“Don’t think for a moment I won’t make the hard choice,” I whispered. “You might never forgive me, but our daughter will have a whole, healthy father. I can live with the rest.”
He still wouldn’t look at me. “Murder is always your answer. Kill first, ask questions later. I don’t want to be like you, Maxine.”
I stood back, stung.
Grant limped to the six-wheeler. I watched him toss his cane into the passenger seat with such violence it almost careened out the other side. Mary was already there, helping the demon children into the back. They all stopped and stared at him. Mary, with disapproval. He didn’t look at her, either.
She pushed his cane aside and climbed into the passenger seat. One hand on her machete. Guard duty, protecting Grant. Just as she had protected his mother and father—or tried to, on another world, in another age. The Labyrinth had torn her out of time—just as it had torn Grant’s mother, who had escaped the war, pregnant with her son. All of them hurtled millions of years into the future, until they’d fallen here, on earth.
He drove away and didn’t look back. I kept hoping he would. As if it would be some kind of apology.
Don’t let him go, I told myself, watching the Osul hiding in the grass rise up and run after the six-wheeler. It’s not safe.
But I didn’t move.
Jack shuffled close. I was so distracted, I barely noticed the smell. The sting I’d felt was only getting worse.
“Grant didn’t mean it,” said my grandfather. “That man worships you. He’s simply afraid.”
I thought about the demon he had just killed in Taiwan. How quickly and ruthlessly he had committed that execution. This man, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Who had fought me for years, refusing to treat demons as I treated them. Grant was the one who had shown me they were more than parasites. He was the one who had made me realize I was more than just a killer—and that it was okay. It was okay that I had broken with precedent. It was okay I had stepped off the path the women before me had made.
I had become my own person, with him.
Not my mother. Not my grandmother. Just me.
“He’s right,” I replied. “My first answer is usually violence.”
“And? Is that so terrible?” Jack forced me to look at him. “You women were made in a different age, your bodies compelled to be the homes of the five most dangerous creatures my kind had ever encountered. Violence, survival, war . . . that is in your blood. But that is not who you are. You broke with that. You made something new.”
It was as if he’d heard my thoughts. He stepped back, a grim smile touching his mouth. “My sweet girl . . . you would have destroyed the world by now if not for your good heart. It’s what has saved you, and us, again and again. Never doubt it.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t like fighting with him. It feels wrong.”
My grandfather made a rude sound. “That’s because you’re both disgustingly in love. If you actually disagreed like normal people, you’d have kicked his arse and been done with it. And it does need kicking, my dear. Not just for what he said to you.”
“Jack,” I said, but he waved me off.
“Enough. You didn’t bring me here for this.” He scratched the bridge of his nose, and a black flake of crud fell off. “Although, do you think I have time for a bath before the invasion? I haven’t been this filthy since I was a gong farmer cleaning out cesspits in old London.”
“Jack,” I said, again.
“Every day,” he went on, scraping the inside of his ear with a long yellow fingernail, “buried to my chest in human excrement. I did not allow myself to be born again in Britain for another three hundred years after that experience.”
“You’re sounding awfully peevish for a man who was in a coma,” I remarked, walking toward the farmhouse. “What were you doing, anyway?”
Jack’s jaw tightened. “Meditation.”
He was lying, of course. But there was nothing productive in berating an immortal for the truth. All I’d get in return would be more enigma, more confusing riddles, and that oh-so-wise-man secretive smile that always made me want to throw a magnificent tantrum.
“It looked like torture,” I said, simply.
There was no air conditioner in the old farmhouse, but inside felt cool, and smelled like chocolate. Mary had just been baking. It reminded me of my mother, and her face flashed in front of me, fresh and startling. Less than a day ago, I’d seen her alive in this kitchen.
God, that hurt.
I let the rest of the house soothe me. Shadows and pale edges, reflections of light from the windows, formed soft lines that relaxed my eyes. I heard a hum of music—just a radio set to a classical station—but it made me think of Grant.