Alcaeus
The hour was late by the time I parted ways with Milena. I ran in wolf form through the woods to let off steam. I only bothered to conjure new clothing for myself as I entered the old cabin on the off chance that I might find Jussara waiting for me there—on the hope that she hadn’t been called away for some nebulous “thing” that may or may not have involved a “thing” with Remy.
At first glance, the home that I had lived in for over a century looked about the same as I’d remembered it. Of course, it would never be the same again without—
I stopped cold in my tracks when I noticed what appeared to be an altar lined with flowers, candles, and photos of Kaleb in my—Jussara’s—living room. I’d turned ownership of the house over to Jussara before I’d left for America. Reminding myself that it was Jussara’s home now to do with as she wished and not mine was maybe the only thing that quelled the instantaneous urge I felt to tip one of those altar candles over and let the whole place go up in flames.
I took a deep breath and toed my clean, newly conjured shoes off. Knowing that Lupe would’ve wanted me to.
My shoeless feet carried me upstairs. I didn’t go to her bedroom. I went to her little sitting room instead; the one where she used to spend hours immersed in her favorite telenovelas. I’d sat through a few of them with her from time to time over the years, mostly to tease her and make her laugh with my commentary and humorous storyline predictions.
It was ultimately an excuse to spend time with her. To hear her laugh and see her shake her head and smile that wry grin of hers that said she didn’t give a fuck what I thought of her shows. Nor did she care how long I’d been alive or how much I thought I knew, for that matter. She was going to watch what she damn well wanted to watch. She didn’t require my approval or anyone else’s.
Her lingering scent was strongest in this room. So much so that I half-expected to hear her cackle fill the space at any minute, to see her familiar form reclining on the old sofa. For a few stolen moments, it felt as if I’d never left.
As if she’d never left.
I’d never understood what appeal those cheesy soap operas held for Lupe. I popped a well-worn Avenida Brasil DVD in and pressed play. Six hours and a gallon of cupuaçu ice cream later, I still didn’t have a clue.
“You have ice cream all over your face, Tio.”
I tore my zombie eyes from the television screen to find Jussara standing in the shadowed doorway. I’d been so engrossed in my own thoughts I hadn’t even heard her enter the house. I smiled and scrubbed blindly at my mouth and chin with the back of my hand. “Thought you weren’t coming back here until morning?”
“It is morning.” She crossed the threshold and plopped down on the couch next to me. “Change of plans for the day. Milena and I are leaving for Alsace. Came to say goodbye.” She licked her thumb and swiped it across my cheekbone. She repeated the action several more times on my chin and jawline. Her nose wrinkled. “You need a shave. And a shower.”
I frowned. “Alex going with you? You two aren’t going alone, are you? I don’t trust that pack. Even Milena’s charm has its limits.”
She laughed. “Did you not see yesterday afternoon what Milena is capable of? I don’t think we’ll need to rely on her ‘charm’ to get us out of there safely if our peace meeting takes a wrong turn.”
“She can’t teleport,” I reminded her, “and neither can you.”
Her eyes rolled. “Yes, Alex is going.”
“Is Remy going?”
“Not sure. I know Yuri and Diogo are going, and several others,” she evaded, turning her head toward the television screen where the characters had begun arguing. Her smile was nostalgic. “I always loved this episode. Mom loved it, too.”
She was avoiding my Remy question.
“Well, I don’t get it.” My voice sounded surly and petulant to my own ears. “These shows are God-awful. The storylines implausible, the characters shallow. Why did she like them so much? And what’s up with the creepy memorial to Kaleb in my living room downstairs? The only thing that’s missing is a damn chalk outline. How can you stand to live here? I don’t think it’s healthy for you to live here.”
What’s going on between you and Remy?
“Geeeez!” She burst out laughing. “You sound like a grumpy old dad. Hard to believe the stories Kai tells of your wild exploits in America right now.”
“It’s none of Kai’s business to be sharing that kind of stuff with you.”
She snorted. “That kind of stuff? You mean sex? Remember when I turned fifty-nine this past year?”
