Hayes looked up and said, “Grandma, what you doing here?”
“You let this woman heal you, Angela May Hayes. Don’t you fight her.”
“You don’t know what I did, Grandma.”
“I heard, but Angela, if a boy is old enough to pick up a weapon and kill you, then he’s not a child anymore, he’s a soldier just like you are, and you did what you had to do.”
“He was Jeffrey’s age.”
“Your brother would never hurt anyone.”
“Jeffrey was a baby when you died, how do you know?”
I felt the smile like the sun coming through clouds after a storm. You couldn’t help but smile when the Goddess smiled. “I keep watch over my babies. I saw you graduate from college. I’m so proud of my angel, and I need you to live, Angela. I need you to go back home and help your mama and Jeffrey and all the rest, do you hear me, Angela?”
“I hear you, Grandma.”
“You have to get better; you’ll be my angel for real one of these days, but not tonight. You heal and go home to our family.”
“Yes, Grandma,” she said.
The blood slowed and then stopped pouring out. I hadn’t done anything, but Angela Hayes had, and the Goddess had, and Hayes’s grandmother had.
“I think I’m better,” Hayes said, and grabbed my hand with hers. “Thank you, Meredith, thank you for bringing my grandma to talk to me.”
“The Goddess brought your grandmother,” I said.
“But you brought the Goddess.”
I held her hand tight and said, “The Goddess is always there for you; you don’t need me to find Her.”
Hayes smiled and then frowned. “I see lights.”
I glanced down the road and saw a line of armored vehicles of all kinds coming over the hill, their lights cutting the thick starlight so that the night seemed both more black and less at the same time.
“They talk about a red-haired Madonna that appears when people need her. No one seems to know it’s you but us.” I knew she meant the other soldiers.
“It’s better that way,” I said.
She gripped my hand tight. “Then you better go before the trucks get closer.”
I touched her face and realized I still had her blood on my hands, so I left the bloody imprints of my fingertips on her skin. “Be well, be safe, come home soon,” I said.
She smiled, and this time it was bright and real. “I will, Meredith, I will.”
The dream broke while I was still holding her hand. I woke in my bed in Los Angeles with the fathers of my babies on either side of me. My hands and nightgown were covered in blood, and it wasn’t mine.
CHAPTER TWO
YOU’D THINK, AFTER a goddess had sent me halfway around the world to save a life and brought me back to my own bed, that my life would be full of magic, and it was, but it was also full of normal things. That’s what no one tells you: that even when Deity takes a hand in your life, and you answer their call, your ordinary life doesn’t go away. I was still pregnant and it had not been a trouble-free pregnancy. If you are following Deity’s plan for you, it isn’t always the easy path; sometimes it’s the hard one. So why follow? Because to do any less is to betray your own abilities and gifts, and the faith that Deity has in you. Who would do that willingly?
Ultrasound pictures are grainy, black and white and gray, and really not all that clear, but it’s a way to get the earliest picture of your unborn child. We had quite a little album of the blurry images at thirty-four weeks into the pregnancy, but the latest one … it was the money shot, because it showed something the other ones hadn’t: We were having triplets.
The twins, as we’d begun to call them, were still floating in front of the picture, but it was as if they were petals of a flower finally opening up enough to show a third baby, shadowy and much less distinct, but very there. The third baby was visibly smaller than the other two, which wasn’t uncommon, Dr. Heelis, my main obstetrician, assured us.
We were all sitting in the conference room at the hospital now, because Dr. Heelis had been joined by Dr. Lee, Dr. Kelly, and Dr. Rodriguez. They each had their specialties in gynecology and delivering babies, or something else needed as a precaution. I hadn’t gained most of the extra medical specialists since they spotted the third baby; they’d been my team almost from the beginning of my pregnancy, because I was Princess Meredith NicEssus—legal name Meredith Gentry, because Princess looks so pretentious on a driver’s license. Dr. Kelly was the new face, but then what was a new doctor compared to a whole new baby?
I was the only faerie princess to be born on American soil, but not for much longer. One of the babies was a girl. My daughter would be Princess Gwenwyfar. We were still negotiating on the rest of her names, since we wouldn’t know until DNA testing who her father was; I’d narrowed it down to six.