Forest Moon Rising (46 page)

Andiamo, cara mia Tess
,” Lady Lucia gushed a few hours later as I passed her in the garden café. If she hadn’t changed clothes to black slacks, red silk blouse, and simple gold necklace and hoop earrings, I’d think she’d spent the night in the corner with Sophia.

I held out my arms to the little girl and she toddled two steps to hug me about the knees.

“Oh, my, her first steps!” Lucia looked as if she might cry.

“I’m honored, Sophia, that you chose to walk to me for those first steps.” I picked her up and hugged her close.

She tugged on my dangling dragon earrings with her right hand while sucking the middle two fingers of her left.

Gently I extricated her sticky fingers from the pewter jewelry. “Maybe she just wanted to investigate rather than honor me,” I laughed, taking a seat beside Lucia, the baby still in my arms.

This is what it would be like if I accepted Lucia’s offer. Sophia in my lap by right and preference.

“I believe you should have this,” Lucia said, pasting a KIT sticker on my con badge that matched hers and Sophia’s. “I ordered an extra just in case you needed it.”

“I’m not . . .”

She held up a hand, blocking my protest. “In case of emergency, you may stay with my daughter without questions.” Then she signaled the waitress for a new carafe of coffee and an extra cup for me.

“I never needed coffee until Sophia was born. Now I cannot live without it,” she said, almost apologetically. “More refreshing than blood.”

I almost gagged, but smiled squeamishly instead. I knew she had killed a man by draining his blood. Gary Gregbaum was a scumbag of a white slaver who had upset forever the balance of Faery to the other dimensions. He needed to be taken out. But that way? I honestly didn’t know if Lucia had served justice or not.

“I will host a party in my suite next week. I’d invite you to share my volunteers, but I need you to keep Sophia. She should not be exposed to my life . . . style.” She added the last word almost as an afterthought.

“Nothing is fully decided yet. I have to check my calendar. I have
three
teens to consider now.”

“If you must. I trust you with my daughter more than any of the nannies I have hired. They all quit after only a few days.”

“You scared them away.”

I covered my unease with a sip of very good coffee. “Bless you. I barely had time for a single cup with breakfast before my girls and their brother dragged me out this morning. They couldn’t wait to get back to their games. I hope they aren’t disappointed that their friends might not be here yet.”

“Very interesting, this convention of yours. In some ways it reminds me of the market fairs in my youth.”

“Not terribly different from Renaissance Faires and Highland Games. A gathering of people who want to celebrate a certain aspect of their hobby or culture,” I replied.

“I do not fully understand the source of this con culture.”

“Then you haven’t read much science fiction or fantasy.”

“No. But I have seen this ‘Star Trek’ as part of the exhibit and rides in Las Vegas.”

“There are Trekkers here too.”

“I saw the costumes. Some are very good. Some not so.”

“People do what they can within their budgets and sewing talents. The idea is that they help re-create their favorite part of the genre.”

“Ah. And the vampires?”

“That’s part of the genre too. Though I don’t think many of them will take it as far as you have.”

She grinned, baring her fangs. Very good implants to complete her persona. “Perhaps I can find new recruits . . .”

“Leave it alone, Lucia. These people are mostly innocent. The hard-core Camarilla followers hang out in different venues. You’ve found them already if you’re hosting a party next week.”

“Ah, wishful thinking. I need a dose of my reality.” She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “Since Sophia came to me I have not the taste for innocent blood that I used to. Most of my party guests are flying in as . . . um . . . escorts to business people I need to entertain in high Goth style.”

“You mean intimidate them into signing one-sided contracts.”

“Of course.”

Sophia climbed over me to return to her mother. Then she slid down beneath the table and crawled out to the opposite side where she pulled herself up by the chair. Carefully she eyed each potential handhold and how many exciting steps she’d need to take to get there.

“No holding her back now!” I said. Since I was closest to her, I stood and hovered over the little girl to make sure she didn’t get into trouble.

Lucia looked relieved that she didn’t have to move.

“Can I leave Sophia with you for a brief time? I need to . . . um . . .”

“Sure. The ladies room is in the corridor to our left.” Idly I followed Sophia a whole three steps before she wobbled and plunked onto her bottom with a wail. I picked her up, comforting her. She cried from disappointment more than any hurt. Her bottom was very well padded with diaper and frilly panties.

I put her back into her high chair and offered her some breakfast. She nibbled a triangle of toast, getting more grape jelly on her face than in her mouth while I savored the very good coffee. Fortunately, her frilly dress was royal purple. The jelly stains wouldn’t show, much. If . . . when . . . the child was mine, I’d have her in sturdy, washable rompers.

Lucia returned. She’d freshened her makeup and brushed her lustrous hair. She looked less weary and worried. I wondered if she had a flask of blood secreted in her bag.

Sophia ignored her. Finding more interest in my dragon earrings than her mother.

“You two look well together,
cara mia
Tess. Like you belong together,” she said, resuming her place on the corner banquette as if sinking onto a throne. Her regal bearing invited lesser folk to approach but not to get too close. “Fitting, that you are my only living relative. Of sorts.”

