Bundle of Joy

 "You know, I think it would be a good idea if you came back to visit this weekend," her mother said. Her voice was thoughtful, but as per usual, it wasn't so much as suggestion as a demand. "Your hoodlum's back."

 Tam frowned at the phone. "He went away?"

 There was silence on the other end. Then her mother said, "It was a bit of an emergency, dear. He didn't want you to worry."

 "Ha, like that would have stopped you telling me," she teased. "C'mon, Mom, I know what you're like about honesty."

 Her mother sounded grumpy. "That young man can be quite persuasive when he wants. Goodness knows, I was always a fool for a pair of sad eyes. Under the circumstances, I agree - reluctantly - with his decision."

 "What circumstances?" This was getting more cryptic by the second.

 A sigh. "It was all...family business, apparently. I knew that ragamuffin had family tucked away somewhere, but you've always given me the impression they don't get on."

 They didn't. From what little Aspen had told her - and that had been little indeed - she knew his mother had died when he was young; his father had followed suit three years ago, and he hadn't spoken to his sister in years.

 "I...don't think they do." If it really was family business, it was something to do with Aspen's sister.

 But then a dreadful suspicion pricked her: what if he was falling back into the clawed embrace of the Nightworld? He'd promised her that he had left all that assassin...stuff behind. Even thinking it brought a twinge of surrealism to her day: she could never quite grasp that Aspen, her sweet, shy Aspen, had been an assassin.

 He'd promised her, surely he wouldn't....

 But he had hidden this trip from her. He had even convinced her mother to lie. That would have taken more charm and downright sneakiness than she'd thought he'd possessed.

 I have to go home, she thought, the first chords of apprehension jangling in her heart. I have to know for myself.

 "Hmm. I think you might be misinformed," her mother said dryly. "Try not to judge Aspen too harshly. Despite his mistakes, I can't help but feel he means well. I wouldn't have let him put that ring on your finger if I didn't."

 But do you really think that, she wondered, or did he mess with your mind?

 She shook herself. These doubt would consume her if she didn't stop it. He was her soulmate; she had seen the best and worst of him, seen him broken and seen him try to heal: she was his first love, his only love. Yet...

 He belonged to the Nightworld and all its horrors before he ever belonged to me, an insidious voice whispered.

 "I'll fly back this weekend," she said, trying to keep the bleakness from her words.

~*~

His house was right on the outskirts of town, perched amidst dilapidated houses that groaned in the wind. His had been little more than a shell when he bought it, but he and his housemate had restored it brick by brick. It looked quite cosy these days, though the doorbell stammered out half a tune before it faded into nothing.

 "Tam!" His thin face lit up when he saw her, and that alone swept away most of her fears. How she loved that smile: the one he saved just for her, though he didn't know it. Wide and bright and soft, it outshone the shadows in his eyes. "Oh wow, what an awesome surprise..."

 She stepped in. Was that...was that a baby crying?

 Slowly, Tam turned and looked at Aspen. "I know there's something you need to tell me. But...tell me that isn't anything to do with it?"

 His face fell, and her hopes sank with it. "Um. It's a bit of a long story."

 "Explain now!" Anger and trepidation formed a queasy mix in her stomach. Oh god. What if he'd kidnapped it? What if...if...it was some Nightworld thing?

 Oh my god, what if it was his son? That would mean he'd, he'd...

 She just couldn't comprehend so massive a betrayal. Not Aspen, that just wasn't in his nature, but all of this was so crazy that he could have told her anything at that moment and she would have believed it.

 He cleared his throat, and then she saw the fear blasting out from his eyes, shaky and dark in the soulmate connection. "He's my nephew."

 A weight lifted from her. His nephew. That made sense. He had a sister, after all, and maybe they'd reconciled. "Oh. Why didn't you say you were looking after him for the week?"

 He laid a tentative hand on her arm. She could feel his fingers trembling, and the soulmate link shivered in time with them, a low incessant rhythm. "I'm...kind of looking after him permanently."

...what? Her mind tried to comprehend, but it made no sense. Dimly, she was aware that the baby's wailing had stopped, but the silence only made his words more startling.

"He's not your son. Your sister didn't just give him to you."

 "Yeah, she did," he said softly. "She thought he'd be safe with me."

