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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I DON’T REMEMBER WHY I had to speak to her. Whatever the reason, it fled the moment I tapped and opened the door to her room and caught her wiping her eyes hastily.

Dry cheeks didn’t eliminate the evidence. The rims of her eyes were pink, and the rest of her face white.

“Hey, hey, what’s this?” I asked, closing the door behind me. “This is more than screwy hormones.”

Ghaliya’s eyes filled up yet again. “I’m fine.” Her voice wobbled. She bent her head and dripped tears onto her belly.

I patted the bed. “Scooch over.”

Ghaliya carefully maneuvered herself toward the head of the bed. The bed itself was enclosed inside an alcove that was lined with bookshelves. Dozens of cushions turned the bed into a sofa beneath the bookshelves. I knew that Ghaliya was working her way through all the old leatherbound books on the shelves, for every now and then she would entertain the dinner table with obscure questions about long gone authors and their writing. Or she would quote a strange fact she had gleaned from among the pages.

I settled in the approximate middle of the bed, which gave Ghaliya no room to escape. I took her hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Her voice was low. Almost inaudible. And she didn’t lift her head. I could see she was still weeping.

“No, really, Ghaliya. What’s upset you?”

“Nothing.” Her voice was a little stronger.

“It’s not nothing. Not from where I’m sitting.”

“Yes, it is !” She lifted her head. “Don’t you get it? Nothing is wrong !”

I stared at her. I was lost.

Ghaliya’s fingers gripped mine, squeezing them. “I’m eight months pregnant as of tomorrow, Mom. I was never supposed to be able to carry a baby for this long. I wasn’t supposed to ever get pregnant at all! And now I’m here, it’s eight months…” She took in a trembling breath. “Do you know that if something goes wrong now and they have to do a C-section, that the baby will most likely live?”

I nodded, although I don’t think I had processed it quite that precisely. I was starting to see the shape of her worry.

Ghaliya shook my hand. “What if something goes wrong? What if, after all this time, I lose the baby? Mom, I don’t think I could stand it. It was okay while it was a peanut in there. I think I could have lived with it. But now …?”

“You said it yourself,” I told her. “Even if something does go wrong, they can take the baby out and now it has a good chance of living when it does. The twenty-eight week mark is the borderline, and you’ve passed that. Weeks ago.”

“And what if I deliver it? I don’t know what to do with a baby !” Ghaliya cried. She shook with great wracking sobs.

I pulled her against me and murmured all the wordless sounds of comfort I’d used when she and Oscar had been small children. They’d grown out of it quickly. Too quickly. Oscar was in Newfoundland now, a father in his own right. Did he soothe his kids the same way?

They might have grown out of it but Ghaliya, right now, needed the comfort. Gradually, she calmed.

I brushed her hair back from her sweaty forehead. “I promise you, Ghaliya, that I will not let anything happen to you and the baby.”

Ghaliya lifted her chin. “You swear it?”

I could hear the hope in her voice, which made it easy to nod and say, “I swear it.”

·

By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs and the front foyer of the hotel, I’d stopped crying myself. But I was drained of all energy and had dinner for twenty-six people to prepare.

Possibly, more than twenty-six people. Yesterday, two dryads had arrived from wherever they came from and requested to lunch with Wim. Olivia had looked thrilled. I didn’t have the heart to say no. Later in the afternoon, one of them had presented me with a new aloe vera plant to replace the one on the fireplace mantle in the bar. The original one had shriveled and curled into a ball, the way many of the plants in the hotel were doing.

Because of those two unexpected diners, I thought it would be smart to assume I had to cater for thirty people.

The dining room, like the rooms upstairs, was reaching capacity.

And I had zero capacity of my own to prepare yet another huge meal. I trudged around the stairs and under them, then through the side door into the kitchen.

Ben straightened up from his lean over the steel prep table and put his phone in his pocket. His eyes narrowed. “You’re upset.”

I shook my head. But damn it, just the concern in his voice was making my eyes water all over again.

I used the tip of my finger to wipe the moisture away, as if I had something in my eye. “It’s nothing….” I began and stopped. I heard Ben’s voice from a few nights ago, telling me I should take my own advice.

Ben didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He tilted his head a little to one side. Disbelief.

