He turned to me. “Have demons been protecting you, or only hurting you?”
It was a good question. “Just attacks.”
Stuart tapped his fingers on the counter the way he does when he’s thinking. “Father, daughter,” he said. “Same blood.”
Eric shook his head. “Not anymore.” He gestured to his body. “I’ve gotten used to it, but it’s not me.”
“But the demon lineage,” Stuart pressed. “That’s why Allie is … the way she is.”
“We got the demon out of him,” I say to Stuart. “You can’t possibly have forgotten that.” Stuart had been right in the thick of it.
“Yeah, well, I’m all out of ideas. And I’m late,” he added, glancing at the clock. He pushed away from the counter, then kissed me goodbye. This time, it was a regular kiss, not the claiming kind that he’d given me in Eric’s presence before out of an overabundance of jealousy.
I’ll admit I like those kinds of kisses, but today I was happy for a typical goodbye-to-my-wife kiss. If nothing else, it was a good first step—maybe even a second step—toward the two men in my life finally finding their way through this forest of craziness.
Not long after Stuart left, Eddie shuffled into the living room, his hair sticking up in all directions and his chin prickly with whiskers. “So the kid did good?”
Eric confirmed that she had, and Eddie nodded as he joined us in the kitchen. “Always knew she would. So, you going to let her go hunting with vampire boy without a chaperone?”
“Don’t call him that,” I said with a sigh. “If we’re letting him into our lives, we should at least call him by his name.”
“Eh,” Eddie said as he pulled Eggos out of the freezer, then popped two into the toaster. “I fixed that necklace for her,” he said. “You make her wear it when she’s with that boy.”
“You don’t trust him?”
He peered into the toaster as if that would make the waffles cook faster, then looked up at me with a shrug. “As far as that girl’s concerned, I don’t trust anybody.”
His concern for her made me feel warm and fuzzy, but I also didn’t want to leave her unprotected. If she had a powerfulvampire to guard her back, that was a good thing. And when I told Eddie as much, he shrugged and grunted ascent.
“I can’t say I disagree, just saying she should wear the necklace.”
I’d purchased the necklace he was referring to for Allie’s last birthday from Eyes Only, a shop that sold spy equipment in Old Town. Mostly novelty and cheap stuff, but there was real equipment available to those who asked. Eddie had suggested having her wear a tracker, and his suggestion had proved essential in saving her life. Unfortunately, it had also been ripped from her neck, the chain broken and the setting smashed.
“Thanks for fixing it,” I told him. “I’ll tell her it’s important to you that she wears it.”
“To me?” Eddie asked.
“She loves you, old man. Go figure.”
At that, he turned positively pink and even offered Eric one of his waffles, a clear sign of a good mood.
Eric declined, saying he needed to get to the school for a faculty meeting now that we were getting close to the beginning of the school year. “Plus, there are a few bodies I need to disintegrate in the basement.”
I grimaced, and pushed the yogurt I’d pulled from the fridge away. I’d eat it later.
After that flurry of morning activity, things slowed down. Eddie had gone to go meet Rita before going to work a few hours at Eyes Only. Allie was reading in bed. My friend Fran had picked up Timmy for a playdate with Elena, leaving me alone with a Swiffer, a vacuum, a can of Pledge, and a dust rag.
Not my favorite way to spend the day, but it had become inevitable. The dust bunnies were forming a union, and Timmy had started writing his letters on the surface of the coffee table. Normally this wouldn’t bother me too much, but we had people coming to the house on Saturday. Considering my terrible skillsat housecleaning, I figured Tuesday was a good day to start with the whole process.
With luck, the place would be shiny and presentable by Saturday, when a horde of toddlers would destroy it all over again.
An hour or so later, Mindy had bounced through the back door and trotted upstairs with barely a wave in my direction. Other than that, nothing much changed. Except that I’d shifted my focus to the kitchen and was in the middle of scrubbing the stove top to within an inch of its life. How it became so dirty when I used the microwave for almost everything is one of the mysteries of the universe.
I was desperate for an excuse not to work, but the loud, high-pitched voices of the two girls coming down the stairs would not have been my first choice at a distraction.
“You’re seriously blowing off our shopping day tomorrow to go patrolling with him? And I can’t even come along?”
“I told you. You don’t want to get hurt before you go onstage.” I’d told her the excuse I made up. Apparently, she thought it was a good one.
