Chapter Text
1979
This time, Rosario Dominguez Santoro just looked tired. Alec knew he had taken from her some of her youth every time, but today it was pronounced. Motherhood, too, had taken a clear toll. Twenty-five, and she seemed a decade older. It was in her voice when she spoke, the lines around her lips when she smiled, her hands as she poured the coffee. They shook. Alec reached out and took the pot from her, setting it aside, steadying her fingers. She smiled at him, and didn’t need to say a word.
“Do I get to see her?” he asked when both their cups were drained. Rosario stiffened.
“Why?”
“Curiosity.”
“Curiosity in what?” she said. “You want to see if she’s like you, is that it?”
“I’ve no way of telling.” Alec twirled the mug back and forth between his palms, looking down at the kitchen counter. “And either way, there’s a good chance she wouldn’t be exactly like me. It’s always up to chance which way they turn out, when—people like me—have children.”
“Especially unintentional ones,” said Rosario dryly, and Alec smiled. She sighed. “I suppose you can see her.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her,” he said, rather hurt by her clear distrust. “Blixes don’t hurt other blixes, Rosie, that’s just how things work.”
“What if she’s not?”
“She’s still my blood.” Rosario looked at him doubtfully a minute longer, then relaxed slightly.
“Fine,” she said. “You can see her. Ven conmigo.” He followed her out of the sweet little kitchen and up the stairs to an equally sweet little nursery. Everything in it was yellow: ideal for a boy or a girl, he supposed, and as sunny as everything else in this overheated city. A dark-haired baby lay in a crib under the window. Rosario picked her up, cooing to her softly as she came awake, fussing. After a few moments she turned and offered the warm little bundle to Alec.
The instant she landed in his arms he felt the life emanating from her. The youth. Normally it would have been terribly tempting, but right now—he supposed blood relation must counter it. That, in combination with the innocence the particular youth of infancy imparted. The baby stared up at him with dark eyes, intelligent for such a tiny creature. She looked terribly like her mother.
“What’s her name?” he asked, not looking away.
“I thought about Valencia,” said Rosario. “Para mi ciudad. Pero…”
“Pero?” he prodded, following.
“Vanessa.”
“Vanessa,” he repeated, and wondered if that was a spark of recognition in the baby’s eye—did she know her own name? Surely she was too small. “English name.”
“English padre,” said Rosario. “Though it seems to me you’ve been growing rather Italian the past few years.”
“Well, in my experience, if you live in a place long enough, drain enough of its people, you do start to resemble them a little, yeah,” said Alec.
“I’m glad,” said Rosario. “It’s made your Spanish better.”
“Until I start mixing them up, I suppose.” He smiled, and let tiny Vanessa grab his finger. “I’m using an Italian surname now. And Christian name, I suppose, I’ve been Sandro for a few years now…”
“Qué apellido?” Rosario asked. “Me gustaba Young.”
“I liked Young, too,” said Alec. “Always thought it was terribly subtle and not at all obvious for a lectoblix.” Rosario smiled.
“So what is it? The new one?” she asked, and Alec hesitated.
“You don’t want to give it to her, do you?” he asked. “You shouldn’t.”
“Dios, no,” said Rosario. “She’s mine, and I’m giving her my name. Santoro. I just want to know what you’re calling yourself, in case—”
“In case you need to track me down?” Alec laughed, and told her, “Capello. Alessandro Capello, in case I ever disappear on you for too long.”
“Capello.” She nodded. “Muy bien. Besides,” she added, “she already has you for her middle name.”
“Oh?”
“Vanessa Maria Alejandra Santoro Dominguez. Though, I think,” she said in an undertone, “we’ll be leaving off the Dominguez once we get there. I like my mother's name.”
“Get where?” said Alec, looking up at her at last. Rosario smiled wanly.
“Me voy,” she said. “At last. Pues, nos vamos,” she amended. “Me and my baby.”
“To the colonies?”
“If that’s what you Englishmen insist on calling it.” She smiled at him very fondly.
“Call me old-fashioned.” He sighed. “Or just nostalgic. Where will you go?” Rosario came to stand closer, head against his shoulder, looking down at the baby.
