“I’m not waiting,” she answered before hurrying to the stairway that led back down onto the street. I followed her, trying to figure out why I felt so dejected. Was it because deep down I worried she wouldn’t need me anymore once she got her family back?
Maybe.
Down on the street, I stayed far behind as she raced to her parents. Her mother was blonde just like her, but her father was a tall, brown-haired man. I stood back and watched her, my heart sinking further until I thought it might just plunk down into my boots.
Her mother started to cry when she saw her, and she pulled her daughter into her arms. I looked at her dad and saw that there were tears in his eyes, too. He put his arms around his wife and daughter both. A bittersweet family reunion.
Alora hadn’t once looked back to see if I was still here. I turned around, thinking I’d leave her with them. There was no danger to her anymore now that Ridley was dead, and Theodore, too. Just as I was about to start walking away though, I heard her call my name.
“Finn, come and meet my parents.”
Taking in a deep breath, I turned back around. Perhaps she did still need me after all.
***
As it turned out, Alora’s parents had fled their home and were staying with friends because they got frightened when the vampire attacks started happening.
Their names were Tom and Beena, and I started to become uncomfortable at how profusely they thanked me for keeping their daughter safe. Beena was a full elf and Tom was human. When we got back to their house and they saw how trashed the place was, they assumed it had been broken into, and Tom started making calls to their insurance company.
Alora came and sat down on my lap in the living room while her mother tried to salvage what she could from the kitchen to make us all a cup of tea.
“So, I guess this means I’m losing you,” I said in a low voice as I caressed her thigh. I’d never get tired of touching her.
She startled when I said it and turned to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve got your folks back. Ridley’s dead. You’re safe. You don’t need me anymore.”
“Finn, I—”
“It’s okay. I see how you look at them. You’ve missed them like crazy. I can understand that you’ll want to stay here. If I could have gotten my mother and sister back, I’d want to spend every second I had with them, too.”
“Finn, just stop. Yes, I’ll be living with my parents, but that doesn’t mean you’re losing me. God, I mean, after all we’ve been through, after all we’ve spoken about, how could you think that? I’ve seen our future, and in that future, we’re together.”
I shrugged and tightened my jaw. I’d never been good with emotional crap.
She pulled my face to hers so that her mouth was above my ear when she whispered, “I’ve fallen in love with you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life, you silly man.”
Something caught in my throat, causing me to swallow hard. “What?”
“I said, I love you,” she answered, eyes looking back and forth between mine with uncertainty as though waiting for something. Then, like a sledgehammer, it hit me.
She was waiting for me to say it back.
It took me a couple of seconds to find my voice. “Shit, isn’t it obvious that I love you, too? I can hardly keep my eyes off you when you walk into a room.”
She giggled and rested her head in the crook of my neck. “Well, that wasn’t the most romantic way for you to declare your love for me, Finn, but at least you said it. I was beginning to think it was all one-sided.”
I cupped her cheek in my hand, pulling her mouth to mine and kissing her long and deep. A warm, foreign sensation spread through my chest. I’d been on my own for so long that I forgot how it felt to have someone. To belong to them unequivocally.
We were interrupted by the sound of her mother stepping into the room and clearing her throat. Beena’s eyes danced as she took in the two of us together, and I was relieved that she approved of my relationship with her daughter. Now I only had her father to contend with.
Beena set the cups and teapot down on the coffee table that had managed to survive getting damaged when the house was trashed. Tom returned, shoving his mobile phone into his pocket and rubbing at the stress lines on his forehead.
“Well, that’s all taken care of. They’re sending someone out to inspect the damage tomorrow.”
“That’s good, love,” Beena said, pouring the tea.
Tom’s eyes narrowed when he noticed Alora sitting on my lap. Embarrassed, she quickly scooted off and sat on the other side of the sofa. I wanted to smile, but I held it in. We made polite chit chat for a couple of minutes, and I almost spilled my tea everywhere when Beena let out a loud gasp. Turning my head, I found that Alora was having another vision, her body going into convulsions.
I pulled her into my arms and waited for the shakes to ride out.
“It frightens me every time this happens to her,” Beena said with an anxious expression. Tom rubbed his wife’s shoulders to calm her down.
“You don’t get visions like Alora does?” I asked Beena a couple of minutes into the episode. Alora’s convulsions were still going strong.
She shook her head. “No. I’m an empath. I read people’s emotions.”
“Oh.”
“I can see the depth of your affection for her. I’m glad she’s found someone that feels the way you do about her.”
Just before I got the chance to ask what she saw in Alora’s feelings for me, the woman in my arms stopped shaking and blinked open her eyes.
“Hey, Goldy,” I said softly. “You okay?”
She nodded and sat up, asking her mother for a glass of water. I rubbed her back and whispered soothing reassurances in her ear.
“I think we need to go and see Tegan,” she told me after she downed the water her mother got for her.
I furrowed my brow. “Why?”
“Because I saw something about her baby.”
Tegan
“What do you think?” I asked Rita as we both sat in the back of Ethan’s new car. We were parked on the road outside her house. Construction had just been started to repair the damage done by the fire all those weeks ago.
“Well, it’ll certainly beat living in that RV. I might be a small woman, but even I need my space.”
“The house should be as good as new within a couple of months,” Ethan said from the front.
“Oh, before I forget, I want you to look at these spell ingredients,” I said, pulling out the list Emilia gave me before she died. “Emilia said that if I take this every morning and night my baby will survive the birth. Was she telling the truth?”
Rita took the list from me and looked it over. “Hmm, there’s nothing suspicious looking on here. It should be alright for you to take it.”
I sighed in relief. “That’s good news.”
“It looks like your dear bunică did one kind thing for you before she died,” Ethan said.
A tiny trickle of grief settled in my belly. Now that she was gone, I regretted some of the things I said to her when she was alive. I knew she was hardly going to be getting any Grandmother of the Year awards, but maybe I could have tried harder to have a friendship with her.