until damn near Thanksgiving for her to fight it off, but at long last, her fever broke and she finally started improving. I was there, every day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes on my break, sometimes in the evening—often, all three—talking with her, cheering her up, slipping her coffee or eclairs, bringing her teen magazines and audiobooks of Laurell Hamilton and gossip about the boys back at the werehouse.
So now it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and everyone was out of town or off at parties—Philip back in Virginia, Savannah with her vampire clan, the werekin with their mundane families, the collegiates back in their hometowns, even the hospital priest was gone, helping out with a benefit for the homeless.
And so it was just up to me to show up at the hospital, seeing Cinnamon, lying there like a bedraggled cat, suddenly brought back to life when I walked in the door; and then suddenly we began talking and joking and laughing at all the were-mistakes in Underworld: Evolution as it played on the hospital TV.
And it was only then that I noticed she was wearing on her wrist one of those snap-on hospital nametags, just like I wore when I was a patient, not a month ago. And for some reason, I noticed, really noticed the name on it: Cinnamon Frost. Dimly I remembered the doctors telling me the DEI officers had to guess at her name, and had just assumed that Cinnamon was my daughter. I had laughed, saying that no mother would just have left her daughter alone with the medics, but I didn’t really object. And then, as I looked at the bracelet, I realized in the whole month that I’d been there I had never objected or corrected them—nor had she.
And around this point I realized: I’d decided to adopt Cinnamon.
“So, Cinnamon,” I said, reaching out to pat her tufted little hand. “I was thinking, you know, about you not having a mom.”
“What of it?” she said, suddenly sullen.
“Well, I don’t have a daughter.”
Cinnamon looked up at me in shock. Her eyes grew all shiny and large, though it was difficult for me to see it with all the water building in mine. Then she reached over and grabbed me and pulled me too her and held on tight, claws pricking me gently through my shirt.
“Mom?” She said the word so gently, it was like magic. And then she bawled. “Oh, Mom. Oh, my Mooooom.”
“It’s okay, Cinnamon,” I said, patting her head. “I’m so glad I found you.”
Yeah, yeah, I know: sappy as hell. Wake the fuck up. When people talk in real life, they don’t make up all sorts of flowery phrases to say what they feel; they say the first thing that comes to mind and then sit there holding each other, glad to be alive.
And we did just sit there, for a long long time, her hugging me hard enough to squeeze the air from my lungs, me cradling her and stroking her soft, feline ears and cooing softly. Finally she said, “How is this going to work?”
“I don’t know, Cinnamon,” I said. “You’re a bit big for me to tell you to clean your room.”
“Oh, Mom,” she sobbed. “Give me a room, and you can tell me to clean it anytime.”
46. PAYOFF
The Valentine Foundation is going to pay out. I’m not joking. It’s a big scandal. There are half a dozen investigations ongoing, but apparently Mirabilus was playing his cards very close to his chest, because the Foundation appears completely legit. In fact their board was mortified to find out that Valentine had been killing potential prizewinners. The money may be tied up for years in court until the investigations around Mirabilus are settled, but the hands of Alex’s wristwatch tattoo are still turning, counting out one day for each turn of the Earth beneath the stars—and so they’re going to pay out.
Even better, I didn’t win just by default—there’s a clause in the contract which stipulates that if one party in the challenge fails to even attempt the feat, the result is decided not by default, but by a panel of experts. They lined up a half dozen of them, but not one of them could explain through trickery or science how it I made a tattoo watch actually rotate. That only left magic as an explanation.
Footage of me putting the watch on Alex even made it into the promos for the next season of the Valentine Foundation’s cable show—and