Sloane Briallen

The helicopter picked us up for the airport at four o’clock.  I got to see Mira before I left.  She gave me a hug and apologized for the brain flick earlier.  She had been tired and also had forgotten it was my birthday.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have wanted her to hold back just because it was my birthday, so I was glad she had forgotten.

We made plans for her to come up in January so we could look at houses.  She would spend Christmas and New Year’s in Phoenix.

We landed in the Twin Cities at eight and were back in our apartment by nine. 

As we took the elevator up, I said, “You know, for all your angst and drama—I figured out how to sire all by myself.  Didn’t even need you.”

He shrugged one shoulder, the elevator opening on our floor.  “It’s innate.” 

I scowled at him.  “That’s a load of horseshit, and you know it.”

He chuckled, opening the door into our apartment. 

I fell onto the couch the minute we were inside.  The couch creaked dangerously beneath me.

“Hey, watch the furniture,” Karhi said sharply.  “I will not have the new, full-fledged vampire breaking my couch.”

“Hm, might want to reinforce the beds then,” I replied, reaching for the TV remote to find something dumb to put on.

It was a moment before I realized Karhi hadn’t replied.  I looked up to see that he had his hand over his eyes, face flushed to his ears.  I frowned, impressed with myself.  Five hundred years old, and I could make him blush.

I pursed my lips.  “What year were you born?  Not turned, but actually born.”  Vampires generally judged their age by the year they were sired, not the year they were born.

“1478.  Turned in 1505.”  His voice was tight.

I furrowed my brow for a second, doing the math.  So . . . five hundred and thirty years old.

“Why?” he asked.

“Cradle robber.”

“Sloane.”

I shrugged.  “Still not the oldest person I’ve slept with.”

He stared at me.

I looked up at the ceiling, thinking.  “Actually, if I had a nickel for every time I hooked up with a girl and she wound up being a powerful, older magic user, I’d have two nickels.  Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?”

He blinked.  “What?”

“Arachne.”

“The spider queen?”

Wait . . . oh, I hadn’t told him this yet.  “Yeah.  My ex.”

Karhi’s mouth dropped.  “What?”

I waved it off.  “Long story.”

“You can’t just drop that and then tell me it’s a long story!” he protested.  “Is that how you know Corvine?”

“It is.”

He scowled at me.  “Sloane.  Explain.”

“I met her when I was fourteen.  We went out for a while.  I broke up with her right before I moved in with Mickey and Bell.” 

He stared at me, a look of discomfort on her face.  “Isn’t she thousands of years old?”

I nodded.

“That’s . . . creepy.”

“I would agree except, when she was cursed to become the spider queen, she was cursed as a human.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.  “So?”

“Former humans don’t do well with immortality.  They weren’t built for it.”

The looked of discomfort faded, replaced with confusion.  “What does that mean?”

“It means that over time, their psyches tend to fracture.  Most actually lose their minds completely.  I thought you knew that, what with Ilona.”  Corvine had explained it to me once.

He opened his mouth to speak before closing it, brow knitting together in thought.  “She was always cruel.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t all there before I took her out.”

“Hazel—”

“Had a family to keep her sane.”

He didn’t have a reply for that.

“Bestia are a race of creatures unto their own.  Arachne is an anomaly—she was a human cursed by Athena to be the spider queen.”

“Why?”

I shook my head.  “Story says it’s cuz Athena was angry.  In reality, it’s more complicated than that, but I never really knew.”

“And she wasn’t built for immortality.”

“Correct.”

“What does that mean?”

“It meant that her brain broke.  She has different ‘stages’, I guess you could call it.  Most of the time she’s Arachne, the spider queen.”  An old sadness settled into my shoulders as I remembered when she would talk about her childhood and her curse.  “And sometimes, she’s Ari, a fifteen-year-old girl who was cursed by Athena for basically just acting like how all teenagers act.”

He considered that for a moment before shaking his head.  “Still weird.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.  “Yeah?  You’re five hundred and ten years older than me.”

He stopped, blinking in surprise.

“Trauma ages you, but it also sticks you,” I said.  “Age regression in some places and maturity beyond your years in others.  Being stuck in the ways you felt when you were younger, unable to move on, while also being forced to handle situations that are, realistically, too large to handle.”  I tilted my head at him thoughtfully.  “When you’re dealing with magic, things aren’t really so black and white.”

