9. Vesper
Vesper
The moment I step off the porch with Bethie on my hip and the diaper bag over my shoulder, I pause at the gate and listen.
No shrill demonic screaming from inside the house. No soul-flaying howl of agony. Just the morning birds and someone’s lawn sprinkler two lots over.
I put Bethie in the stroller and keep walking. It’s about a half-mile to the playground.
One hand on the chain-link gate, one block, then two. Still nothing. No thunder of clawed feet on my porch. No reverb of distress bleeding through whatever invisible thread connects us.
And I feel light as a feather.
Not free exactly—just a weight lifted off, an intense sense of relief.
Valefar is the one who suffers when there’s too much distance between us.
I remember how he dropped to his knees, screeching in agony, but this morning, apparently, he’s fine.
Or at least quietly fine. Quiet enough that I’m not sprinting back inside.
I don’t know if it’s the daylight. Or Bethie being with me. Or the fact that we—well. We bonded in the most aggressively biological way two beings could. Twice.
Probably a combination of all three reasons. And I’ll take it.
St. Johns in June is its own kind of beautiful, the kind that doesn’t try hard because it doesn’t have to.
The big Douglas firs bordering my property on the north side cast long speckled shadows across the road, and the air still carries that green, ancient smell of the Cascades right up to the edge of my yard.
Three blocks east, the neighborhood gets a little more proper—actual sidewalks, the occasional neatly painted mailbox, a couple of older craftsman houses with tomato cages in the front yards.
Green shoots have popped out of the dirt. Dandelions riddling fields like hundreds of little yellow suns. The leafy canopies are full and bursting with life.
But right here on my block, we’re still on the seam. Civilization on one side. The watchful forest on the other. I’ve always liked living in the seam.
Bethie likes the stroller. She likes gnawing on the teething toys and shaking the rattlers while her eyes soak in every scrap of the world around her. Always so observant.
Sometimes, she wants to get out and toddle near the big trees, which she treats as friends, hugging them as if they were lonely giants. I don’t rush her. We play tag. And I take snapshots on my phone the rest of the time.
Due to the delays, we arrive nearly an hour or so later. Somehow, I know Valefar is fine. The tether between us feels tight but not suffocating. I like that it’s tight. I like that he’s still…here.
The playground is a modest little thing tucked at the end of Ivanhoe Street behind a community garden. A set of swings, a climbing structure with two plastic slides, a sandbox currently occupied by a sparrow having an existential crisis or something.
On a weekday morning, it’s ours. Most of the neighborhood has cleared out for work by now. Kids are at daycare or school. I can’t afford daycare.
That’s the beautiful thing about Vesper’s Vessels opening at three p.m.—I keep witchy hours, and I’m not even slightly sorry about it. On weekends, we open obscenely early.
But I get undivided time with my daughter every weekday.
Speaking of…
After parking the stroller by the picnic bench, I lean over to unstrap Bethie. She slaps my cheek with a small, sticky hand. “Mama.”
“Hello to you, too,” I tell her.
“Valwfar.”
I lift my brows, then smile, rubbing noses with her. So observant. So alert. She’s on a name-by-name basis now.
I settle her into the baby swing, give her a push, and let my brain start untangling its immediate issue, which is not, for once, my disaster of an ex or the visitation emails piling up in my archive folder like radioactive waste. And the debt collectors sniffing around.
It’s the seven-foot demon currently sitting in my family room, reading children’s books, getting a crash course in pop culture, and learning what a spatula is.
It’s not exactly an issue. Just…a complication.
I can’t leave Valefar home alone. With my luck, he’d attack the washing machine and any other terrifying household appliance. He needs supervision. Active, alert, fully caffeinated supervision, and I am the only qualified candidate within a thousand miles.
Which means he’s coming to work with me.
I push Bethie higher and let that thought settle. She kicks her legs, head tipped back, delighted.
Valefar cannot walk through St. Johns in just my ex’s sweatpants.
My shop does have a clothing rack—witchy linens, velvet cloaks, the kind of dramatic choices my regulars love—and if that doesn’t sort it, there are at least three thrift shops within a mile of the shop.
I should call Manny and ask him to come an hour early. Just in case we need to browse.
Manny. God. Manny Reyes. Emmanuel, technically, but he goes by Manny, which I maintain is the universe’s finest joke, watches Bethie when I’m at the shop. He is the best “manny” I have ever had; he is absolutely unshockable, and he is arriving at my house in approximately ninety minutes.
I cannot leave Valefar there with him.
Not because Manny can’t handle a demon. He absolutely could. But Valefar is tall, bronze, and catastrophically built, and Manny has a very specific and enthusiastic type.
I’m doing Valefar a favor, really. He’s mine, and mine goes where I go.
Besides, I don’t know how far the tether range extends. What if I’m on the other side of the city and it snaps back like a rubber band? What if Valefar suddenly drops to his knees on my kitchen floor in agony while Bethie is napping three feet away?
