Part Two

Ash Redfern honestly wasn’t sure if they were happy or not.

"Sometimes I think that I’m making us both miserable, and sometimes I just..." he trailed off.

Nina Rosette knew better. Nina knew how he called his sister every other day and his best friend on the days between. She knew how he didn’t sleep and how he drank his blood cold straight from the package. She knew how his eyes roamed the room whenever she was in it as if he was afraid to look at her.

They had been living together for ten weeks. They slept at opposite ends of the same bed. Next door was the spare room, which had once been Ash’s "rage room" where he went to break cheap lamps and tear his nails into the punching bag, and later home to his two children from a separate love affair in another dimension. Now it was their three-month old daughter’s nursery.

"Wish none of this had ever happened," Nina finished for him. They were sitting in the living room with the lights out. Her back was throbbing no matter how many times she resettled herself in the black leather arm chair.

"That’s not what I was going to say," he told her.

"That’s what you were thinking," she snapped, accidentally.

She’d been trying not to say things like that. She was aware that it didn’t help. But optimism had not been lobbying for a place in her life recently and sometimes snapping at Ash kept her from snapping at the baby, which she was aware could mess children up.

They’d been told they could never have children. Ash was a vampire, Nina was a human, it was genetically impossible and besides that, their relationship hadn’t been steady enough for them to even begin talking about moving in together.

That was before Nina was prescribed a medication called Josselphin for her diabetes. Before the miracle occurred in her uterus.

She’d run away. She knew it still hurt Ash, the way she called his superiors in Circle Daybreak and asked for asylum, then hid from him for five months until their child was born a wretched birth during an avalanche. The same avalanche that broke several vertebrae in her back and left her unable to care for herself.

He had been sweet in the hospital. Nina chalked it up to guilt, the sweet words, the only time he’d ever managed to tell her that he loved her. He had sworn it wouldn’t be the first time she heard the words, but three months later she was still waiting. Maybe it was her own fault; she knew she’d been a pain in the ass.

But she was in pain, constantly. And she was angry at her life and the hairpin turns it had taken on dangerous roads. Angry at Ash because if he just wasn’t such a repressed fuck they might be able to talk about this until she felt safe with him again.

"It doesn’t matter," she tried to amend, "sometimes I think the same thing."

Ash was sitting—perched, really—on the edge of the couch, arms hanging between his knees. His blond hair was getting long and fell shaggily around his pale face. She’d seen his eyes in the light half an hour ago and noted the apple green color in them. It set off the wet red of his lips.

Handsome devil, she thought. If I didn’t want to hurt him so badly I might hit on him.

"Don’t go there," Ash said. He swallowed and she knew he was working to reign in his temper. He’d been so kind to her the past three months that it had begun to seem hollow. She couldn’t stop wishing that he’d quit sparing her feelings and let her have it. At least then she wouldn’t be so...alone in this.

"My brother’s going to be here tomorrow morning, and I can promise you that he’s going to say it. Avrem isn’t subtle, Ash."

"I got that feeling from our conversations on the phone."

Nina had never had many friends. She’d had her demanding, consuming family and her ill health for companions, and she’d lived in Conniticut until she moved to New Mexico for college. Now that she’d dropped out to recover and take care of her baby, she rarely spoke to anyone who didn’t come to the apartment, and the idea of Avrem, her big, bossy, insensitive brother, arriving was warming. She wanted his security, she wanted him to take over for a couple of days. He would only be staying one night, before heading to Seattle for his next appointment with the Navy.

She was about to speak when crying came from the spare room. No, she corrected herself as she automatically began to climb out of her chair, the nursery.

"No, don’t get up," Ash said. "I’ll get her."

"I can do it." She tried to keep the grimace off her face as she gripped the coffee table edge for balance.

He sighed but didn’t argue. She was half hoping he would reach for her arm, but knew she had told him not to too many times for him to try again. Why was it people gave up knocking just when she was ready to let them in?

The nursery was mostly shelves. They made finding things easier for Nina, since she didn’t have to drag open heavy drawers that might or might not contain what she needed. In the glow of a plastic Statue of Liberty nightlight—Nine had refused the ever-burning flame Somebody Harman had offered—the Diaper Jennie sat like a canister built by NASA under the window. The curtains were made of leather, in case the baby developed a sensitivity to sunlight.

Nina prayed every night that she wouldn’t.

Ash picked her up; he was adamant about not letting Nina do that. "Not with your back," he said. She was secretly relieved and didn’t know what she’d do six months from now with a significantly heavier toddler.

"What’s up, Belle?" he asked, lifting the stunningly small baby into his arms.

Nina had always figured that if she had children, she would give them simple names. Mary. Anne. Maybe Hannah if she got ambitious. After all, she’d spent nineteen years trying to explain that her own name was pronounced "NY-nah," not "NEE-nah." But she’d been doped up in the recovery room after having back surgery when some idiot nurse helped her fill out the birth certificate, and she’d woken up more fully the next day to discover that her first child was legally named Carabelissima Ashlyn Rosette.

Ash was the only one who called her Belle. Everyone else called her Carabel or Carrie.

Nina watched the baby’s tiny hand form a fist and beat uselessly against Ash’s chest. She’d been born four months premature, healthy beyond the understanding of medicine and science unless her lamia heritage was taken into account, and she was just now beginning to grow to a size that didn’t make strangers gasp.

"She’s not wet," Ash said. "When did you feed her?"

"Only an hour ago."

"Is there milk left in the fridge?"

"She drank it all."

Nina turned away, hugging her arms around herself. Honestly, she didn’t know where that baby put it; she drank Nina dry as often as she could and then continued to cry.

She seemed to be thirsty all the time.

As if breast milk wasn’t what she wanted.

Ash sighed. "I’ll go mix some formula. Do you mind taking her for a couple of minutes?"

Nina’s irritability made her say, "Of course not," when in reality she was wondering how much longer she could remain standing.

She sat down in the rocker Rowan had given them. Not wood, of course, but solid plastic. The heavy-duty kind bullet-proof windows were made from. It tipped back gently as Ash put Carabel into her arms.

"I’ll be back in a sec," he promised, and Nina avoided looking at him so that she wouldn’t scowl.

The baby continued to cry, despite long, slow rocks in the chair and Nina’s warmest cooing. "It’s okay," she said, "no need to cry. You’ll have a bottle soon and everything will be fine again. The world will return to a safe, sane place."

In her wildest dreams maybe. The other thing she knew that Ash didn’t seem to realize was that if they stayed together much longer, they were going to start hating each other. Passionately.

"You don’t understand, do you?" she asked Carabel in a light tone. "How love takes a long time to grow, and while it’s growing, it’s fragile, and if you fuck everything up while it’s growing, nothing turns out right afterward."

She wondered if she should start watching her mouth. Ash said lamia kids learned to talk quick.

"It’s not your fault," she added. "Don’t ever think it was your fault."

It wasn’t Carabel’s fault. In her dark hearts, Nina admitted to herself that she resented her daughter, but she loved her, too. It was a strange kind of love, a kind of desperate love felt for something stolen but nearby. As if the world could pivot simply on the existence of this one little creature.

"Absolutely not your fault," she promised.

No, she couldn’t resent Carabel much.