“Technically, she’s been dead a long time,” Sebastian said drily. To me, he added, inspecting the puffy explosion of down feathers at my shoulder, “Your coat took the brunt of the attack. But there is a little blood somewhere. ” Lower, in my ear, he whispered huskily, “I can smell it.”
Great. My vampire boyfriend was getting all blood horny in front of the parents. I gave him the “down, boy” squinty glare, and jerked my head in the direction of my folks. My dad was standing over Teréza and peering down into her face. “I think I dented her head.”
“Not likely,” Sebastian said. “She’s really, really, really hard to keep down.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Dad said, tentatively poking Teréza’s coat with his toe. “She could need medical attention. Or a cemetery.”
“I’ve tried both.” Sebastian sighed.
My dad chuckled. My mother sidled closer to us. She shined her penlight into my face. “You put on quite the show,” she said.
“Was that . . . ?” She paused momentarily and whispered, “Magic? I mean, should I be reconsidering Lutheran-ism?”
“It’s not typical,” I admitted. “I had a kind of magical accident.”
“Happy accident,” Sebastian said. When I gave him a look, he explained. “Given the sorts of things we attract, you’d be dead six times over by now.”
“Speaking of dead,” my dad said, “what should we do with her?”
My mother shined her penlight around the dusty edges of the barn. A couple of mice scurried away into darker corners. “Does this place have a storm shelter?”
“Of course,” Sebastian said, pointed to a spot on the floor none of the rest of us could see in the gloom. “Right over there.”
“What this barn needs is electricity,” Dad said. He put his hands on his hips and looked around in that way men had when they were thinking about fixing something. “Run a line in from the house.”
“It’s not worth it,” Sebastian said. “I really only use this place as a potting shed.”
“You could put in grow lights,” I said.
“You’ve got a lot of space here,” my mother agreed.
Teréza groaned.
Sebastian stood up and walked into the darkness, stepping over Teréza. I could barely see him in the gloom, but he kicked around the dusty floor.
“What’cha looking for, son?” my dad asked.
“The root cellar,” he said. Kneeling down, Sebastian grasped at something. I stood up to get a closer look. My mom shined her tiny flashlight in Sebastian’s direction.
“The ground is going to be frozen,” my dad said. “You’re going to need a lever. . . .”
Dirt and frozen bits of straw flew everywhere as Sebastian yanked the door open.
“Or you could just do that,” my dad said, sounding a little surprised at Sebastian’s dramatic show of strength.
“Help me drag her over,” Sebastian said to my dad.
“You must work out at the gym a lot,” Dad said, adjusting his seed cap.
“He has the strength of ten men,” I said drily. “I told you already, he’s a vampire.”
“Yeah,” my dad said gruffly, like he still wasn ’t sure he believed any of this yet. “Huh. Does that make you dead, too?” He asked Sebastian. “I don’t know if my daughter should be marrying a dead guy. Hell, I ’m not sure it’s legal to marry someone who’s already dead.”
“You had to bring up the vampire thing again, ” Sebastian said as he grabbed Teréza’s arms. My dad took hold of her feet. Mom and I followed along like some grim procession. I picked up one of the fallen shovels in case we had to whack her on the head again. My mom gave me a concerned glance that seemed to imply I was being a bit bloodthirsty. She wasn’t the one whose favorite parka had just been ravaged by a scythe, however.
“Don’t vampires shrivel in sunlight?” my dad asked Sebastian.
“Some do. I don’t,” Sebastian shot me an angry look.
I shrugged an apology. Somehow he managed to bring up occult matters, and my parents rolled with it. The second I did, my dad got all up in arms. How was I supposed to predict that?
“Your magic is pretty impressive,” my mom said to me.
“Oh, well, that’s mostly Lilith,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed. I didn’t know why, but talking about magic with my mom felt a little like talking about sex.
“Don’t be so modest,” Sebastian admonished, as he and my dad negotiated down the creaky wooden stairs. My dad, of course, couldn’t see nearly as well. My mom tried to give them as much light as she could, but the flashlight was weak. “Garnet is a very powerful witch in her own right.”
“You are? Why don’t we know anything about this?” My mom had that same vaguely hurt tone in her voice as when she talked about the dress. Oh God.
“How about garlic? Do you like garlic?” my dad said.