“Ghaliya’s terrified!” I said. Then it was there. All of it. Pushing to escape me, to be heard. “She’s afraid something will happen to the baby and afraid of what will happen if the baby is born! And I just swore I would fix it all! Me! I don’t even know what hospital to take her to. Or even if the town will let me ! And I can’t think at all because I don’t have time, and I’ve had a headache for five days, and the dreams are getting worse, and if I don’t start prepping lunch now, everyone will bitch at me, and I don’t even know if I can serve what I planned because who the hell knows what food has gone over since breakfast? I’ve got hot and cold running guests whose beds and bathrooms must be cleaned every single morning, and Frida can barely lift herself up on one elbow without passing out! Axel King and his people aren’t leaving and won’t until we figure out who killed Calloway, and I don’t have the time to sort that out, not until after Beltane. They’re going to be here for all the craziness on Beltane Eve. Hirom’s out, but Broch’s doing okay, but what do I do when the beer runs out because Orrin drinks a jug at a time, and he’s here to pass judgement on us all and—”

Ben touched his fingertip to my mouth. It halted me as effectively as if he’d laid his entire hand across it. My lips tingled where he’d touched me.

He reached up and with his thumb drew a line from the center of my forehead to my temple. He did the same on the other side with his other thumb.

I could feel something sigh and relax inside me. The headache that hovered behind my eyes receded. It didn’t disappear, but it was enough for me to realize that I had been holding my face in a scowl. I could feel the muscles loosen and my skin smooth out.

“Just a touch,” Ben said, his voice soft. “I won’t use too much power. Not even for you. Not now.”

I realized with a start that he had used some of his healing power to fix my headache. Well, send it into the next room for a time-out, at least.

I focused on what he had said. “Why not now?” I asked. Ben was a Caladrius, one of a long line of male family members, going back to Rome itself. He was a shifter, and when he shifted and flew during the equinox or the solstice, his healing powers were restored.

The spring equinox had been in late March. The June solstice was two months away. “You’re saving your powers?” I asked Ben.

He looked down at the steel counter beside his hip. Reached out and wiped away an invisible smear.

“You are ,” I breathed. “For Ghaliya…” Some more of the straining chords of tension inside me eased.

“Ghaliya is perfectly healthy,” Ben said, his voice low. “She’s in better health than when you arrived. I can deliver her. You don’t have to go anywhere.”

Her . I gasped. “You know the sex of the baby?”

He made a small sound of annoyance. “Sorry,” he added.

Ghaliya was carrying a girl.

I squeezed my hands together, delighted.

Ben came closer. “Ghaliya will be fine,” he said, his voice firm. “As for you…you need—”

“Help,” I finished and blew out my breath. “I really, really need help.” And my voice wobbled, adding to my pathetic stature.

“That’s why I’m here,” Ben said. He put his hand on the counter. “I figured you’d be back here sooner or later. What help do you most need?”

Everything was relaxing inside me. But at the same time, my cheeks burned. I tried to ignore all that. Treat it as a simple corporate delegation exercise.

“Help in the kitchen,” I said. “Help cleaning the rooms each day. But the kitchen is the big one. And someone has to talk to Hirom and see if he has more beer already barreled in his forest clearing, wherever he brews the stuff.”

“Broch will know where that is,” Ben said, swiping out notes on his phone.

“Broch has to stay tending the bar,” I said quickly. “Everyone who is staying here is spending their days in the bar. Broch could probably use help of his own.” I had been too busy to check in on him and find that out. I was a terrible boss.

“Stop that,” Ben said and touched my brow again. I could feel the tension crowding in there once more and tried to let it relax.

“That’s all for now,” I said. “It’s a lot, but…”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“You’re sure?” I asked. “About Ghaliya, I mean.”

Ben put his phone away. “You haven’t been here long enough,” he said. “If you had been here for a while, you might believe me when I say that Ghaliya is probably better off here than anywhere else.”

“Because you’re that good?” I asked, trying to remove any doubt from my tone.

“Because we all care about her,” Ben said. “Trevalyan has spells he’s been building ingredients and hex bags for, for a couple of months now. That’s why he was pleased about the herbs that Stonebrunch gave you. I have medicines that have been used throughout history to help a woman through delivery. They work, better than you would believe. Olivia has been knitting like crazy, just not where you or Ghaliya could see it because she thought it might be bad luck for you to see the blankets and booties and caps she’s finished. Wim has been building a bower—”

“Bower?” I repeated. It was an ancient word, right out of nursery rhymes.

“A basinet. A crib. A dryad version of one.”

I felt winded. “Is there anyone who hasn’t been running around behind my back, behaving like it was their kid on the way?”

Ben smiled. “A child, in this town…of course she will be everyone’s delight. Ghaliya will never lack babysitters. Broch, by the way, has been buying up Amazon. Anything we can’t make here is either already stashed in the house behind mine, or it is on the way.”

I drew in a shuddering deep breath. “Okay…” I said at last. “Alright. I trust you. And I’ll ask Trevalyan for a Tylenol equivalent, so you don’t have to do anything more this quarter.”

Ben squeezed my shoulder. “You’d better start dinner. I’ll go and haul Olivia away from her knitting needles and we’ll help you finish it.”

