma’s Witches Book 2) Hope Welsh
Karma’s a Witch
(Karma’s Witches Book 3) Lanie Jordan
Haunting Karma
(Karma’s Witches Book 4)
Healing Karma
(Karma’s Witches Book 5) Hope Welsh
Sharp as Steele
(Karma’s Witches Book 6) Hope Welsh
Hard as Flint
(Karma’s Witches Book 7)
Karma Steele
(Karma’s Witches Book 8) Coming Soon, Hope Welsh
Unlife Series
“So what you’re saying,” I said as slowly and as reasonably as I could manage, “is that my dad—my ‘real’ dad—is Death… but not Thanatos?”
My mother sighed and rolled her eyes. I thought I heard her mutter one of her mantras—the one with the ‘I deserve a child like you’ tucked into the middle. With her fair hair and huge dark eyes she looked more like she could be my sister than my mother—especially now that I was taller than her. It wasn’t much of an accomplishment, since my mom topped off just under five feet even. She liked to tell me and my brothers that having us had made her shrink. She could say whatever she wanted, but I knew she’d never been particularly tall.
“Death with a little ‘d’,” interjected my dad. He was draped over the entire couch across the room. I never knew when he was sleeping or when he was listening in.
Ha
. He was always listening in. He might not have been my biological dad—something I had known all my life—but that wasn’t going to keep him from worrying and generally making my life as aggravating as possible. And when a man as monstrously huge as my dad was trying to be aggravating, chances were he was going to be able to pull it off. Dad wasn’t just ‘big’—he was huge. At last check, he was six foot six and, well, buff. It was as if he had been custom-made to stress out any potential dates I might have.
Not that I’d ever had to worry about that.
“Kodi,” Mom admonished, shaking her bright blond head at him. “This is complicated enough without you having to stick your two cents in.”
Dad grinned unrepentantly and winked at me.
I rolled my eyes.
“Your dad is… was a reaper,” Mom said, clasping her hands together as if praying I would understand what she was trying to tell me. The lines appearing on her forehead showed just how serious she was about this.
That didn’t make me feel any better.
“Was?” I raised my eyebrows. I hadn’t known that reapers had any sort of retirement plan. Wasn’t that kind of career choice kind of permanent? “What is he now?”
Mom huffed in frustration—a sure sign that she didn’t know something. She
hated
not knowing absolutely everything about…everything. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. She blew her bangs off her forehead. “Until this morning I hadn’t heard anything from or about him since before you were born.”
It didn’t take me more than a few seconds to realize the importance of the timing. No contact and then, suddenly out of the blue, my biological father existed again?
“So,” I said, trying to keep from gritting my teeth. “Tomorrow is my eighteenth
birthday
and all of a sudden my dad wants to get in touch with me?” I folded my arms over my chest. I could feel my jaw tighten in the stubborn way it always did when I was feeling aggravated. My brothers liked to tease that a donkey was nowhere as stubborn as I was, when I dug my feet in. I raised my eyebrows. “Well, how nice for him. Nice to know he knows I even have a birthday. You can tell him I have no interest in getting to know him.”
Dad cleared his throat. He shot Mom one of those meaning-laden looks that drove me nuts. Gosh. How many secrets did they have, anyway?
Mom glared at him. “I’m getting there!” She looked back at me, her dark eyes full of some kind of emotion I couldn’t read. Usually Mom was a bit of an open book, but now I couldn’t figure out what was going through her head. That wasn’t helping with my nerves.
Fred, my mom’s pet zombie chicken, jumped up into my lap. He was a perfect example of Magic gone wrong. Once he had been a perfectly normal silkie chicken… until a truck had creamed him. Some wise-guy had decided to raise him from the dead. The result? An almost-cute and most definitely evil zombie chicken. I absently stroked what feathers Fred had left while my mother had what looked like an internal argument with herself.
