Sparks (10 page)

"Hey," he said, grabbing her hand as the door clicked shut behind him.

She felt his lips brush hers in the glowing darkness. When she reached up to touch his cheek, it was still warm from the sun. And his kiss was warm, so unlike the cold spirits she swallowed. He felt solid. Real.

Anya pressed her body against his, craving that feeling of heat. Brian stepped back against the door but drew her with him. He wound his fingers in her hair and seared her lips with his, with a heat she felt in the soles of her feet.

Her craving, for this moment, eclipsed the fear she'd had of getting close to another human being. She didn't want to let go of the moment. She stood on tiptoe to kiss one closed eye, then the other, letting her eyelashes brush his face as she slid up. She heard his breath catch and snag in his throat as her fingers reached in his jacket and planed across his chest.

The salamander collar around her neck stirred.

Not now,
she thought, vehemently.

She grasped Brian's hand, led him down the hall. With her free hand, she worked the salamander torque free of her throat. She hadn't ever taken it off, but she cast the squirming collar, rattling, on the bathroom vanity.

"You--" Brian began.

She pressed her finger to his lips, pulled him into the shade of the bedroom. Red light leaked from around the blinds, casting stripes of sun and shadow across Anya's bed. Across from her bed lay Sparky's dog bed, which he never used, and his toys. She felt a stab of guilt, and turned away to wrap her arms around Brian's neck.

On one wall, the black portrait of Anya watched over her pearly shoulder as the real Anya tugged Brian into an ornate magick circle painted on the bedroom floor. The circle was unfinished: The south to southeast corners were left open. Anya kicked it closed with the sash of her robe. Once closed, the circle would keep all magickal creatures out. Even salamanders. She didn't plan on telling Brian how she knew this little trick, how it had been taught to her by the man who'd painted the portrait of Ishtar.

Brian cupped his bare hands around her bare throat. She reveled in the feeling of his hands on her skin as they lovingly undressed her. He peeled her clothes away slowly, allowing her jacket to pool to the floor. Anya managed to clumsily yank his T-shirt over his head, and was momentarily transfixed by Brian's chiseled abs. This wasn't the body of a computer programmer; he had the sinewy frame of a soldier. Fascinated, she slipped her hands around his waist, feeling each ripple and twitch.

Her blouse slipped against her back, and the buttons were as hot against her skin as coins on summer pavement. Reflexively, she moved her hands to cover the scars on her chest, but he pushed them away, fingers and mouth exploring each rill and dent.

They fell to the bed in a tangle of clothes. Anya growled in frustration at being unable to unfasten the stubborn button on Brian's jeans, succeeding on the third try when Brian rolled on his back and let her straddle him, and focus her full concentration on his pants.

"You," he whispered, cupping her face with his hands. It was the single most loving, permanent, ordinary word Anya had ever heard.

He rolled over, stretching all the glorious heat of his skin against her body. She wrapped herself around him. A slat of sunshine slipped over Anya's eyes, dazzling her as he moved within her.

In the shimmering heat of the setting sun, she forgot herself. Forgot spontaneous human combustion. Forgot DAGR. Even forgot the salamander cast outside the circle.

She forgot everything but: "You."

Sun drained out of the day, leaving Anya with her head resting on Brian's chest in the gray gloom of night. The regular beat of his heart was soothing, loud enough to drown out Sparky's pacing around the perimeter of the magic circle. Once in a while, his snout would pop up within view as he stood on his hind legs, whimpering. She saw occasional flickers of light from the dog bed she'd placed in the corner of the room, as he patted and played with his Gloworm, one of the few toys he had that responded to his presence. Anya did her best to ignore him, pressing her ear more tightly against Brian's chest.

Light from the street filtered in through the blinds, illuminating the Ishtar painting on the wall. Minerals worked into the paint sparkled in the dimness, like the quartz in Bernie's ghost trap. As her face looked over the shoulder, cold, remote, powerful, it reminded Anya of who she didn't want to be. But she didn't feel like Ishtar now. She felt warm and safe.

Brian's fingers explored her naked neck. "I've never seen you without that collar."

Anya pulled the sheet around her neck. "I've been wearing it ever since I can remember."

"So your mom gave it to you? Gave Sparky to you?"

"Sort of." She bit her lip, weighing how much to tell him. Somehow, here, in darkness, it was easier to tell him, since she wasn't looking him in the eye. She couldn't even see the Ishtar portrait from here, that representation of her shadow self. Anya listened to Sparky pacing from the bedroom to the bathroom and back again, a nervous circuit, his toes ticking on floor like a clock. It was time to tell Brian.

Still, some part of her feared rejection, and it took a few minutes more to steady the quaver in her voice. "When I was twelve, our house burned down. It was my fault.... I snuck downstairs to plug the Christmas tree lights back in, and I fell asleep in front of it. When I woke up..." Her voice cracked, and Brian stroked her hair.