Too many variables.
“Mam! Ma ma ma ma!”
Bethie interrupts my scattered thoughts.
She is done with the baby swing. She’s dangling her arms, head drooping like a small drama queen signaling her ennui.
Smiling, I scoop her out and set her on her feet, and she immediately toddles off toward the climbing structure with that toddler confidence with absolutely no self-preservation.
“Okay, okay.” I follow right behind her, arms out.
She makes a beeline for the slide—not the small, sensible baby slide, but the big one. The blue tube curves around the corner of the structure. She grabs the bottom rung of the ladder with two determined little fists and looks up at me.
“Up,” she says. Clear as a bell.
“You want the big slide?” I ask.
She pats the rung. That’s a yes.
Well, she’s testing her limitations. Very normal for her age.
I help her up each step, one hand steady on her back, the other ready to catch. She’s good. Better than I expect—her little legs find each rung with that new toddler bravery.
At the top, I settle her at the opening of the slide, crouching behind her, giving her just enough room to go first.
“Go ahead, bug. I’m right here.”
She looks down, considering. Then, with a shriek that could crack the sound barrier, she shoves off and shoots down the slide in a blur of chubby arms and wispy blonde curls.
I hear her hit the bottom—the soft thud and immediate sound of delight—and I follow right behind her. The plastic is sun-warm against the backs of my thighs. I land half a second after her, catching myself on both feet.
We rinse-repeat a few times, but after the fifth slide, I’m still grinning when I notice Bethie hasn’t moved.
She’s standing exactly where she landed, right at the slide’s exit. But she hasn’t toddled off to repeat her new obsession. She hasn’t looked back to make sure I’m following.
She’s facing the street.
The playground is quiet. A car passes a block up. A train whistle echoes in the distance. But Bethie’s head is tilted. It’s slow, weighted, purposeful—not a toddler tilt. That’s something else.
I straighten up, focusing in.
Across the street, on the far side, a man stands on the sidewalk.
He has a dog—a lean, rangy thing on a short leather leash, some mixed breed with a big chest and a square jaw.
And its eyes are…yellow. The man himself is not unusual at first glance.
Medium height, brown jacket. The kind of face your brain smooths over when you try to describe it later.
He’s not walking. He’s just standing there.
And the dog isn’t sniffing the ground or pulling toward the grass the way dogs do. The dog is completely still.
Then the man’s gaze moves—from some vague middle distance to us. To me. And it stays there. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. A chill shivers down my spine, icing every nerve ending.
I watch him watch me. This prolonged eye contact that isn’t curiosity or recognition. It’s something more patient than that.
A sound from the dog pulls my attention down, and my stomach drops.
The hackles along its spine are raised. A full ridge of fur standing straight from its shoulders to its tail.
Its lips have pulled back from its teeth—not a snap, not a lunge.
Just a slow, silent snarl like it’s keenly aware of something.
Something like a trail.
Bethie’s hand reaches up and finds my leg. She doesn’t grip it. She just touches it lightly, like when she wants to make sure I’m still there. But she’s still fixated on the man and his dog across the street.
“Bethie bug,” I say softly, reaching down to secure her hand. “What do you see?”
She is quiet for a moment. And my daughter—my babbling, clattering daughter—opens her mouth with eerie, uncharacteristic calm.
“Hound,” she says.
The word lands in my chest like a stone dropped in still water. I don’t move. I don’t breathe.
Hound.
Dog, yes. She knows dog—she says it whenever she sees our neighbor’s beagle. But hound is not a toddler word. Hound is ancient. Hound is something that hunts.
Where did she learn that?
The black tourmaline pendant at my collarbone goes warm.
Not body-warm. Not a lazy warmth. This is a live wire.
It’s pulsing. I’ve worn it on a cord since Rick.
I recharged it under the last full moon.
It warms like that when something near me is not what it appears to be.
My other hand closes around it beneath my shirt.
Across the street, the man takes one single step toward the curb.
I pick Bethie up. She wraps her legs around my waist and presses her face into the side of my neck without a sound. Her tiny hand finds the cord of my pendant and holds it, like she already knows what it’s for.
I don’t run. Running draws attention. Running is an invitation.
I put her in the stroller and walk quickly, back the way we came, north toward home. I keep my gaze forward. Don’t look back. Look around.
At the end of the first block, I glance casually over my shoulder. The sidewalk across the street is empty. No man. No dog. Not even a disturbance in the leaf litter at the curb.
The pendant goes cool.
I don’t slow down. I only stop once to give Bethie a new toy. Now, I go through my back gate, down the cracked concrete path, up the back porch steps. I fumble my keys out of the diaper bag, pick Bethie up while she hums a low sound into my collarbone.
The tether catches the moment I push open the door—a familiar warmth threading up from my sternum to meet something just inside.
The second I step from the kitchen into the main room, Valefar rushes to our side.