“That’s beside the point,” I snapped. “Fuck.” I dropped my head in my hands. “I’m sorry. It’s your house now. You can erect whatever memorials you want. I just … don’t understand any of it.”
I felt her slim arms go around my shoulders and squeeze. “I know, Tio.”
“I don’t understand why she did it.”
“I know.” Jussara sighed and pressed a kiss to the side of my bent head. “I didn’t understand either at first. But I think … she just wanted a choice for once.”
The last statement I’d spoken more to myself. I hadn’t expected her to answer. I lifted my head and turned to face her as she continued. She still looked like a teenager to me. He face was too youthful to house such wise, jaded green eyes.
“She wanted a say in her own final destiny. When Nahuel killed my grandparents, he robbed her of the only world that she knew. Then she came here, and Alex took her future choices from her when he forced her to stay and be part of his pack.”
She’d obviously given this a lot of thought. Maybe more than I had over the years.
“This room”—she looked around the small space—“those videos … it was the only environment she felt she could control. She watched the same stories again and again.” Jussara’s eyes, so much like her late mother’s, grew bright as they misted with tears. “She knew all the endings by heart. I think there was a comfort in that because her own ending had become her worst looming fear. The telenovelas—they were safe.”
“But she was safe here with me. From the very first day she arrived. I always kept her safe.”
“You did. I know you did. And she knew it, too.” She cupped my cheek in her hand. “I used to think it was all about me, too. That she’d done it to try and save me from a connection to the Salvatella pack. And maybe in part she did. For so long, I held onto such guilt over it. Until I realized, she came here to the Reinoso compound for me. She stayed and carved out an important place within this world for me.” She dropped her hand from my cheek and slapped it against her knee. “Hell, I think the only reason she never slept with you was because of me. But leaving this world—she did that for herself.”
What? Jussara was the reason Lupe had never slept with me?
“Maybe it helped for her to rationalize that she was doing it to save me from a connection to Nahuel’s family and to save Milena from a faulty blood curse, but in the end, those things were only to justify the first arguably selfish move that she’d made since her parents’ murder.” She clasped my hands in hers. “She knew how much it would hurt all of us. Especially you. And she did it anyway. Because she had to put her own needs first in the end.”
I shook my head. “I could’ve found another way. She shouldn’t have had to resort to help from Maribel. I could’ve—”
“No, Tio. You couldn’t have.” She bit her lip. As her eyes overflowed with tears, I had the worst sense that they were for me. “You did everything right by her. By us. What’s done is done. You have to let it go. You have to let her go.”
I felt his telltale trail of magic invade the house seconds before Kai teleported into the hallway outside Lupe’s sitting room. He hadn’t yet mastered my sister’s finesse for teleporting.
I knew Jussara had felt Kai’s entry, too. She’d begun wiping at her tears and composing herself before he knocked on the doorjamb to announce his presence.
“Sorry for the intrusion. I wanted to catch you before you left.”
“It’s fine,” she told him with a smile. “I do need to get going,” she said to me. She threw her arms around my neck and gave me a good squeeze. “Try and remember, it was her choice, okay? She just wanted a choice for once. We have to honor that.”
I hugged her tightly back, wishing that we had more time, that Kai wasn’t in the room with us, and that I wasn’t such an emotionally bereft dolt at a loss for what to say to her where her mother was concerned.
She gave Kai a hug, too, promising that she and Milena would visit us in America next if we didn’t come back to Brazil soon.
Uncomfortable silence descended upon Lupe’s sitting room after Jussara left. Kai stood there awkwardly, just a few feet within the doorway, while I pretended to be watching the telenovela on the screen.
“You still want to head back later today, right?” he asked at last. “Because we have that meeting in Denver tomorrow.”
I nodded.
“You sleep at all?”
I shrugged.
He turned his attention to the episode playing on the television. “I don’t think I ever saw this one.”
“Why would you have?”
