Part II

 

I woke up in my bed a few hours later. Sunlight filtered in through my cheap curtains. That was later than I usually slept. What was the bloody time, anyway?

I squinted at the clock next to my bed. A little after nine in the morning. Shite, that meant I had slept for ten hours. I must have been getting lazy in my old age.

Oh well. It was a Sunday. I was allowed to sleep as long as I liked on Sundays. My foreman got a mite bit tetchy if I woke up that late on any other day of the week, but Sundays I could do whatever the hell I liked.

The first step in any successful day is always a pair of pants. Other details could be worked out later, but at that moment I needed breakfast more than a full set of clothes.

I pulled down the cereal and fetched a bowl from the cupboard.

Milk. I needed milk. Fortunately there was still half a bottle left in my icebox. No, make that refrigerator.

I’ll get it straight one of these days.

Blessed General Mills. I used to hate having to find something for breakfast. All I had to do now was add milk. Voilà: one complete meal.

Breakfast dealt with, I gave the newspaper a cursory glance. It didn’t have anything interesting in it that day, though. The politicians were still talking at each other in Berlin, as they’d been doing for the past two weeks. Only politicians could talk for two weeks and not get anything accomplished. I tried not to think about it too much. It wasn’t any of my business. I can’t even remember why the damned war started in the first place.

I had more pressing matters.

For starters, my cupboards were running really low on food. Plenty of Cheerios, but that was about it. As much as I liked cold cereal, I could probably only go a day or two without anything else.

I went back to my bedroom and flipped on the radio whilst hunting for a clean shirt to wear. I should probably do a load of laundry soon, too. Maybe I could get Rosalie to do it for me. I was pretty sure she did the wash on Sunday. I hoped she did. It was either that or spend money on the laundromat. Besides, Rosalie had one of those automatic washing machines, so it wasn’t as if it would be any extra trouble.

First things first, though. I happened to know a convenience store where the owner sort of hung around on Sundays. It was just a couple blocks away, too.

The walk was nice. It was the middle of summer, so the morning was as warm as you could ask for, and the sun shone nice and bright. And to think—I’d missed a good four hours of it. It was a damn shame.

Anyway, I reached the store after a few minutes. The place was all dark, but the door was open so I let myself in and picked up a shopping basket.

“Hey, Hal!” I called. “Hal, get your arse out here, don’t you know you’ve got a customer?”

“Yeah, I hear you! Give me a minute, will you?”

Satisfied that he would come out and make me pay for things, I wandered around the store throwing groceries into my basket. I only really needed a few things to tide me over for the next few days. At least until I could get to the big supermarket in Newark.

I dropped my groceries on the counter. Hal gave me a look.

“So what brings you to the store on a Sunday morning, anyway?” he asked, ringing up the merchandise.

“The usual. It’s not my fault it was a weekend this time.”

“Nothing but cold cereal in your pantry, huh?”

“Aye, that’s about the whole of it. I must have eaten everything else without noticing.”

“That sounds like your fault to me.”

I grumbled at him and handed him a few dollars.

“You ought to turn your lights on when you have a customer,” I told him. “Person could get hurt or spill something like this.”

Hal rolled his eyes at me. “Come on now, you know I ain’t supposed to be open today anyway. You want me to get fined, do you?”

I took my groceries and gave him a wave.

“You know I’m kidding, Hal,” I said before walking out the door. He sighed and returned to his office in the back.

Well, the food I just bought should last me the week. I was going to have to remember to get up to Newark next Saturday, so long as I got off work early enough. If worse came to worst, I still had my Cheerios.

I walked back home and spent about ten minutes putting everything away. That still left me with most of the day before sunset. I decided I should head over to Seth’s place as soon as possible. I took a moment to decide whether showing up with a laundry bag slung over my shoulder was maybe a bit asinine before deciding just to call the man first. Rosalie had done my laundry before, but it was always better to ask.

“Hey, Seth,” I said when he picked up his phone.

“Hey, buddy. How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks. Listen, is Rosalie doing her wash today?”

“Yes, she is. Why do you ask?”

I hesitated for a moment. “Well…”

Seth has known me entirely too long. He chuckled into the phone and sighed. “I’ll ask her to wait until you get here.”

I grinned. “I’ll see you in a couple minutes.”

Seth lived a few miles down the road. I could have walked, but chose to drive instead. I had finally bought myself an automobile a few months ago and I have to admit I used it a bit more than I really needed to.

