Wild Ride (38 page)

Women. A problem for 2,500 years.

He thought of Vanth pressing against him, Glenda hot under his hands. . . .

Women. Worth the problems they caused.

But not worth losing everything for.

Glenda and her son were going to die.

 

M
ab woke up alone on Sunday morning, which was par for her course and which usually she preferred. But today . . .

Of course he didn't stay
, she told herself.
He doesn't even know you.

She crawled out of bed, found her clothes had been unpacked and put away, and got dressed in her jeans and a blue long-sleeved Dreamland thermal T-shirt. Then she put a zip-front sweatshirt on over that.

She'd been cold enough last night to last her the rest of her life.

She opened the door and looked down the short hallway to see Oliver sitting at her malachite table, his fair hair gleaming in the sunlight through the trailer window and his shirtsleeves rolled up, going through her research while Frankie sat on the malachite table and supervised.

He's still here
, she thought, her heart lifting, and then kicked herself. He was going through
her work.
The fact that he looked really good going through her work was no reason for her not to be furious. Or something.

“Hello?” she said, and meant to add,
What the hell are you doing?
but he looked up and said, “There's coffee, but not for you. Tea on the counter, hot water on the stove.” Then he went back to his reading.

Mab padded down the short hall and found a note pinned to a box of peppermint tea bags on the counter, something she'd missed in her hurry to get into the shower the night before. The note said, “Welcome home, Mab. Love, Glenda,” and she almost started to cry again, except Oliver was sitting right there, because Glenda had unpacked everything for her to welcome her home.

So she got one of Delpha's good, thick, white china mugs down from the cupboard and put one of Glenda's tea bags in it, and poured in the water Oliver had heated for her, and thought,
People.
There were people everywhere in her life now.

She picked up her mug and turned to look at Oliver, his gray eyes serious on her work.

People. It wasn't so bad.

She sat down in the wide ebony chair across from him, and Frankie picked his way over the papers to butt his head against her hand. “Hey, baby,” she said, rubbing his head with her finger, and then she looked back at Oliver. “What are you doing?”

“Finding out what you've been up to,” he said, not looking up from the papers. “Apparently, you're as pure as the driven snow.”

“Pure?” Mab said.

“I'm not seeing anything in here except research for restoring the park.”

“That's because I was restoring the park,” Mab said, confused. “What did you think I was doing?”

“We didn't know.” Oliver put the papers neatly back into her binder—more neatly than she'd put them in there—and closed it, and then looked at her, his gaze steady and a little disconcerting without the big black-rimmed glasses. She could see his cheekbones clearly now. He had great cheekbones. “You're Ray Brannigan's niece, and you have a strong francium trace. So I watched you.”

“That's creepy.” Mab sipped her tea. It was wonderful. Then it hit bottom and her stomach said,
Hello?
but she sat very still until the urge to return the tea passed.

“Morning sickness?” he said.

“Can't anybody around here keep a secret?” Mab said, putting down her mug, annoyed. “Who told you?”

He picked up his coat and reached into the pocket and handed her his glasses. She took them and put them on, not sure what he wanted. The world looked odd through them, a little watery, but nothing really surprising until she put up her hand to take them off.

Her hand had a faint blue glow around it.

“Oh,” she said.

“They pick up francium,” Oliver said.

Mab looked down at her stomach. There was a tiny dot of green light there, barely visible, but there.

She took off the glasses and handed them back. “I'm scared,” she told him.

“What of?”

“What this baby is. What I am.” It was such a relief to say it that she sighed and picked up her tea.

“You're a human being,” Oliver said. “You just have some mutant genes.”

“Mutant,” Mab said. “We talking X-Men mutant here?”

“It's well known that a fetus can be altered by radiation or environmental
hazards,” Oliver said, sounding like a PBS documentary. “At the moment of your conception, according to your mother's frequent statements, she was possessed by a demon. Therefore, you were exposed to francium. As was your baby since the man who fathered it was possessed by a demon.”

