Page 4 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

Silver

The chair was comfortable enough, I fell asleep and didn’t awaken for hours and hours, because the three metals had been fashioned into strands of twisted metal, and the old man was braiding them together when I woke and looked around.

Once he had them braided, he put them through a roller that smashed them together a couple of times, then he hammered at them and stuck the ends into two little balls of what I thought were copper, sitting off to the side.

“We had the most copper,” Mordecai told me, as if that explained why the balls were copper, and I supposed it did.

The jeweler pounded the balls into flat squares, rounded the corners a little, held the whole thing in fire, running it back and forth to get it hot again before he molded it around a pipe-shaped piece of metal, hammering it into submission.

Once it was bracelet-shaped, he grabbed it with tongs again, held it over the fire again, dunked it into ice water, and finally offered it to me while still holding it with tongs.

“First human hands to hold it once it’s finished,” Mordecai said. “It’s yours. The coin pendant came to you, making it yours. Also, the silver torc that makes up the silver part of the braid.”

I accepted it, and there was nothing. No tingle. No life. I put it on my bicep instead of my wrist because it was kind of big. Again, nothing .

Mordecai shrugged. “Time will tell.” He turned to the jeweler. “Your craftsmanship is appreciated, as always. Expect your granddaughter to share the news with close family in seven to nine weeks, but she should conceive within the next ten to fifteen days.”

And then the world tilted and lurched. The heated air from the workshop turned cooler, the slightly acrid scent swapped for clean air, and I staggered a half-step despite Mordecai’s steadying hand on my bicep.

It took a second for me to realize we were back in the bedroom I’d been given at Homewood. “Come,” Mordecai said. “Two of the slow cookers have lasagna, and a third has cauliflower soup.”

I grabbed my phone off the charger and told him, “I want the meat version.” I’d learned in the past that sometimes Kirsten makes a slow cooker meal for herself without meat, and then freezes all but two servings so she can pull them out of the freezer later to eat.

“As does nearly everyone else in the house,” he said as we walked down the hall. “Well, everyone who eats food, anyway.”

Right, because the vampires only drank blood.

I looked at my phone to check the time. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. I’d slept a really long time while in Italy, and that wasn’t like me, to sleep with activity going on around me.

“I dampened the sound,” Mordecai said. “Your sleep was natural. I didn’t put you to sleep or keep you there, but I made sure nothing woke you.”

There was no sense in telling him how creepy it was for him to respond to what I was thinking. If he was in my head, he was aware.

Kirsten was sitting at the kitchen table with an ancient Chinese dude, and his eyes went straight to my arm when I walked into the room.

“So, you killed it, then,” he said.

“I prefer neutralized,” Mordecai told him, “but I don’t sense life in it, either. The possibility of life, but nothing active at this time.”

The wrinkled Chinese man grunted. “Same.”

Kirsten turned to him in surprise. “You can speak English!”

He looked at me and back to her. “It would be impolite to speak Chinese around your friend, since she wouldn’t understand.”

Kirsten shook her head at him and looked at me. “What do you feel from it?”

I shook my head. “I felt something before. I don’t know what it was, but I don’t feel it now.

The thing is, I didn’t always feel it before.

Mostly, just when I first put it on, kind of like it was tasting me.

Not feeling anything probably doesn’t mean much.

It’s not like I’m an ancient god or something. ”

Kirsten looked to Mordecai with her brows raised, and he shrugged. “Silver is smart. Tā figured it out without help.”

“Ta?” I asked.

“Chinese pronouns are genderless,” Kirsten explained, “so it means he or she without denoting which.”

“Wow, I wish English did that.” I looked to Mordecai. “Just pick a pronoun and use it. I’m good with whatever you use. I really don’t like for people to make a big deal over it.”

“Shīfù had me turn the meat lasagna pot up to medium about ten minutes ago,” Kirsten told Mordecai. “Ladle some out, turn it back to low, and join us.”

Mordecai looked to me. “It was rude of us not to introduce you, but I was at a loss for…” He rolled his eyes. “We’ll go with calling him Shīfù. He trained Kirsten in martial arts, and it’s the only name she knew him by for years.”

“Shīfù, like in Kung Fu Panda ?” I asked.