"When I woke up, the room was in flames. Backdraft pulled the fire up to the second floor, where my mother was sleeping. She didn't have a chance."

Anya bit her lip, listening to Brian's quickened pulse, straining to hear the judgment behind it.

"It wasn't your fault," he finally murmured against her forehead.

"That's what the priest said. 'Not my fault.' But it felt like it. Still does." Anya rubbed at her nose, which was suddenly running. "The collar--Sparky--is the last thing I have from that life."

"You grew up with him?"

"Yeah. He's always been around. I don't know where my mom picked him up. She told me that he slept curled up in my crib. He's always been... a guardian. The night of the fire, he pulled me out of the house." Anya blinked at her blurry vision, feeling a stab of guilt for exiling the salamander from her bed. She lifted her head, listened. Sparky had stopped pacing. He was no doubt sulking in some corner of the house, contemplating which wires to chew. Anya hadn't thought of having a magick circle cast around the new television, but she considered it.

"He's lucky to have you."

Anya frowned. She and the salamander were tangled up together like socks in a dryer. She couldn't extricate herself, even if she wanted to.

But for just this one night, she relished the silence and the naked chill around her neck as she slept.

Anya slept until the gray light of dawn. She wriggled out from around Brian's arm and padded to the bathroom. Goose bumps lifted on her skin and she snatched her robe from the bathroom hook.

She switched on the light, reaching for the salamander collar on the counter. She slipped it around her neck, but it felt cold, empty. Panic pooled in her stomach.

"Sparky?" she whispered.

A soft chirp echoed from the bathtub, behind the shower curtain decorated with cartoon rubber ducks. Anya pulled aside the plastic curtain and gasped.

The interior of the bathtub was coated in a crystalline coating, like the interior of a geode. The salamander lay in the center of the tub, curled around what looked like a heap of marbles. He blinked up at her, tiredly, and trilled.

Anya knelt by the tub, reached in to stroke his sides. "What happened? Are you all right?"

The salamander licked her wrist and laid his head back down on the marbles. Anya stroked his side, felt his skin loose and wobbly over his ribs.

Gingerly, she reached down and picked up one of the marbles. It reminded her of the glass cat's-eye marbles she'd played with as a child. It was rough as the skin of a stone, though, and warm to the touch. She held it up to the bathroom light, let the light shine through its rippled surface.

She nearly dropped it when she saw a tiny salamander inside it, curled into the fetal position.

"Oh, Sparky. What've you done?"

"Y
OU'RE TELLING ME THAT A
salamander laid eggs in your bathtub?" Ciro set down his fork.

Anya sat on her couch and rubbed her forehead. Katie patted her shoulder and handed her a piece of cake on a paper plate. On the coffee table, a sheet cake displayed the words "Congratulations Anya and Sparky!" above the cartoon frosted image of a stork. The kitchen witch had a weird sense of humor. But at least the cake was chocolate.

"Yes. That's exactly what I'm telling you," said Anya.

Ciro's eyes gleamed with excitement.

A howl echoed across the bathroom tile, and a door slammed. Brian slunk sheepishly down the hallway, video camera in hand. "Did you know that your salamander can slam doors?"

"He never did that before," Katie said, around a mouthful of cake.

"That's not surprising," said Ciro. "He's likely highly hormonal, so his powers are elevated."

"Stop pestering him," Anya snapped. She felt guilty for letting the poor salamander give birth. All alone. In a bathtub. She turned to Ciro. "I, ah, thought Sparky was a boy. I mean... I never actually
looked.
How the hell did this happen? Is there a Mrs. Sparky?" Questions tumbled over one another. She was glad Katie had brought Ciro, and was even happier that she'd had the foresight not to bring Jules. Jules would probably try to kill them.

A glint of frosting showed on Ciro's mustache. "For elementals, gender is really meaningless. You assigned him a gender once upon a time, and he didn't rebel against it."

"It's sort of like angels," Katie said. "Gabriel is variously depicted as male or female, but he/she/it is a genderless force. Sex is an illusion designed to allow us to relate and interact with them better."

Anya's gaze crossed Brian's, and she blushed. "So where did the eggs come from? I haven't seen any other salamanders crawling around."

"Parthenogenesis." Ciro licked his fork. "It's actually relatively common in the natural world. Some species of bees, sharks, and lizards reproduce asexually when a suitable mate isn't around. Komodo dragons do it, too. There are several species of New Mexico whiptail lizards that reproduce exclusively by parthenogenesis. As I understand it, the key thing is that there's a biological need for reproduction to occur, and no suitable mate of the opposite gender available."

"This is how salamanders normally reproduce, then?"