In my defence, it was a good car.

Besides, I was bringing a sack of dirty laundry with me. I liked to limit myself to looking like a vagrant only once every twenty-four hours.

I got to his house soon enough.

Rosalie opened the door at my first knock, taking my sack with a roll of her eyes.

“One of these days, you will have to learn to wash your own laundry,” she admonished me in that fancy French accent of hers.

“Hey, not my fault you went and bought one of them fancy automatic washers,” I retorted. “Can’t hardly blame a man for trying to save a few dollars.”

“You’re lucky to be such good friends with my husband,” she said, and walked away with my laundry.

“I tell him that almost every day,” Seth said, emerging from wherever he had been. “So, good night last night?”

“Just got one. Vampire. Up at that shopping centre a few blocks away. I’m going to see if Sari knows anything about a nest in the area—it came out of those woods.”

Seth frowned.

“The woods? I have to say, it’s not like one of them to hide in the woods. Weredemons? Yes. Vampires? That sounds somewhat unusual.”

“Just telling you what I saw. Anyway, it was only the one.”

I sighed and settled into a chair.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, “It would make my life easier if people knew what sort of things were after them on a night like the last. Remember when we first started out, forty years ago or so? Respectable people went home at night. That Stoker novel had just come out, and people were all too scared to leave the house after dark, and nobody was a bit surprised if they happened to see something they maybe shouldn’t have.”

“You don’t have to convince me, you know,” Seth said. “I told you years ago we could have them eradicated in no time, if people stopped being foolish enough to let themselves be turned.”

“That’s people for you. Each as damned stupid as the next.”

Seth shot me a warning glance.

“I would ask you to watch your language, please. Lily is at an incredibly impressionable age.”

“Sorry, Seth. Where is the little angel, anyway?”

“Off playing with her dolls, I suspect. She has recently discovered the Tea Party,” he told me with a smile. “Lilianne! We have a guest. Come say ‘hello’!”

From somewhere in the house came the frantic pattering of small feet. A few seconds later a little aes sídhe in pink ruffles came running down the hall, clutching one of her dolls. She came straight for me and crawled into my lap.

“Hi there, sunshine!” I exclaimed. “Have you been a good lass?”

“Yup!”

“She has been a lovely young lady,” Seth said, disappearing into the kitchen.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Want to see the picture I drew?”

“Of course!”

I set the five-year-old back down on the floor and she dashed off, returning with a piece of paper covered in crayon. I couldn’t tell what it was meant to be, although there seemed to be a great deal of pink and yellow. Seth stuck his head out from the kitchen.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked, “Glass of milk, perhaps?”

“Please! That sounds perfect.”

I returned my attention to the drawing while Lily watched me hopefully, awaiting my verdict. I finally decided that the largest scribble was intended to be a bunny rabbit, and the surrounding splotches were flowers of some sort.

“It’s beautiful, Lily,” I said, handing it back to her. She beamed. “Go give it to your Da. Maybe he can hang it up for you.”

Seth accepted the masterpiece and set it on the kitchen counter before returning to the living room. He set two glasses of milk on the table.

“Perfect,” I said again, reaching for one of them. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

Seth grinned in appreciation of my joke.

“Tell me about last night,” he requested. “Did the vampire give you any trouble?”

“None at all,” I said smugly. “I did my dirty homeless man act. Hey, you think they’re afraid of catching ill?”

“Not likely,” he said, laughing, “Although fleas could be a unique dilemma.”

We both chuckled a bit at the thought of vampiric fleas.

“Although, come to think of it, I don’t suppose they would change at all!”

“No, I daresay they wouldn’t!”

“Oh, I do miss hunting,” Seth said with a wistful sigh. “I still go out every so often, mind you, but it really isn’t the same. Between Lily and work I hardly have the time.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“You are very lucky to have them,” I said quietly.

Seth offered me a small, apologetic smile.

“You will find somebody one day,” he reassured me. “It just takes ti–.”

“I don’t want anybody,” I interrupted him. “Except her, and she’s gone now, and that’s that. You’ve known this since the beginning.” I sighed. “Listen. I’m glad to have you, and Rosalie, and little Lily in my life, but that’s all.”

“I apologize. I cannot even imagine what it must be like.”

“No, you really can’t.”

Another one of those damned uncomfortable pauses.

