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“And she vanished, right?”
“Right. And her insurance information turned out to be fraudulent.”
Yugi flipped through the file folder, and I realized it was the same one that they had created for the first accident. “We have here that you told us her name was Eisha te Kana. Here’s the information she gave you for her phone and address, but it says that her info checked out as fake.”
“Right. She disappeared, and nobody ever contacted me to tell me if they’d found her.”
“We didn’t. She just vanished into nowhere.” Yugi looked up as Nerissa and my sisters entered the room.
They flocked around me like a group of mother hens, crowding Roman out. I was too rattled to hear what they were all saying, so I held up my hands.
“One at a time. Please.” Suddenly feeling as if all the wind had left my sails, I drooped. “I’m tired. I know vamps aren’t supposed to get tired, but I am. I’m weary and stressed and shaky.”
Camille motioned to the chairs. “Everybody, sit down and shut up. Let Menolly take the lead. She’s all right, we can see that much, so back off and give her some space.”
Grateful, I waited till they had sorted themselves out. Nerissa vanished for a moment and brought back a box of doughnuts. Camille and Delilah each accepted raspberry-filled pastries, while Nerissa bit into a chocolate-covered cake doughnut. As they listened, I told them what had happened. Recounting it didn’t take any of the horror away, nor did spelling out the connection we thought there might be with Eisha te Kana.
“So is your car totally trashed?” Delilah winced as she asked. She knew how much I loved my Jag.
In answer, I pulled out my phone and showed her the pictures I’d taken before driving back to headquarters. The crumpled metal, crushed in on itself, was shocking. That I’d been right in the middle of it was worse.>Like me. I glanced over at Nerissa, who wore a cloak as gold as the sun, over a black dress. She matched me well, but I also needed Roman for when my predator wanted out to play. I would never expect just one person to meet my needs. And Delilah? Well, she was more like our mother, but still she had both Shade and the Autumn Lord.
Perhaps that had been the problem. Perhaps Father had turned against his nature, needed Mother too much, and in doing so, denied anyone else the chance to make him happy and whole.
Whatever the case, the past was long over, and now we stood on the side of Birchwater Pond. Instead of our mother, we were here to bid farewell to Sephreh. The formal rites would come later—but for now, we passed the chalice and intoned the prayer of the dead, and focused our energy on Camille as she cut the cords of energy connecting him to our lives. Grieving would take time, mourning would move as it would, but letting go? We had to let him go. We had to let him journey on to find his joy and his future.
We ate our communion cakes—ate the body of the Great Mother. And we sipped the blood of the Harvest God, found in sweet wine, although my chalice contained actual blood. We lit the fires and wandered the shore after wishing Father’s spirit—and Chrysandra and Queen Asteria and all those we’d lost over the past few years—well on their journeys.
After we were done, Nerissa and I strolled arm in arm to the water’s edge, and once again, I flashed back to childhood, watching the lake churn as the falling water thundered into it.
“What are you thinking about? You look so far away.” Nerissa slid her arm around me and kissed the top of my head.
“Memories. Just… the past. The first Samhain we bade farewell to our mother. And how Father was such an ass.” I told her about it.
“He was mourning your mother.”
“He had three daughters who needed him to man up, to be both father and mother to them. We needed him then, and I swear, he never fully returned after checking out. I just hope Mother was waiting for him. I don’t like to think of him wandering alone. For one thing, I don’t want him haunting our home.”
She laughed, but I was serious. The last thing we needed was the ghost of our father wandering around the house, bemoaning his fate.
“I think you’re safe. Wouldn’t your mother be there for him? Isn’t that how it works in your afterlife?” The way she said it made it sound almost like a disease, but I knew she didn’t mean anything by it.
“I hope so. I seriously hope so.” We paused by a little bower where Smoky and Morio had built a covered bench. Taking shelter from the rain, we held hands, snuggling together.
“I love the look, by the way. I love your hair down.” The way she said it sounded wistful. “You seem more vulnerable… less… less like nothing matters. Sometimes I think everything just bounces off you, and I worry that anything I say will do the same.”
Oh, no. We didn’t need angst tonight and this had become a common argument. There was enough pain with remembering our dead, remembering our friends and family who had passed. Especially those who died because of us.
“Don’t. Not tonight. You know I love you. You know I listen to you—even if I don’t say anything. I never ignore you.” Apparently I wasn’t tuned in enough, or so Nerissa thought. I wasn’t entirely sure where her complaints were coming from because I didn’t think I did that at all.
“Yes, you do.” She let out a long sigh. “But we’ll talk about that later. You’re right. Tonight is not for arguing. Tonight’s for remembering the dead, and letting the past move into the past.”
I hated seeing the clouded look on her face and leaned in to give her a kiss. “I promise—we’ll work on this. I may not understand why you’re upset, but I see that you are. And I don’t want you unhappy. I love you too much for that.”
She squeezed my hand. “I know. I love you, too.”
And with that, we headed back to the others. Trillian and Morio grilled the meat while Hanna and Vanzir spread out the rest of the food on the tables. Iris was playing with Maggie, who looked delighted to have her first nanny around again. Iris hadn’t been able to care for Maggie since mid-pregnancy, because Maggie accidentally tripped her up, and she could be a real handful. But now, she sat, contented, on Iris’s lap, leaning against her softly with that wide-eyed innocence beaming up at her.
Trillian picked up a guitar and started to play an Otherworld melody. He’d proved quite adept with the instrument, and Camille had bought him one last Yule. The song was one of loss, and acceptance, and I recognized it right off. I’d learned it when I was a teenager.