My snap reply had come out sounding like I was accusing him of something, so it shouldn’t have surprised me when he huffed and returned defensively, “Why wouldn’t I have? I watched every single episode of 2-5499 Ocupado on rerun with Lupe during the summer of eighty-nine, thank you very much.”
I racked my brain a moment and recalled that 1989 was the summer I’d been away on a mission with Kaleb. At my request, Kai had stayed behind to look after Lupe and Jussara while I’d been gone.
“I remember the ongoing arguments Lupe and I had over the implausibility of Emily and Larry’s relationship like it was yesterday,” Kai said with a chuckle. I felt myself scowl as I watched a stupid, wistful grin spread across his face. “I mean the absurdity of that entire storyline was beyond measure. Did you ever watch that one with her? The one about the woman in prison who was a telephone operator?”
It was one thing to wax nostalgic with Jussara. It was another thing to do it with Kai. I didn’t want to share memories of Lupe with Kai. Not even the ones that were already his—as irrational as it was. As he began to reminisce aloud about other ridiculous telenovela plotlines he’d debated with Lupe over the years, I cracked.
“Hey, I got an outlandish, over-the-top storyline for you,” I cut off his sentimental musings. “Remember that time when my best friend’s dead mate who wasn’t all the way dead killed the only woman I ever loved?”
“Okay.” Kai held his palms up and backed out through the doorway. “My apologies for interrupting your telenovela. We’ll talk later.”
Fuck. “Kai, look, I’m sorry,” I called after him. “I didn’t mean to say it like it was your fault.” Except I did.
I definitely did.
He leaned his shoulder into the doorframe and nodded slowly at the floor. “You know, you’re not the only one who lost Lupe.”
He was right. But it was the last thing I wanted to hear. From him in particular.
I nodded. “I know.”
“It’s been almost ten years, Al.”
As if I didn’t know? God, there he went with his condescending tone again.
“I really think … maybe it’s time you stopped mourning your loss with meaningless sex and channeled that grief into something more constructive. I think Lupe would’ve—”
“You know what Lupe would’ve wanted?” I was suddenly standing. And shouting. His arrogance and presumption had finally eroded whatever thin restraint I’d been clinging to. “Lupe would’ve wanted you to get your dick wet just once this fucking century! Did you ever think that maybe I feel compelled to fuck enough pussy for the both of us? To make up for how you’ve mishandled Lupe’s sacrifice?”
His eyes widened. Then they narrowed. “Mishandled her sacrifice?” He looked affronted.
Good.
I tossed my arms in the air at his endless pompous ignorance. “Lupe died for your mated dick’s freedom. She made a deal with the devil so that you wouldn’t have to stay tied to a psycho undead bitch for all eternity.”
“No.” Kai’s jaw tightened. “She died to free herself from an eternity with Nahuel. It’s like Jussara said. She wanted a choice for once.”
“A choice? Oh, please, that psychobabble bullshit sounds like just the sort of thing Remy would say to put a positive, empowering spin on things for Jussara’s benefit in order to try and get into her pants.” I leveled my pointer finger in his face. “And by the way, I will fucking kill him and all the rest of you if I find out that he has gotten into those pants and you guys have been keeping it from me.”
“Do you hear yourself? Jussara’s pushing sixty. And she’s not your daughter.”
“She might as well be!”
“I’m going to go now. I’ll come back later when your ice cream hangover has worn off.”
“Lupe was manipulated, and you know it. She was preyed upon. Used.” I hissed the word at him. “Misled by that demon undead bitch of yours that you’re still actively pining over even after everything that you know she’s done.”
His eyes flashed bright blue, and I tasted a moment’s satisfaction knowing that at least I’d gotten a reaction out of the wolf, if not the man, as he growled, “She is still my mate.”
“Really? Well, I don’t see a mark on you anymore.” I shrugged. “And there’s a body count over ninety-eight years long to show for how hard she worked to be rid of you. Maybe you should think about that fact the next time you’re stroking your dick to her glorious memory.”
The sound of fabric rending was instantaneous, and the white wolf was on me before I’d managed to shift—having wasted a half-second relishing the victory of his wolf’s reaction.