 "Hah." A new voice intruded on their conversation, and she was almost glad of the distraction. Vaje Chusson filled the doorway to the kitchen, and in his arms...she stared...it really was a baby, apparently asleep. A sheaf of dark hair and squashed pug features were all she could make out. "As safe as anything is around you, Aspen. Tam. Good to see you."

 She ignored him and kept staring at the creature in his arms. "Is that real?" she said faintly.

 "Real as they get," the coyote answered, a touch of amusement in his voice.

"And is Aspen really...his uncle?" She kept her voice low, unwilling to wake the child. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Aspen's injured look.

  I wouldn't lie, he mumbled along the soulmate link. Not to you, my Tam.

 "Yup. Poor lad." The coyote had an oddly soft expression, and there was a sadness to his face that was almost too intimate to see. "Been a long item since I had to quiet a kid. I guess you never lose the knack."

 "You had kids?" Strange fact on top of strange fact. Tam wondered if her head was going to explode. Surely one person could only take so many revelations.

 "A kid," he corrected. "Once. He died. It was all a long time ago."

 Maybe, she thought, but you haven't forgotten him, have you? Does it pain you to hold someone else's child and feel the ghost of your own there? Do you pretend he never died, that if you don't look too hard, your son still has a life waiting to happen?

She put those disturbing questiosn aside. It was none of her business. This child, however, was very much her business.

 She turned back and forth between Vaje and Aspen. "So...how did he get here?"

 "Well," Vaje began, perking up. "When a mummy and a daddy love each other very-"

 She gave him her best imitation of her mother's stare.

 Vaje's mouth snapped shut.

 "Hey! I thought the Stare O' Doom had been outlawed," protested Aspen.

 "Not in this situation," she said firmly. "Seriously. Why is he here?"

 He squirmed. "You won't like it."

 She'd yet to see any part of this situation that she liked. Her boyfriend had acquired a child: a child he apparently intended to raise. "Try me."

 He cleared his throat, his voice almost flat, as if he was trying to detach himself from his own words. "You have to understand that I got most of this from my sister. It's been...years since I've seen her."

 "I thought so," she muttered.

 "Well...six years ago, after I first joined the, um, Furies..." His voice wilted a little; he knew she hated to hear about his past life. "...she came to me wanting a favour. I hadn't seen her since I was eight, when she'd left the enclave, so it was a bit of a shock. She hadn't changed. Still ambitious. So ambitious."

 He brushed her cheek with light fingers: and she saw his sister, with the same dark hair and hawk-sharp features, the same shifting eyes. But there was a cruel line to her mouth, and in Aspen's eleven year-old eyes, she loomed over him, hands punctuating her words with little jabs.

 "She'd always resented the fact we weren't as powerful as the Redferns or as rich as the Rasmussens. You have to hand it to Clem, she was always thinking of the family." How bitter his voice was, an adult's regret laid over that child's memory. "She thought the Furies could help her. Thought I'd do it for free."

 "Not the brightest," murmured Vaje.

 "I refused her." Shrill words, hurled between those two siblings: one young and snarling, the other older and icy in her indifference. "So she went to K'Shaia, instead, and they offered their aid. They told her they'd make her a marriage with someone suitable, in exchange for her firstborn." Aspen's teeth bared. "It's a pretty standard contract. Of course, she agreed, but she thought she could outwit them, so she asked for the marriage to take place in a few years. They agreed."

 "And in the meantime, she went to a witch and asked them to cast fertility spells. Then she went out looking for humans. Any humans: she didn't care who. I don't know how many she must have gone through. She screwed them, and she waited for a child. She just used them and threw them away." Disgust, raw under those unadorned words.

 And they probably did the same with her, said Tam in a private corner of her mind. She imagined men, piling up like crumpled tissues.

 "Enough fertility spells, enough guys and she wound up pregnant."

 "Clever," breathed Vaje. "Clever, and very simple."

 Aspen didn't look as though he found it clever. "Yeah. That was her plan. Make sure her firstborn was a half-breed brat she didn't give a damn about, then make her marriage and throw her carrion to K'Shaia. But she slipped up." He gave a harsh laugh, and in his eyes, something wild and wounded floated. "It turns out Clemmie does have a heart. She...well, she said she just fell in love with him, even before he was born."

 A soft voice threaded into her mind: the memory of Clementine Martin, with wonder in her eyes. Softened so, the resemblance to Aspen was more striking, and Tam wondered if she would have liked his sister if they'd met.
 
