Forest Moon Rising (40 page)

I looked for blood. None. The bullet hadn’t penetrated. I wondered if the demon tattoo protected Blondie from the toxic oils of the plant too.

“Take care of my sisters,” Oak said to me. “Get out now, before Father comes to investigate.”

“Come with me.”

“We have to stay here to blur your path.”

“He’ll kill you.”

“No, he won’t. He’ll hurt us. But he won’t kill his sons.”

“He values you more than his daughters,” I sighed.

“Girls are only good for sex and bearing children,” Cedar said. He came up from his crouch and leaped at me, hands folding into tight fists.

Oak caught him, then cast him aside as if he weighed no more than thistle down.

“Run, Miss Tess. Run quickly. You haven’t much time to get free of the forest before Father finds you.”

I ran. I’d never run from a fight before, but I ran from this one.

For the sake of my daughters, I ran, skidded, and slid downhill. I had to stop thinking like a Warrior and start acting like a mother.

Lady Lucia had warned me about this. She’d told me never to get involved, never let my emotions get between me and my job.

I had to. I had to protect my daughters.

T
HURSDAY AFTERNOON, the girls huddled over registration forms I’d downloaded from the local con. Their lesson after lunch consisted of figuring out how to write the correct information in the appropriate boxes.

I’d learned to read and write at the same time. They’d only learned to read. Writing came hard.

I sat at my desk in front of the computer, adjacent to the dining table. My concentration wandered from the view out the windows, to the half-written page in front of me, to blatantly eavesdropping on their whispers. Much as I wanted to jump up and prompt them through the procedure, I knew they needed to figure out as much as possible on their own with the help of a few writing samples I’d left for them.

They seemed to have recovered from their confrontation with their brothers and the dark elf’s minions the day before. I hadn’t. My hands still shook when I thought about how close we’d come to losing Phonetia.

Scrap sat on the balcony railing smoking a big fat cigar. He could see all of us, the river path, and if he craned his neck, around the side of the building, the parking lot.

Interesting
, he said as he flew off.

“Scrap, what’s up?”

Oh, this is a good one, babe. Forget about pretending to work and answer the door.
He popped back into the room and hung upside down from the wine glass rack.
E.T. needs some help here.

“Scrap, what is going on?”

Her. That eliminated the Nörglein and his sons and minions.

I heard clumping on the metal stairs. A bit of anger and frustration was in those footsteps.

Then I heard a baby cry. Not the basic needs kind of cry of a tiny infant. This was the full-blown temper tantrum of a toddler. I flung open the door.

A roundly built young woman, barely out of her teens wearing loose jeans and a purple sweatshirt, trudged up to the last landing, a squirming Sophia in her arms. Lady Lucia’s daughter protested as loudly as possible to the entire world that nothing was right in her Universe. Nothing. And no one could ever make it right. Ever.

The young woman looked up. A deep frown and extreme anger turned her pink and white complexion into a parody of Little Orphan Annie. Her short blonde curls no longer bounced. All her energy went into confining Sophia and lugging her diaper bag.

“Are you Tess Noncoiré?” she demanded.

“Yes.” I stepped toward her and held my arms out to Sophia.

She half turned in the woman’s grasp and held out her chubby little arms to me. Her chin quivered and her cries turned from angry to forlorn. Pleading with me to tilt her world back on its axis.

“Ms. Continelli said I was to come to you in an emergency.” The woman practically shoved Sophia at me.

“Where is Lady Lucia?” I cradled Sophia’s head against my shoulder. She sobbed and beat her fists but did not squirm.

“How the hell am I supposed to know? And she isn’t any lady. At least not by my definition.”

“You must be the newest nanny.”

“Ex-nanny. I quit.” She unslung the diaper bag and dropped it at my feet.

Phonetia scooted out of the doorway and grabbed the bag. She and her sister stayed at my side, blatantly observing.

“What happened?” I asked. “Look, why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea. We’ll talk. I’ll call Lucia. I have her emergency cell phone number.”

“I’ve already called it three times. She’s not answering.”

“What’s your name?”

“Anita Madison. I’m a licensed nanny. I graduated top of my class from the Northwest Nanny Institute. I love kids. Kids love me. But not that one.” She pointed accusingly at Sophia. “I’ve tried everything. And she won’t settle. And Ms. Continelli gives me the creeps. She keeps blood in the fridge. She decorates in skulls and swaths of black around pictures of graveyards. And those teeth! She bares her fangs all the time.”

“Anita, it’s all stage dressing.”

“I don’t care. She gives her own baby nightmares. Sophia wakes up so frightened, her muscles clenched so tight she spasms. That’s not right. I’m out of here. Even without a reference. Just keep the kid safe until that . . . that vampire comes and gets her.” Anita turned abruptly and stomped down three flights of stairs. “And tell her that I’m keeping the car she gave me. I’ll leave the baby seat and stroller at the foot of the stairs along with that hideous black uniform she insisted I wear. Straight out of Jane Austen!”

Having exhausted herself, Sophia laid her head on my shoulder and stuffed her thumb in her mouth. Then she spat it out and began whimpering again.