“New York City,” she said. “I’ve heard there’s a community there.”
“What, a coven?”
“Si.”
“Pues,” said Alec in the accent he knew perfectly well to be terrible, “Puedo contactarles para ti—”
“I can do it myself,” said Rosario, surprisingly fiercely. “They won’t hurt me as long as I have her.” Alec had to admit she had a point, or at least so he hoped.
“Well, ten cuidado.” He sighed. They stood there in silence for a few moments. Vanessa had lapsed back into sleeping.
“Do you have to go again soon?” Rosario asked. Alec shrugged.
“I can stay a weekend.”
“Good.” She laughed. “I need an extra pair of hands to help me pack.”
“When do you leave?”
“In a month.”
“So soon.”
“Come to see us, won’t you?” said Rosario, and again Alec shrugged.
“I’ll try,” he said. “Can’t say how often I’ll be over there.” Again, Rosario laughed, softer this time. “What’s funny?”
“That’s the same thing you said when we finished university and I moved back here,” she said. “Well, when I finished university. For you it must have been, what—”
“My fourteenth,” Alec supplied, and now they both laughed. “New York’s a lot farther than Spain, Rosie.”
“I know.” She smiled up at him. “Doesn’t mean you won’t come.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He looked away, and let his eyes be fixed again on his daughter. “You’re my favorite human, Rosie. My favorite in three hundred years.”
“I know,” she said again.
The house in Valencia was packed up quickly and easily. Alec came back a month later to drive them to the airport. Vanessa slept all the way. For Rosario’s sake he hoped she would sleep on the flights as well.
“Remember,” he said as they unloaded the suitcases from the trunk of his rental car, “your contact is Greg Florentine.”
“Greg Florentine. That can’t be Gregorio di Firenze?” said Rosario a bit doubtfully as they began to walk together through the terminal. “The Vampire of Florence?”
“He’s an old friend,” was all Alec said to that.
“How old?” she asked, eyes narrowed.
“Older than me.”
“Obviously, as the Vampire’s reign of terror was fifty years before you were born.”
“He had a rather rebellious adolescence,” said Alec.
“How many adolescences has he had?”
“More than me.”
“And you’ve had thirteen?”
“Fourteen including the past ten years.” They laughed, and were distracted by checking the bags, and then they walked on toward the gate.
“Greg Florentine,” Alec said again. “And if anyone threatens you—hell, if anyone frightens you—call me. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
“And how will I do that?” said Rosario dryly. “When you move around so often.” Alec pulled his notebook from his pocket and scribbled down two numbers. The first was his number in Italy: +39 577 221879. The second was different. 000 587754.
“If you can’t reach the first,” he said, “call the second. He’ll find me.”
“I didn’t know zero-zero-zero was an area code.”
“I think it routes through Obsidian Waste,” said Alec without thinking—she did that to him—and cursed his tongue as soon as the words were out. Rosario frowned up at him.
“Obsidian what?”
“Never mind. Just—in an emergency,” he said, and pressed the page into her hand. “Only an absolute emergency. Only if you can’t possibly talk your way out of it, if you can’t even run, do you understand? Only then.” She nodded. “Tell him you need Alec Young, and I promise he’ll help.”
“All right.” Rosario stuck the page into her pocket, and of course it was then that Vanessa woke up in her arms. Four months was far too young for this flight, Alec thought, but there was no helping it now. He took the baby when Rosario held her up, and rocked her while her mother went to the gate to sort out boarding in Spanish so hurried that for once he actually couldn’t understand. Vanessa wouldn’t quiet. She cried—then she screamed, little mouth opening wide, and he gave her a finger to suck on. Apparently that was her concern—that nursing wasn’t available—but then he felt something hard and sharp press fast against the pad of his finger.