Drunk Dave. “Oh, god,” Mab said, gripping her mug tighter.

“Still a human baby, created by two human beings,” Oliver said. “You have nothing to worry about. She'll just be like you. Different.”

“I don't want to be different,” Mab said, feeling her gorge rise. “I don't want
her
to be different—”

“Why?” Oliver said. “Why choose to be like everybody else when you can be—”

“A demon?”

“Gifted,” Oliver said. “I have great admiration for you, Mary Alice. You've made beautiful things in your life, recovered things that would have been lost forever. Imagine what your son will do.”

“Daughter,” Mab said. “Delphie.”

He nodded. “Let's go get breakfast at the Dream Cream. Delphie needs waffles.”

Mab laughed, surprising herself, and got her coat while he made sure the stove was off and the coffeemaker was unplugged, and then she followed him out the door, Frankie flying in advance, catching updrafts with enthusiasm. “So you've been watching me? Why?” she said as they headed for the midway, and he said, “Mostly so Weaver wouldn't shoot you,” and she laughed again and felt glad to be alive.

 

E
than woke in comfort with Weaver in his arms, which was startling enough all by itself. Then he remembered that his bullet was gone, and after that, that Mab was going to have a baby, and that Glenda had almost died and was free of the Guardia now—

Weaver stirred and cuddled closer.

—and Weaver had slept in his arms all night. His life had changed. He was going to have to change to keep up with it.

He left Weaver sleeping, putting Beemer in his place in bed beside
her, and crossed the path to Glenda's trailer just as Mab and Oliver walked by, Mab calling out to Glenda, “Thank you for unpacking for me, that was lovely, and so was the tea.”

Glenda waved at her from her lawn chair, swathed in blankets, her eyes covered with big sunglasses, an umbrella drink in her hand and a novel in her lap.

All she needed was a cabana boy, and Ethan really didn't want to take that thought any further, so he said, “Good morning. I have news.”

“You're engaged to Army Barbie.” Glenda nodded. “I'm for it. She'll give me very sturdy grandchildren who will be able to lay down cover fire as I get older.”

“The bullet's out.”

Glenda pulled her sunglasses down so that her sharp eyes peered over them. “What?”

“You were right, about the Guardia, about me not dying. The bullet worked its way out.” He fished it out of his pocket and handed it to her. “I'm not going to die.”

“Well, of course not, I told you that,” Glenda said, but her voice quavered as she looked at the bullet and she swallowed hard before she went on. “But thank you for telling me.” Her face crumpled. “Oh, Ethan, I'm so glad.”

“Me too, Mom,” Ethan said before she dissolved completely. “Do you still have that concoction?”

Glenda blinked back tears. “What concoction?”

“The one you tried to kill me with the other night.”

She shoved the glasses back in place. “Stop being so paranoid. I wasn't trying to kill you; I was trying to save you. You're on your own now, feel free to deny reality as much as you—”

“Cut the crap, Mom. It's forty degrees out here and you're acting like you're retired in Miami.”

“I am retired,” Glenda said airily. “I am enjoying my golden years. With my son. Who's not dying.” She smiled and picked up her drink and then spoiled the picture by sniffing back tears.

“And I want to keep things safe so you can,” Ethan said.

Glenda put the umbrella drink down and removed the sunglasses. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “I'm taking this seriously. I've got a lot of life ahead of me. It's time I did it right.”

Glenda put her sunglasses back on, picked up the umbrella drink, and held it out. “Get me a refill, would you?”

“Glenda, I need—”

“The big plastic jug I used to make lemonade for you is full of daiquiris. Next to the fridge is your flask. It's got the—” She waved her hand. “—concoction in it.”

Ethan was surprised. “You already did that?”

“I'm your mother.”

“Right.” Ethan went and refilled Glenda's margarita glass and took the flask. He came back out and handed the drink to her. “You stay here.”

“Absolutely,” Glenda said.

Ethan paused. “Can I ask you something?”

“Certainly.”

“Your eyes ever flash?”

Glenda went still. “What do you mean?”