Honestly, you’d think that two men who had known each other for over forty years would be able to avoid them. I drank my glass of milk in silence. I was at a complete loss for something to say next. Seth, clearly, had the same problem.

Rosalie came to our rescue in her usual way, with a cheerful smile and a plate of biscuits.

“Here, have a cookie,” she said, setting the plate next to our glasses. “I just baked them this morning.”

Seth reached for one. I eyed the plate, trying to decide whether I wanted any.

“Don’t be shy,” she admonished.

I grinned in concession and took a biscuit for myself. Never call me a poor houseguest. They were quite good, besides. Seth had certainly found himself a wonderful wife.

“Seth, darling,” she said, “Did you tell him about the picnic next weekend?”

“Oh, yes! I had nearly forgotten. There is a picnic next Saturday,” he told me, “At the park. Everybody is invited, of course. You are free, aren’t you?”

Damn it all, there went my groceries.

“Always free for a picnic, you know that.”

“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “It starts at twelve o’clock, as usual. If you get the chance, do try to bring something for it. Rosalie is making her special crêpes again.”

“You mean the kind with the fruit and the chocolate drizzled all over? Now I really will have to come to this thing. I’m not certain you want me cooking, though.”

At the moment, the best I could probably manage would be to bring one of my boxes of Cheerios.

Especially if I wasn’t going to make it to the market in Newark.

Seth and I chatted for a few more minutes. Lily came back into the room at some point and resumed her artistic pursuits, pausing every so often to present either me or her da with the latest composition.

Before I left, Rosalie extracted a promise from me that I would actually return for my laundry the next day. Alright, so maybe I had once waited so long to fetch my clothes that they had been completely soaked by rain before I got to them. I still had my suspicions that she’d done it on purpose. But a man had obligations, didn’t he? Even if that man could never quite seem to say what those obligations were when it mattered.

At the moment, for example, I had an obligation to tell Sari about that sucker from the woods. After that, I could look forward to a week’s worth of obligation to finish that new office building with the rest of my crew.

It was such a hard life.

 

 

 

Young Gabriel woke one particular morning with a smile on his face. It was a beautiful morning. The sun had just peeked over the horizon and was casting all manner of pretty light over everything.  The air was warm as well, and the birds sang cheerfully in the trees and in the sky.

None of those things were the reason, though, that the lad found such happiness in the new day. In fact, it would have mattered not at all if the day had been dark, or cold, or soaked with rain.

Today was Gabriel’s wedding day.

In just a few hours he would be meeting his bonnie Aoife at the chapel. In just a few hours he would be a husband, with a wife. In just a few hours he would be the happiest man in the world.

He was absolutely terrified.

Would he be a good husband? A good father? He had, of course, helped to care for his younger brothers and sisters, so he thought he might do alright as far as that went. Still, the prospect was dizzying. In the time it took the lad to get himself from his bed to his breakfast, he had already gone from happy to petrified to faint-headed and back again.

His fears cast all over, from worries about his future to more practical concerns about doing something foolish at the chapel. Surely, though, his darling Aoife loved him well enough not to change her mind even if he did some such fool thing as stumble at the altar or blunder through his vows.

His father, bless him, knew exactly what was going through his poor son’s head and so he took the lad aside for a while, to give him some words of encouragement and advice.

“Son,” he said to him, “You’ll be a man after today. You’re ready for it, sure enough, and I don’t want you to worry overmuch. I raised you myself, after all. If I didn’t think it were true, I’d tell you as much and you know it.”

“Yes, Da,” Gabriel said.

“And don’t you worry about your bonnie Aoife. She’s a fine lass, and I couldn’t be happier for you. Now… Is there, er,” he paused for a moment, embarrassed. “Is there anything you’d be wanting to ask me about tonight?”

Young Gabriel blushed a deep red, knowing what his da was asking. Truth be told, he was almost more nervous about that night as he was about that afternoon. There wasn’t anything could help that, though, except to get through it.

“W-well, I…” he stuttered, as embarrassed as his Da—if not more so. Fearghas smiled understandingly at his eldest son.

“Now I know you know the basics of it,” he said. “There are livestock enough in the fields. Just you be sure to take care with your wife, do you hear? You treat her right, and you’ll have nothing but happiness in your marriage.”

“Yes, Da, I will,” Gabriel said. “I promise.”