“I . . .” He didn’t have an answer for that.

“I think we’ve both spent most of our lives just trying to survive.  And when that’s what you’re doing, it doesn’t give you much room to just . . . be. 

“Large age gaps are about power imbalances, right?  And sure, we could say you’re a sugar daddy.  Except you know that money isn’t why I stay.  I’ve shown that I’m more than capable of getting my needs take care of.

“Could argue that there’s an educational difference.  But I’m well-read; I have a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in math.”

He stared at me.  “You do?”

It was my turn to be surprised.  Hadn’t he known that?  He had wiped my record for me. 

I had worked my ass off in high school to get into that dual program with such a spotty school history.  But I had always been good at math.  I had taken classes junior and senior year, and then I took a final class in the fall after my senior year at one of Minnesota’s community colleges to finish the Associate’s.  I had been numb as shit, but being able to focus on something that required no emotions had helped me through.

Though, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t actually received the degree until this past summer because they didn’t give out degrees until it was your turn to walk.  I hadn’t walked, just received it in the mail.

“Right,” I said.  “I got it after you did my info wipe.  You probably saw that I was taking classes, but that was it.”

He nodded.

“Yeah.  It’s not a four-year degree, but I’m not an idiot.”

“I never said—”

“I know.  But what I’m saying is that the power dynamics between us are complicated.  Child-sire stuff is weird.  Power dynamics between me and Ari were weird.”  I shrugged.  “I don’t feel unsafe with you, nor do I feel manipulated or anything else.  I’ve seen grooming.  I’ve seen all the terrible things that people do to each other.”  Had experienced some of them.  “I don’t really have an answer here.”

This was something I had been thinking about off and on for a while.  But also, when you live for hundreds of years . . . it was hard to gauge where people’s head spaces were.  Looking back on my relationship with Ari, I didn’t really think about it being weird.  My relationship with her hadn’t really been a relationship with Arachne.  They weren’t the same people.

And Karhi was old but also . . . arrested development.  Maybe I was too immature for him.  Maybe he was too old for me.  Or, fuck, maybe the other way around.

We’d figure it out.

There was a knock on the door.  Karhi still looked stunned.

I stood up and rounded the couch.  “Okay?” I asked him, stopping in front of him.  He still stood behind the couch, close to the door.

The look of stunned shock was fading.  I could feel the gears in his head turning.  “I . . . want to think about it.”

“I’d be concerned if you didn’t.”  I reached down and took one of his hands.  I squeezed it.  He squeezed back.

Another knock, this one a little sharper and more insistent.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, letting go of Karhi and opening the door.  Karhi disappeared into the kitchen.

Bell and Mickey stood in the doorway.  They both looked exhausted.

“Let’s find a place to go eat,” I said.

The exhaustion changed to elation, and they both looked like they would kiss me.

“Karhi, I’ll be back later.”

“Yeah.”  He still sounded a little stunned.

I closed the door behind me and headed out with the boys.

“He sounded weird,” Mickey said as we got in the elevator.

“Long story,” I said.  “It doesn’t really matter right now.”  I turned to Bell.  “I’m sorry,” I said.

He surprised me by hugging me.  It was like being hugged by a bear.  He was so broad and huge.  “Me too,” he said into my neck.

I hugged him back.

“I’m sorry I said I was continuing the legacy of walk-outs.”  With the new perspective, I felt fucking terrible about saying that.  I hadn’t wanted to leave Mickey and Bell behind when I was twelve.  I’d felt like I had to.

And it was the same for them when we were eighteen.  They hadn’t wanted to, but they thought they had to.  It was for different reasons, but in the end, we had been trying to protect each other and our families.

“I’m sorry I tried to force you to move at a pace you weren’t ready for,” Bell said.  “I talked to Mikko for a while.  He helped me understand things a bit better.”

I had heard that, but I hadn’t been too clear on how much Bell had absorbed.  He could be particularly bull-headed.

“Mom and Mauve tried to do the best they could.  But you can still be hurt.  And trying to force you to be okay again isn’t the move.”

I pulled away from him, putting my arms on his biceps.  Christ, he was warm, and his biceps were so fucking big.

