Halina brushed between us and crawled up on the coffee table, to sit next to the candles perched there. I watched her adjust her short, tight, black dress as she swung her legs behind her, to sit on her hip. I again stared at the picture of her as a modest human woman and marveled at the difference. She seemed to notice my gaze this time.
"Attractive, wasn't he?" Her voice was layered with sadness as she glanced at Teren out of the corner of her eyes.
I had been studying Halina in the photo, but looked back at her husband upon her words. "Yes...very." I peeked over at Teren as well, before my eyes rested on Halina's. She noticed my examination of Teren and her husband, and knew I had spotted the resemblance. She smiled warmly at me, for quite possibly the first time ever.
"His name was Nicolis. His family was Russian as well." She spoke a long flowery sentence in the odd sounding language. I cocked my head and waited for an explanation of the words. She didn't give them. Teren hung his head, and a sense of sadness swept through the stone room, making me shiver. The silence lasted for a solid thirty seconds before Halina spoke again.
"I'm glad you came back, Emma." She raised an eyebrow at me. "Although, I was looking forward to tracking you down, if you didn't accept Teren's condition." My mouth fell open with an audible sound, as I realized that she really would have hunted me down and "wiped my memory" if I hadn't come back. She smiled at the look on my face. "I do so enjoy the hunt..."
The shiver came back up my spine at her words. Teren coughed into his hand. "Well, she did, Great-Gran, and I didn't need your help this time."
That made me look at Teren oddly. Exactly how many times had he spilled his heart to unwilling women? How many girls had dated Teren that no longer remembered it? Halina seemed to understand my strange expression and laughed. Teren glanced over at me and coughed again.
"Well...we should probably get going...long drive." He tore his eyes away from my narrowed ones and looked back to Halina; she was fluidly rising from the coffee table. Teren stood and embraced her. "We won't stay away so long," he said reassuringly, as he picked the tiny woman up.
She giggled like a teenager until he set her down. "Good...we do miss you." After I stood from the chair, Halina faced me and placed a hand on my stomach. The sudden move shocked me into stillness. Her expression took on a longing wistfulness, and I remembered her story from the other night...about wanting to fill a farm with children. I wondered if her mournful gaze was for hoping I got pregnant soon, or for wishing she was still able to. Either way it softened me, and I placed my hand over her chilly one.
She jerked her eyes up to mine, seemingly surprised that I would willingly touch her. Honestly, I was a little shocked as well. Her face relaxed as we stared at each other. "The baby will be strong and healthy," she said as she gently patted my stomach. Tears unexpectedly stung my eyes, as I suddenly hoped she had an unnatural ability to sense these things. She dashed that hope by adding, in a near pleading voice, "I believe there will be time."
I nodded and finally embraced her. She was hesitant at first to return my hug, but eventually she warmly clasped me back. Teren was smiling when we pulled apart. "We should say goodbye to the others," he said, before he briefly hugged her again. "Goodnight, Great-Gran."
"Goodnight, Teren...Emma."
We left her absently staring at the photo of her long dead husband, and then we made our way to the hallway leading back to the stairs, and out of Halina's throne room. Once back in the closet, Teren pulled a piece of string attached to the inner door frame that I hadn't noticed before, and yanked the false door closed with a small click. As he opened the other side, I thought over the meeting with Halina. I still wasn't pleased that she killed, and I really wasn't sure how often she did that. Teren made it sound like she merely...hunted, and that most humans made it out from under her teeth safely, but the knowledge that she would take a life was a disturbing thought to have when you were around her. Sometimes she could seem so fragile and innocent though...like when she spoke of the sun, or her husband.
"What did Halina say?" I asked as we walked back into the living room.
He understood what I was referencing-the Russian that they all spoke and I didn't. He gave a sad glance back to the door before answering me. "She said that he was the ray of light that lit her world, and the moment she ended that light, hers died as well..." He looked back to where my eyes were tearing up again. "She said she paints every sun as a memorial to him..."
That was just too much to bear, and the tears dripped down my cheeks. Teren smiled and rubbed them away before giving me a tender kiss. I savored his warmth and his strength and fortified my stomach. Darn emotional vampires.
While not completely dark yet, the sun was low enough, that Imogen was in the kitchen with Alanna and Jack. Knowing they were both in there, Teren headed straight to the kitchen from the living room. I wondered what that felt like to him, this odd blood connection that instinctively told him exactly where his family was. Did he feel it in his skin or was it a nagging sense in his head, like a GPS navigator that he couldn't turn off..."turn right at the next corner." It'd be interesting to feel what being an Adams vampire felt like...for maybe a day. After that, I'd be tired of hearing every bump and whisper for a half mile, having people intuitively know where I was all the time, and of course, the craving blood thing. That still did not sound appetizing at all.
We exchanged hugs and niceties, and said goodbye to his family. They politely asked if we wanted to stay for dinner and although Teren did eye the empty carafe waiting on the counter, he said we had to get going; he had an early day tomorrow.