“Ouch!” He pulled it back. The baby was calmed, but his finger was bleeding and, oddly, tingling. Venom. He had been bitten before, by others, but he wasn’t used to being bitten unexpectedly, let alone by a baby. He set her gently on a chair in the waiting area outside the gate and sat down in the next, closing his eyes to focus, to see if he could figure out what kind she was—please don’t be a vivi, was all he thought to himself. Either else would be fine, but zombies scared even him—
Alec woke to Rosario saying his name and looking terribly worried. They stood by the window, looking out at the airplanes. Vanessa was sleeping in her arms again. He could have sworn he had sat down in the chair, and was briefly very confused—then the baby woke, and her eyes opened just as they rolled back down from whites, and at the sight of her dark irises Alec’s head cleared at last.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, and Rosario smacked him in the arm.
“I do mean to raise her Catholic, you know,” she said. “Save setting a bad example for a little later?”
“I suppose,” he said, eyes never leaving Vanessa’s. She looked up at him solemnly, intelligently. Infant eyes were poor, he knew. Now she had seen in 20/20. There was something very alarming about that thought, as he looked at her.
“I’ll miss you all the same.” Rosario stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. Alec barely felt it. “Alec?” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Is something wrong? Tell me quickly, because we need to board, and from the sound of it she’s hungry.” That woke him right up.
“You can’t nurse her,” he said. Rosario frowned.
“I didn’t intend to do so on the airplanes,” she said. “I was hoping she would sleep, but I do have a few bottles packed. Enough to get through.”
“No, I mean—you can’t once you’re there, either,” said Alec. “Not anymore. She’s a narco.” Rosario blinked.
“Narco?”
“Narcoblix. They’re not as famous as lectos like me—not as dramatic, not as long-lived, not as much cult sex appeal. Once they bite you, they can control you in your sleep.”
“Ay,” said Rosario, now following his gaze down to their daughter. “How do you know, all of a sudden?”
“She bit me,” said Alec, and showed her his finger. The puncture wound had shrunk to a small round dot. “She bit me, put me to sleep, and possessed me to walk over here. So you can’t nurse her, if she can do that already, because then she could possess you, and—”
“All right.” Rosario nodded. “I won’t. I have to go, Alec—adios—” and she kissed his lips this time, much to his surprise, and left him standing there as she and their baby boarded a plane to halfway across the world.
Alec had been left alone a lot, he thought, watching the plane roll across the tarmac toward the runway. It was inevitable, he supposed, whenever he let himself have dealings with humans. When they had burned Kate, when he was really a youth, in the first adolescence—that had ruined him, he thought, but in ruining made him better at all the lesser abandonments that followed, so that as years turned into centuries he kept telling himself his heart burned with her. Still he ran from them: their lives were short, and all he could do was to shorten them further, whether by endangering them with his presence or in the more obvious and direct manner. For two hundred years now all his friends and associates had been immortal in some way or another: blixes, demons, particular shadow-charmers, the Sphinx, whatever he was. Then, his fourteenth turn through Oxbridge, along came Rosario. Now there was a baby in the picture. A narcoblix.
No one would burn the Santoros. No one. He would make quite certain of that.
Out on the runway, the plane sped, and sped, and lifted off. Alec started to turn to go, satisfied that all was well, but he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder and a red-bearded grin in his face.
“Alec Young, as I live and breathe!” James Ashley drew him into a tight and unexpected embrace. “What are you doing in the Valencia airport?”
“Seeing off some friends,” said Alec broadly. Jamie nodded.
“Some kind of mission?” he said quietly, knowingly. Apparently he was English today. “I’ve got one of those myself. Headed off in fifteen.”
“Oh? Where to?”
“Sudan, Democratic Republic of.” Jamie grimaced. “Apparently there’s a vivi terrorizing a village. Want to join me? I could use some company.” Alec frowned. “I can pay your way,” Jamie added, looking quite hopeful.
“Did you know I would be here?” said Alec, suddenly a bit suspicious, and Jamie wilted before him. It really was as if he lost a bit of his youth in being discovered. Man was always a terrible liar.
“He told me,” he said, and pulled a ticket from his pocket. “Please come?”
“Who told you? The Captain?”
“You know who.”