Katie cut another slice of cake. "According to legend, salamanders reproduce once every hundred years, and they mate when they feel that they've found a suitable guardian. It's rumored the fires that burned Joan of Arc hatched hundreds of salamanders."

Ciro wiped his fingers on a napkin. "Hadn't heard that one."

"I think that was a Crowley-ism."

"Ah. That explains it. Crowley was often full of shit." Ciro wagged his finger before Katie. "Never believe anything he says without independent verification."

"I'm not Joan of fucking Arc." Anya pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, unwilling to let the conversation degenerate into a discussion of which member of the Order of the Golden Dawn had the brassiest balls. "And I don't want to be burned."

"Well, obviously. But Sparky seems to think that you're a strong enough hero to watch over his babies."

"How long do they take to hatch? What do I do to take care of them?" Anya wailed.

Brian murmured, "Looks like Sparky's doing a good job of that himself." He was hunched over the blue-and-red glow of a thermal imaging camera. It didn't appear to be a standard camera. Instead, it was something Brian had jerry-rigged with wires and a circuit board duct-taped to the housing. He aimed it at the wall separating the kitchen from the bathroom. Anya could make out a red salamander shape curled protectively over a clutch of orange eggs. Anya counted fifty-one dots. She tried to imagine what would happen with fifty-one Sparkies running underfoot.

Chaos.

"Is he keeping them warm?"

Ciro grinned. "They will need to be kept warm. They
are
fire elementals, after all. As far as how long it will take them to hatch, I don't know. I'm just a theoretician, remember. I don't actually practice magick."

Katie giggled. "I
so
can't wait to throw you a baby shower."

Anya gave her a dirty look. "I've gotta go to work tomorrow. How can I leave Sparky alone with his eggs?"

Katie tucked into another slice of cake. "I think that we should also make up some magickal protections, wards and the like, for the nest. That might make Sparky feel more secure. But wait until he calms down a bit first."

Anya put her head in her hands. "Shit. I'm gonna be a mother."

Katie pointed at her with her fork. "You're gonna need provisions. We'll leave the guys here to watch the eggs. I'll take you shopping."

Anya eyed her dubiously. "Provisions?" she echoed. "From where?"

Katie grinned at her, an evil glint in her eye. "Hell," she said. "I'm taking you to hell."

The mega baby superstore loomed over the asphalt parking lot. It oozed pink and blue, and Anya shivered in its cold shadow. Pregnant women waddled in and out of the store, some in packs, some dragging dazed men by the hand. Baby contraptions were hung in the windows; Anya thought she recognized some of them to be strollers, but she wasn't sure. Most looked like alien spaceships with wheels.

"No. I'm not going in there." Anya dug in her heels. She wound her fingers in the salamander collar around her neck. If Sparky was in there, he was being very, very quiet.

Anya had decided to experiment with leaving the house later that afternoon. She didn't know whether Sparky would follow her or stay with the nest. She didn't know if he even had a choice in it. Either way, she needed to go provisioning. She left Brian with instructions to sneak into the bathroom and aim the hair dryer at the nest periodically. By Ciro's guesstimation, the nest was at about human-body temperature with Sparky on it, and that temperature would need to be maintained.

Anya and Katie first went to the pet store to buy a crate of heat pads for lizards. They were filled with iron powder, and would heat for forty hours when activated, without electricity. Anya had rejected outright the idea of using an electric blanket from the discount store--if the little buggers were anything like Sparky, they'd short it out and burn the house down. The clerk at the pet store probably thought they were running an iguana-smuggling operation, shipping lizards all over the world.

Anya had accepted the idea of charging four hundred dollars for an arctic expedition-rated, Gore-Tex-insulated sleeping bag from the camping store.

But the baby store was where she drew the line.

"What the hell do we need in there?" Anya growled.

Katie consulted her list. "We need a night-light--don't want the babies hatching in darkness. We need a thermometer to keep track of the temperature in the nest. We might find other useful equipment. I was considering a baby monitor, but Brian can probably cook up something higher tech in the mad scientist's laboratory." Katie waggled her eyebrows at her. "You know, so that you can hear what's happening when you're otherwise indisposed. With bedroom activities."

Anya opened her mouth, shut it. She let the dig go past; there was no use lying to a witch. "Salamanders have been hatching for thousands of years without all this"--she waved her hand at the fearsome facade--"crap."

"Quit arguing. Let's get what we need and get out." Like a sergeant dragging along a reluctant recruit, she hauled Anya into the store.

"You're so... maternal."

"Fuck you, Anya. Give me your credit card."

The place gave her the willies more than any haunted house. The estrogen was much, much too high. Everything was pastel and/or calico: high chairs, booster seats, things with springs and plastic parts. Stuffed animals with strange button eyes ogled her, perched beside tubes of concoctions called "Butt Paste" and hundred-dollar tote bags designed to hold diapers. Muzak played a calliope version of "Puff the Magic Dragon" overhead.