Both women rubbed my stomach, just like Halina had, and I suddenly felt like a good luck Buddha statue. I knew they were all imparting well wishes and hopeful thoughts, but it just made me feel really weird. I dealt with it though. This was important to them and, who knew, maybe their vampire mojo would work on me? I was keeping an open mind on those urban legends. As Imogen rubbed her hand over my stomach a second time while Teren peacefully chatted with his father, I wondered with a slight bit of irritation if he was going to be rubbed. It was a two person project after all.
After a ten minute goodbye session and more promises to return soon, Teren zipped to pack our stuff and load up the car. Three minutes after that, we were bouncing down their long driveway. I turned in my seat to watch the last of the sun wash over the house of vampires.
"You had a good time, didn't you?" Teren asked, watching me.
I nodded and sighed in happiness as I faced back to the front. We passed under the Adams sign and I chuckled again at the odd thought I'd had on my first arrival here. They were still a little spooky, but now they were a lot less creepy. I was starting to love this little Adams Family. And I did already love their son. I rested my head on his shoulder and laced the fingers of his free hand in mine as we hit the asphalt of the highway.
"I had a great time, Teren."
He kissed my head and we began our sixty mile drive back home.
Chapter 12 - A Camping We Will Go
Monday morning came with me rising alone in my bed. Of course, I'd also gone to sleep alone in my bed. I found I didn't like that nearly as much as I liked falling asleep in Teren's warm arms, his heart thumping against my back. But Teren hadn't been lying about his early morning meeting. He had dropped me off, insisted on helping me with my bag, which I really could have handled by myself, gave me a long, lingering kiss goodbye and then headed home.
I'd had the momentary, Hmmmm...I should drive over there, slip into his house and crawl into his bed while he's sleeping thought, but I had decided that sounded too Fatal Attraction-ish, and stayed put in my cold, lonely bed. Then I'd wondered if Teren and I should just move in together already. The thought made me laugh out loud. Here we were, actively trying to get me pregnant, and I had to wonder if we should live together? Our relationship was so backwards...but I kind of loved that it was.
I thought about my weekend while I brushed my hair for work, and took a minute to examine my neck. It was healed enough that I could pass it off as a rousing make-out session, if anyone asked-and really, who besides Tracey would ask me that at work? I did make sure my hair covered it though. I thought about the fight Teren and I'd had, and the argument he'd had with his mother.
He'd asked her pointblank to not tell me the details of his conversion and she'd done it anyway. I'd be upset at my mom, too, if she'd done that to me. But we weren't talking about letting some embarrassing childhood memory slip out in conversation, we were talking about the possibility of him killing me or killing someone else. That was worth her betraying his trust. That was something I needed to be aware of.
As I got dressed, I wondered what I was going to do with that information now. I slipped on my slacks and a lacy camisole and replayed his thirst during the couple of dinners that I had witnessed. Teren had stared at the blood on the table like he wanted to stick his head in the pot and drink it dry. I'd never seen him look quite so foreign, and it had been a little shocking, and possibly even a little frightening. But I had to believe that it was just his body preparing him for the conversion. That he'd calm down about it, once he switched over. I mean, the girls hadn't seemed that affected by the blood on the table. Imogen even sipped hers, like it was a twenty-year-old Scotch. The intenseness of his desire had to be because it was new. It just had to be.
Because if it wasn't...
I didn't finish that thought. He was in an adjustment period. We would be fine. He assured me of that constantly. I already wasn't thrilled about his "brilliant" plan though. I was supposed to somehow get a dying man to my car, and to the ranch, before he woke up ravenously hungry in the middle of the city. Really? Was I superwoman now? What if it happened at work, and by the time I got there, he'd passed out? Well, okay, technically he'd be dead, but I was thinking of it as him being passed out so I didn't lose my marbles. Was I supposed to secretly drag his limp ass to my car with no one seeing us? And what if someone else found him first? Did I break into the morgue and pop him out of cold storage? There were so many ways his plan could go wrong that my mind was starting to spin. I had to forcefully switch to another train of thought. Hell, I needed to pull into a different station of thought.
Emptying my brain of conception-reducing worries, I slipped on my jacket. Feeling the wounds on my neck, I fluffed my hair around my shoulders to cover them with the long strands. Teren had sure enjoyed doing that. Personally, I thought the thigh would be more appealing, being a little sexier body part and all, but he'd sure gotten excited over just the memory of biting my neck. I wondered if that was because the artery was so close to the skin. He'd be able to feel it with his lips before he bit down. And being so close, he barely had to bite before he got a nice little stream. I laughed as I grabbed my bag and unburied my keys from inside it. Maybe, like a lot of men, my vampire was just a little lazy, and didn't want to have to work very hard for his meal.
I was still chuckling over that thought as I walked to my cubicle. A couple of men eyed me on the way to my desk and I rechecked that my hair covered my injuries. The men seemed more focused lower on my body however, and I silently thanked my cl**vage-enhancing lacy camisole for distracting their attention. I plodded over to my cozy chair and stuffed my still-full purse in the drawer. Even though, a few weeks ago, I had spent a solid twenty minutes cleaning out the junk that had collected in my favorite large bag, some garbage must have crawled back in already.