“I have a brother and sister, nieces and nephews. My father is a Noncoiré too. He has brothers and sisters. One of them, MoonFeather, is a witch.”

“But they have not your special talents. Nor do they have an imp companion to bridge the gaps between this world and the next.” She gestured vaguely to where Scrap dangled from a tree in the garden area, seemingly conversing with a pet parrot and a pug wheezing on the ground.

“Can you see him?” I asked, remembering Scrap’s comments from the night before.

“Not really. Just an awareness that he is somewhere close, in that direction. If we both concentrate we can communicate.”

That was a relief. Lady Lucia wasn’t really as spooky as I first thought. Most of her violence and bloodlust was an act to intimidate enemies, business associates, and district attorneys.

“I have decided. Tomorrow morning we will go to early Mass together. You will stand as godmother to my baby.” An order, not a request. “A prelude to your adoption of my child.”

“I’m honored . . . Are you sure? Can you step onto sacred ground?” Vampires couldn’t, if you believed the literature. Fiction and legend weren’t so detailed about very dilute demon blood. I had no trouble in churches. But Lucia was almost two hundred years closer to the source than I.

“I would not ask if I were indecisive. And I have been baptized. I attended Mass most every day of my life until I escaped from Count Continelli. Since then?” She shrugged as if not interested. “You are the only one I trust with my daughter’s soul, and her upbringing. I have already changed my will, regardless of your decision to adopt my baby or not.”

“Then I’ll see you at St. Mary’s at six.” Before dawn, in keeping with her persona. I felt honored by her trust. But I was also a little afraid of the heavy portent in her words. Life wasn’t going to be easy anytime soon.

“You are wearing the pearls?”

“Almost always.” I fingered the strand hanging beneath my bulky Aran Isle sweater.

“Good. You never know when you’ll need them.”

What did that mean?

She turned her focus onto Sophia, pulling a wet wipe out of the diaper bag and cleaning jelly off her face, hands, knees, dress front . . .

“Thank you for the coffee, Lady Lucia.” Somehow her manner indicated she required the title now rather than the more familiar form. “I need to talk to some people in the Green Room before my ten o’clock panel.”

“I can spare you. But first, tell me where is the charming physician who escorted you yesterday?”

“Sean should be here anytime. Unless he got called to work on an emergency. He’s supposed to have two full days off, but that doesn’t always happen.”

“I understand. And was that Donovan Estevez I saw with Doreen Cooper yesterday?”

“Sure was. They’re engaged.”

“Ah, that is good. He will have less need to take interest in me and my child. The Cooper woman will be a steadying influence on him. He will be an impressive man when he matures into his responsibilities.”

“Still might be a good idea to stay out of his way.”

“Agreed. Now off with you to your appointment. I have things to prepare for the baptism. White lace gowns in the appropriate size are very difficult to find.”

“Harder to keep clean.”

D
OREEN WAITS FOR MY DAHLING TESS in the Green Room. She cradles a cup of very fragrant coffee between her lush breasts. Her eyes are half closed and her thoughts turn inward. I think she knows that new life has begun inside her. She marvels at the idea. And yet I smell a touch of sadness in her.

“Tess.” She nods succinctly.

“Doreen. I got your email. What’s up?” Tess fills a plain black ceramic mug of generic coffee from the carafe on the side table. Only a brief wince betrays the staleness of the brew. It’s not the good stuff Doreen sips.

“Not here.” Doreen looks around warily. A dozen or more pro writers, artists, and other guests of the con mingle, fixing bowls of cereal, nibbling on toasted bagels, and chatting amiably about everything from politics to the business of writing, to their next panel topic.

“This sounds ominous, babe. Let’s decamp to the back of the dealers’ room. They don’t open for another hour and it’s nearly deserted,” I suggest to Tess.

She and Doreen come to an agreement. I flit off to check on the kids. They need me more than the ladies do.

Doreen waited until we were tucked behind her sales table in the back of the dealers’ room. Then she turned on me with impossible quickness. “Is the crystal ball safe?”

“Yes.” I sent a quick query to Scrap.

Of course, dahling
.

“Do you know how to use it?”

“Not really.”

“Will it . . . will it help you find someone?”

“Possibly.”

Donovan would kill me or anyone else who stood between him and that crystal ball if he knew what it could do.

Doreen was engaged to Donovan.

The Nörglein wanted it too. For his own purposes.

He worked for Doreen’s parents.

Too many connections. Best say as little as possible.

“Can we make a date to try it?”

“Later. After the con.”

She nodded in mute understanding. “I saw you with two girls yesterday. I recognized them.”

“They are my daughters now. I have the paperwork to prove it and . . . and a magic link to them stronger than any birth mother’s . . .”

“Are you sure it’s a stronger link than a true mother to her baby?”

“I don’t know that for sure since I’ve never had a child of my own.”

“But you believe in that link.”

I thought of my own mother and how often she’d sensed my moods and problems before I did. I still missed her terribly. “Yes, I believe in a mother’s link to her children.”