His da chuckled. “I’m not the one you need to be promising,” he reminded the lad. “Now come, we must be getting you ready for your bonnie lass. You can be sure she’s busy as a bee getting ready for you.”

Gabriel followed his Da back into his small bedroom to get himself properly dressed. Today he would be wearing his very best suit, which he never took out except for the very best of occasions. As accustomed as he was to his work clothes, the tight suit felt all manner of constricting. The high collar felt as though it was choking him, and he felt like he could hardly move for all the starch in his trousers. He must have spent over twenty minutes just pulling at his suit like a nervous schoolboy. Finally he admitted to himself that he would not be able to make himself any more comfortable in that suit and stepped away from the mirror. He ran his fingers through his hair and turned to find his Da again.

Both his mother and his da were in the main room, helping Gabriel’s brothers and sisters get ready for the wedding. The very youngest, not used to getting dressed so fine, were complaining awfully about the clothes. Gabriel had to smile, though—his littlest sister Delwyn, only six, was the bonniest little thing he had ever seen. Her long brown curls had been tied back with a ribbon and her skirts were fluffed out like a little flower. Gabriel walked over to her to pick her up, but was stopped by his mother’s warning cry.

“Gabriel Kavanagh, don’t you wrinkle that suit, now! I spent an hour pressing that for you last night!”

The lad stepped away from his little sister, a guilty look on his face. “Sorry, Mother,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You just keep yourself clean and pressed, and we’ll take care of the rest. And for goodness’ sake, stop running your fingers through your hair, you’re getting it all mussed!”

She came at him with the brush that she’d been using on the little ones. “Come here, then, and let me fix that for you. And that’s the last I want to see you putting your hands through it.”

“Yes, Mother.”

She finished fixing his hair and smiled at him. “Oh my handsome lad,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t believe you’ll be leaving me now. You promise you’ll bring your lass to visit us as often as you can, alright?”

“Of course I will, Mother.”

“And if you ever need help with your little ones, you’ll bring them? It would be no trouble at all.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Ohh,” she wailed, dabbing at her eyes, “The two of you are going to have such bonnie children! You picked such a fine lass, Gabriel!”

The lad smiled and put a comforting arm around his mother. “Don’t worry, Mother. I promise to come visit you and Da and all the little ones as often as I can. You’ll see. You’ll never be rid of me.”

His mother wiped the errant tears away with her handkerchief. “You’re such a good lad,” she said. “Oh, now, look, you’ve wrinkled your sleeve!”

Gabriel sighed and relinquished control of his arm. His mother tried her best to smooth out the slight wrinkling in his sleeve with her hands. Finally he had to shoo her away; the hour of his wedding was fast approaching. He could not bear the thought of arriving late.

He needn’t have worried.

He and all of his family arrived at the small chapel with time to spare. There were other relations there, too: cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents from both sides pressed into that little chapel, some from his side that he had not seen in years. The priest was there, standing at the very front, holding his bible. He smiled reassuringly at Gabriel as he walked in. The man had surely seen many nervous husbands-to-be, Gabriel thought to himself. He found his way up to stand before the priest, as his Da had told him.

Now it was his own turn to wait.

Any minute, his bonnie Aoife would come down that aisle.

What if she never showed? What if she had changed her mind?

Nonsense. Gabriel tried to calm himself down and felt a slight pressure on his back. He turned to see the priest, smiling still, a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The old man nodded slightly at him. It would all turn out just fine, he seemed to be saying to the lad.

Gabriel believed him.

And oh, then there she was.

A beautiful aes sídhe dressed all in white stepped through the doors of the chapel, and Gabriel saw naught else in all the world. The only thing in his vision then was his sweet lass, more beautiful than he had ever seen her before. He watched her in a daze as she walked towards him, white lace in a halo all around her. She came to him, and stood beside him, and the priest read from his bible and said a few words. Gabriel heard none of it. All he could see was Aoife’s sweet smile; all he could hear was the sound of his heart beating clear out of his chest.

The priest had them recite their vows, and Gabriel could do nothing but repeat the words that the priest gave him, word for word. Then the priest bid them exchange rings. Gabriel’s next-eldest brother handed him the silver band—for that had been all he could afford—with its heart and hands and crown, and he slipped that band around Aoife’s finger. She, in return, gave him a ring to match. With a few final words it was done. Aoife was his, and he was hers, forever as man and wife.

It was the happiest moment of Gabriel’s life.