Banishing the Dark (The Arcadia Bell series) (5 page)

Priya’s brow furrowed. “You should not gamble with her life, Kerub. Your associations got her injured. Put your faith in her own people now.”

Oh, boy. I didn’t have to look at Lon to know that
the horns were coming out. I could feel the transmutation in my bones like an esoteric platoon of soldiers marching to war. But when I lifted my hand to hold Lon back, something caught my eye: threads of pale light.

I’d seen threads emerging from my hand before but not quite like this. And when Priya leaned closer to have a look himself, the gossamer strings brightened like fluorescence exposed by ultraviolet light. Priya’s Æthyric halo was making them visible.

When Jupe had secretly, and stupidly, tattooed my sigil on his body, it created an invisible thread connecting us. One that lit up bright gold when he was in danger, much brighter than it was now. And when I first summoned Priya in his new body, my guardian reestablished our link and created a second thread, a black cobweb that anchored him to my Heka signature, even across the planes.

Two threads. But now there were
four
.

Four wispy filaments of light growing out of my palm, waving in the wind like dandelion tufts. My gaze followed the black thread to Priya. And a second pale gold thread that trailed off beyond the alley: Jupe’s.

The third thread was pale green. I followed that . . . right next to me.

To Lon.

I grabbed Lon’s hand and saw its endpoint, right in the middle of his palm. Just like Priya’s. “What did you do?” I said, confused. Lon hated tattoos. And
I hadn’t seen every inch of his skin since I’d come home from the hospital, but he had no reason to want my sigil on him.

His mouth fell open, but no sound came out. I looked back at my palm to the fourth thread: a white line that on first glance seemed to be sprouting from my palm like the others but on closer examination was a little bit different. It splintered from the green thread connected to Lon, and it headed . . .

Down.

To my stomach.

But that couldn’t be right. That meant . . .

Goose bumps pimpled my arms as my world tilted. The oncoming rush of memory made me feel as if I were strapped to a railroad track with no chance of escape, watching a train barreling toward me. I remembered Dr. Mick forcing Lon to leave the surgery room. Mick leaning over me, telling me the news . . .

The baby survived. I’m not sure how—you’re badly bruised, and your hip is broken. But it showed up in the blood work, and I can detect the heartbeat with my knack.

You’re about seven weeks along, I’d guess. Maybe eight.

“Leave us,” Lon barked at Priya, his angry voice snapping me back into the moment. “Return when you have news.”

“Mistress—”

“Go!” I shouted.

Priya disappeared, and in his absence, the threads
quickly faded until they were invisible. I looked up at Lon, blinking into the fire flaring from his halo. His eyes were wide, his brows drawn together. The shock I felt was mirrored in his face.

“You knew,” I whispered accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’ve been trying, asking if you remembered Mick telling you.”

“But I didn’t. You should’ve—”

“I didn’t know how you’d react,” he said, suddenly becoming animated. “You have
no
idea what I’ve been through. None at all. When I walked into Tambuku and saw you lying on the floor in a pool of blood, I thought you were dead. You damn sure felt dead in my arms. Your pulse was so weak I couldn’t hear it. And even when I got you to the hospital, I didn’t know if you’d make it. And if you didn’t make it”—his eyes glazed over as grief lanced through his features—“I didn’t know if I could handle that,” he ended in a broken voice.

“But I made it,” I whispered.

“Yes.” He blinked rapidly and pulled himself together. “But you had trouble remembering, and Mick said to take it slow. To let you remember on your own, or it might be too upsetting. I just . . . did the best I could.”

I heard what he was saying, but it was all just too much. I strode away from him, to clear my head. To breathe and get some perspective.

So . . . I was pregnant.

Fuck.

How the hell had that happened?

I went through the same list of symptoms I’d gone over the first time I’d been told, remembering things I’d ignored over the holidays. All the crying and getting tired at weird times. My breasts getting bigger. I glanced down.
Pfft.
Not anymore. I must have lost it all in the coma.

