Chapter 11
Cher, I would be hunted down and fed to a gator should I miss a single family event.
—Janvier to his Ashblade (Once, on a dark New York night)
Saying goodbye to Eve a few days later wasn’t hard—not when Elena knew she’d be seeing her sister again in a few more months.
“My lips are zipped until you’re ready to spill the beans,” Eve said just before she got on her return flight.
“Though I reserve the right to start secretly stockpiling tiny combat outfits. Might even dust off the knitting skills Beth taught me and make teeny-weeny socks. I think Bethie would like that, don’t you? ”
Elena started crying. “Stupid hormones,” she said, as Eve hugged her.
Then her sister was boarding her flight—not supersonic as had once been floated due to the fact the inevitable sonic booms disrupted angelic flight—but far faster and cleaner than jets in Elena’s mortal life.
Elena watched the sleek triangular object vanish into the horizon, already missing her sister.
However, it seemed this was the week for family, because she arrived home to find an invitation from the descendants of Beth’s and Amy’s children and their children’s children.
It had been Janvier who’d told Elena to stay in touch with her family through time. “Oui, there will be pain at first,” the Cajun vampire had said as he sat beside her on a bench in Central Park some months after Beth’s funeral.
Laying her sister to rest had savaged Elena’s heart. She’d helped carry Beth to her place of rest, and all she could think of the entire time was how small Bethie had been when their lives changed forever. How her tiny hand had clutched at Elena’s at Ari and Belle’s joint funeral.
She’d been so scared and lost, not truly understanding what had happened to her big sisters.
The next day, in an act of confused childish grief, she’d locked away her favorite dolls.
“Suzy and Janey are being mean, Ellie.” A quivering lower lip, her strawberry blonde hair a halo around her face.
“They’re saying Ari and Belle won’t come back ever. ”
As Beth would now never come back.
“You will remember those you lost,” Janvier had continued that day in Central Park, the bayou green of his eyes potent with memory.
“As I remember my Amelie and Joelle and how they used to bring all their complaints to their big brother. They were so ’tite my sisters, so vibrant, and to my eyes, so young to the very end. ”
“I never saw Beth as older than me.” Elena’s voice had been as ragged as her heart.
“She was and will always be my baby sister.” Even though Beth had gained wrinkles over the years, her skin spotted by time, and was her family’s beloved matriarch, she’d still turned to Elena anytime she needed “grown-up” advice.
“That’s how it should be. Age, the way we look, that is only part of what makes us.” Arms braced on his thighs and the sun glinting off the burnished brown of his hair, the vampire had watched children play with kites in the distance, the colorful diamonds bright against the blue sky.
“But after the pain will come the happiness,” he’d said in his lazy drawl of a voice. “You will catch glimpses of your sister and others in those who come after them. There is a new bébé in my family who could be a copy of my sister, Joelle.”
He’d put a fist on his heart. “When I’m with their descendants, when I dance with them at a fais-dodo, when I hear their memories, I remember that my family is not dead. It has simply changed and grown, and if I am not to be frozen in stone, so must I.
“Some of my vampiric brethren say it is foolish to hold on, that we should separate vampires from mortals, but why? My Ashblade and I do not go to feed on my family. We go to share their lives and to tell them of ours in turn. You see how it helped Majda and Jean-Baptiste to know you and to know Beth and her children. Such bonds are a gift, Elena.”
Janvier wasn’t like Illium, with whom she’d always had an affectionate friendship. Rather, theirs was the relationship of fellow warriors. He was part of her Guard, and their respect went both ways—but they didn’t do heart-to-heart conversations.
That day, however, he’d taken her hand and held it as he said, “Grieve, Ellie. Oui, you must. But after that is over, you must celebrate what brought Beth such happiness—the family she raised, the legacy she left behind. That is her spirit walking through time.”
It had taken her years to fully accept and absorb his advice, but she’d already been part of Beth’s—and Amy’s—families by the time of their passing.
Their children and grandchildren had leaned on her, the eldest aunt, and she’d experienced firsthand what it was that Janvier had tried to share with her.
So as Janvier went to many a fais-dodo down in Louisiana, she’d been to many an event put on by her family. A week after Eve’s departure, she landed in a park in Queens.
The area was abuzz with descendants who still carried the Deveraux name, and many more who’d ended up with different surnames over the generations.
Five picnic tables groaned with food, while someone had set up a brightly colored bounce castle in one corner—those things had never gone out of vogue, not since the day they’d been invented.
“Ellie!” A little girl with glittering barrettes in her black curls ran over to jump into her arms.
Elena snugged her against her hip. “Hello, Parisa,” she said to this little one with Beth’s eyes against skin as luxuriantly dark as the night sky.
“Have you seen Grandma Majda?” Elena’s grandmother had chosen to remain Grandma to all the children who had come from Beth and then Beth’s children.
As Elena’s grandfather, Jean-Baptiste, had chosen to remain Grandpa.
