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She covered her mouth with her hand as tears spilled from her eyes. “I had a vision of something that happened. I think it’s a prophesy.”
A prophesy? Of what? “You said the vision has already happened.”
“Yes. I think Emelyn is showing me what happened when we were at Granna and Granddaddy’s house. It happened when we were asleep in the apartment. Marsala found us. She stood at our bedside and watched us sleep, but I don’t think she was corporeally there. I think she was there through Black Magic.”
The Marsala I knew wouldn’t have simply watched us sleep. Sebastian was right about her not missing her opportunity. “She only watched us sleep?”
“She watched us for a while, but then she came closer to me. She stood over me and stared at my sleeping body for a long while. When she was finished, she was about to put her hands around my throat when she suddenly stopped as if she was listening attentively to something. She leaned over me and put her ear to my chest like she was listening to my heart. She stayed that way for a minute and then she moved her ear lower down my body to my stomach. She listened another minute and I saw a malicious grin come over her face. When she lifted her ear from my stomach, she replaced it with her palm and said, ‘It is your lucky night, Agápe. Tonight you escape death because you carry his child, but that won’t always be the case.’ Then, she turned and left.”
Damn, I didn’t know how Marsala could manage to be so cruel from so far away, but this was clearly another one of her tricks. Chansey’s heart was pounding away and I knew what she wanted me to do, but I didn’t want to hurt her by telling her there was no baby.
She reached for her flat belly, touched it and then looked at me. “Is it possible?”
I shook my head and squeezed my eyes tightly to prepare myself to say the words. “No, Love, it’s one of Marsala’s tricks.”
She rested her palm on her lower belly and asked, “Will you put your ear here and listen the way she did in my vision? Only to put my mind at ease?”
It felt cruel and inhumane to do this to Chansey. I saw the hope in her eyes, wishing for this impossibility to be possible, even if she wouldn’t admit to it.
“I will if it’s what you want, but I don’t want to upset you.”
“I want you to,” she said as she lay back flat on the bed and pulled her satin nightgown up away from her body. “I would feel better about being turned tomorrow if I knew there wasn’t a little tiny Curry in there,” she laughed, but I didn’t mistake her jest for indifference. She wanted to hear me tell her that I heard something.
Her reference to being turned tomorrow reminded of another disappointment I would need to discuss her after I told her there wasn’t a baby. I looked at her tanned belly above her black lacy panties and thought about how it deserved to be swollen with a beautiful baby for her to love. I rubbed my hand over it and wished I could give her this thing she repetitively denied wanting.
I didn’t know why, but I took a deep breath and held it as I leaned forward to place my ear just above the edge of her panties. We were both silent and motionless as I listened for the telltale sign of a new life within Chansey. I held my breath, expecting to hear nothing, but hopelessly wished to hear the sound of a miracle.
And then there it was...the sweetest sound to ever be heard by my ears. Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub, over and over again, at least 170 times over a minute.
My heart began to race and I realized I was still holding my breath. Could it be? Surely my ears were tricking me.
“I feel your excitement. You hear something, don’t you, Curry?”
I couldn’t lift my ear from her stomach. I didn’t want to stop listening to the repetitive lub dub sound because I was afraid I was wrong or that it was another one of Marsala’s Black Magic tricks.
Chansey reached for my hair and grabbed a fistful, forcing me to look up at her. “Tell me what you hear.”
I was scared to say the words.
“Ugh!” she groaned. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking because your emotions are all over the place.”
I broke into a smile that I couldn’t contain if my life depended on it. “I think you need a pregnancy test.”
˜ ˜ ˜
Because it was night, it was too dangerous for Chansey to be out, so I had the honor of shopping for a pregnancy test after midnight. I stood dumbfounded in a 24-hour drugstore staring ignorantly at the numerous shelves of pregnancy tests and had no idea which one to get for Chansey. A female employee walked by and noticed me, but said nothing. A few minutes later, she passed a second time and looked at me standing motionless in a comatose state. “Do you need help, sir?”
Yeah, she had no idea about the kind of help I needed. I continued staring ahead as I replied, “My wife needs a pregnancy test and I have no idea what I’m doing.” I turned to look at the clerk. “I absolutely have no idea what I’m doing.”
She reached for one of the tests and handed it to me. “I personally think they’re all about the same, but I’d go with this one if she thinks it’s an early pregnancy. This one claims to detect it sooner than the others. She won’t trust the first result, so get this one with two tests.”
I took the box from her hand and stared at it.
“This must be your first one,” she said. “Baby, I mean.”
I looked up at her. “Yes and not something we expected.”
She reached and innocently touched my arm. “Honey, babies have this notorious way of showing up when you least expect them,” she laughed.
“Thank you for your help.”
“You are quite welcome and early congratulation
s if your wife is pregnant.”
I smiled at the thought. “Thank you.”
Marsala could trick Chansey with the dream. She could possibly trick me into believing I heard a heartbeat, but she couldn’t trick two pregnancy tests, right?
After I paid for the pregnancy tests, I streaked to my car, not caring who saw me, because I was desperate for confirmation one way or the other.
Once back at the compound, I raced toward our quarters and ran into Sol in the hallway. “Whoa, where’s the fire, dude?”
“Umm. Umm.” That’s all I could say and I didn’t have time for idle conversation, so I left him standing in the hallway staring after me strangely.
“Whatever,” I heard him call behind me, but I didn’t care. I could explain my abrupt rudeness after I knew the test results.
I hurried through the door and Chansey was not in the bed. I didn’t see her anywhere. “Chansey,” I called out.
She walked out of her sitting room. “I’m right here,” she laughed because of my anxiousness.
I held the plastic bag out to her. “The clerk at the drugstore recommended these.”
She took the bag from my hand and pulled out the pregnancy test. She turned it over to read about it and I offered, “I’ve already read the instructions. You just pee on the absorbent tip or you can collect it in a cup and dip it.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I figured as much.”
I stood nervously waiting for her to take a step toward the bathroom, but she didn’t. “I’m scared.”
I wasn’t sure of which verdict she referred. “Scared it will be positive or that it will be negative?”
“Both.”
I put my arms around her. “I’m scared, too.”
“Scared it will be positive or that it will be negative?”
“Both.”
“Okay, here we go.”
I watched her go into the bathroom and shut the door. I sat on the edge of the bed knowing that our lives were never going to be the same when she came back, regardless of the results, and that’s when I started to panic.
What if she was pregnant? What would this baby be? Human? Vampire? Half and half? Was that even possible to have half human and half vampire? There had simply never been a vampire baby unless another Agápe couple had one. I needed Sebastian again, but I wouldn’t ask until I knew for sure.