And oh, God, that’s right: my stupid phone alarm. Forgetting to take the Pill. And of course, we pretty much screwed like rabbits—before the coma, at least.

I spun around to face him and nearly shrieked in surprise when I found him inches away. “You bastard!” I said, shoving him back. “You knocked me up!”

“You helped!”

We stood there for several moments, glowering at each other, until I started laughing. His face twisted in confusion. Then I burst into tears.

His arms roped around me, and I fell against him, weeping into his shirt as the distant sound of a speeding car mingled with the crash of the Pacific surf.

“What are we going to do?” I said, pulling back to see his face after I’d gotten a grip on my tears.

He’d shifted back down, no horns, no fiery halo, just Lon, green eyes peering down at me over his brown and gray beard. With the pad of his thumb,
he brushed away the tears beneath my eyes. Then he pushed my hair away from my forehead with one warm palm. “I don’t know.”

“It could be Earthbound.”

“Or human.”

Or something else entirely. I looked down between us and put a tentative hand over my stomach. How could I not know? Surely that had to make me the worst mother ever already, and I hadn’t even started. I pulled up my T-shirt. “I don’t feel anything. I’m not showing.”

“You’re only eleven weeks along, and you just got out of the hospital. But don’t worry. That tea I’ve been making you is a thousand calories a glass—”

“Oh, my fucking God.”

“—which you
need
. I can already tell from your face that it’s helping.”

“But how do I even know the baby is okay?”

“They did sonograms and tests and monitored you. Mick checked everything before he left for the funeral and said it was healthy and normal. That was a day before you woke up.”

“I can’t believe he told you.” I felt a little betrayed. As if it wasn’t his business to share. As if they were scheming behind my back.

“He didn’t have a choice, Cady. I had to sign the surgery release. He thought you might miscarry.”

And how I had managed not to, after what I’d been through . . . I couldn’t even think about it. I just
couldn’t. It was too awful. But in shunning one bad thought, I faced another. “I’ve been releasing kindled Heka without a caduceus all day.”

“I told you to stop doing that!”

“I didn’t know why! You didn’t tell me I could shock my own baby!”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, calming himself. “Electrical tolerance is inherited, so I’m sure the baby is fine. And you saw the threads. They’re a supernatural marker, just like halos, and you know how a halo changes when you’re sick or unhealthy. But the baby’s thread looked as strong as mine, and I’m fine, so I think we can assume that means everything’s normal.”

“Normal? Having threads in your palm isn’t normal.”

He grabbed my chin and leaned closer to my face. “They are for you, because you’re extraordinary and special, and what you have inside you is, too. Not because of what you are—I don’t give a shit if you’re a goddamn alien or an average human being. You’re mine, and so’s that baby. And whatever it is, it’s beautiful.”

Goddammit. I almost started crying again. Until I had a terrible thought. “Oh, God. My mother—”

“Cannot find out,” Lon said firmly.

She could drop down from the Æthyr and possess my body. She tried to kill Lon. What was to stop her from trying to take my baby away? “What if—”

Lon shook his head emphatically and cradled my
face between his hands. “Not going to think about what-ifs. We’re going to figure out a solution, and we’re going to live through it, just like we always do. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said in a quiet voice. “And I love you. But I’m very, very scared.”

“Me, too,” he said, pulling me closer. “All of the above.”

We drove straight home from the wine bar. I pretended I wasn’t quietly panicking while Jupe talked my ear off and watched TV for a while. After Lon sent him to bed, the two of us headed to the covered back patio, where we could talk without worrying we’d be overheard. Where we could make a plan.

Midnight was my new noon. I supposed I was doomed to keep bartender hours from now until God knew when. I shivered under a blanket and pecked at a tablet touch screen.

“Nothing in Los Angeles,” I confirmed to Lon. “When I look up ‘Wildeye’ and ‘private investigator,’ I get one hit in Golden Peak, California.”

