My wallet and my phone had both been in my pockets. Thanks to the bubble, the phone was dry, and my cards were safe. Primarily my Tulane access card. I was able to get into Jones Hall; the hour wasn't incredibly late.
I made my way up to my office and then down the tiny service elevator to the very lowest floor. It was dark and a bit musky; we seldom ventured down there. But I found a hanging light and sat under it, with the baby in my arms. My baby.
As a Primordial, he was a natural shapeshifter, but in this form he sported his father's beautiful black hair and clear eyes. He still did not fuss, which I guess was good for hiding out, but he also wasn't telling me anything. Was he hungry? Was he scared? It had been too long, and I had never given birth to a half-human before. I felt helpless.
The service elevator rumbled to life, and after making a trip up, it returned and opened its doors onto my floor. "This is suitably creepy," Blair commented, striding out and scanning the room. As an afterthought, he added, "Geese."
"Blair." He was fine. Perfectly fine. In fact, he was a bit too much so. "How...."
He shrugged. "I'm a druid."
"You're completely dry."
"I'm a very good druid." He found me and stooped before me; reading his energy, I could tell it was him, boasting notwithstanding. "Are you all right?"
I nodded. He brushed his fingers along the baby's forehead, and I shifted the whole bundle into his arms. "Your son. Your son, Blair."
He held the little child against his chest. "My son."
"What should we name him?"
After studying the baby for a moment, he glanced up at me. "Ruaridh."
"Okay." I knew next to nothing about human names. I did know, though, that even though he had said "Rory," the fact that it was Scottish or Irish or whatever meant it probably looked entirely different on paper.
He stroked the baby's hair. "Ruaridh Winters."
I glanced up at him. There was something happening to him beneath that placid demeanor. What it was, I couldn't tell. He was too good at keeping things inside. Dammit, even taking a dive into the Mississippi River had not rattled him.
"He's not a baby," I said softly. "Primordials grow quickly. At the moment he's about fifteen human years old."
Blair only nodded faintly. "But he's still in baby form. He must be hungry."
"I dunno."
"Nurse him," Blair said. "He'll need it."
I unbuttoned my blouse, then took Ruaridh into my arms and nudged him toward my breast. "Do you have a plan?"
"No." He sighed. "But we need to keep both of you safe. I can ward your house against danger easily. I'll go there in the morning. You'll join me there an hour later."
"And you?"
"I'll figure something out."
I frowned. "Blair...."
"Yes?" His clear cerulean eyes settled on me. I looked away.
We were silent for a while. Blair found a book and started paging through it.
"You should get some sleep," he said after a while.
"I'm not tired," I answered. "I kinda almost just lost my life."
"Which is why you need sleep. Here." He took Ruaridh from my arms and tapped my forehead. "Sweet dreams."
I dozed off immediately.
*****
As the sun rose, we slipped out of Jones Hall and took the St. Charles streetcar downtown. At the end of the line, I went up to Jackson Square with Ruaridh, and Blair took the bus into the Marigny. I would follow him a couple of buses later. As I waited, I wandered through the Square, admiring the deep, vivid colors of the flowers.
It all happened at once. Someone snatched Ruaridh from my hands while someone else restrained me, with one hand over my mouth and one around my lower torso. A scuffle took place in front of me, and I realized my attackers were now fighting my baby. My baby; Ruaridh had shifted from baby form into a young man, long-legged and limber. I watched in shock for a moment. My baby....
Ruaridh fought off one agent and was prepared to take on another when he looked back at me. My captor had brandished a dagger and was holding it to my throat. Meanwhile, the other two agents were closing in on him again.
"Run!" I shouted.
It was a good call. The two agents took off after Ruaridh, who disappeared into the French Quarter. The one holding me withdrew his knife, and spun me around, clearly intending to knock me out, but someone knocked him out first.
Someone vaguely familiar.
I didn't have time to place it. The person knocked me out too. But I came to a couple of minutes later. I was sitting on a bench with my hands in my lap, holding down a thin napkin that kept trying to flap away in the autumn breeze.
I looked at the napkin. It was plain and unused, except for a tiny bit of writing in one corner.
GO HOME
The next bus had not even arrived yet. Was this a trick? I turned the napkin over. There was a little more writing in another corner.
NOW
I had just lost Ruaridh. Had someone gone after Blair too? With a deep breath - meant to settle my nerves - I shifted into light and beamed myself directly to my neighborhood. The agents be damned.