Light brown eyes met mine.  He was biting the inside of his cheek.  A nervous habit.  His only one, really.

“Mickey said that he thought you guys had an unspoken agreement to find me one day.  Did you also think that?”

He nodded.  “Every fucking day.”

My heart swelled in my chest.  “I love you.” 

Bell blinked in surprise.  I wasn’t sure why he was surprised.  It wasn’t like I never said it to him.

Though . . . I guess considering the circumstances of the past two weeks, it made sense.

“I love you, too.”

I took his hand and squeezed it, separating from him.  “It’s complicated.  We have to work to our new normal.”

He squeezed back.  “Work around scar tissue and concrete.”

That was definitely something Mikko had said.  Bell was not that poetic.  Though I didn’t know how they were related.  “Yes,” I said anyway.  “I want us to be okay again.  I want to be with you both.”  I looked at Mickey, too, when I said that.

“Me, too,” Bell nodded.

The elevator dinged, and we separated to go out through the lobby.  It was white marble with a fountain that took up more space than a water feature had the right to take.

“We’ll figure it out,” Mickey said.

“Yeah,” Bell and I said at the same time. 

I had a lot of things to figure out.  Karhi and me.  My brothers and me.  My family coming to Minnesota.

I was looking forward to it.  For the first time in years, I was looking forward to the future.

“Wanna see if we can find a place that does wings?”

“Birthday wings?” Bell grinned.

“Birthday wings,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket. 

“Still can’t believe you have an iPhone,” Bell said, shaking his head.  “You hate technology.”

“I do, and yet I must use it.  Especially because it has internet and maybe we can find birthday wings that way.”

He motioned for me to give him my phone.  I scowled at him, but I handed it over.  I knew he just wanted an excuse to play with it.  I would let him.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” Mickey said.  He leaned over to put an arm around me and squeeze me to his side before letting go.

“Yeah, right, happy birthday,” Bell said absently, the screen illuminating his face as he scrolled.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes.  I flicked my head to move my hair away from my face and froze.

Standing across the street, I saw a pale woman with black lines tattooed all over.  Her gaze was cold on me.  I hiccupped in surprise.

“Sloane?”

I looked up to see Mickey looking back at me.  Bell was still walking, looking at my phone.  He hadn’t even noticed.

I looked back across the street, but all I saw were other people walking downtown, in search of food or drink.

“What are you looking at?”

I shook my head.  “Nothing.  I thought I saw someone I knew.”  No—I had been talking to Karhi about Arachne.  She was just on my mind.

“Aha!  Guys, I—what are you doing?”  Bell looked back at us from twenty yards ahead. 

“Nothing,” I said, grabbing Mickey’s hand and pulling him towards Bell.  “You find something?”

“Yeah.  No birthday wings, but I did find birthday pizza.”

“Birthday pizza?” Mickey and I asked, intrigued.

“However old you are, they make a pizza that many inches in diameter.”

“What if you’re like, 70?” I asked.

“The restriction is that, for larger sizes, you also have to bring a large party.  And give advanced notice.  But the cut off is thirty before you have to do that.”

“Nice.  Then, pizza?”

“Pizza,” Bell and Mickey said in unison, nodding.

“All right,” I said.  “Where to?”

“Nicollet Mall?” Bell said, handing me my phone back.

“Alright.  That’s Minneapolis.”  I grinned.  “I’m a full-fledged vampire.  I can keep up with y’all running, now.”

“We’ll see,” Bell replied.  And with that, he was gone.

Mickey made a noise of complaint.  “Ugh.”

I grabbed his hand.  “Come on, come on.  We can’t let the stupid soccer player win.”

“He’s a soccer player, though.  So, by definition, he’s a runner.”

I started running, dragging him behind me.

“Fine,” he said grudgingly.

“The secret is that he has no idea where he’s going and has a shit sense of direction,” I whispered.

I saw that spark something in Mickey’s eyes.  He grinned.  “Right.”

We ran.  And we got to the pizza place.  And we had to wait twenty minutes for Bell to find us.

Which was fine.  I’d done a fair amount of waiting for them.  But this time, I knew what I was waiting for.  And this time, I wouldn’t be alone.

Not anymore.