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MARY ALSTON: Yeah. Just come, OK?
So maybe this was about Esposito. My gut tensed, like it always did when I had to deal with my sperm donor. It had been ten days since I’d asked my mom to keep an eye out for him, but so far, he was still MIA.
Be there in thirty minutes, I responded.
Instead of putting the phone away, my fingers hovered over the screen. Maybe I should text Rio, ask him to let Eden know I wouldn’t be there for another couple of hours? She’d be expecting me; I’d gotten in the habit of going to her every night around now.
Then I realized what I was doing and shoved the phone into my pocket.
For fuck’s sake, Talon, she’s your thrall, not your girlfriend.
I stopped in Cain’s office to let him know where I was going and that I’d be back in an hour or two, then grabbed my bike from the renovated carriage house that served as the castle’s garage and headed out. The cottage was a few miles south on the opposite side of the island from Bluebeard’s Cove. I found my mom sitting in the dark again, this time in her living room.
“Talon.” She stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray and rose from the couch. “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem.” I kissed her cheek, taking the opportunity to surreptitiously sniffed her breath. But she hadn’t been drinking. In fact, she appeared fine—clear-eyed and alert, if a little depressed. “So what’s up?” I asked. “Did Esposito contact you?”
“No, and stop asking if I’ve seen him.” She rubbed her neck irritably. “Because I haven’t. I sent for you because I wanted to ask you something and I didn’t want to do it over the phone.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Go ahead.”
“Not here.” She moved past me to the short hall. “Let’s go for a walk—I could use the exercise.”
“Sure, why not?” With a shrug, I followed her into the tiny foyer, taking her navy peacoat from the peg and helping her into it.
Pulling a striped wool hat over her short gray hair, she picked up a pair of mittens. “Ready,” she said and proceeded me out the door.
The cottage was near the end of a narrow dirt road lined with bare-branched maples and oaks. We followed the road until it dead-ended onto a windy cliff overlooking the Atlantic, then walked along the edge for another five or ten minutes.
Mom paused on the scrubby grass and lifted her face to the biting salt air. “I smell snow,” she said, inhaling. “We’ll have two or three inches by morning.”
“Yeah?” I didn’t question her certainty; my mom was the island weather witch. If she said snow or rain was on the way, then it was.
“It will be December in a couple of weeks,” she added, almost to herself. “Winter lobster season.”
I nodded, gazing out at the heaving black waves. On nights like these, I was grateful I hadn’t grown up in a lobstering family. “Anyone who takes a boat out in this weather has balls of steel.”
Mom made a sound of agreement, her mind clearly elsewhere. “I hear Eden Montgomery is having a baby. A boy.”
I snapped my head around to find her frowning at me from beneath the striped hat. So that’s what this was about. “That’s right.”
“He’s yours, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Her throat worked, her hurt permeating the air. “I see.”
“I’m sorry. I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
An icy wind buffeted me. Even for a vampire, it was fucking cold out here. I jammed both hands into the pockets of my leather jacket. “Soon.”
“How long have you known?”
“Two weeks,” I admitted.
Two weeks in which Eden had gradually worked her way back into my life.