“Well, no,” said Alec, “no, actually I don’t—you haven’t told me yet who this Sudan mission is for.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not so much,” said Alec, taking the ticket from his old friend’s hand—“I just like to know who I’m talking to, and how far we can go in saying the ends justify the means.”
“Well, in that case,” said Jamie, and his accent shifted entirely, back to the thick brogue of boyhood, “you probably assumed you were speaking to John Grant of London, but in fact you’re about to board a plane alongside Jamie Ashley of Crieff. If you so choose.”
"So that’s who told you I’d be here.” Alec sighed in a bit of relief. “All right. I’ll certainly go with Jamie Ashley of Crieff.”
“Yeah?”
“These are more fun, anyway.” Alec flashed him a wicked grin. “So that’s who told you I’d be here,” he said, quieter, and glanced impulsively up at the sky where Rosario’s plane had long since vanished. Thank God. He would much rather he knew they existed.
“Yeah,” said Jamie again. “Rhodes is a very smart man.”
“That he is.” Alec’s whole body felt lighter. “Now let’s go catch him a viviblix.”
“Yes, let’s.” Jamie started to lead him down to the gate printed on the ticket.
“I don’t have a change of clothes with me,” Alec pointed out. “And I’ve got a rental car sitting outside.”
“Someone will take care of that.” Jamie waved it aside. “And you don’t need a change of clothes in the field. This should be a fast one.”
“Fair enough.”
“Man, how long has it been?” said Jamie, quite cheerful all of a sudden. “I’ve got a lot to catch you up on!”
“Me too,” said Alec. “On the plane I’ll tell you about my narco daughter.” That got exactly the reaction he wanted.
“Daughter? The bloody hell, man?” Jamie exclaimed. “When did that happen? It hasn’t been that long since I saw you last—only a couple decades!” Alec laughed, and ran off, and let Jamie chase him all the way to the gate for Sudan.
No one would burn the Santoros, he promised—he promised himself, he promised Rosario, and perhaps most importantly he promised Vanessa—and maybe, just maybe, Alec Young could even manage to keep that promise.
1982
It was very early in Italy, and Alec was still asleep, when his phone rang abruptly, which was very strange, because no one ever called him in Italy. Jamie had this number, and Elinor, and Geoff, and Greg, and Anne, and probably Lestat for all he knew. So did both of them: Rhodes and the Captain. So did—
The ringing stopped, and he drifted back to sleep, and didn’t hear it when the phone rang again—but when he woke up he was holding it, and Rosario was saying his name, and the déjà vu made his blood run cold. “Ciao.”
“Alec?” Rosario sounded panicked. “Ay, que bueno que estás allí—ayudame, por favor, Ale, no sé que hacer—”
“Slow down, slow down. It’s going to be all right.”
“Español!”
“No puedo, Rosie, it’s—god, it’s four in the morning here—what’s wrong that you’re calling me at, what, ten? What’s the emergency?” On the other end, Rosario sighed in some relief.
“Well, at least you’re awake,” she said hurriedly. “Look, a group—about twenty men came to the apartments—they arrested the coven—they say they can help us escape, they think Nessie’s human—”
“Did they call themselves knights?” said Alec through suddenly-gritted teeth.
“Sí.”
“Mierda.”
“Alec!”
“Since when are you calling her Nessie?”
“Well, you’re British.”
“I’m English!”
“So?”
“So Loch Ness is Scottish!”
“El lago tiene un monstruo, y yo tengo una monstrua,” said Rosario, and it was clearly a joke, but Alec wasn’t in the mood. It was four in the morning, and the Knights were back to racial profiling.
“And now you’re calling her a monster, too. Great.”
“No—Alec—look, they gave me this one call,” said Rosario, quieter. “Please tell me what to do. Can I trust them?” Alec sighed and raked a hand through his hair, wishing he could be a quarter of the world away to help her.
“As long as they don’t find out she’s not human,” he said. “As long as they think she is, I think you’ll be fine.”
“So you know who they are.”
“Yes.”
“Can you help me deal with them?” she asked.
“Can you hand the phone to whoever’s in charge?” said Alec wearily.
“Just a moment.” Static for a moment, then a man’s voice on the other end.