“Hmm,” I mused. Something about the way she worked her jaw reminded me of my sister Cecilia’s youngest.

“Back to work, girls. I think I know the baby’s problem.”

“What?” E.T. asked, fascinated by the tiny child.

“Teeth. She’s got new teeth coming in. Probably crooked. A tiny bit of scotch rubbed on her gums ought to help.”

“You’d get better results putting the scotch in her bottle.” Phonetia turned and stalked back into the condo. But she took the diaper bag with her. She rummaged around in it until she found a soft pink flannel blanket with a worn satin binding. She wrapped it around Sophia, making certain the little girl could clutch the edges.

The baby immediately rubbed the satin against her cheek and settled. But her mouth still hurt.

An hour later, as the sun neared setting, Lady Lucia blew in. Her pencil slim, black suit skirt that teased her ankles was slit to the top of her thigh. The short-waisted matching jacket strained to close beneath her breasts with a single jet button the size of Sophia’s hand. I’d seen that red blouse before, or its twin, with silk ruffles on the deep v-neck and French cuffs.

She’d had her hair touched up since I’d last seen her. The glossy blonde length was twisted into an elegant chignon complete with antique mantilla comb scintillating with jet and rubies.

“What now?” She tapped her foot impatiently just inside my door. She rocked back and forth on her black four-inch stiletto heels. “I was in a very important meeting.”

“Your latest nanny quit and left Sophia with me.
”
I caressed the baby’s dark head where she slept on my lap. “Too bad, Anita might have been a good one. She might even have figured out that your daughter hurt when she cut a new tooth if she hadn’t been so spooked by your décor.”

I took a good-sized sip of single malt. Sophia had only needed a few drops to numb her gums enough to get some relief from the troublesome tooth that had poked through red and swollen tissue about ten minutes before. It looked twisted. If the adult tooth followed the same path, she’d need braces in about ten years.

“What is wrong with the servant class these days?” Lady Lucia flung herself into the armchair set at an angle to the sofa. She didn’t reach for her child. “Phonetia, I need a drink. Bring me some of that.” She pointed toward my scotch.

Phonetia looked to me for instructions.

I shook my head slightly. My daughter went back to the problem of figuring out how to write her birth date.

“That’s part of the problem,” I said curtly. “Nannies aren’t servants to be exploited. They are highly trained professionals to be respected. You owe her a good reference. She could have just left Sophia with a hotel maid or someone totally unsuitable.”

“I paid her twice the going rate and gave her a car so that she could take Sophia with her on errands and such.” She threw up her hands, completely forgetting her order for Scotch.

“You still treated Anita like she should cower before you and obey your whims without question. Society has changed since you had a nanny of your own, Lucia.”

“Unfortunately, you are right.”

“Anita said Sophia has nightmares. Bad ones. The kind a baby shouldn’t have.”

“Anita? Is that her name?”

I grunted my disgust.

“Will you please keep Sophia a little longer? I must get back to my meeting or I will lose a great deal of money and much respect from my associates.”

I looked at the clock. Five-thirty. “Sophia may stay for a short time. I hate to disturb her now that she’s fallen asleep. I’ll feed her when she wakes. But I need you to fetch her by eight.
My
daughters and I have things to do before we go to the con tomorrow.”

Lucia opened her mouth to protest my restrictions. Then closed it, thought a moment, and heaved a sigh of resignation. “Very well. I shall return at eight. I should be able to conclude my business by then.” She left without so much as looking at her daughter.

And she didn’t come back until nine.

“We need to talk,” Lady Lucia said before Phonetia had finished opening the door for her.

“You bet we do.” I entrusted a wide awake Sophia to my daughters. They seemed delighted to entertain her by stacking brightly numbered and lettered blocks together. Sophia was more interested in knocking down the teetering towers, clapping her hands as she made new patterns of the colored squares.

I heard more than a few whispers over the similarity between the numbers on the toys and on their daily math sheets.

“Five and three equal eight!” E.T. whispered excitedly. “They equal eight!” she chortled louder.

“I don’t see it,” Phonetia murmured.

Her embarrassment that her younger sister figured it out before she did burned on my nape.

Hmmmm . . . building blocks; back to kindergarten again. Whatever worked to get the girls thinking in twenty-first century terms. Or even nineteenth century terms.

Lucia perched on the comfy armchair like she would a board of director’s chair, or a throne. “I have been thinking for some weeks now that I am not a fit mother for Sophia,” she said.

I could almost see the clipboard in front of her as she mentally ticked off items on the agenda.

“You think?” I still steamed at her offhand treatment of the child earlier. And her deliberate intimidation of her nannies.

“Therefore, I have decided that since you are my closest blood relative, you should adopt my daughter,” Lucia announced. Her eyes tracked Sophia’s every move. A drop of bright moisture glistened in the inside corners of her eyes.

Oh, yes. Yes, we have to do it, babe,
Scrap said. He flitted about the room three times before taking up a perch on the wine glass rack where he could oversee everything.

“What about her father?” I asked, not daring to hope, not daring to breathe.