In the middle of the night, Nick held me against his chest and murmured against my hair. "You're amazing, Olivia Nowicki. In all of history, there's never been a woman such as you." He'd healed every scratch, bruise, and bite mark on my body, but only smirked when I told him I was a bit tender between my legs. "I think I'll leave that be. Don't want you to forget about me."
As if I ever could. Good Lord, I was in deep. With my head on his shoulder, I traced the light blue swirl that ran along the outside of his ribcage with one finger. The djinn tattoos were easier to see in the dark. "There's something more I want to ask, but I won't wish for the answer. It's up to you because it might be too personal."
He trailed his fingers down my back and up again. "What we just did was fairly personal, I'd think. What do you want to know?"
"Have you ever... I mean... I don't know how old you are, but you must have... Obviously, you're not... After so long you probably... You said that you had an affair with Agloape but it wasn't..."
He chuckled, and I buried my face against his chest. It was like pressing my face against a heating pad. Even with the outside world covered in snow that Nick may or may not have caused to accumulate to an impressive depth, it was toasty warm curled up beside him.
"You want to know about my love life before now?"
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." Thankfully, in the dark, he couldn't see how red my cheeks were.
He was quiet for a long time, stroking my back and saying nothing. I thought maybe he'd decided not to answer but then he spoke softly. "I was not joking when I told you about Pompeii. The panic and the anger, the fear... It's one of my earliest memories. I was three years old."
I barely dared to breathe. My mind simply couldn't wrap itself around anything so big and terrible.
"My father..." He squeezed me a little tighter and pulled the sheet up over our bodies. "For a very long time, somewhat later, I mean, I was something of a recluse. There were... encounters. Sometimes I developed a friendship with a woman. Never a human. I... Never a human. As a general rule, I did not associate with humans." He took a slow, deep breath. "I had companion lovers. I never expected anything more than that to develop."
It wasn't so hard to read between the lines of what he was saying, especially not when my heart ached with his emotion. "But then you fell in love with a human."
"A touch more than a hundred years ago. An Irish woman," he said. "Oonagh. She'd married young and lost two children before her husband died as well. After that, she returned to her father's house. I was just passing through town. She immediately saw me for what I was, and she showed no fear at all."
So, the bravery thing was a running theme for him. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
"We had a happy life together for more than ten years. I cared for her and her kin, provided for them, protected them. It was a dangerous time in Ireland, but they knew they were safe with me in the house."
He stopped then. I waited, but he offered no more. I couldn't stand the suspense. I propped myself up on my elbow to look at him. Tears cut silvery tracks along his luminescent cheeks and disappeared into the dark shadow of his whiskers.
"What happened?"
"I left the house." He sniffed and wiped his tears with the back of his free hand. "I went hunting." His eyebrow arched upward a bit. "Just regular hunting for food for Oonagh. Her father, his new wife and her bairn were out. They went to visit friends, but Oonagh stayed home with a headache." His gaze stayed on the fan above the bed. "Men came while I was gone. They beat her and raped her." He sniffed again. "When I came home, I saw. I hunted them. I made them pay for what they'd done."
"No one could blame you for that."
"I tore them apart with my bare hands." He paused. "And with my teeth, like an animal." The savage words, whispered in the dark, sounded like a confession made to a priest. "I slaughtered them, and it was a great joy to me. But people from the village saw me. Before I'd even returned home, word had spread. Oonagh and her family had harbored a monster. Her father tried to send them away. He stood up for me and they killed him, killed his wife, killed the newborn child. Oonagh blamed me. I told her I would bring them back, but the very thought was a horror to her. She was a good Christian girl, and she could abide my unusual strength and strange appetites, but to speak of reversing death itself was one sacrilege too far, I suppose. I pleaded, and we fought. She ran away."
At last, he met my eye again. "I tried to change it all back, reverse time, make it as if none of it had ever happened. I did... god stuff."
His gaze drifted away again.
"What happened?"
"The Great War."
I couldn't help but scoff.
"You mock my pain?"
"You didn't cause World War One."
His brow inched upward. "What did?"
"Well... it just... there was... Archduke Ferdinand was shot."
"What was the war about, Olivia?"
"I don't know that much about history."
He smiled a sad, joyless little grin. "I do."
"So, for two thousand years you alternated between avoiding people altogether and having flings with supes and you finally fell in love, and it ended up starting the biggest war that had ever happened up to that point?"