“Who am I talking to?” He was gruff and American.
“Who am I talking to?”
“Rick Edwards, South Lieutenant.”
“Rick.” Alec sighed, and struggled to remember what his name was this time around. “You’re talking to Tom Hart. You probably don’t know me, I answer to West.” His American was shaky this early in the morning, but it probably didn’t matter—he had never met Rick Edwards in person, and with any luck, never would. “I’m currently in Italy, and it’s four in the morning, and I’d like to know what the hell you’re doing arresting my ex.”
“I assume your ex is the human Rosario Santoro, and not one of the nine blixes my men just arrested?”
“Yeah.”
“Then in return I ask you what the hell your ex was doing living in a building we knew years ago to belong to a coven.”
“She was keeping an eye on them,” said Alec exhaustedly.
“She’s a Knight?” said Edwards sharply. “She doesn’t seem to know anything of who we are.”
“No, no, she’s not a Knight, she’s—she’s freelance—not everyone who knows our special secrets is a Knight, you know.”
“But she’s not Society, either?” Sharp and suspicious. God, why couldn’t they have done their sting this time there? Then it would be ten for him, and he could think…
“Not that I know of, and I think I would, since we slept together for five years,” said Alec sarcastically. Sarcasm killed his American. Whatever.
“I assume her daughter is yours, then?” Edwards’ voice softened a little. That was nice. He hated to answer, but it was still nice.
“Yeah.” Well, it had lasted three years, he thought. Three years she had existed without the Captain knowing she did.
“I see.” Silence for a moment. Then Rosario again.
“Alec?”
“Estoy aquí.”
“He says we’re free to go.”
“Are Greg and Mandy all right?” Edwards had said nine, but as Alec recalled there were several dozen blixes in that coven.
“They got out.”
“And Francis?”
“Frank’s gone. So are Rachel and Hannah.”
“Good.” He sighed. “Do you have a place to stay for the mean time?”
“Greg said he’ll call in the morning to work things out for us,” she said. “The Knights seem content to leave me alone again.”
“Good.”
“I’ll let you know where we go.”
“Good.”
“Say something other than just good?”
“Bien.”
“Alec.”
“I’m exhausted, Rosie. It’s four in the morning.”
“All right.” She laughed softly. “We’ll be fine, Alec. You go back to bed.”
“Call me when you know what’s happening.”
“I will.”
“Is Vanessa asleep?”
“She slept right through it, yes.”
“Good.”
“Go back to bed, Alec.”
“I will eventually.”
“Good night.” She said it rather firmly, and it surprised him to realize, with a jolt, that he didn’t want to hang up.
“Buonanotte.”
“I think you mean buenas noches.”
“I’m in Italy.”
“I know.”
“Buenas noches.”
“Alec, you need to go back to bed. I need to go to bed.”
“No,” he said, “I need to hear you talk.” That didn’t grant that wish; instead she was silent for what felt like several full minutes.
“You’ll hear me talk again tomorrow,” said Rosario. “When Greg and I figure out our next step.”
“Right.” Alec sighed, reluctant. “All right. Good night.”
“Good night,” she said, and the line clicked, and he hung up the phone and fell back into bed—not to sleep, as it turned out, but to stare at the ceiling and wonder whether Rosario knew Vanessa was awake after all—that she knew exactly what was going on, enough to possess her father into helping them from six time zones away.
He didn’t sleep because he was worried, but somewhere subconsciously he was sure he also didn’t sleep because he was unnerved. Unnerved by Vanessa; unnerved more by the Knights raiding a coven. That wasn’t like them—for the two and a half centuries he had been playing double agent, both the Knights and the Society had been fairly docile. Though they worked to opposite ends in theory, most of what they did seemed to be along the same lines: peacekeeping between myth and reality, making sure nothing went too horribly wrong between humans and other species. The Knights wanted to keep their secrets, the Society wanted everyone to know the truth, but so far in Alec’s lifetime neither had done anything to upset the status quo. Tonight—well, this morning, for him—made him fear that that might change.