“Watch the last step,” Sebastian said. “It felt a little loose to me.”
“Dad, we met at an Italian restaurant. You know he can stand garlic,” I said.
“That’s good,” Dad said with a grunt as they reached the bottom of the cellar. “I couldn’t deal with a son-in-law who didn’t eat garlic. Where the hell does that whole garlic thing come from anyway? It never made any sense to me.”
“It’s a natural blood thinner,” Sebastian said. “Besides, in some countries it’s considered a cure-all.”
Mom and I peered down into the root cellar. Even from where we stood I could smell the dankness. Mom’s flashlight revealed rows of shelves containing dusty, ancient canned beans and pickles. Something that looked like an old slide projector sat in a corner. “Look at this place,” I said. “You should be using this.”
“We
are
running out of room for my canning in the basement,” Sebastian said, glancing around. Sebastian was an herbalist, but he had a small vegetable garden, as well. We made salsa, tomato sauce, pickles, and anything else we could think of every fall.
“You can? How marvelous!” My mother was thrilled. I could understand her enthusiasm in a way. Canning was a dying art. It was becoming harder and harder for Sebastian and me to find our supplies at the grocery store. When they set Teréza down on the floor, she stirred. Her foot twitched. I gripped my shovel. My father stumbled back, nearly tripping over a rusty washtub. “Uh,” he said trying to gain his composure a little, “we should get out of here before she wakes up.”
I had to agree with Dad, but, “What are we going to tell Mátyás? He’s just going to let her out, and then she’s really going to be pissed with all of us.” I gave Sebastian a meaningful look as he came up the dusty staircase. After all, he’d kissed her only last night, and now he was helping toss her into a storm cellar.
Mom shone her light on Teréza’s pale face. “She looks like a child.”
“She was twenty-three when she died,” Sebastian said. Even though I couldn’t see his face clearly in the dark, I could hear the pain in his voice. He gave a little sad laugh. “In those days, she was considered an old maid.”
Sebastian lifted the storm door. He paused with it halfway open.
Maybe I’m insensitive, or perhaps I was still a little hurt about the whole kiss in the woods, so I said, “Yet you let her get pregnant with your baby, and you never married her?”
“Garnet!” my mother hissed.
Sebastian let the door drop with a bang. “We should find a crowbar or something to lock the door.”
“Are you really that cold, or are you just trying to put me off the scent?” I asked. He grabbed the shovel from my hands, wrenching it from my grasp. “This will work,” he snarled. I gasped. I was surprised by his violence.
“Don’t you treat my daughter like that, you bully,” my mom said.
Sebastian kneeled down. He jammed the wooden handle of the shovel through the latch on the cellar door. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but he pulled at the door, and it only opened an inch or so.
I stared at him. My hands stung a bit from the force he had used to pull the shovel from me. I wiped them on my jeans. When Sebastian stood up, Mom got in his face. “Did you hear me? You owe Garnet an apology, young man.”
I smelled cinnamon toast and butter. “Ma’am,” Sebastian said. “You need to back off.”
“You need to answer her questions,” my dad said. He stepped in, even as my mother moved back a pace from Sebastian’s fierce look. “Are you even planning to marry our daughter? Or are you going to run out on her like you did the last one?”
Sebastian glared at me. His glamour smelled very alluring, like fresh bread on a lazy Sunday morning. Part of me was ready to just drop the whole thing and grab a midnight snack. But the magic couldn ’t quite overpower the way my heart pounded in my chest, waiting to see what Sebastian would do. Also, I was fairly awestruck at the way my parents rushed to my defense. I would have thought my mother would have admonished me about my manners a long time ago.
“Garnet and I need to discuss our wedding plans, sir, ” Sebastian said to my dad. “There have been a number of complications.”
“Are you talking about the dress?” My mother asked, “Because Garnet will wear her grandmother’s.”
“Or is there something else?” Dad pressed.
Sebastian’s lips were tight. I’m sure he was expecting me to blurt out the fact that I’d caught him and Teréza in the woods.
“Uh, Mom, Dad,” I said. “Can you guys let us talk about this?” When my dad continued to stare up into Sebastian’s hard face, I cleared my throat. “Alone?”
My mom got the hint. “Sure, honey. Come on, Glen.”
