Her spoon in the pot slowed, and steam wafted over her. "Funny how fate seems to push people together sometimes," she said softly. "I took that class to sit next to one man, but ended up falling in love with his best friend." She smiled at me. "Your father. All three of us partnered for the lab. I would have flunked if it hadn't been for Monty. I'm not a ley line witch, and since Monty couldn't stir a spell to save his life, he set all my circles for me the next two years in return for me invoking all his charms for him until he graduated."
I had never heard this one before, and as I rose to get three coffee mugs, my gaze fell upon the pot of red sauce. Brow pinching, I wondered if there was a tactful way to spill it down the garbage disposal. She was cooking in her spell pot again, too. I hoped she had remembered to wash it in saltwater, or lunch might be a bit more interesting than usual.
"How did you and Rachel meet?" my mother asked as she nudged me away from the pot and set a loaf of frozen bread to bake in the oven.
Eyes suddenly wide, I shook my head in warning at Nick. His eyes flicked from me to my mother. "Ah, a sporting event."
"The Howlers?" she questioned.
Nick looked to me for help, and I sat beside him. "We met at the rat fights, Mom," I said. "I bet on the mink, and he bet on the rat."
"Rat fights?" she said, making a face. "Nasty business, that. Who won?"
"They got away," Nick said, his eyes soft on mine. "We always imagined they escaped together and fell madly in love and are living in the city's sewers somewhere."
I choked back a laugh, but my mother let hers flow freely. My heart seemed to catch at the sound. I hadn't heard her laugh in delight in a long time.
"Yes," she said as she set her oven mitts aside. "I like that. Minks and rats. Just like Monty and me with no more children."
I blinked, wondering how she had jumped from rats and minks to her and Dad, and how that related to them not having any more children.
Nick leaned close and whispered, "Minks and rats can't procreate, either."
My mouth opened in a silent, Oh, and I thought that perhaps Nick, with his odd way of seeing the world, might understand my mother better than I did.
"Nick, dear," my mom said as she gave the sauce a quick, clockwise turn. "You don't have a cellular disease in your family, do you?"
Oh, no, I thought in panic as Nick answered evenly, "No, Mrs. Morgan."
"Call me Alice," she said. "I like you. Marry Rachel and have lots of kids."
"Mom!" I exclaimed. Nick grinned, enjoying it.
"But not right away," she continued. "Enjoy your freedom together for a while. You don't want children until you're ready. You are practicing safe sex, yes?"
"Mother!" I shouted. "Shut up!" God, help me get through this night.
She turned, one hand on her hip, the other holding the dripping spoon. "Rachel, if you didn't want me to bring it up, you should have spelled your hickey."
I stared at her, my mouth agape. Mortified, I rose and pulled her into the hall. "Excuse us," I managed, seeing Nick grinning.
"Mom!" I whispered in the safety of the hall. "You ought to be on medication, you know that?"
Her head drooped. "He seems like a nice man. I don't want you to drive him away like you do all your other boyfriends. I loved your father so. I just want you to be that happy."
Immediately my anger fizzled to nothing, seeing her standing alone and upset. My shoulders shifted in a sigh. I should come over more often, I thought. "Mom," I said. "He's human."
"Oh," she said softly. "Guess there isn't much safer sex than that, is there?"
I felt bad as the weight of that simple statement fell on her, and I wondered if that might change her opinion of Nick. There could never be any children between Nick and me. The chromosomes didn't line up right. Finding that out for sure had been the end of a long-running controversy among Inderlanders, proving that witches, unlike vamps and Weres, were a separate species from humans, as much as pixies or trolls. Vamps and Weres, whether bitten or born to their status, were only modified humans. Though witches mimicked humanity almost perfectly, we were as different as bananas from fruit flies at a cellular level. With Nick, I would be barren.
I had told Nick the first time our cuddling turned to something more intent, afraid he would notice if something didn't look quite right. I had been almost sick with the thought he would react in disgust about the different species thing. Then I almost cried when his only wide-eyed question had been, "It all looks and works the same, doesn't it?"
At the time, I honestly hadn't known. We had answered that question together.
Flushing at such thoughts in front of my mother, I gave her a weak smile. She returned it, pulling her slight body up straight. "Well," she said, "I'll go open a jar of alfredo, then."
Tension drained from me, and I gave her a hug. Her grip had a new tightness to it, and I responded in kind. I'd missed her. "Thanks, Mom," I whispered.
She patted my back, and we stepped apart. Not meeting my eyes, she turned to the kitchen. "I've an amulet in the bathroom if you want it, third drawer down." She took a breath, and with a cheerful face headed into the kitchen with quick, short steps. I listened for a moment, deciding nothing had changed as she chattered happily to Nick about the weather while packing the tomato-based sauce away. Relieved, I thumped down the shadowed hall in my flip-flops.
My mom's bathroom looked eerily like Ivy's - minus the fish in the bathtub. I found the amulet, and after washing off the Covergirl, I invoked the spell, pleased at the result. A final primp and sigh at my hair, and I hustled back to the kitchen. No telling what my mom would tell Nick if I left her alone with him too long.
Sure enough, I found them together with their heads almost touching as she pointed at the photo album. He had a cup of coffee in his hands, the steam drifting between them. "Mom," I complained. "This is why I never bring anyone over."