Eventually he shifted his worries back to concern for Rosario, and fell asleep to that around six. So far the Santoros had not burned, but this—contact with the Knights, of all people—seemed to dip the torch perilously close to the kindling at their feet.
1985
San Francisco was as steep as Alec remembered it from last year. Last year, he had come for a week in June to find Rosario with a boyfriend who thought very little of Vanessa’s absent father, and his daughter more interested in the boyfriend—Brad—than in him. Today he prayed it would be different, all the way back to the house. Greg came to meet him at the airport and drive him to the cul-de-sac where what remained of the Brooklyn coven had taken up.
“It’s great to see you,” said Greg in the car. “Rosie’s at work, so why don’t you come to our house? Mandy will be home soon with the kids.”
“All right,” said Alec, a little off-put by Greg’s calling her Rosie. Only he had ever done that. “How are the kids?”
“Great.” Greg drummed his fingers on the steering wheel at a stoplight. He looked over at Alec. “You doing all right, Alec?”
“Fine.”
“You don’t look like you’ve fed in a while, is all.”
“I haven’t much.”
“I mean, you look like you’re over thirty.”
“I am over thirty.” Substantially.
“Right, but you don’t usually look it.”
“Yeah, well.” They were quiet for a moment. “I sold the house in Siena,” Alec said.
“Where are you going next?” Greg asked. Alec paused to consider his response.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, feel free to stay here a while,” said Greg. “On behalf of everyone. It’ll be good to have you around.” They pulled into a neat paved driveway behind a minivan. Children were climbing out of it one by one—at least a half-dozen, he thought, and was a little amazed they all fit back there. Greg waited to open his door until they had all been herded through a little gate next to the neat, boxy house and into what was surely the back garden. Then he got out, and Alec followed.
“Where should I go?” said Alec once they were in the front door. Mandy emerged from behind a partition, drying her hands on a dishtowel, to give him a wide-smiling hug.
“You should go into the yard,” she said firmly. “Greg will take your suitcases over to Rosario’s, won’t you, Greg?” He nodded and went right back the way they had come, and Alec followed Mandy the opposite direction through the little house. It was pleasant: the walls were painted in pastels and the curtains looked faded, and the couches were lumpy and old, but that just added to the sturdiness of the place. It had always looked like a very nice thing to do, living settled down. She led him through the yellow-tiled kitchen. The inside door hung open, letting in a pleasant breeze; she opened a screen door and stepped down a porch, and he followed.
In the back garden the California sun hit Mandy properly, and Alec realized with a jolt that she looked terribly careworn. Narcoblixes, though long-lived, weren’t as immortal as lectoblixes could be. Mandy, at fifty-two, was actually starting to look middle-aged. Then he was distracted.
“ALEC!” And a tiny black-pigtailed whirlwind ran at him to wrap her arms around his legs. Without toppling over, he carefully detached Vanessa’s fingers from the backs of his knees and lifted her up into his own arms. She jumped forward from his hold to throw her arms around his neck, and the force of her on his shoulders, unsupported, finally sent him to his knees.
“You were definitely not this big last time I saw you,” he said. It was all he could say, hugging her. She felt very right in his arms, and all but attacking him didn’t seem like disinterest, certainly. That gave him hope.
“Well, no,” said Vanessa. “I was five. Now I’m six.” She pulled away and held up a hand, fingers spread wide, for him to see, then added the index of the other hand. He nodded.
“That you are.”
“I’m in kindergarten,” she said proudly. “Will you make me a snack? Mandy hasn’t yet, and I’m hungry.”
“I was about to,” said Mandy, who stood back watching them. Over Vanessa’s shoulder, Alec could see the rest of the children also looking at them curiously. He recognized Greg and Mandy’s three: Kathryn, who had to be ten by now; Xander, named for him but only sort of, who was—eight? Yes, eight—and Jessica, who was still just a baby when the Knights raided them in Brooklyn, and had grown up now enough to toddle after her siblings. The others looked faintly familiar—the features of parents whose names he couldn’t place, he supposed.
“Is that Vanessa’s dad?” one of them asked aloud. “She has a dad, right?”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Kathryn, clearly the eldest there. “Everyone has to have a dad. They couldn’t exist if they didn’t have a dad.”