I could tell my dad didn’t want to back down, but my mother had invoked the Christian name. In our family, you knew how deep in trouble you were by how much of your name got used. God help you if you got called by first, middle,
and
last. Even so, my dad let me call the situation. “Are you sure, Garnet?”
“Yeah, Dad, please. Sebastian and I need to work this out privately.”
“All right,” he agreed grudgingly. “Come on, Estelle.”
My dad protectively glared at Sebastian the entire time he headed out the door, so much so he nearly tripped over one of the fallen rakes. My mother grabbed his elbow and then tucked her arm into his.
“Are you feeling sorry for Teréza now?” Sebastian asked as soon as my folks were out of earshot. “When exactly did this compassion develop? I thought you figured her for a crazy Gypsy zombie.”
“Vampire,” I added. When Sebastian cocked his head to the side curiously, I repeated the litany, “Crazy zombie vampire. Oh, and witch.”
He chuckled a little at that, but the tension hadn’t entirely broken.
“Look,” I said. “I’m cold, and it stinks like a dead skunk in here. Can we go inside and talk in front of the fire? Besides, all that glamour you sprayed around made me hungry.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not ready to go inside yet. We need to talk about Teréza. I need to explain.”
I glanced over at the cellar door. My eyes had adjusted somewhat, but I couldn’t quite make out the details. For all I could tell, she might be peeping out at us right now. “She might hear us,” I said.
“That would be fine with me. I never got a chance to explain myself to her, either.”
I rubbed my hands against my arms, bringing down a shower of feathers from the slash in my coat. Now that the excitement had died down, I could feel the chill on my ears. I’d really rather be inside for this. “So,” I said with a sigh. “Why didn’t you marry her?”
“I was selfish.”
That derailed me. I wasn’t expecting that answer. “What do you mean?”
“How does the saying go these days? I just wasn’t that
into
her. Besides,” he said, and the hardness in his voice since I first brought this subject up shattered a little, “I had other children before. None of them lived past infancy. I thought it was part of my curse.”
Poor Sebastian. I reached a hand out to comfort him, but he turned away before I could touch him. I wished more than ever that I could see his face. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“I held off the marriage because I didn’t want to be saddled with a woman I didn’t really love for a child that wouldn’t live. Then she got sick. Out of a misplaced sense of duty, I had to act.”
“Wait, so you’re saying that you turned Teréza when she was pregnant?”
“I didn’t know what else to do, Garnet.” Sebastian said, with a glance over his shoulder. Turning away again, he added, “I thought at least I could save her. In my mind, the baby was doomed from the start. But this way, her family wouldn ’t have to mourn two deaths.”
“But . . .” My head was really spinning now. “She did die.”
“Yes,” Sebastian said. “And, the baby grew inside her. When he was born, I took Mátyás back to his people. I—” I could hear the tears now. “I wasn’t able to take care of him. That whole experience—watching, waiting—it was horrible. It broke me. And Mátyás needed a wet nurse. He needed someone who could love him properly. The whole thing was such a disaster.”
“Oh, Sebastian,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. I went over to him and grabbed him into a hug, even though his back was still to me. I could feel him go stiff and rigid at first. I squeezed tighter. Finally, he turned around and let me give him a real hug. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”
Sebastian’s arms curled around my shoulders. Silently, we clung to each other for a long moment. He rested his chin on the top of my head, and I snuggled deeper into his chest. I hated to bring it up, but I had one last question for Sebastian.
“So is that why you kissed Teréza? Because of all this?”
Sebastian tried to pull away, but I tightened my grip on him with a little help from Lilith.
“I understand you two have history,” I said, still muffled in the leather of his coat. “What I want to know is: Do you have a future with her?”
I pulled back a little and studied Sebastian ’s face in the half-light. His gaze was turned inward, his expression a study of indifference. He answered quietly but firmly, “Teréza will always be my son’s mother.”
“That’s an awfully careful answer,” I pointed out. “I’m not asking if you love her, because I know you’re still entangled with her, out of duty or whatever. When I saw you . . .” It was my turn to feel hurt. I pushed through it. It was important for me to tell him how I felt about this. If not, it would always nag me. “You were like two sides of the same coin, like you were meant to be together. I mean, she’s a vampire too, now. That’s got to be like a second chance for you to make things right.”