Jenks's wings made a harsh clatter as he rose from my mother's shoulder. "Aw, lighten up, witch. We've already got past the naked baby pictures."
I closed my eyes to gather my strength. Moving with a happy swing in her step, my mother went to stir the alfredo sauce. I took her place by Nick, pointing down. "That's my brother, Robert," I said, wishing he would return my phone calls. "And there's my dad," I said, feeling a soft emotion fill me. I smiled back at the photo, missing him.
"He looks nice," Nick said.
"He was the best." I turned the page, and Jenks landed on it, hands on his hips as he strolled over my life, carefully arranged in neat little rows and columns. "That's my favorite picture of him," I said, tapping an unlikely looking group of eleven-and twelve-year-old girls standing before a yellow bus. We were all sunburned, our hair three shades lighter than usual. Mine was cropped short and stuck out all over. My dad was standing beside me, a hand on my shoulder as he smiled at the camera. I felt a sigh slip from me.
"Those are all my friends at camp," I said, thinking my three years there had been some of my best summers. "Look," I said, pointing. "You can see the lake. It was way up in New York somewhere. I only went swimming once, since it was so cold. Made my toes cramp up."
"I never went to camp," Nick said, looking at the faces intently.
"It was one of those 'Make-a-Wish' camps," I said. "They kicked me out when they figured out I wasn't dying anymore."
"Rachel!" my mother protested. "Not everyone there was dying."
"Most were." My mood went somber as my gaze roved over the faces, and I realized I was probably the only one in the picture still alive. I tried to remember the name of the thin black-haired girl standing beside me, not liking it when I couldn't. She had been my best friend.
"Rachel was asked to not come back after she lost her temper," my mom said, "not because she was getting well. She got it into her head to punish a little boy for teasing the girls."
"Little boy," I scoffed. "He was older than everyone else there and a bully."
"What did you do?" Nick asked, a glint of amusement in his brown eyes.
I got up to put coffee in my mug. "Threw him into a tree."
Jenks snickered, and my mother rapped the spoon on the side of the sauce pot. "Don't be modest. Rachel tapped the ley line the camp was built on and threw him thirty feet up."
Jenks whistled and Nick's eyes grew wide. I poured out the coffee, embarrassed. It hadn't been a very good day. The brat had been about fifteen, and was tormenting the girl whose shoulder my arm was draped over in the picture. I had told him to leave her alone, and when he pushed me down, I lost it. I hadn't even known how to draw on a ley line; it just kind of happened. The kid landed in a tree, fell, and cut his arm. There had been so much blood, I got scared. The young vamps in the camp all had to take a special overnight trip across the lake until they could dig up the dirt he had bled on and burn it.
My dad had to fly up and sort things out. It was the first time I had used ley lines, and basically the last until I went to college since my dad had tanned my hide but good. I'd been lucky they hadn't made me leave right then and there.
I went back to the table, looking at him smiling at me from the photo. "Mom, can I have this picture? I lost mine this spring when - a misaligned spell took them out." I met Nick's eyes, the shared understanding in them reassuring me he'd say nothing about my death threats.
My mom sidled close. "That's a nice one of your father," she said, pulling the photo out and handing it to me before she went back to the stove.
I sat down in my chair and looked at the faces, searching for a name for any of them. I could recall none. It bothered me.
"Um, Rachel?" Nick said, peering down at the album.
"What?" Amanda? I silently asked the dark-haired girl. Was that your name?
Jenks's wings flashed into motion, sending my hair to dance about my face. "Holy crap!" he exclaimed.
I looked down to the picture that had been under the one now in my hand and felt my face go white. It was the same day, since the background was of the bus. But this time, instead of being surrounded by preadolescent girls, my dad was next to a man who was a dead ringer for an older Trent Kalamack.
My breath wouldn't come out. The two men were smiling, squinting against the sun. They had an arm companionably about each other's shoulders and were clearly happy.
I exchanged frightened looks with Jenks. "Mom?" I finally managed. "Who is this?"
She came close, making a small sound of surprise. "Oh, I had forgotten I had that one. That's the man who owned the camp. Your father and he were such good friends. It broke your dad's heart when he died. And so tragically, too, not six years after his wife. I think that was part of the reason your dad lost the will to fight. They died only a week apart, you know."
"No, I didn't," I whispered, staring down. It wasn't Trent, but the resemblance was eerie. It had to be his father. My dad had known Trent's father?
I put a hand to my stomach in a sudden thought. I had gone to camp with a rare blood disease and left every year feeling better. Trent dabbled in genetic research. His father might have done the same. My recovery had been called a miracle. Perhaps it had been outlawed, immoral, genetic manipulation. "God help me," I breathed.
Three summers at camp. Months of not waking until almost sundown. The unexplained soreness in my hip. The nightmares I still occasionally woke from, of a cloying vapor.
How much? I wondered. What had Trent's father taken from my dad in payment for the life of his daughter? Had he exchanged it for his own?
"Rachel?" Nick said. "Are you okay?"
"No." I concentrated on breathing, staring at the picture. "Can I have this one, too, Mom?" I asked, hearing my voice as if it weren't my own.
"Oh, I don't want it," she said, and I slipped it out, fingers trembling. "That's why it was underneath. You know I can't throw anything of your father's away."
"Thanks," I whispered.