By evening, I was feeling more alive than I had since my attempted murder in the fall. I vacillated between thinking that there was something energizing about blood and that my heritage had finally caught up with me. Either way, my cocktail hours throughout the day were revitalizing.
By the end of the week, though, blood martinis, murdering “best” friends, and machete-wielding dead men were the least of my troubles. I’d started to suspect that without regular blood I was going to flag. Eli and I set out to see Mama Lauren, closely followed by Jesse, Christy, Sera, and for reasons I’d never admit, Alice. Chanukah wasn’t a major holiday for Jews, not a high holy day despite the fact that it was one of the only ones Christians knew we had. Still, my mother was keen on any excuse to cook for my friends.
It was a topic we rarely addressed, but my peculiar diet was a challenge for her. I was fairly liquid based, and the few solid things I ate were a choice not a need. Honestly, it was a testament to her cleverness that she discovered that I needed alcohol of all things. To her, I was a hummingbird, existing on some sort of water with additives.
Technically, we were there for the holiday, lighting a candle and sharing prayers and food, but in truth, I also needed maternal insight on what was wrong with me. She could tell. She had always been able to tell what I needed, as far as I knew, so if anyone in the world had answers, it would be Mama Lauren.
In some ways, driving into the Outs for this was not that different than driving to see Beatrice. The primary distinction was that I rarely had the chance to do this of late.
The Outs were dangerous for me in a way that they weren’t for most people. I was tempting to the dead, and my childhood included waking too often to desperate monsters trying to peel off the rolldowns.
Mama Lauren coped, but she always just shrugged and asked what else was she to do? The sort of people who lived here were peculiar. The cities were where folks clustered, and the immediate space outside that—the ghost zones—were where draugr gathered. The Outs were their own thing. No utility services. No sheriff. No law. A special sort of madness drew folks to live out in nature.
Your energy was via solar or wind power, and your liquids were well water, septic, and leach fields. Law? Well, that was a combination of firepower and the judicious use of roll-downs for every window, door, chicken coop, and greenhouse on her farm. In the Outs, you didn’t go outside once the sun set—which made the sunset candle lighting a challenge.
We’d always made do. Our “sunset” was noon for the purposes of holidays with friends. The alternative was staying over, and that was complicated sometimes with the way I beckoned to dead things. Mama Lauren could cope, but I didn’t want my friends to wake up to draugr clawing at the walls to get in.
We crawled down the pitted lane, and Eli’s steering managed to avoid pits that seemed likely to swallow his car whole. Maybe it was nerves, but I wasn’t feeling like talking. I clung to the “oh shit” handle on the door as we bounced along.
Mama Lauren was expecting me, so she stood outside watching for us. Her hair was starting to gray, and she’d pulled it back into a long braid for a change. It was almost always tied up in a knot, but today it was bound in a braid that reached past her hips. My tresses might be blue-dyed, but the thick coils were obviously from her genes.
She had on her usual tall boots, dress, and a pair of pistols holstered at her hips. Today an apron covered the dress. Her hand rested on the butt of one of those guns until she saw me step out of Eli’s car.
I flowed toward her before anyone else was out of the cars.
“Eli’s here,” I said. “Alice, too. Please, don’t hex either of them.”
Mama Lauren laughed and swept me into a hug that reminded me that she was strong for her age. Honestly, she was strong for my age. “You worry too much, bubeleh.”
Then she was off to greet my friends. “No Yule log, my darlings! I do have the menorah in the window, but . . .” I tuned her out and watched Eli.
I think she enjoyed the confusion her mix of Yiddish, Hebrew, and pagan terms caused a lot of people, but honestly, none of my friends blinked at it today. I’m not sure they ever did.
I wondered, though, what Eli would think.
He waited until everyone had greeted her, and then he bowed so deeply you’d think she was royalty. “It is my honor to meet you. I am not nor will I be worthy of the gift that is your daughter’s attention.”
“True.” Mama Lauren nodded at him. “Not even a prince is worthy of Geneviève. She says you are helpful, though.”
Jesse snorted in laughter.
“I do attempt to be of use,” Eli said with not a hint of laughter in his voice.
Then, my mother patted his cheeks. “That’s all any of us can do.” She looked over at Jesse and swatted him. “You! You haven’t visited your family.”
“Yes, Mama Lauren,” he said, laughter vanishing. Jesse had been my childhood bestie, so he was well aware of my mother’s temper—and her stinging hexes.
But then my mother looked down at Jesse’s hand, holding on to Christy’s. “At least you figured that out.”
She shooed us into the house, where she’d set a table that no city restaurant could match. That was the not-so-secret truth of life in the Outs: there were things aplenty that might kill you, but there were also benefits. For someone so bound to the soil, someone who grew her own food and herbs, there was no contest.
Later, when I had fewer witnesses I’d ask my mother about the blood. For now, I simply asked for a “pick-me-up” and downed whatever concoctions she handed me during our visit. I wasn’t typically this compliant, but I wasn’t ready for my mother or friends to discover how much I needed the blood martinis that Alice made me.
And Alice was, for all her cheery remarks, looking tired. So, I was without my martinis for a few days. Maybe I lied to her that I was fine, but I wasn’t going to leech away her energy when she was clearly donating too much.
We all tucked into our odd version of a holiday, knowing that I would much rather stay for several days, and no one remarked on the way that Sera and Christy both kept track of the time. Holiday or not, the draugr would come if I was out here after hours—and after my run-in with Harold, I’d really rather have a draugr free event.