IN THE five-minute drive between the parking lot and home, everything hits me at once: shakes, nausea, fever, arousal, not to mention the mourning-turned-relief at having Gen back from the dead and the real mourning over my only recently reclaimed father. We’re in the rear of Gen’s Charger with Chris driving. Gen’s cuddled against my shoulder, my arm wrapped around her. She’s regained consciousness. My pull from her only stunned her for a few moments. It looks like she’ll recover in a matter of hours, though she’s pale and weary.
I think I’m going to take a lot longer.
The landscape rushing by makes the nausea worse, so I focus on my free hand grasping my knee, digging into the torn denim. Wetness runs down my cheeks. I try to get a grip. The shaking intensifies. Fuck it. I let myself shake.
“Flynn, it’s over. We did it. This isn’t just the power usage. What’s going on?” Gen asks, her voice a whisper.
It’s too much. I can’t answer her.
Chris slows the Charger and turns onto Royal Court Street. “Something… happened… to her at the pub,” he says over the seat back. “Before Granfeld showed up, so it’s more than the fight. Maybe she shouldn’t have gotten out of bed so soon, but I don’t think that’s it.”
Oh. Right. After my battle with Leo, I was supposed to be convalescing. I snuck out. Feels like an eternity ago. Gen tilts her head up to study my face, her expression of concern offset by her frown. She’s probably a little pissed at me for going to the pub. Never in my life have I been so happy to have her pissed at me.
The house comes into view, all castle turrets, sloping rooftops, and stone architecture. Then the garage, then the front yard. Chris turns into the driveway. When the car stops, Gen moves to climb out the rear passenger door.
I don’t let her. I can’t. My grip on her shoulder won’t loosen. Now that all the adrenaline has worn off, the very idea of her being separated from me, even for a moment, is unbearable. I lost her. I cannot lose her again. I know it’s irrational. It doesn’t matter.
She grips me back, holding me together, because I’m falling apart. I don’t bother wiping away the falling tears—there’s a lot more coming behind these.
“Don’t let go,” I whisper into her hair, breathing in the scent of her—lavender shampoo, the incense she uses when she’s reading the tarot, the orange-and-honey perfume she dabs behind each ear when she gets up every morning. “Whatever you do, just don’t let go.”
She doesn’t. And though I can feel her confusion and concern in every murmur of her comfort, every rub of my back and shoulders, she doesn’t press me further.
It’s a long time before I can unclench my grip from around her enough to slide out my own door, drawing her with me. I let her lead me inside the house, Chris trailing behind. She tugs me gently into the living room, where Katy prowls nervously back and forth in front of the couch. Gen pushes me down onto the cushions and snuggles under my arm, still holding me, bless her. Katy hops up, though she’s forbidden on the sofa, and I bury my free hand in her soft fur.
Rattling of pots and pans and the opening and closing of cabinets tell me Chris is at work in the kitchen, which is confirmed a few minutes later when he appears with a steaming mug of hot cocoa in his outstretched hands.
I give it the old college try, but I can’t manage it without sloshing, so Gen holds it for me, bringing it to my lips over and over until I’ve drunk half. When I can take a solid breath without gasping, choking, or sobbing, she pulls the mug away and sets it aside.
“Now,” she says, “talk to me. Please. I think you just scared five years off my life.”
Which, of course, has the effect of starting me crying all over again.
When I calm for the second time, I take her hands and try to get the words out, but they won’t come. I shake my head. “Not now. I can’t go through it again right now.” Maybe not ever, but she’ll never accept that, so I don’t say it. “Let me keep this a bit.” She opens her mouth to protest, and I don’t blame her, but I cut her off. “I’m not hurt, well, except for some glass in my hand, a bruise from falling off the barstool, and some others from getting tossed around. But nothing’s broken.” At least I don’t think so. If I’m honest, every inch of my body aches like a sonofabitch.
Gen gives me an incredulous look.
Okay, yeah, I’m covered in scrapes, cuts, and assorted other minor injuries, so I rephrase. “There’s no immediate danger. Nothing life-threatening. And I’ll get through this, so long as you’re near me.” And when I say near, I mean literally. I can’t bear the thought of letting her out of my sight in the foreseeable future, which I’m sure will raise even more questions, but maybe by then I’ll be ready to tell her everything. “Just give me some time.”
She doesn’t like it. I don’t have to be psychic to figure that out. But after a long moment, she nods. “Okay. For now. But you are going to tell me, Flynn. You can’t scare me like that and not tell me.”
“I will. As soon as I’m able. I promise.”
IT’S A couple of days before I can manage to share anything. Gen’s borne it like a trooper, watching me when she thinks I’m not looking, starting to ask multiple times, then stopping herself and shaking her head in frustration.
And she’s stuck to me like glue, with the exception of the first night when she slipped out of our bed to use the bathroom and I woke up, found her gone, and totally freaked out on her. Again.
After that episode, she lets me know whenever she needs to leave my sight, even if she has to wake me to do so.
A few days later, we see the story on the news: “Local man found dead in Disney Springs hotel room. Anyone with any information regarding the situation should contact the authorities.” And they flash my dad’s driver’s license photo on the screen.
Gen’s in shock. I’ve been expecting it.
“Is that why?” Gen asks from her spot on the couch beside me, turning to look up at me with sympathy. She doesn’t usually sit here when we’re not about to make out. Her favorite armchair is across the room.
Too far. Much too far.
“That’s part of it.”
“Oh, Flynn, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” She doesn’t like it one bit when I drop it at that, but I’m still not ready.