“Over there!” Parisa Beth Emmanuel pointed, kicking her feet as Elena wove through the crowd to greet the acknowledged matriarch of their family.
“Ellie!” Kisses on the cheek, hugs, small touches as she passed, all from adult family members who had known her since they were children, and so had no fear of her.
Quite unlike their chosen partners—the more established ones had settled down from their instinctive wariness of an archangels’ consort, but the newer ones kept a wide-eyed distance.
Then she was being enfolded in her grandmother’s embrace, the wild-raspberry-and-cinnamon-spice scent of her the scent of home, of comfort.
Elena’s emotions surged, thick in her throat and hot in her eyes.
Majda with her hair of moonlight and eyes of clear turquoise had been younger than Elena when she’d been Made into a vampire, her features eternally of that innocent young woman.
But in the years since Elena had first found her, she’d learned to see beyond Majda’s physical youth to the heart beneath—a heart that saw Elena as the beloved child of her own lost child.
Their relationship had altered with that realization, becoming that of grandmother and grandchild in every way.
Today, she hugged Majda back as hard as she could with one arm, while a happy Parisa was squashed in between them.
Taking the little one’s face gently between her hands, Majda kissed her first on one cheek, then the other. “You have grown at least three inches since the last time I saw you.”
Parisa beamed, then asked to be put down, after which she made a beeline for the bounce castle.
Majda scanned Elena’s face the moment they were alone. “What is it, azeeztee? Your heart lives in your eyes today, and that I do not often see in Marguerite’s warrior child.”
Elena hadn’t intended to tell her grandparents yet, not wanting to cause them pain if she miscarried. Majda and Jean-Baptiste had already suffered too much pain. But right then, she knew without a doubt that she’d hurt them far worse if she didn’t tell. I’m pregnant.
Majda’s hands threatened to fly to her mouth, her eyes going huge.
Elena grabbed her hands. No one can know yet, she said quickly mind-to-mind. It’s too soon.
After an immediate nod, Majda, her eyes ashine, wrapped Elena up in her embrace. “We’ll be with you every step of the way, azeeztee, come what may.” She swallowed her tears as she drew back. “Now, go tell your grandfather before I give in to my emotions and make everyone curious.”
A squeeze of Elena’s hand. We will celebrate together privately, all of us. A kiss on Elena’s cheek, a warmth of cinnamon-spice-dipped raspberries.
* * *
Jean-Baptiste walked with Elena until they stood by a flower garden the children had been forbidden from playing near lest they damage it. Daisies and early-season dahlias bobbed their heads among what looked to be a blush variety of cosmos intermingled with deep blue cornflowers.
Spring was in full bloom in New York.
“What did you want to talk about, Ellie?” Jean-Baptiste asked, one arm around her shoulders as he cradled her against him in the way of the grandfather that he was—though his body was as ageless as Majda’s, his jaw square, his eyes a striking silvery blue, and his hair strands of gold.
To the Tower, he was a commander battle honed.
But to her, he had become Grandpa long ago, their relationship only settling deeper with time. Now, she looked up at him and said, You’re about to become a great-grandfather again.
Jean-Baptiste sucked in a breath, his eyes flicking to her abdomen before he turned his head to stare unseeing at the flowers.
His breathing turned jagged, his body stiff as he held her tighter.
I have loved every child of this sprawling family.
I have been honored to cradle them in my hands, and to give them counsel as they age.
But it wounds me each time we have to say goodbye to one of them.
Blinking rapidly, Elena said, “I know.” It came out a rasp.
It will be…rather wonderful to have a grandbabe who is immortal, and who will most certainly consider us decrepit ancients.
Elena laughed, her wings brushing his back as she leaned even deeper into his embrace. Kid’s going to have one heck of a family.
That he or she will. Jean-Baptiste stroked a hand over her hair. I presume, since you asked me to walk away from the crowd, that we are not to tell others yet?
It’s too early.
I understand. His smile was pure sunlight. I cannot wait to brag to my fellow warriors when it is time.
Elena was still laughing when a huffing little boy ran over to tug on Jean-Baptiste’s hand. “Grandpa, come, play!”
“Go,” Elena said when her grandfather glanced at her. We’ll get together privately soon.
Jean-Baptiste took the time to press a kiss to her temple before he allowed himself to be pulled away by his tiny playmate.
Elena smiled and went to step closer to the flower garden, wanting a better look at the dahlias…when she glimpsed a figure out of the corner of her eye, the man all but hidden behind the most distant tree in the park.
She scowled at the idea of anyone spying on the family gathering.
The media knew that harassing any member of her family would lead to an immediate and harsh punishment—because Elena did not fuck around when it came to these people whose only crime was that they continued to treat her as kin.
Jason’s team also kept a constant quiet eye on the descendants.
Regardless, Elena wasn’t about to be complacent—because why the hell was a man lurking on the fringes like that? Might have nothing to do with her, and everything to do with all the children running about.
Jaw set, she strode in that direction, was almost on him when he stepped out from behind the tree.
Her stride hitched, her eyes going wide. “Harrison.”