down the pitted lane, and Eli’s steering managed to avoid pits that seemed likely to swallow his car whole. Maybe it was nerves, but I wasn’t feeling like talking. I clung to the “oh shit” handle on the door as we bounced along.
Mama Lauren was expecting me, so she stood outside watching for us. Her hair was starting to gray, and she’d pulled it back into a long braid for a change. It was almost always tied up in a knot, but today it was bound in a braid that reached past her hips. My tresses might be blue-dyed, but the thick coils were obviously from her genes.
She had on her usual tall boots, dress, and a pair of pistols holstered at her hips. Today an apron covered the dress. Her hand rested on the butt of one of those guns until she saw me step out of Eli’s car.
I flowed toward her before anyone else was out of the cars.
“Eli’s here,” I said. “Alice, too. Please, don’t hex either of them.”
Mama Lauren laughed and swept me into a hug that reminded me that she was strong for her age. Honestly, she was strong for my age. “You worry too much, bubeleh.”
Then she was off to greet my friends. “No Yule log, my darlings! I do have the menorah in the window, but . . .” I tuned her out and watched Eli.
I think she enjoyed the confusion her mix of Yiddish, Hebrew, and pagan terms caused a lot of people, but honestly, none of my friends blinked at it today. I’m not sure they ever did.
I wondered, though, what Eli would think.
He waited until everyone had greeted her, and then he bowed so deeply you’d think she was royalty. “It is my honor to meet you. I am not nor will I be worthy of the gift that is your daughter’s attention.”
“True.” Mama Lauren nodded at him. “Not even a prince is worthy of Geneviève. She says you are helpful, though.”
Jesse snorted in laughter.
“I do attempt to be of use,” Eli said with not a hint of laughter in his voice.
Then, my mother patted his cheeks. “That’s all any of us can do.” She looked over at Jesse and swatted him. “You! You haven’t visited your family.”
“Yes, Mama Lauren,” he said, laughter vanishing. Jesse had been my childhood bestie, so he was well aware of my mother’s temper—and her stinging hexes.
But then my mother looked down at Jesse’s hand, holding on to Christy’s. “At least you figured that out.”
She shooed us into the house, where she’d set a table that no city restaurant could match. That was the not-so-secret truth of life in the Outs: there were things aplenty that might kill you, but there were also benefits. For someone so bound to the soil, someone who grew her own food and herbs, there was no contest.
Later, when I had fewer witnesses I’d ask my mother about the blood. For now, I simply asked for a “pick-me-up” and downed whatever concoctions she handed me during our visit. I wasn’t typically this compliant, but I wasn’t ready for my mother or friends to discover how much I needed the blood martinis that Alice made me.
And Alice was, for all her cheery remarks, looking tired. So, I was without my martinis for a few days. Maybe I lied to her that I was fine, but I wasn’t going to leech away her energy when she was clearly donating too much.
We all tucked into our odd version of a holiday, knowing that I would much rather stay for several days, and no one remarked on the way that Sera and Christy both kept track of the time. Holiday or not, the draugr would come if I was out here after hours—and after my run-in with Harold, I’d really rather have a draugr free event.
~ 10 ~
Sometimes I thought that every single time I believed things might go well, there ought to be a laugh track in my life to remind me that was never the case. I’d been shot at for being a witch, had my arm flayed open by a pissy draugr, discovered a need for blood, and accidentally entered a courtship that was supposed to result in marriage in a matter of weeks.
I might have managed to avoid the conversation, and loudly argued that we weren’t actually getting married, but fae customs were better understood as laws than traditions.
The only thing that had gone well was introducing Eli to my