Night's Mistress (Children of The Night 5)

Mara punched him on the shoulder. “As if you didn’t know.”

He laughed softly. “I’ve got to say, this night ended up a lot better than it started.” He placed his hand on her belly. “How many other enemies do you suppose you’ve got out there?”

“I don’t know,” she said, smothering a yawn, and then, as a new thought occurred to her, she sat up, her arms folded over her belly. What if she ran into others she had turned against their will? Or if some mortal man attacked her? In her current state, she was helpless to protect her baby.

“What’s wrong now?” Logan asked, tugging her back down beside him.

“Maybe I’m making a mistake in keeping the baby.”

Logan blew out a sigh. She was as changeable as the wind. “What brought that up . . . ? Oh, never mind. Meeting Rogen. Right?”

“If you hadn’t been here . . .” She didn’t want to think of what might have happened if she had been alone.

“Stop worrying, darlin’,” he said, running his knuckles down her cheek. “I’ll always be here.”

Chapter Eighteen

Logan and Mara returned to the house in Tyler the following night. After seeing Mara safely inside, Logan kissed her on the cheek, then left to go hunting.

Mara curled up on the sofa. She was glad to be home again, away from the crowds and the lights. On her last visit to the doctor, Ramsden had advised her that he intended to induce her on the eighteenth of October. When she had asked why he thought it necessary to induce the baby, Ramsden had reminded her that he was a vampire and as such, he would have to deliver the baby at night, in his office.

“Don’t worry,” he had said, “I have a complete hospital room set up downstairs. And if there should be complications . . .” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “I think it would be better for all concerned that no one else be aware of it. It wouldn’t be wise to have blood samples fall into the wrong hands, or for people to ask questions we’d rather not answer.”

She wondered why he hadn’t mentioned inducing her before, and why the idea of having the baby in his office filled her with such trepidation.

Four more weeks until she held her baby in her arms. She could hardly wait. She just hoped the next four went by faster than the last.

The sound of laughter drew her to the window. Across the street, a handful of teenage boys were playing basketball in the driveway. A couple of fathers sat on the front porch, watching. Her neighbors were friendly, nodding and waving whenever they saw her.

Soon after she and Logan had moved in, their next-door neighbor, Louise, had invited Mara over for coffee and donuts. Mara had been hesitant to go at first. Making small talk with human females was something she had rarely done. She was even more diffident when Louise invited her inside. In the big family kitchen, Louise introduced her to three other women who lived in the neighborhood. The women had welcomed Mara like an old friend as they introduced themselves. Sally Blankman had nine-year-old twin boys and lived across the street. Her husband, Terry, was a dentist. Judy Michaels lived next door to Sally. Judy had a three-month-old daughter. Her husband was an airline pilot. Monica Sorenson lived next to Mara. Monica had three teenage daughters. Her husband was a Marine.

As soon as Mara had settled at the table with a cup of hot coffee and a chocolate donut, the ladies asked about the baby. Was this her first? How far along was she? Did she know if it was a boy or a girl? Once she had answered all their questions about her pregnancy, they had shared their stories of childbirth with her, stories of eighteen-hour labors and emergency C-sections that had given Mara nightmares and made her wonder why any woman, having gone through childbirth once, would willingly do it again.

Now pressing a hand to her aching back, Mara went into the kitchen for a glass of milk, which led to a couple of cookies and another glass of milk. She thought about trying to write more on the story of her life, but she just didn’t have the energy. Maybe it had been a silly idea. Who would believe it, anyway?

With a sigh, she put the glass in the sink, then waddled into the living room to watch TV. She had gained so much weight, she would probably never be thin again. Logan told her repeatedly that she wasn’t fat, she was pregnant. Easy for him to say. She had weighed a hundred and ten pounds for as long as she could remember. Well, those days were long gone. The last time the doctor had weighed her, she had gained almost forty pounds. When she was standing up, she couldn’t even see her feet anymore, which was just as well, because they were all fat and swollen, too.

Of course, she couldn’t blame it all on the baby. Ever since she had discovered that mortal food didn’t make her sick, she had devoured practically everything in sight, but after over two thousand years on a warm liquid diet, who could blame her?

Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she went into the bedroom and booted up the computer, then called up her life story. She read it from the beginning, adding a few paragraphs here, rearranging a few sentences there, reliving each chapter as she read. It needed a lot of work, she thought, but then, she wasn’t a writer, and if she decided to keep the baby, there would be no reason to hurry. She would have the next eighteen years or so to finish it.

If she decided to keep the baby. Logan had said he would always be there. But would he? And if he left, how would she manage without him?

She tapped her fingers on the desktop as she gathered her thoughts, and then she began to write . . .

I moved to Georgia just before the start of the Civil War. It was an era I dearly loved, a time of quiet elegance and Southern charm, of chaperones and nannies. With its rigid rules about propriety and its quaint customs, it was like a make-believe world, so different from anything I had ever known before.

I bought a plantation, complete with a few servants who were warned of dire consequences if they intruded on my rest during the day. I knew they gossiped about my peculiar ways, about the fact that I didn’t eat in their presence, but it was of no consequence. I treated them well and they had no reason to rise against me.

It was an elegant time. I loved playing the part of a Southern belle, adored the clothes of the period, the long dresses and longer courtships, the dainty hats and gloves, the enormous petticoats, the balls and cotillions, the country barbeques. And, most of all, the handsome young men clad in Confederate gray. What dashing creatures they were. Innately polite, they treated their women like porcelain dolls, to be displayed and treasured but never taken too seriously.