“This is Alec,” was all Mandy said by way of explanation, careful, diplomatic.
“Can I have a snack?” Vanessa asked again, tugging on his shirt. He nodded.
“Certainly. Let’s go inside.” He stood, carrying her—she giggled—and went back in through the screen door to the kitchen. “What do you like?”
“Peanut butter.” He set her on the counter. She swung her feet against the drawers. Mandy trailed after them.
“They’re not allowed up there, you know,” she said as Alec opened the breadbox and rummaged through it for something that would work.
“Just this once,” he replied.
“Yeah!” Vanessa agreed cheerfully. Mandy sighed.
“All right, I guess,” she said, and leaned on the counter beside Vanessa, pointing out where things were as Alec went about making his daughter a sandwich.
“Do you want jam?” he asked, glancing at her over his shoulder. Vanessa nodded enthusiastically. Then her eyes widened.
“Mami!” She jumped down from the counter too fast for him to catch her, and ran to Rosario where she had appeared with Greg in the doorway. She came up to her mother’s waist. Rosario hugged her, but smiled over her head at Alec when he turned to see her.
“Hola, mija.” She leaned down to kiss the top of Vanessa’s head. “Alec.”
“Rosario.”
“When did you get in?”
“Not long ago,” he said. “Fifteen minutes. Do you want your sandwich, Vanessa?” He had cut it diagonally into quarters and put it on a blue plastic plate. Vanessa pulled out of her mother’s grasp and ran back to him to take it. She climbed up to sit at the kitchen table.
“Did Alec make you a sandwich?” said Rosario. Vanessa nodded, mouth already full. “What do we say?”
“Fank you, Alehh,” said Vanessa around the peanut butter. Rosario rolled her eyes and turned back to Alec.
“Ven aquí, you.” She held out her arms, and, relieved at the invitation, Alec went over to hug her. She smelled like the ocean, and like vanilla, and as with Vanessa earlier, he didn’t much want to let go. She did much too soon, so he had to.
“Nessie, why don’t you go back outside?” said Mandy, and herded her away. Greg, Rosario, and Alec all sat down at the vacated kitchen table, where the two who lived here immediately launched into a cheerful explanation of what lives were like now. Rosario was working as a paralegal in Silicon Valley, while Vanessa went to a Montessori school run by blixes for the children of blixes. Alec liked that: it canceled out the hazards that sending her to public school would have posed.
Other things had changed, he thought as he listened to Rosario talk: her English was accented American now, and her vocabulary was leaning that way as well. Her English was more fluent, too, her speech more fluid. There was a caress in her voice when she said their daughter’s name that he didn’t remember from before, and she didn’t use the nickname anymore that Mandy seemed to have stuck to. She seemed confident; she seemed settled. They all seemed settled. Alec wondered what that was like, being settled.
Mandy made them dinner, and Alec found himself ravenous. After all the salad and chicken were gone he went with Rosario to her house down the block. Vanessa skipped ahead in the soft evening light.
“Greg said he put your things in the guest room?” For whatever reason her voice trailed up on the end, making a statement a question.
“Yeah,” was all Alec said in reply, and they walked in silence for a moment.
“Brad’s long gone, you know,” said Rosario quietly. “He was nice, but he wasn’t—” she cut herself off.
“Ah.”
“Do you want to be in the guest room?” she asked, stopping at the end of the walk. Vanessa was on the porch, jumping up and down impatiently in waiting for her mother to come and unlock the front door. Alec shrugged.
“I mean—if that’s where you’d like me—”
“But do you want to be there?” she asked again, and this time he was honest.
“No.” They stared at each other a moment, eyes bright in the growing darkness. Then Vanessa ran up to them.
“Mami,” she said, “llaves!”
“All right, all right,” Rosario laughed, and followed her down the walk. She caught Alec’s hand as she went, and pulled him with her.
They put Vanessa to bed. Tomorrow was Saturday, so there was nothing to prepare for school.
“Read to me, Alec!” she insisted, so he sat and read her a picture book. Little Blix Goes to School.
