“Not even if we took your Blanks!”
I grinned; I couldn’t help it. “Blahniks. Manolo Blahniks, you little savages.”
They were dressed in what I liked to call future toddler fabric: shiny overalls, his green and hers blue. No idea what the material was, but nothing stuck to it. Nothing. Frankly, I could have used a few outfits made out of whatever it was. They had dark blue long-sleeved T-shirts beneath the overalls, and their sturdy little feet were clad in fuzzy red socks.
Jessica and Dick’s gorgeous biracial kids were Exhibit A for Proving Bigots Wrong: races should mix constantly because I’d never seen more gorgeous kids.
Their skin was pale with rosy gold undertones, and their hair was deep black and kinky. The girl wore hers pulled back into braids that reminded me of Jessica’s killer-tight ponytail; the boy’s was clipped short. Their enormous dark eyes were their mother’s, too. And they were precocious, and not just because they were continent newborns sitting up and feeding themselves and going to kindergarten. They were smart. Whip-smart. Marc was always fascinated when other iterations of the twins popped in, and he did IQ tests on them disguised as games. Which they immediately figured out and called him on. Which made him want to test them more. Which they tolerated, what with the blatant Rice Krispies bar bribery that always ensued.
Of course, not everybody was enchanted by their, um, special gifts. Parenting newborns was relentless and stressful enough (at least, judging from Dick’s and Jessica’s permanent state of exhausted confusion). Newborns who were sometimes a month old and sometimes in elementary school and sometimes old enough to drive . . . that was trickier. Jessica had explained it like so: “I don’t know the five-year-olds, so how can I love them? Understanding intellectually that those are my children years from now doesn’t help me feel it. I love the babies. I don’t know the others.”
I didn’t have a clue about parenting, not really, and made the rare decision to nod and keep my mouth shut. My half brother/son BabyJon spent more time with my mother than he did here. It was better that way. Safer.
And speaking of safety, how would the recent unpleasant developments affect Jessica’s family? Dick was beyond tolerant of our supernatural shenanigans, but if reporters were going to be poking around—or, worse, goth kids searching for real vampires—how were they going to handle that?
“You’re our best most favorite aunt,” the girl told me approvingly, draining her milk and handing me the cup like I was a goddamned waitress. (What the hell. I took the cup and rinsed it. She got me off an unpleasant train of thought, after all.)
“Your only aunt,” I reminded them.
“Nuh-uh! There’s Tina and Grandma Taylor.”
“Grandma Taylor is Grandma Taylor, not aunt,” the boy corrected. (Argh, when was Jessica going to name these things? We all agreed asking the twins would be cheating, and the kids never addressed each other by name, preferring “No, you shut up!”) “And Tina’s a friend in the family. Right, Onnie Betsy? Friend in the family?”
“Of the family,” I corrected, taking his empty cup. I could see him making a mental note so he’d use the phrase correctly next time. He would, too. These guys never forgot anything, except that they weren’t supposed to have too many cookies after school.
“D’you know where Mommy is?” The girl had glanced at the calendar on the wall and then outside, figured it was daylight and business hours, and assumed Dick was at work so no point in asking after him. All correct. Cripes, when I was five I sometimes forgot how to open the fridge.
(“No, honey, pull. Don’t push.”
“But I’m so hungry!”)
Dick hadn’t wanted to go back to work—well, he had, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it, and he’d both dreaded and anticipated getting the hell out of the house. Jessica had insisted, pointing out there were few things scarier than a man legally required to carry a gun who was overtired and shaking from too much caffeine. He was on a part-time schedule for now, trying to figure out his official cop stance on Operation Expose Vamps. He felt bad about hiding in the house during my inadvertent press conference that morning and was determined not to do so again. But how to explain to the brass? “Of course it’s not true. I’m definitely not exposing myself, my wife, and my helpless infants to vampires and a zombie. Well, time for my gun and me to patrol the streets—hope I don’t run into any reporters, ho-ho-ho!”
The good news was, he didn’t have to work at all—he had almost as much money as Jessica did—but he loved his job. We loved it, too. If not for his job, he and Jess never would have met.17 Sinclair had taken him aside and asked him not to make any permanent decisions for the next few days. He’d agreed.