Idylton
Jody
“Starving yourself isn’t going to get either of us anywhere we like.”
Jody had tried small talk. He’d tried wheedling her. He’d even tried flattery, which he should have known better than to attempt. Even when Lora’s guard was completely down with him, she’d never been susceptible to compliments.
Nothing reasonable seemed to help ease Lora down from the high-alert state she was in, so he figured he’d take a page out of Ollie’s book and resort to mild shaming. That strategy worked all the time on Tess.
Lora didn’t even open her eyes at Jody’s scold, though he knew for certain she was awake.
She’d gotten off the sofa at around three A.M. to use the bathroom and then had returned with her shoes off to curl up in her former spot. But, she’d been tossing and turning in the four hours since, and he hadn’t been able to sleep because she couldn’t. He’d hoped that in all that time, she’d explain herself, but she didn’t.
The burden was on him to do the talking.
“If you don’t want the food Faye packed, I’m sure she would send something else down in the dumbwaiter. Just tell her.”
Lora took a deep breath and let it out. She had her back turned to him, and looked so small and frail lying on her side. He wanted to settle onto the sofa beside her and rub down her mussed hair and feel if the skin that was flushed so pink was too hot.
But, not wanting to agitate her further, he kept his hands to himself.
It was the worst kind of torture, not being able to soothe someone he loved who, for the moment, didn’t love him back.
“Do you want eggs?” he asked. “Toast?”
She drew in another deep breath.
“Fruit? Cup of tea? Or can you even handle the acid? Tess couldn’t when she was pregnant. She had the baby, by the way. A few days ago. She named her April after our mother.”
Surprisingly, Lora rolled over then and looked at him. “Who’s Tess?”
“My little sister.” He made a you know gesture. “And your boss.”
Lora furrowed her brow and rolled back over. “I can’t believe I’d work with anyone associated with you.”
“I’m wondering if perhaps I should just keep my mouth shut until you regain more of your memories because obviously you don’t hold me in very high esteem.”
She shrugged.
He let down the foot of the recliner he was lounging on and draped his forearms across his thighs. “What do you know about me? Do you know my name? That seems a good place to start.”
“No.”
“No, you don’t want to start or no you don’t know my name?”
She sighed.
Grimacing, he grabbed the cordless phone from the coffee table and dialed Faye’s cell. She’d claimed she’d be up early and to call if they needed anything. Given the intimate nature of his and Lora’s relationship, she didn’t want to have to turn on the camera. She’d wanted to give them privacy, but he suspected it’d be a while before they were anywhere close to needing it. He wanted to be gentle with her, but at the same time, there was a credible threat to Lora and the Afótama, and he needed his woman’s brain running at its usual velocity. She couldn’t make good decisions if she didn’t have her memories.
“Mornin’!” Faye chirped into the phone.
Jody shuddered at the sound. It was too early for cheerfulness. “Hey. I’m going to send the basket up. Lora didn’t eat, but don’t feel too offended. I think she’s starving herself to spite me.”
“Well, that won’t do. She’s gotta take her medication with food, or she’s just gonna get sicker. Make sure you tell her that.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Good. Oh! And just so you know, Claude had a nice chat with your grandmother this morning. And by ‘chat’ I mean she screamed at him for a good twenty minutes, and he was sweating when he hung up.”
Jody pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his tired eyes. “I’d lie and tell you that her bark is worse than her bite, but the truth is, she’s not someone you want to tangle with. Did Claude explain everything to her?”
“Tried to.”
“Did she buy it? Being down here in this bunker, I’m totally tuned out of the web.” They may not have had any unusual abilities of their own, but they’d done a damn good job constructing a space well equipped to protect psychic sensitives.
“Dunno if she did, but I got the sneaking suspicion that if your sister weren’t immediately postnatal and in need of mothering, your grandmother would be here raising hell.”
“That’s a safe bet.”
Faye sighed. “Said she was sending your uncle out to act as a liaison, along with his wife. Ótama wanted to come. Your grandmother told her no, and Claude agreed that’d be a big oopsie if she did. It’s better for now if fewer folks know Ótama’s alive.”
“I agree.”
“Well, I’m glad we can agree on some things.” She let out one of those Midwestern groans that always sounded so long-suffering. “I’ll send down food in ten minutes. Need anything else, just holler.”
“Thanks.” Jody disconnected and slid the phone back onto the table. He glanced at Lora to try to glean whether she had any opinion whatsoever about the conversation that had just transpired, but she hadn’t moved.
Grunting softly, he stood, carried the half-eaten dinner to the dumbwaiter, and raised the door.
“Haven’t used one of these in forever,” he said, chuckling. “Keith and I used to joke when we were young that we could drive our parents crazy by sticking Tess in the one at the mansion. The plan was to let her pop out and surprise folks.” He shoved the tray in and hit the button to send the box upward. “Never really went through with it, though. I guess that seemed too irresponsible, even for us.”
No response.
He shut the dumbwaiter door after poking his head inside the shaft and watching the tray crank upward on via the electronic pulley system. Apparently, to maintain the psychic-proof seal on the room, only one of the doors could be open at a time. If the one in the cellar was open, neither the one in the kitchen nor the one on the second floor would function. He’d had to close the door so Faye could fetch the tray.