“It’s not that simple,” she said quietly. She bit her bottom lip. “You see… when I was not that much older than you…”
I groaned. No good stories started with words like those. Usually that was my cue to tune her out and pray for escape. On my lap, Fred seemed to agree with my sentiment. He made a rather convincing snoring sound, though I knew he was still wide awake.
Did zombies even sleep? I wasn’t sure that they did.
Mom glared at me. I subsided. I was doomed. I was going to have to listen to this story. There was no way around it. “Around the time I got pregnant with you, Thanatos told me that I was what he called ‘unlife’. It’s kind of the opposite of ‘undead’.”
“So?” I failed to see how any of this affected me. So what if my mom was the opposite of undead.
The very undead rooster on my chest seemed to agree. He made a grumbling sound. I scratched him under his chin. It wasn’t his fault that the undead got a bad name.
Well… maybe it was. But I wasn’t going to hold that against him.
“So, I was kind of half-dead soul-wise thanks to a kind of accident with about a hundred vampires,” she said quickly, “And I was already unlife…and then I was caught in the barrier when it exploded while I was pregnant with you…”
I held up my hands and sat up. That certainly had gotten my full attention. “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Back up here…you got caught in the barrier, Mom? How are you even alive?” My whole life I had heard about the evil bubble of Wild Magic that had separated Faerie from the Outside world. It was strange to think about—hard for me to imagine. The world I knew had no segregation like that. The barrier days were basically the dark ages. Back then, most people in the Outside world hadn’t even believed that Magic existed. It only existed in fairy tales and really angsty teenage fiction.
And now it was one, big, semi-happy world. No Faerie. No Outside. Just…world. And, though not everyone was happy about Magic, at least everyone knew it was there.
Mom cleared her throat. “Yes, I got caught in the barrier. Your dad saved me.”
I glanced at Dad and raised my eyebrows.
“Yes, him,” Mom said. “And…and your biological dad, too.”
I tried to digest that as she continued.
“So, because of all those things, apparently you were born unlife, too.” She shifted uncomfortably.
“Which you obviously knew,” I said.
Her face turned bright red, which was as good as a confession.
“Yes,” she said. “I knew that, too. You were exposed to so much death before you were even born.”
“I’m guessing all this has to do with why my dad suddenly wants to have something to do with me?” I tried to ignore the tightness that was creeping into my chest. I didn’t want my parents to see how much this conversation was starting to upset me. I was proud of the fact that my voice didn’t even waver.
“Yes,” Mom said, bluntly. “You’re to report to Thanatos tomorrow… for training.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’m supposed to report to Death with a capital D for
training
? What exactly am I going to be getting training in… or for?”
“I don’t know,” Mom admitted. Her hands clenched together, a sure sign that she was worried. Not much phased Mom. She worked with wild Magical creatures all day. She practically made a career of dealing with dragon-made disasters. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved in something that worried her.
I tried to rally up some enthusiasm, if just for her. Mom was already troubled enough, and if there was no choice about the situation, there was no point in me trying to fight it. “It sounds great,” I said, making my voice as chipper as I could manage. “Really. It’s no problem. I mean, how many people get to train with Death? It’s a once in a lifetime…er…a great experience, right?”
Mom looked relieved. “You don’t have to worry about Nat,” she said reassuringly. “He’s a great guy. He won’t let anything happen to you.”
Nat? My mom knew death enough to call him by a
nickname
?
Oh, my very merry fairy godmother.
Maybe it was time to start paying attention to some of those long, rambling stories of hers—the ones that started with ‘when I was around your age’. Apparently, I had missed out on hearing about fighting vampires and hanging out with Death.
And here I thought she was just a conservationist with a booming law practice with Dad on the side.
Who knew?
I scratched Fred under his chin. He purred happily under my fingers. I wondered if this unlife stuff would come with any neat new powers. All my half-brothers could shift into bears—like both of my parents could. I, on the other hand, could not. I’d missed out on that gene, probably because my mom was what was called a ‘bitten’ were and not a ‘birth’ were.
