This fortress, cockroaches, and Twinkies. All that would be left.
She parked the Ducati just beyond the stone steps that went up to the front door, but she didn't dismount. Looking at the arching jambs, the massive carved panels, the glowering gargoyles that had cameras in their mouths - there was no welcome mat in sight.
Enter at your own risk was the point.
A quick check of her watch told her what she already knew: John would already be out for the night, fighting in the part of town she had just left -
Xhex cranked her head to the left.
Her mother's grid was out back, in the gardens behind the house.
This was good. She didn't want to go inside. Didn't want to walk across the foyer. Didn't want to remember what she had been wearing, thinking, dreaming of when she'd been mated.
Dumb-ass fantasy of what life was going to be like.
Dematerializing to the far side of the barrier hedge, she had no trouble orienting herself. She and John had wandered out here in the spring, ducking beneath the budding branches of the fruit trees, breathing in the forgotten smell of fresh earth, holding each other against the chill that they knew was not long for the air.
So much possibility back then. And given where they were now, it seemed kind of fitting that all of summer's warmth was gone, that vital blooming period missed altogether: Now the leaves were on the ground, the branches were bare once again, and everything was about hunkering down.
Well, wasn't she a Hallmark card tonight.
Zeroing in on her mother's grid, she went along the side of the house, passing by the French doors of the billiards room and the library.
No'One was down at the pool's edge, a still figure spotlit by the blue glow of water that was yet to be drained.
Wow. . . Xhex thought. Something big had changed with the female, and whatever the shift was, it had altered much of her emotional superstructure. Her grid was jumbled up, but not in a bad way; more like a house that was undergoing extensive renovations. It was a good start, a positive transformation that was probably a long time in coming.
"Attaboy, Tohr," Xhex murmured under her breath.
As if she had heard, No'One looked over her shoulder - and that was when Xhex realized that the hood that was always up was down, her mother's cap of smooth blond hair suggesting that the stuff was braided, with the long end tucked under the robing.
Xhex waited for fear to light up that grid. And waited. And waited. . .
Holy shit, something really had changed.
"Thank you for coming," No'One said as Xhex approached.
That voice was different. A little deeper. Surer.
She had been transformed in a lot of ways.
"Thanks for inviting me," Xhex replied.
"You look well. "
"As do you. "
Stopping in front of her mother, she measured the way the flickering light from the pool played across the female's perfectly lovely face. And in the quiet that followed, Xhex frowned, information flooding through her sensory receptors, the picture filling out.
"You are stuck," she said, thinking that was kind of ironic.
Her mother's brows flared. "As a matter of fact. . . I am. "
"Funny. " Xhex looked at the sky. "Me, too. "
Staring up at the strong, proud female in front of her, No'One felt the strangest connection to her daughter: as the restless reflections from the pool played over tough, grim features, those gunmetal gray eyes held an edgy frustration similar to her own.
"So you and Tohr, huh," Xhex said casually.