ONCE THE coroner settles on heart attack, we claim Dad’s body, hold the funeral the following week, and then I’m finally ready to share.
But not everything.
Over more hot chocolate in the kitchen, I lay down the basics. My mother. Shifting timelines. Gen’s… death.
That’s the hardest part, and I don’t go into details, but with her sitting next to me, within arm’s reach, I’m able to get it out without breaking down again. I refuse to tell her how she died. She doesn’t need to know that, and I’ll suffer the nightmares for both of us.
I don’t share how badly it affected me, either, other than to croak out, “It was the worst day and a half of my life.” Considering everything we’ve been through these past months, that’s saying a helluva lot. She doesn’t ask for more than that, but I suspect she knows I didn’t handle losing her very well.
Gen always knows me.
That leads to my pursuit of Tempest Granfeld, which ended in my dad’s apparent destruction of my mom and vice versa, followed by our final showdown with Tempest in the parking lot. I also leave out the whole “I’m a real succubus” part. Am I some mythological monster? Maybe. But I never want to give her reason to fear me.
I fill in as many blanks for her as I can until she draws a deep breath and lets out a long sigh. “Well,” she says, “let me tie up one more loose end.” She reaches across and into my jeans pocket, dipping her fingers way in.
“What are you—?”
Her hand comes up with the baggie of herbs mixed with my blood that kept my mother away, at least in the present. It wouldn’t have been in there in the past or in the alternate timeline, which was how Mom had her opening to attack me and Dad. The baggie was so far down, I hadn’t noticed either its disappearance or reappearance, and it had likely been through a wash or two.
“Never good to carry unnecessary magical items around,” Gen says a little too flippantly. “Besides, it took me too long to get the cumin from my bag out of the sheets to risk a repeat performance.” She slips off her kitchen chair, heading for the door leading to the screened-in pool area behind the mansion. With her hand on the knob, she turns back to me. “I have to dispose of this properly. I’ll only be a few minutes, I promise.”
I nod. “Sure.” But my insides clench when the door closes her off from my view.
We’re fine. It’s over. Gen’s alive and well. We can’t spend the rest of our lives glued together at the hip or even anywhere more pleasant, but….
I stand and follow her. She’ll roll her eyes, sigh, and shake her head, but she’ll get over it. I have been getting better about needing her next to me.
A little.
I step into the pool enclosure just in time to see her throw the baggie into the air above the chlorinated water, where it bursts into one brief flame before hitting the pool’s surface.
One green flame.
“Shit, Gen!” I shout, startling her so she almost falls in. She teeters on the pool’s edge before regaining her balance and turning to glare at me. I ignore it. “Did you seriously have to use dark magic to destroy that thing? You couldn’t, you know, flush it or something?” My vocal pitch has risen half an octave. I stop and take a deep breath, waiting for an explanation I know I’m not going to like.
She doesn’t meet my eyes. “I didn’t use dark magic to destroy it,” Gen says, focused on her ballet flats. “I used dark magic to create it.”
She used….
How? How could she possibly have used dark magic without me seeing—
The needle. When she pricked my finger, I closed my eyes. And she would have known I’d do that. She must have cast it quickly while my eyes were shut.
“Dammit,” I mutter, turning and heading back inside. For the first time in a week, I don’t want her near me.
“It was just a tiny bit,” she says, running after me. “There was no other way, Flynn. Blood magic requires a related catalyst to work. A psychic who specializes in it could have activated it easily, but I had to improvise. It was the only way to get rid of her immediately. And nothing else would have stopped her. She would have been hounding you night and day, constantly criticizing and insulting us both, or worse, until the Registry put us in touch with someone. Blood workers are rare. Besides, it would have drawn President Argyle’s attention to exactly who your mother was.”
She lets that hang there. Yeah, having Argyle know the full extent of my family tree would be bad. But that’s not a good enough excuse.
“And what about the cost?” I demand, whirling on her.
She backpedals a step. Her brow wrinkles in confusion. “Cost? The cost of blood magic is the blood. The blood paid the price—”
“No, you paid it, with a deeper addiction, and I paid it. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?” I’m shouting. I’m shouting at someone I nearly killed myself over losing. But I am not going to lose her to this.
Tears are forming in her eyes. She really doesn’t see it. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“The timing, Gen! Think. You use just a little bit of dark magic, and less than two days later you’re blasting me in the back with it because you’ve lost your temper and you’re so quick to it that you can’t think straight. You really believe that was just coincidence?” At the time, I couldn’t figure it out. She’d been doing so much better up until she hurt me, and it had seemingly come out of nowhere. I remember wondering if she’d been sneaking using it behind my back, when really, she’d used it right in front of me. Holy fuck. “You almost killed me, Gen,” I say in a small voice. And there it is. I’ve acknowledged the great big green elephant in the room. Gen said it when she first visited me at Cassie’s place, but I never did. It’s almost a relief to get that out. Almost.
Well, if Gen didn’t understand before, she does now. She’s gone pale. “Do you… do you want me to leave?” she whispers.
“No!” I throw my hands up in exasperation. “No. I want you to stop. And if you can’t,” I add, cutting off whatever she is about to say, “then I want you to let me stop you.” I take her shoulders and pull her in to me. She’s trembling. “Tell me if you feel it calling. Tell me when you think dark magic might be the best way to deal with a problem and we’ll find another solution together. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she says, muffling her face in my shirt.
“Good.”
I can only have faith that it’s a promise she can keep.
For weeks and weeks I’ve been wanting my life back, but I never really lost it until I lost Gen. With Granfeld gone, I can do the thing I love most—focus on my wife, her health and happiness, and my own.