“I made her show me her fangs several times, and asked where she was getting her blood. She admitted that she was picking up men in bars on the nights she went out, going home with them, and biting them. She said she was careful now not to take too much blood, and other than a couple of false starts when she first got to Calgary, she’d left her meals alive and well.”
“Maybe the town house owner was one of those false starts,” Sam suggested.
“Maybe,” Allie agreed. “It was a couple weeks after New Year’s that she went into labor. I had just finished a big project and—”
“Wait a minute,” Sam interrupted. “No one told me what you do. What project?”
“She works at the blood bank,” Tybo said.
“I’ve only worked at the blood bank the last couple of months as a temporary part-time gig. Really I’m a web designer,” Allie corrected.
Tybo’s eyebrows rose. “What websites have you designed? Anything I might have seen? What are you working on now?”
Allie smiled with amusement at the quick-fire questions. He reminded her of Liam when he got excited about something. Before she could answer, though, Lucian said, “She can tell you that later. Let’s finish this business with Stella first.”
“Of course,” she said calmly, unsurprised by it now.
“You were talking about Stella’s going into labor,” Sam said helpfully. “You were just finishing a big project and . . . ?”
“Right. Thank you,” Allie said. “So I was working in my office upstairs, and Stella was downstairs baking something. She had started to spend a lot of time at my place as it got closer to her time,” she explained. “I guess it was about midnight when I heard this crash. I rushed downstairs to find Stella on her hands and knees in the kitchen surrounded by liquid and glass. Her water had broken as she was making whatever she was going to bake, and she, for some reason, panicked about the mess on the floor, snatched for paper towels to clean it up, and knocked over a glass. Now she was trying to clean up both of them.”
“Oh, dear,” Sam said with wide eyes. “What was she thinking?”
“I have no idea,” Allie said dryly. “I’ve never had a baby, so have no idea how a woman’s mind works during labor. But Stella’s didn’t seem to be too clear in that moment. She was determined to clean up the mess. Seriously determined,” Allie stressed. “I ended up having to sweep up the glass while she mopped up the liquid before I could get her up off the floor. But when I tried to urge her to get her coat on so we could go to the hospital, she balked. She wasn’t going to the hospital. They’d know she was a vampire and lock her and the baby in a cage somewhere and do experiments on them.”
Allie shook her head. “I think I just stood there staring at her for a full two minutes when she said that. It had never occurred to me that she couldn’t go to the hospital. I mean, when I talked about getting a bag ready for the hospital and such before she admitted what she was to me, she’d nodded and agreed and assured me she’d handle it. Turns out she just did that because she couldn’t say she wasn’t going without explaining why. And we hadn’t talked about the trip to the hospital since the revelation because I was too busy asking stupid questions.”
Allie pushed the hair back from her face at the memory. “Liam was born in my living room on a mattress I dragged down from the guest bedroom. It was the scariest, most disgusting, most painful yet most beautiful experience of my life.”
“Painful?” Magnus asked uncertainly. “You mean for Stella?”
“Hell, no,” Allie said on a laugh. “I mean, sure, she was in terrible pain, but at one point, in that pain, she gouged grooves of skin out of my arms and I can’t count the number of times I had to warn her to let go of my hand or wrist because she was about to break the bone.” She shook her head at the memory. “I should have read up on childbirth. I had no idea it could be so gross. I mean, it wasn’t just the baby that came out, and when the pain was at its worst she started vomiting blood.”
Tricia was smiling wryly at this news, but Sam paled and whispered,