In fact, Dad had been the one to bite her. Which was gross. I didn’t want to think about my parents biting each other. Ew.
In fact, I didn’t seem to have much in the way of powers at all. I couldn’t make plants grow like Grams could, and I couldn’t make art come to life like my Auntie Iris… I would have even settled for making a few Magical cupcakes like my Aunt Cindy, who had even more amazing powers than that… but, my own Magic was a little capricious. Even if I managed to figure out a new spell, I almost never could replicate it a second time. I’d been able to do enough Magic to fit in with the other kids at school, but nothing like the rest of my cousins, who were all basically superstars when it came to powers.
It kind of sucked to be the boring fluffy white sheep in the family flock of black sheep.
All in all, I was distressingly Ordinary. Boring.
I pushed back a curly lock of my dark-blond hair, which had, as usual, escaped, from my usual waist-length braid. “Is there anything else I need to know about,” I asked. I had a feeling I still hadn’t heard the entire story.
“N-no,” Mom said. Obviously, there was something more, but she didn’t want to tell me. I knew better than to push it. My mom could be insanely stubborn when pressed.
I’d just have to let it slide and hope it wasn’t something too vital.
Like, well, finding out that my dad was… or had been… a minion of death.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said, his voice rumbling from across the room in his bear-appropriate baritone. “You can handle anything they throw at you, Antigone.”
I choked back a groan. “Come on, Dad! How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?”
“It’s your name,” Dad said, mimicking my tone.
“It’s Annie,” I muttered. I knew there was no point in trying to get either of my parents to call me by my chosen version of my given name. What kind of black-hearted mother named her child ‘Antigone’? She must have been going through a rough patch or something. It had to be the worst name in the history of all things Magical. I’d read the play. I knew just how messed up my namesake was.
The thundering steps of what sounded like a thousand elephants announced the arrival of my brothers onto the scene, and the end of my little ‘interlude’ with my parents. I had a million questions, but I was willing to let them wait. I didn’t need to unfold the whole situation in front of my brothers. This whole ‘unlife’ business was a little too creepy for me. Undead I was used to—after all, I’d grown up around creatures like Fred—but ‘unlife’? What did that even mean?
The triplets, as always, led the pack into the kitchen. In rapid succession, the whirlwind of energy that always accompanied them wherever they went banged through the fridge and several cabinets before settling around Mom. The triplets had all gone through a crazy growth spurt lately, which meant they were always hungry. It also meant that they towered over Mom’s tiny frame, making her look ridiculously delicate and petite. I had a hunch that, when they were done growing, they were going to top off even taller than Dad.
Face it, my brothers were all giants. They’d inherited Dad’s height as well as his were-bear nature, something else that had passed me by.
Nope. I got to be short, Magically stunted, and bear-less. The last wouldn’t have been so bad if everyone else in my family hadn’t been were bears. It sucked to be the odd one out.
I smiled slightly to myself. I’d never seen my mom more furious than the time she’d discovered I’d been trying to bribe my brothers into biting me, so that I wouldn’t be the only member of the family that couldn’t turn into a bear at will.
She needn’t have worried. One of the few things all my brothers agreed on was that the very idea of biting a sister was ‘nasty’.
If only I had inherited some of the super-powerful Magic that seemed to run rampant in my cousins on my mom’s side of the family, but that had skipped me by, too.
I was… lame. Tame.
Boring.
And now I was apparently ‘unlife’. Yet another way I didn’t fit in.
I bit my thumbnail as I watched my brothers hassle our mother for something to eat. I hated the trace of resentment that I could feel simmering under the calm surface I pretended to have. Life wasn’t fair. I knew that. I knew it was ridiculous to resent my lack of abilities, or how different I was from everyone else I knew.
And I knew just how dangerous resentment was for me.
My Magic wasn’t powerful, it wasn’t flashy or impressive. But it was a little scary. I’d learned early on in life to hide the way that it fed off of my negative emotions. It used to scare Mom, so I’d learned to hide it from her.