  I'd never had anything - anyone - who was really mine, before. Mostly I hated getting fat and having my legs and my back aching all the time, but sometimes...he'd kick, and I realised it was a person in there. I was responsible for him, no matter what I thought. And I...I don't want to give him to the Furies. Please, Aspen, please help me. If you won't help me, then help him.

 "She called me last week. He's three months old now, and she'd realised she didn't want to give him to the Furies, but she couldn't bring him up either. Whoever she marries - well, he won't tolerate a halfbreed. And he certainly won't want anyone who might threaten his heirs. There wasn't anyone else who'd help, so...me. She was desperate - she thought I was still part of the Furies."

 And he wasn't. She should never have doubted him, but even now, she knew the Furies had some hold over him, although he refused to admit it.

 "And if anyone checks," put in Vaje gruffly, "I am. So K'Shaia can't argue - he won't be any use to them for a few years, anyway."

 "But...he's a baby," she said, trying to be practical. "You can't bring up a kid! You've got a job."

 Aspen smiled faintly. "I can afford to take a little time off."

 "Me too," put in Vaje. "Look, Tam, I lost a kid to the Furies myself. He ain't going to get any protection better than me and Aspen."

 Aspen's face was so young and earnest that it tore her to try and talk him out of it, but he just wasn't responsible enough to bring up a child. I'm not, a voice whispered. I don't want to give up med school for some baby I've never seen. This was supposed to happen years in the future, and he was meant to be ours, mine and Aspen's.

 "And who's going to be his mother?" she demanded. "God knows his own wasn't much good. I don't want to look after a kid, Aspen!" It came out as a wail, the panic bubbling up out of her throat.

 "Whoa..." Vaje raised his eyebrows. "Don't wake him."

 She glared at him.

 "Tam.." Aspen's smile held a little pity. "This...this isn't to do with you. He's not just a kid, he's half a vampire, and he's going to have more problems than you can handle. There's no way he's going have a normal life as it is, and I kind of get this feeling that I'm going to have your mother looking over my shoulder at every moment."

 It was strange, but yes, she thought her mother would approve of this mad scheme. Her belief in the bond of family was stronger than anything else, and despite her pretended dislike of Aspen, her mother would never have let him propose if she didn't think him a suitable husband.

 And...he didn't expect her to do anything. That selfish, panicky part of her heaved a sigh of relief.

 It might be good for him, a voice in her head whispered. The same way your family's been good for him: you know how much he loves Celia and Billy. Remember how he was when you first met? Remember what happened two years ago, with his father? Look at him now. He's got a house and a job and a fiancée. And that kid has no one. Maybe he needs someone like Aspen, someone who knows how dangerous the Nightworld is.

 Maybe. It wasn't as if she seemed to have much say in the matter. That rankled.

 "Fine," she muttered. "But if he calls me Mommy, there will be so much trouble."

 They all looked at the sleeping form.

 "He won't be calling anyone anything for a good year," said Vaje dryly.

 "Does he have a name?" she asked, equally dryly. "I mean, you can't just call him 'him'."

 The coyote gave her a crooked smile. "Actually...he doesn't."

 The baby didn't even have a name? What kind of person was Aspen's sister?

 "She didn't want to name him," Aspen said, sounding terribly sad. "She said she couldn't afford to get any more attached than she already was."

 "Well, he needs a name," she said. "What about Sebastian? I always liked that."

 "Too flouncy," declared Vaje. "Give him something with a bit of bite. What about Mark?"

 "Boring," she dismissed. "Um, how about-"

 "Zane," said Aspen, overriding her.

 Vaje's head snapped to him, and the coyote and vampire stared at one another for a long moment: bronze eyes met anxious eyes that slipped through a rainbow flurry of colours. The tension was palpable, but she didn't understand why.

 "Zane," repeated the coyote, and she could swear his eyes shone with tears, but she didn't know why. "I...don't know."

 A gentle comment that she didn't think she was supposed to hear brushed by, compassion cresting on it like the silver foam on waves. Don't you think it's time that name was written on a birthday card instead of a headstone?

 She stayed silent. This was between them, this moment of old turmoil and new indecision.

 The coyote looked at the child in his arms, and for the first time, she saw grief crease his face, stealing the years from him. But through it, he raised a weak smile, a proud smile. "Zane," he said softly. "Boy, are you going to have an exciting life."

 Just like us, she thought resignedly.