Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(108)

“Don’t push it,” she said.

He considered that. “I will not push it if you eat the cookies.”

Tam rolled her eyes, lips twitching. “So it’s cookies, plural, now?”

“To buy my compliance, yes,” he said. “Two.”

“One,” she countered. “I will not be bullied. Get out. This is a hen party. No one with a penis is invited. Except for Eamon. He can stay.”

Val looked hurt. “You mean, you do not want to hear the tale of my valiant fight to save you and Rachel from the forces of evil?”

“Out.” Tam leaned over her belly and gave his hip a shove.

“Two cookies,” he repeated, backing out of the room.

Tam took a bite of the cookie after he left. “He’s very nervous,” she explained to Lily, patting her belly. “We lost a couple, before.”

“I’m sorry,” Lily said.

Tam acknowledged her words with a nod as she chewed. “To be honest, we can’t quite believe we’ve gotten this far,” she said. “I never thought I’d have kids. I wasn’t the type. Then Rachel happened. And I had some organ damage from the poison in that incident that I told you about, so I thought probably nothing, in terms of babies. Which would have been fine. We have Rachel, and she counts for three. But voilà, here she is. Our little surprise.” Her face tightened. “So far.”

“How far along are you?” Lily asked.

“Twenty-eight weeks.” Tam petted her belly, wincing. “Ouch. She’s a wild thing today. But I like her that way.”

“Twenty-eight weeks,” Lily said. “That’s almost home free, right?”

“Almost,” Tam agreed. “Almost.” She leaned to grab another cookie but couldn’t reach them over the bulge of her belly. Edie sat up and passed a green-frosted four-leaf clover to her. “Here,” she said. “For luck. I thought you didn’t want two cookies. After all that carrying on.”

“Oh, I’ll probably eat four more. I just say no to him on principle,” Tam confided. “If I give in to him at all, he becomes insufferable. Basic Val management.” She lifted her cookie, as if toasting the women in the room. “To luck.” She took a bite, frowning as she chewed, and directed her next words at Edie. “But wait. You’re psychic. What are you, clairvoyant? How can you believe in luck if you can see the future?”

Edie shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m a big believer in luck.”

“Maybe Edie should do a drawing for Lily,” Liv suggested. “She could use some new fonts of information, don’t you think?”

Lily fidgeted. Edie’s tale had been as harrowing as any of the others, what with her and Kev’s struggle against the mind-control freaks, but the psychic part was hard for her to swallow. She was pragmatic by nature. “Please don’t take this personally,” she said to Edie. “But I just don’t know how useful that could be for me. I don’t really believe in that psychic stuff. I’m very sorry.”

Edie patted Lily’s knee. “Don’t be,” she said. “I’m not hurt.”

“You’re not?”

Edie licked all thfrosting off her fingers before she answered.

“Think of it this way,” she said. “If you were watching a sunset, and you were with somebody who had been blind since birth, and this person said to you, ‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t really believe in pink, or orange, or scarlet, or purple, or violet,’ would you take it personally?”

Lily pondered that. “I don’t know. Are you saying that I’m blind?”

“Not at all,” Edie said. “But if you’re not tuned to that frequency, how could you be expected to believe that it exists? What’s real for me is still real, whether other people believe in it or not. It used to be so painful when people didn’t believe me. But not anymore.”

“That’s just because finally you’re getting regularly laid,” Tam pointed out, wisely. “Changes your attitude about so many thing.”

Edie snorted with laughter, spraying cookie crumbs.

Lily watched the women giggling, thinking about the sunset. Imagining what it would be like to have never seen it. How these events might be changing her. If love might be able to change her, too. How it would feel to really let it unfold. What she might see, hear, or believe.

She didn’t want to be so defensive, so suspicious and cynical. She was never going to get out of this maze if she insisted on blocking out the light. Sveti was watching her, her eyes so wise. A smile was forming on the younger girl’s face, transforming it from wanly pretty to beautiful. Lily smiled back. The idea matured into a resolution.

She turned to Edie. “Will you do a reading on me?” she blurted, interrupting what they were saying. “Or, um, a drawing, I should say?”

Edie and Tam looked at her blankly. Edie collected herself. “Ah, of course. I’d be happy to. You have to promise me something, though.”

Lily braced herself. “And that is?”

Edie looked like she was choosing her words. “Sometimes I see things people don’t want to face. I can’t control what comes out of my pencil. I’m just warning you. That you might not like . . . whatever it is.”