“Yeah,” I said. “Get in here.”
He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. His eyes went straight to the baby in my arms. His expression softened in a way I had not seen often from him.
“Look at you,” he said quietly. “She’s gotten big, huh?”
“Yup,” I answered. “You wanna sit?”
“Only if I don’t wake her,” he said.
“Sit your ass down,” I told him.
I eased down on the couch, settling the baby back on my lap. Hellsing took the armchair across from me. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely, eyes still on the kid.
“She looks like you,” he said.
“Poor thing,” I said.
He shook his head. “She looks like both of you,” he corrected. “That’s a good thing.”
I watched him for a moment. He had always carried a weight on his shoulders none of us could ever understand. I suppose it was because none of us were waiting for the next demon to crawl out of the floor.
“What’s goin’ on?” I asked. “You didn’t drive all the way out here just to compliment my kid.”
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly.
“Virgil was a good man,” he said. “You know that.”
“I do,” I said.
“He pulled me out of a mess more than once,” Hellsing went on. “Taught me how to stand in front of things that scared me and keep my knees from bucklin’. I would not be here without him. Grace would not be here without him. I owe him my life, and I owe him my family.”
I saw where this was going before he said it.
“How is Grace?” I asked.
He looked up at me then, and the corner of his mouth lifted.
“She’s good,” he said. “Better. There are nights when she wakes up cryin’. There are days when she stares at a wall and I know she’s goin’ through it again. But she smiles more now than she did six months ago. She laughs. She eats. She works at the shop with Seraphine. She bosses me around.”
“Sounds like she’s alive,” I said.
“She is,” he said. “And she’s six weeks pregnant.”
I let that sit there for a second.
“You serious?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “We waited to be sure. Doctors confirmed it. She wanted to tell you herself, but she is with her mama tonight, and I had some other business with you, so I figured I’d deliver the news.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, and I saw the raw joy there, mixed with fear.
“You look like you swallowed a grenade,” I said.
He laughed once, quietly.
“I feel like it,” he admitted. “I am happy. So damn happy it scares me. And I am terrified. After everything that touched her. After what Bael did. There is always that little voice in the back ofmy head that says it is too good, it will be taken. I got to shut that voice up somehow, ‘cause she does not need to see it in my eyes.”
His shoulders lowered a fraction.