“I thought eyes flashing was a demon thing,” Ethan said. “Is it also a Guardia thing?”

“No. Try to get out of earshot when you drink that, will you?”

Ethan left Glenda to her retirement and went into the woods, out of earshot. He pulled out the flask, unscrewed the lid, hesitated for a moment, then took a swallow.

He was on his knees vomiting in a few seconds. He stayed on his knees and took a second swallow, forcing the liquid down. It felt like fire racing through his veins and like acid coming back to his stomach and up his throat. He drank until he finished every drop in the flask and purged every iota of alcohol from his system, steam rising from the sweat on his skin.

Then, hands shaking, Ethan screwed the top back on and stood up. There. A new life.

Now all he had to do was make it demon-free.

 

“A
ll right,” Ethan said at noon, standing behind his chair at the pentagonal table on the top floor of the Keep as Mab, Cindy, Gus, and Young Fred took seats before him. “Let's get going.”

He glanced at Oliver and Weaver against the wall, Weaver reading the Guardia weapons book, leaning over to show Oliver a word he needed to translate for her, and Oliver sitting silent and watchful. Glenda sat beside them on the floor, smiling at Ethan with pride. Her son, the Guardia captain.

The quiet was deafening.

“Our mission,” he said to them, “is to keep the Untouchables locked up and the world safe. It's most endangered on Halloween at midnight when the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural weaken. Is that right, Mom?”

“Pretty much,” Glenda said. “But most of our Halloweens have been uneventful. The last really bad one was forty years ago.”

“Well, something's happening this time,” Ethan said. “We've got minion demons trying to kill us. That's new, right?”

“Well,” Glenda said. “Not really. One or two show up here a couple times a year. Tourists carry them in across the causeway, not realizing something they're carrying is possessed. But minions are not too smart, so . . .”

“These are organized,” Ethan said. “There's a bigger plan.”

Mab was looking impatient, so he added, “What?”

“If we know the Untouchables are in the chalices,” she said, “why can't we just bury them in a load of cement?”

“Because if the chalice breaks in the cement, they get out,” Glenda said. “And then we don't have the chalice to hold them because it's broken and buried in cement. We keep the chalices locked in the iron statues so minions can't get to them, with the keys hidden elsewhere. It's the best we can do.”

“What do they want?” Cindy said. “I know I'm new here, but if we knew what they wanted, couldn't we do a deal or something?”

“You want to deal with the Devil?” Weaver said from behind them. “Very bad idea. ‘He is a liar and the father of lies.' You can't trust him. Ever.”

“I think Cindy's right, we need to know why they're doing this,” Mab said.

Ethan rolled his eyes. “They're demons. They're acting like demons because they're demons.”

“No,” Mab said. “They have to want something. If we knew—”

“Despair,” Glenda said. “They feed on it. They terrorize people, destroy hope, and draw energy from the pain. They—”

“No.” Mab shook her head. “That's not right. Fun did nothing to make me despair.”

“Hey, I was with you in the men's room,” Ethan said. “You were despairing.”

“I was grieving,” Mab said. “And he wasn't there. If he wanted to feed on my grief, he'd have stuck around. I got upset, and he ran for the Pavilion. I thought at the time that that was because he was a guy, but now I'm thinking maybe he can't stand grief.”

“We'll get him a therapist once we have his ass back in the chalice,” Ethan said. “Now what we have to do—”

“Wait a minute,” Oliver said from the side of the room, and Ethan turned to him, annoyed. “I think she's right. Fufluns wasn't always a demon, he started out as a god of revelry and got deposed. I bet he feeds on happiness.”

“That's it,” Mab said, straightening. “That's why he's always making people laugh. It isn't that he needs everybody to like him, it's that he needs to feed on happiness to survive, be strong. That's why he . . .” She stopped, evidently remembering something she didn't want to share.

“If Fufluns feeds on happiness,” Oliver said when she didn't continue, “then he's naturally an enemy of Kharos, who evidently does feed on despair. You can use that.”