Faith Hunter: Have Stakes Will Travel

Back in Spruce Pine, I picked up my daughter, Angelina, from the family café where my younger sisters were watching her and arrived home, to our new house, before Big Evan did. My girl was worn out after playing with my wholly human sisters, Regan and Amelia, which meant she went down for a nap while I fixed supper. I put Angie Baby in her bed and covered her with the blankie that Evangelina had crocheted while Angie was still kicking my insides out in the last horrible month of pregnancy.

When we painted the new house—after we lost the mobile home—I had chosen the soft sage-green color for Angie’s room based on the blankie, which my daughter loved. Darker green leprechauns and brown brownies sat on huge calla lily leaves beneath a magical spreading oak tree. Unicorns pranced in the background and rainbows crossed the horizon beyond the tree, all painted by Regan and Amelia. What they hadn’t gotten in magical abilities they had made up for in artistic ability and talent. It was a room of love.

In the kitchen, I turned up the Aga, stirred the stew I had left bubbling on the stove, and put a loaf of bread in the oven. I also started a pot of brown rice, to stretch the stew so that Jane could join us. I couldn’t pay her for the work this afternoon, so the least I could do was feed her supper.

I knew Evan was home before he even turned into the drive. The wards we had put up around the house warned me, identifying his signature. He came in, work boots clomping, and put his arms around me. Evan is a huge bear of a man, easily six-feet-six, with red hair and beard, lightly streaked with gray. He is older than I am but with witches’ expanded life spans, that matters less to us than to humans. When we met it was love at first sight. Lust at first sight too, but that was definitely the lesser of our earth-shattering reactions to one another. Evan was a witch, one of the rare male witches to survive to adulthood, and we were pretty certain that was why Angie Baby’s gift had awakened so early—she had a witch gene from each of her parents, making her the most powerful witch on earth at this time.

“Who’s magics you been playing around with?” he mumbled into my hair, which tumbled over my eyes and tangled with his beard. Mine was not nearly as bright red as his. “Do I need to worry that another witch caught your eye?”

“Absolutely.” I turned in his arms and wrapped mine around him. They didn’t quite reach around his shoulders, but the fit was perfect around his chest and I clasped my hands together in the middle of his back. “I think you need to remind me that I have the perfect man at home and shouldn’t be playing the field anymore.”

“Is Angie in her room?” His voice turned up hopefully on the end.

I buried my face in the crook of his shoulder. “Napping very deeply. She’s making those little puffs of breath that she does when we just can’t wake her.”

“There is a God.” Big Evan picked me up and carried me to the bathroom instead of the bed, which worked out quite well to remove the sweat of the day from him and the construction dust and stink of vamp and unfamiliar magics off of me.

When Jane got to the house my hair was still damp, but I was clean—very, very clean—and I was dressed in a T-shirt and a fitted denim shift with full skirt and deep, tucked pockets. I don’t think Big Evan and I fooled her any, because she shook her head and smiled that small smile while looking back and forth between us. I had the feeling she thought we were cute, but at least she wasn’t the teasing type.

She woke Angie Baby and kept her busy in her room while I finished up the evening meal, and then carried my girl to the table. Angie usually fought being put into the high chair, wanting to sit in a regular chair like a big girl, though the table came only to her nose that way and I didn’t trust a stack of catalogues the way my own mother had. But tonight Jane surprised us all with a bright pink booster seat with Angie’s name painted on the back. It had little suction cups on the bottom and a strap that attached it to the chair; another strap attached around Angie’s waist, with an additional strap that looked special-made for Angie’s current baby doll. Angie squealed and chattered and was enchanted with her big-girl chair. And Jane’s face softened at Angie’s obvious delight.

Over stew—heavy on the veggies, light on the beef—Jane told us what she had discovered about the strange stethoscope. “It’s called a Kerr Symballophone, and it was designed in 1940 with two diaphragm chest pieces to allow doctors to hear different parts of the chest in both ears so they could differentiate the sounds from either lung, or from the top and bottom of a single lung, or from the heart and a lung. Kinda neat, really.”

I leaned into my husband and said, “She’s showing off her brand-new emergency medical training.”

“You took an EMT course?” he said, surprised.

Jane gave a minuscule shrug and tore off a hunk of bread. “Finished last month. I figured it might come in handy,” she said, her eyes on the bread and a smile tugging at her mouth, “for the day you finally give in to temptation and shoot Evangelina.”

Evan coughed and turned red. I laughed. I guess it was possible that he didn’t think his feelings about my eldest sister were quite so obvious. “You can’t choose your family,” I said sweetly. “More stew?” Evan nodded and Jane went on as I dipped up another humongous portion for my hubby. The man had to burn ten thousand calories a day.

“Anyway, I went to the Hainbridge Historical Society and did some research.”

“I didn’t even know Hainbridge had a history,” I said.

Evan chuckled, shoveled in a mouthful, and gestured for Jane to go on.

“There was a doctor by the name of Hainbridge living in the city in 1840.” She went back to the bread and dipped it into her stew, watching as the bread soaked up the thick broth. “And in 1870. And in 1910. And in 1940.”

“A family of doctors?” Evan asked.

I remembered the smell of vamp and said, “No way. He wasn’t—”

“Way,” Jane said. “I’ve seen two small portraits, hand painted, seventy years apart, and except for the beard, it’s the same guy.”

“I’ll be,” I said. “I know we have a lair in Asheville. Word is that the head vampire wants to start a barbeque joint in town.” When Evan paused with his spoon in midair, I said, “Down boy. So far, it’s just a rumor.” To Jane I said, “Barbequed ribs are his favorite. So. We had a lair here, way back when.”

She nodded and glanced at Angelina, her look saying there was more to tell but not in front of tender ears. So I had to wait for details, and waiting never sat well with me. I have red hair. Some form of impatience is surely bred into me.

When Angie Baby was finally down again for the night, and Jane and Evan and I were all stretched out in the tiny living room, Jane finally dished. “Hainbridge was a vamp with a human son. The kid came down with what sounds like leukemia, when he was a child in 1845.”

“Vamps can have kids? I mean, human kids?” Evan said.

“Sounds like it, but it must be really rare.,” Jane said. “According to the records, the doctor tried everything to cure the kid, and instead of curing him, the kid went crazy. The local newspaper called him a lunatic. He was seven.”

“The father tried to turn his son to cure him of the leukemia,” I whispered.

“Yeah. That’s what I got out of it. And from what I’ve read, that’s not permissible, to turn a child. And just as bad, Hainbridge didn’t chain his child up.”

I looked across the room to Angie’s door. It was half closed and I suddenly couldn’t stand it. I stood and crossed to the opening and looked in. Angie was curled on her side, her thumb in her mouth. She didn’t sleep with her thumb in her mouth often, only when she needed comfort, and I had to wonder if she had heard us talking, even in her sleep, and become distressed. I studied the wards on the room and tightened them here and there where they had grown a bit frayed. And I prayed too. I wasn’t much of a prayer, not like Jane. She was a true believer and she prayed religiously—a small joke we shared. I was less… confident, less sanguine, about who and what God was, and about why He would give a rat’s behind about any of us. But I prayed anyway— God keep my baby safe . Just in case. And oddly, when I finished, Angie pulled her thumb out of her mouth, sighed, and rolled over. Coincidence was a strange mistress. When I settled in my chair and picked up my tea, Jane went on.