“That’s a little resort town in Big Sur, maybe three or four hours south of us.”

“Robert Wildeye . . . huh.”

“What?”

I peered at the screen. “He’s got a website. Says he’s in Golden Peak and gives a phone number. No
street address. No e-mail. No nothing. Just says, ‘Private Investigator. Confidential. Twenty years experience. Licensed and insured. Premium rates for premium service.’ Oh, interesting. Nox symbol.” Two interlocking circles that indicated the business was Earthbound-friendly.

“Any reviews on other sites?” Lon asked.

I backed out of the page and searched again, using the full name. Only scam sites trying to get you to fork over your credit-card number in exchange for a bogus background check. “It’s like he barely exists,” I said, shivering again.

“Maybe he only exists if you have enough cash.” Lon padded over to the control panel to turn on the heating in the cement flooring.

“Luckily, you do. But I think we need to be careful about contacting him. What if he tries to give us the slip? Or what if he was friends with Dare?”

“Dare didn’t have friends. The town’s not that big, and it’s the off-season. Bet we can ask around and figure out how to find him.”

He sounded a lot more hopeful than I felt, but at least it was a place to start. One small thing decided. Now there was just the other enormous one to face. I set the tablet on a nearby patio table and sighed.

We hadn’t told Jupe the news. Hell, I was still in shock myself. And feeling more than a little foolish. Seriously. Who doesn’t know they’re pregnant? Even Lon said he’d noticed I had missed a period in November, but he just chalked it up to stress, since
I’d been busy working at the bar while juggling piddly magical jobs for the Hellfire Club in my off time. Then there was that horrible afternoon on the chartered boat. And the holidays spent chasing down the boys who robbed Tambuku while they were amped up on Dare’s bionic drug.

Not to mention putting Yvonne in the hospital.

So, yeah. I’d been under a lot of stress. But no use dwelling on the whys and hows. I was pregnant, and that’s all there was to it. I had choices, of course, but when I considered whether I was ready for something so life-changing, I knew my situation could be worse. I was an adult in a solid relationship. More than solid. I really couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. Couldn’t even imagine
wanting
to. Kar Yee joked about all the men she fantasized about. But no matter where they started, all my fantasies eventually led back to Lon.

And maybe I’d never be a domestic goddess, baking pies and arranging tablescapes for dinner parties, but I was pretty good at handling Jupe. Better than Lon sometimes, but that was mostly because he’d been a single parent too long. If I had to raise Jupe alone, I’d lose my shit on occasion, too. All things considered, Lon was a damn good father.

Financially, it wasn’t a problem. I had savings. Not a lot, granted, and I hoped Kar Yee wasn’t so fed up with me that she wanted to ditch our partnership in Tambuku. No, I couldn’t imagine myself slinging drinks with a baby bump, but she could manage just fine without me, at least for a little while.

And Lon was more than financially stable. Maybe he was only rich compared with someone working-class like me, but he didn’t hurt for anything, and even if he decided to retire from photography, he had his inheritance.

So, yeah. Logically, there was no reason
not
to have a baby.

And emotionally? God help me, but despite the chaos that seemed to plague my life before and after I’d met Lon, it was our baby. Us. Him and me. We made it together, no matter how foolishly. Hell, yeah, I wanted it. Fiercely.

There was only the small matter of my murderous mother.

“How’s that?” Lon asked. “You feel it warming up, or you want me to light a fire?”

“No need. It’s much better,” I said, holding the blanket up so he could crawl under with me on a wide wicker chaise. When he stretched out and wrapped his arms around me, his warmth chased the last of the chill away.

Lon often lounged out here, reading beneath the cover of the deep roof. From this vantage point, my gaze drifted over the wraparound redwood deck and the green lawn beyond, lush with palms and Monterrey cypresses. Past the cliffs, the moon-bathed Pacific spread out like a never-ending black carpet.