The old man said, “And you are Silver. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Shīfù means teacher, and I suppose it’s as good of a name for me as any. I would be honored for you to call me such.”

“Thank you for speaking English to me, Shīfù.”

Mordecai handed me a bowl filled with meat lasagna. He sat beside the Chinese man, so I sat beside Kirsten.

“May I examine the calluses on your hands, young musician?” Shīfù asked.

It isn’t the first time someone’s been curious, so I held my hands out for him to see the tops of my left fingertips.

“May I touch?”

I nodded, and he reached out with delicate fingers to touch the tips of my fingers, then held my left hand between his.

“So much strength,” he noted. “And talent. You are a worthy holder of what remains of…”

He went silent, and Mordecai said, “Yes. Best not to speak the name aloud and risk calling it back into being. I agree.”

Kirsten sighed. “My ankle is itching.”

It took me a moment to remember it itches when the demon wants to talk to her.

She got up, and I thought she might be leaving to talk to him, but she grabbed something from a drawer in the freezer, fastened it around her ankle, and returned to the table.

“It’s an ice pack made for ankle injuries,” she explained. “Tricks my brain into not telling me it’s itching.”

“I shall speak with him after we finish our meal,” Shīfù said.

He looked to Mordecai, glanced at Kirsten, and focused on his food again.

“The vampire currently known as Gawain sent me gifts. I returned the favor. By the rules of old, we are now at truce.” He looked at Kirsten. “I understand this is Lauren’s doing?”

Kirsten shook her head. “She didn’t know he’d begun the process of a cease-fire with you until after he’d started. He did it on his own.”

“You are a mighty warrior. I approved of your method of torture, but I was saddened when you didn’t kill him while you held his heart in your hands.”

“I’d be dead if I’d killed him, Shīfù.”

He nodded. “Yes, and this would sadden me far more.” He walked his bowl and chopsticks to the sink, washed them, and settled them beside the sink to dry. “Come, Erlkonigin. Give your old teacher a hug.”

Kirsten stood and hugged him. “My name is fine, Shīfù, unless you want me to start using your names of old.”

“I addressed you by your title, not your name, daughter of mine. Go with peace, and give my regards to your daughter and her lovers.”

“I will. Thank you for agreeing to that peace, so my daughter doesn’t get caught in the middle of an old battle.”

I blinked and he was gone, and Kirsten sat and continued eating her meal as if nothing had happened.

“Your Silver came to some conclusions about himself in the past two days. It’s possible she needs to talk about them,” Mordecai said, and then he was gone, along with the bowl he’d been eating from, and the fork.

Kirsten stood, walked around the table, pulled her plate and glass to her, and sat facing me.

“What did Xaephan offer you?”

“He started by offering to make me normal. Either male or female. My choice. I’d have a big dick or a normal-sized vaj, and I’d be able to either bear children or father them. He could make my chest look however I wanted, too.”

She smiled. “And once you had the offer, you realized you don’t want to change?”

I nodded. “If he’d given me the offer any time before about sixteen or seventeen, maybe even nineteen, I’d have jumped on it.

” I shrugged. “Which I’d have chosen would’ve depended on the exact age, since I went back and forth every couple of months back then, rather than daily or weekly. Fuck , sometimes hourly, these days.”

“And he had a second offer?” she asked.

“Yeah. No change to my outside parts, but he could make it so I could have kids. Again, my choice of whether I’d be able to get pregnant or impregnate someone, and I was damned tempted by that one.” I blew out a breath because that didn’t say enough. “ Really tempted.”

“But?”

I shrugged again. “I was absolutely certain I didn’t want to get pregnant, the hormone shifts would play havoc with my body, and I like my body the way it is.

” I glanced away a second and looked back to her, breathing through my emotions.

“But the idea of fathering a child? A baby? Watching it grow into an adult? That one’s harder to let go of. ”

She stayed silent. No prodding. She let me figure out my own pace.

“I’ve never seriously let myself consider it. It wasn’t possible, so why go there, right?” I rubbed the side of my thumb. “But once I knew it could happen, once it turned into a choice, a real thing I could get excited about, could imagine… now it feels like a loss.”

I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat.

“I did the right thing. I know that. But I keep wondering… what if I hadn’t? What if I’d waited a day? What if there was a way to get rid of the necklace after ?”

Kirsten didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.