“Tess used it a lot at the end of the pregnancy, though,” he said. “She was hungry all the time and couldn’t handle all the stairs to go back and forth to the kitchen. Mrs. Carbone offered to make her some stuff and carry it up, but Tess felt bad about her having to do the extra steps. The dumbwaiter got put to good use.”
“She had a baby,” Lora stated.
Cocking a brow, Jody perched against the recliner’s arm. “Yeah. April. Chunky, squishy, and adorable. Seems to have her father’s eye color defect which surprised us all.”
“Why?”
Of course she didn’t remember. Jody was going to have to explain the significance of throwaway things and hoped something clicked before he dropped the heavy news on her. There were some things he just had to rip the Band-Aid off about, though.
“Her father—Ollie…” he started. He scraped at the hangnail on his middle finger as he carefully chose his words. He didn’t know what she didn’t know. He needed to explain things to her as though she knew nothing at all about where she’d lived nearly her entire life. “Ollie isn’t like most Afótama. That’s what the group I’m from is called, by the way. Afótama. Actually, he isn’t Afótama at all. He comes from a small town in Nevada called Fallon. Same place as my father. He’s not only an outsider, though. He’s got some heritage that goes beyond the standard oddities found in our gene pool.”
Lora didn’t say anything but did sit up. Her sleep-swollen eyes narrowed and forehead creased deeply. “What are you talking about? I already know about witches. As far as I’m concerned, witches are human enough.”
“Good to know.” He picked up his hat from the back of the recliner, raked his hair down, and pinned it in place with the cap.
He could have cut his hair. Gods knew he wanted to. In fact, he’d wanted to for five years. The only reason he hadn’t was because of Lora. She’d never explicitly told him not to cut it, but he read her subtle clues, noticed the way she fondled it when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. He paid attention to the quiet murmurs about the color and how it changed in the light—about how she’d never be sure if it was more brown or more red.
She hated gray areas—hated not being able to put tidy labels on things or to be able to sort things into specific boxes.
He’d been helping her give up some of her stress over things beyond her control in small ways. He’d been helping her cope with the fact that when things didn’t go as expected, she wasn’t necessarily to blame. She needed to be easier on herself. Nobody expected her to be perfect, and especially not him. She was already perfect enough for him. He couldn’t ask for more in a woman.
He’d never even thought to try.
“Ollie is a little more than a witch.” Jody shoved his hands into his pockets and stared up at the drop ceiling, wondering briefly what materials Claude had used for psychic proofing. Nan preferred steel embedded with agate and various other gemstones, but she could also afford it. Claude didn’t seem to be the kind of guy who’d have inherited wealth at his disposal.
“Well, what is he?” Lora asked.
“His mother was fae.”
“You mean…” She pointed upstairs.
“No, no. Not like Faye. F-A-E. Fairy, like Sídhe.”
“Huh.” She pulled her legs in crisscross style and twined her fingers atop her feet. When she sat that way, the bulge of her belly was so obvious, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed before then that she was pregnant.
But she had been especially difficult to pin down in the past few weeks, giving him excuse after excuse about why he couldn’t spend the night. He’d believed that she was busy because they always were busy. Both of them.
That wasn’t good enough, though. Deep down, maybe, he’d known something wasn’t quite right with their days of separation, and he’d brushed off the worry.
I should have pushed harder.
“What does him being fae have to do with his daughter’s eye color?” she asked.
“Ollie explained that eye color in Sídhe people isn’t always straightforward genetics. Sometimes, their eye color is due to inheritance, but it’s just as likely to be due to the nature of whatever magic they have. Ollie’s eyes are blue except for a section of brown in one of them.”
“And April’s?”
“One blue eye. One darker one that’ll probably be brown. We’ll see. Hard to tell with newborns sometimes.”
“I’m certain this one will have brown eyes. Can’t get much darker than mine.” She pressed a hand to the underside of her belly and swiped her thumb across the curve.
“They could be blue.”
Jody had no idea of what color Lora’s father’s eyes had been, but Jody’s were blue. It wouldn’t be unusual if his child’s were.
The look on her face indicated how dubious she thought that was, but of course she would find that possibility highly questionable. She didn’t know that baby was his.
He wasn’t sure yet how to tell her. Already, she was wary of him. Her memories deceived her, and he didn’t know how to fix that. He had to try, though.
“I—”
Faye sent breakfast down then, giving him a perfect excuse to end the conversation and try it again later after he’d screwed his head on straight.
“Oatmeal,” he said, pushing the door all the way up. “With coffee, eggs, bacon, and a banana.” He tossed the fruit from one hand to the other. “Why the hell is it cold?”
Lora held her hand out for it. “So I don’t throw up from the scent. Please stop fondling my fruit. I’d prefer if you didn’t touch things I have to put into my mouth.”
“I see,” he said an undertone as he heaved the heavy tray out of the lift.
She had no idea of what sort of things he’d touched that she’d happily put into her mouth. Or why he was smiling as he set down that tray.