Anya picked up something that looked like a plastic tissue box. "What the hell is this?" She read the side of it: "'Baby Wipe Warmer.' Seriously, baby wipes have to be warm before they can touch a baby's ass?"

A very pregnant woman pushing a pink stroller down the aisle gave her a dirty look. Anya noticed that she walked very much the way Sparky had been waddling the past few weeks. She felt a stab of guilt: not for swearing, but for her complete and utter failure to discern Sparky's condition.

"Guess I'm not allowed to swear in here, either." She trotted to keep up with Katie, who already had two boxes in her cart and was trying to act like she didn't know Anya. She paused before a wall of thermometers.

Anya poked at something that looked like a hemorrhoid pillow that had been rebranded as an "infant positioner." She drifted by a plastic apparatus with a snout and tubes that looked like a squid from a bad science fiction movie.

"Seriously, what's all this stuff for?"

Katie glanced over her shoulder. "That's a breast pump."

"A what?" Anya snatched her hand away.

"Were you raised by wolves? They're used to pump breast milk and store it for later." Katie held up a package containing a yellow rubber duck. "This thermometer is supposed to float in a bathtub. It sounds an alarm if the temperature gets above a hundred or below eighty." She scanned the shelves. "Looks like the rest are rectal thermometers."

"Give me that." Anya snatched the plastic duck. "Are we done here?"

"Almost. We need crib bumpers."

"What the hell are crib bumpers, and why would we need them? The newts aren't going to be driving cars."

Katie rolled her eyes and led Anya down an aisle containing crib bedding.

Anya's eyes glazed over at the variety of organic cotton sheets, blankets, dust ruffles, and canopies. "It's basically padding for the sides of a crib. It's so the newts don't hurt themselves on the sharp edges of all that crystal. It will also act as insulation."

Anya stared at Katie, who was pawing through plastic-wrapped calico. "Seriously. How do you know all this shit?"

Katie gave her a grim look. "I had to throw the baby shower from hell for my sister when she had twins. For over a hundred people."

"I'm sorry."

Anya felt a small wiggle at her neck. Sparky had come with her, after all. From the corner of her eye, she saw Sparky standing on her shoulder, staring upward. Anya followed his gaze. A crib mobile of moons and stars dangled overhead. He reached out to bat the plush yellow stars and squealed in delight when they made a musical chiming sound, beginning to play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Anya screwed her eyes shut, imagining that keeping her awake at night. Sparky loved making his Gloworm light up in the dark by slapping it around. But the Gloworm was silent.

"May I help you ladies?"

A clerk advanced toward them with a broad smile. She had a ponytail and was wearing a yellow smock with a name tag that said "Hi, I'm Audrey."

Katie stabbed her thumb over her shoulder at Anya and gave her a wicked smirk. "Yeah. She's having a baby. Multiples, actually."

"Congratulations!" The clerk clasped her hands in front of her and glowed, having struck the retail mother lode. "When are you due?"

"Uh..." Anya crossed her arms over her stomach. "Not for a while."

"We can get you started on a baby registry right away." Audrey pulled what looked like a laser gun from the utility belt at her waist. It, like everything else in the store, was pastel. "We'll set you up with some paperwork and turn you loose with the UPC scanner."

"The what?" Anya blinked.

"We keep an electronic registry for your friends and family. You use the UPC scanner to scan the UPCs of the items you want them to buy you." The clerk spoke very slowly, as if the multiples had sucked the juice out of Anya's brain. She demonstrated by scanning the price code on a crib. A red light lanced out of the snout of the scanner, and it displayed the price on an LED window on the back: $458.

"Jesus," Anya muttered.

But Sparky was in love. He stood on Anya's shoulder, twisting his head to stare at the UPC gun and the shiny red laser beam extending from it like the sights on a ray gun.

"Um. I'd like one of those." Anya pointed up to the mobile.

"For your registry, or to take with you today?"

"I'll take it with me." Anya couldn't seriously imagine anyone wanting to buy anything from a baby registry for a nest of salamanders.

Audrey shuffled through the boxes on the floor. "Here's one," she chirped. Magically, she produced an electronic tablet from her utility belt, which was beginning to look as if it held more gizmos than Batman's. She handed it to Anya with a stylus. "Just fill out the form here, and click 'Send.'"

Anya looked over the form asking for her name, address, due date, and various and other sundry biographical info. "Then what?"

Audrey punched in some numbers on the keypad on the back of the UPC scanner. "Then I turn you loose with the scanner."

On Anya's shoulder, Sparky whined. She looked into his marble-like eyes and felt a deep pang of guilt for missing him give birth.