"Irish stories are nearly always tragic," he said. "You ought to know that if you're planning to involve yourself with an Irishman."
"What happened to Oonagh?"
"She died in the war."
I flopped down next to him and joined him in staring at the fan.
"I turned myself in to The Organization. I hoped they'd lock me up, find a way to destroy me perhaps, but Hawwa stepped in."
"She seems to do that."
When he chuckled, it seemed to carry a bit of light. "Aye. She does. She asked those in charge to find a place for me in the world. She'd always seen the good and believed it could overcome the bad. All of that led to where I am now."
My hand found his in the space between us. Our fingers laced together. The way he fought his feelings made more sense now. "I hate that you've had so much hurt, but I quite like where you are. Here. In my bed."
"I don't know what the future looks like," he whispered. "I try to see. I wish I was, but I'm not omniscient."
"Me either. Sometimes, the present needs to be enough." I turned my head to look at him, and he turned toward me. His contentment and desire poured into me. I threw my leg over him and did a few more things I'd been dreaming of for the past several months.
***
I woke up burning hot and kicked the blankets away.
Nick chuckled softly. "I wondered If it would be too warm for you. I thought about cracking the window but..."
I followed his gaze and saw a thick layer of ice caked over the glass. From the small bit of the world I could see from the bed, the whole world was buried under a thick blanket of white, probably a foot deep.
My stomach clenched in a spasm of guilt. "Did we do that?"
"There was also an earthquake. Four point two." He shrugged his bare shoulder, and I realized he wasn't glowing as brightly as he had been. "Tied for the biggest ever in Michigan history."
I blew out a long, noisy exhale. "We have failed spectacularly to find a way to make things less messy."
He fiddled with a lock of my hair and refrained from commenting.
Watching his blue eyes watching me had me not caring as much as I probably should about causing major weather events. My voice wavered when I spoke, as if the words didn't really want to come out. "I need to check on my grandmother and talk to Chantelle. Plus, I've got two skips on the run."
"All important things."
"Right. I should do them."
"Probably, yes." He drew his hand away and laid there watching me with the tiniest hint of a smile on his face.
It took me a minute of rummaging to find my cellphone. Somehow, it had ended up in a pile of blankets in front of the closet door. I brought it back to the bed, plugged it in, sat down, and dialed the hospital. The operator rang me through to Jaja's room and Busia answered the phone. "Hello?"
"Hey, Busia. How's the patient?"
"Olivia! We had a blizzard!"
Nick ran a hand over his face.
"Yeah. I noticed. Crazy."
"An earthquake, too!"
"Wild times, am I right?"
"Father Borys says the second coming is soon and the antichrist will come."
Nick peeked out at me from between his fingers.
I grinned at him. "Some people think he's already on earth."
My grandmother hissed. I could practically see her on the other end of the line, making the sign of the cross. Since Nick didn't burst into flame or anything, I figured we were golden.
"How's Jaja?" I asked again.
She harrumphed. "Grumpy. He woke up this morning, and he's made at me for calling the nine-eleven. He says now we have to make a co-pay and I should have driven him. I don't drive! How do I get a fat man like your Jaja to the car? He's crazy."
"Sounds like he's well on his way to his old self."
Nick scooted closer to me and ran a burning hot hand over my bare thigh.
I swallowed hard. "Do you need anything? I've got a big car right now, one from work, so the snow probably won't be a big deal. Plus, I'm sure they'll have the roads cleared soon."
"No, no. You stay safe at home. If an April blizzard isn't a good reason to stay in bed all day, I don't know what is."
Nick's hand moved closer to the space between my legs.
I cleared my throat. "You make an excellent point, Busia."
Nick found a spot we both liked. He shifted, putting his tongue where his fingers had been.
I chewed my lip.
"Are you okay, Tygrysku? You sound like you're choking."
"I'm fine, Busia, but maybe I should go get a glass of water or something. Call me if you need me, okay?"
She promised she would.
I hung up and dropped the phone, not much caring where it landed. With my hands wrapped in Nick's hair, I gasped, "Is this a good idea? What if we start the apocalypse or something?"
His mouth was busy, but he stopped long enough to grin up at me. "That's what happens when you sleep with the antichrist, love." He went back to doing what he'd been doing.
If the apocalypse came, it was totally worth it.