“Who writes these?” he asked Rosario, examining it when Little Blix had gone successfully through a school day and Vanessa’s light was off in her room, which was pink in paint only: full of stuffed versions of preserve creatures, trolls and centaurs and fairies, rather than conventional dolls or teddy bears, and, more curiously to him, toy weapons.
“People.” She shrugged. “There’s a thriving community here in private. You’d know if you’d been a part of it.”
“Ouch,” said Alec. “Do you want me in the guest room after all?”
“No,” said Rosario, and the book fell to the floor forgotten as she pulled him up against the wall to kiss him. They barely made it to the bedroom intact.
“I could be a part of it,” said Alec sometime much later.
“Hmm?” said Rosario, who was half-asleep with her head on his bare shoulder.
“I could.”
“You’re not—staying?” she asked, suddenly awake, and quite disbelieving.
“I sold the house in Italy,” Alec told her. “I can always go somewhere else, but I think—I do want to stay this time. If you’ll have me.” Now Rosario sat up in bed, in the dark, clutching the sheet to her chest. She was silhouetted against the faintly-moonlit window, beautifully so.
“You know I’m human,” she said.
“I do.”
“You’re theoretically immortal. I’m not. Vanessa’s not.”
“Neither are Mandy and two of the three kids, and Greg still stays.”
“Mandy’s his fifth wife,” said Rosario. “He’s had fifteen children before this family, and buried eleven of them, and all the wives. Do you want that, too, Alec? I always thought that was why you stayed away.”
“I don’t want that,” said Alec, and wondered how the hell he was going to tell her the truth. Rosario flopped back onto the pillow.
“Then don’t act like you’d take it,” she said coolly.
“I don’t want five wives,” he amended. “I want one.” Rosario rolled over to face him.
“And then, what, live out eternity in grief?”
“I want one.” He leaned forward to kiss her. “I want one, and I want to grow old with her. Just a bit at a time, as I’ve always done, and I’ll age with a semblance of normality, Rosie, right along with you.” He heard her gasp.
“You do look older—you’ve started already,” she realized. He nodded. “No, Alec—when you could live forever—”
“I don’t want to live forever,” he replied. “Have you ever heard of Torina Barker?”
“No. Should I have?”
“Absolutely not.” He shuddered. Of all the people who could burn the Santoros—“She—she’s a lecto, very old, centuries older than me, and she—she’s lost all control. All she cares about is staying young, she’s incredibly vain, she can barely stop herself from killing her victims one by one—I don’t want to be like her, Rosie, I don’t want to live forever. Three hundred-some years will be far beyond enough.”
“Oh,” said Rosario softly, and tentatively snuggled against him again. “How old are you? I don’t think you’ve ever told me.”
“I’ll be two-hundred ninety one this December,” said Alec.
“Ah.” She sighed. “I’m thirty-one, thanks for asking.”
“Well, I know how old you are,” said Alec. “And I’m pretty sure I’ve still got all the maturity of a thirty-year-old, so there.”
“Does the youth correlate to attitude?” Rosario wondered aloud, faintly, sleepily.
“I don’t know. I’ve always felt mine does, but then I am the man who had fourteen youths. It’s not as if that was an accident.” He felt her laugh faintly against his side.
“And one adulthood now,” she added.
“One and only.” He kissed her forehead. “Te amo, Rosario, siempre.”
“Y yo a ti también,” Rosario mumbled, and they were silent, listening to each other’s breathing there in the house in the cul-de-sac in San Francisco. The house, Alec decided, where he would live; where he would die.
He woke in the morning to find himself dressed and downstairs making breakfast. He turned to see Vanessa sitting at the table, eyes sliding back down from the whites, already smiling at him innocently.
“We’re going to need to set some ground rules, you and I,” he told her firmly, but far from being unnerving, after the past few years he was glad she had this power, and the stuffed animals, and the weapons. Whatever was coming, Dawn or Evening Star or both, at least Vanessa would be well-equipped to handle it.
No matter what was to come, the Santoros would not burn. He was sure of that now.