·

Everyone did turn out and roll up their sleeves. Every local who wasn’t bedridden, except Broch, who was tending the bar, ended up helping in the kitchen, while I acted as chef and directed them, while dealing with the temperamental recipes.

After dinner, which was a noisy affair at our table, and not a lot less noisy anywhere else in the room, everyone filed back into the kitchen and cleaned up.

Olivia asked if they could do anything to have breakfast prep go more smoothly in the morning. It took me nearly thirty seconds to nod my head and ask diffidently that fruit be peeled and chopped and muffins made.

Lots of laughter sounded as people squeezed juice into their eyes or licked dough bowls clean.

And the work was actually done a lot faster than I could have done it myself, even with all my practice.

We all trooped out and across to the bar after that, to have a well-deserved drink, which would be on my tab.

The bar was crowded and noisy. Even before we moved through the doorway, I guessed by the noise level that it was likely the big round table by the fireplace had been taken by others. That might make the locals who spent a lot of time at that table uncomfortable.

“Ha!” Trevalyan exclaimed as I ducked under the curtain myself.

I moved around everyone to see.

The big round table had an empty glass or mug or tankard in front of every chair, and in the middle was a folded piece of card with “Reserved” on it.

“I could kiss him,” Trevalyan declared.

I glanced toward the bar, at least twenty feet away, and caught Broch rolling his eyes as he poured a pitcher of beer from one of the two hand-made barrels sitting on their stands at the other end of the bar. He nodded at the dryad standing in front of the bar, talking to him. I couldn’t hear the dryad from here.

Everyone headed for the round table and settled themselves into one of the barrel chairs. Good natured shoving and laughter sounded.

Harper was sitting by herself on the window seat as usual. She had a glass of whisky in one hand and a magazine in the other, the cover curled under so she could hold it in one hand. Her head was bent, and she ignored us.

That was fine by me. I was still processing what had happened in the parking lot a few days ago. I wasn’t ready to be charitable toward her once more.

Trevalyan, though, got to his feet to look over the heads of everyone at the table. “Harper. Come and sit with us.”

Harper looked up at him. Her nose wrinkled and I thought she was about to give one of those disdainful sniffs of hers.

“I mean it,” Trevalyan said. “Come on.”

Harper’s gaze roamed around the table. Then it settled on me for one long second.

Silently, she closed the magazine, lowered her foot from the coffee table, rose and moved over to the table.

We all shuffled and nudged chairs around once more, making room for her. Broch brought over two trays of drinks, a round for everyone, and sorting them out and handing them out took more conversation.

Harper sat in the chair that Wim had placed for her. She put her glass of whisky on the table. Then, after a second, she picked it up again.

The conversations started up again. They teased each other about how bad everyone was at cooking, and how food just didn’t behave the way one thought it should. And how was one supposed to peel a pomegranate, anyway? There were more comments about how satisfying raw muffin dough was to eat.

Harper didn’t join them. She remained silent, sipping her whisky. Until, some minutes later, Olivia leaned across Wim and touched Harper’s arm, resting on the chair. Olivia asked Harper something that I didn’t catch as I was on the far side of the table, and Trevalyan wasn’t modulating his tone at all.

Harper stirred and answered Olivia. Ghaliya added something and the people on that side of the table laughed…except for Harper, whose mouth merely twitched.

I didn’t last long, after that. I was exhausted and could feel sleep pulling at me. By the time I had finished my small glass of whisky, I was drooping. If I merely closed my eyes for a few minutes, that would be it. I would sleep right where I was sitting, regardless of the high level of noise in the room.

By the time I hauled myself to my feet, Harper was speaking as easily as everyone else at the table.

And the next morning when I entered the kitchen to start breakfast prep, Harper was standing at the back of the group waiting for instructions. She didn’t meet my eyes, but she didn’t need to.

It turned out that Harper was a natural cook. Not surprisingly, she could handle a knife like nobody’s business.

Two days later, I realized that Ben had created breathing room in my days. I was no longer bouncing from essential task to critical chore in a string that ended only when I fell into bed. When I cleaned the rooms after breakfast, Olivia and Trevalyan helped me. When the last three rooms were claimed by five new guests, Ben joined the morning cleanup crew, too.

And while we were cleaning, Wim and Harper were starting basic prep in the kitchen. By the time I arrived with my cleaning crew to prepare lunch, most of the grunt work was done.

The frantic pace of my days geared down, enough to let me start thinking about something other than the demands of running the hotel. I consulted with Broch, then sent an email to Riley Connors, asking for an hour of her time, and explaining why.

I got an answer within the hour, inviting me to stop by her apartment in Soho, tomorrow.