*****
At my front door, I shifted into human form again and placed my hand on the knob. It moved with my slightest touch. Carefully, slowly, I crossed the threshold and inched my way down the hallway. There had definitely been a fight - my hallway was a mess. But it all stopped at the kitchen door.
I peered into the kitchen. A tall figure was seated at the table. Blair. Good. I started toward him - and started to realize that what had seemed "good" was actually very, very bad.
He did not move as I drew closer. He did not even seem to breathe. "Blair?" I whispered.
His eyes shifted toward me. Not his head, just his eyes. "Roscoe."
Now I was close enough to see everything fully. A wound in his back was oozing blood onto the floor beneath his chair. Blood was running from his left shoulder down his arm, and from his lower abdomen as well. He was - or had been - bruised all over. Most concerning, though, was the bullet hole in the middle of his head, from which blood dripped into his beautiful eyes.
"Blair." I reached for his hand. It was perfectly cold. "They attacked you."
"An ambush, yes." His lips barely moved.
I felt my body shaking. "How... they... you're alive."
"I'm not."
"Of - of course you are." I wanted to believe he was, anyway. "You're talking."
"I tied my life to the life of one of my attackers."
That truly made me shudder. "Can... can you do that?"
"I couldn't. Now I can. Or I could." His gaze found me again. "Roscoe, I'm out of time. I only wanted to tell you that I'm sorry."
"No, no. Don't talk like that." I touched his arm. "I can fix this."
"I should never have dragged you into this. Now I've endangered both of you."
"Blair, no. Ruaridh is in the wind. He needs both of us."
"I'm already dead, Ros. Just... forgive me." He closed his eyes.
"No!" I shook him, and his eyes opened again, slightly. "I'm not giving up on you!"
"You... have no choice."
I opened my palms. They were starting to glow warmly.
"No!" He seemed to put extra energy into that snap. "There's a... cloak. Impenetrable. Unless you do this. They'll... never miss it."
"No they will not. They'll see a big blast of healing energy right next to a huge cloud of particularly nasty death magick and I think they'll be more inclined to let that dissipate a bit, won't they?" I placed one hand between his shoulder blades and one at the small of his back, trying to ease him out of the chair and onto the floor; he winced when the back wound came into contact with the tile. "Now, this is gonna hurt. Really hurt. There won't be anything to numb the pain. Okay?"
His eyes fluttered slightly.
I placed my palms on his chest and let the energy ease out through him. He did well for a few seconds; after that he was screaming so loudly that I had to knock him out.
*****
Finally he opened his eyes. Once his body was healed enough to take care of itself, I had managed to drag him into the bedroom and stretch him out on my bed. "Shh. Don't move." I placed a hand on his cheek. "How do you feel?"
"Sore. Tired." He touched his forehead. "Ouch."
"You kinda got shot point-blank there. The wound's closed but not healed."
He sighed and laid his head back. "You shouldn't have done that."
"But I did." I sat on the bed, cross-legged. "And I'm gonna need some answers."
"Now?"
"Yes, now. We're losing daylight. I need to know what I'm dealing with when they attack again."
"They won't attack tonight."
I folded my arms. "How you know that is one of the things I need to know."
He sighed again. "I've been warring against factions like this one all my life. I know how they operate."
"All your life," I said. "Who are you?"
"I'm Blair Winters."
"That can't be your name. What's your real name?"
He shifted slightly. "'Blair Winters' is the name I've been using since the Norman Conquest, so it's as close to a real name as I have."
"Aside from your birth...." I paused. Names have power. Even humans experience it; when their parents use their full names, or when their lovers whisper to them, for example. But for a magick user, names become part of the being. It was a cruel trade off: more than likely, to some extent, the fiercely independent, unpredictable Blair Winters could be controlled by his name.
"How old are you?" I asked instead.
"Three thousand one hundred seventy-five." I was impressed by his accuracy, but then he had to add, "Give or take a bit."
I rolled my eyes.
To which he pointed out, "Do you know how old you are?"
Biting my lip, I admitted, "No."
He shrugged slightly, winced, and closed his eyes.
"How are you so old, anyway? Druids aren't known for being particularly long-lived."
His eyes remained closed. "Some have been. Besides, I'm not strictly a druid."
"What are you, then?"
Question time was over. He looked at me. "Why does any of this matter?"
"I need to know who you are." I folded my arms.
"I'm a very bad man who you should run from as soon as you can. That's who I am."
"No. I don't do self-pity."
"That wasn't self-pity. That was a warning."
I eyed him. "You would abandon your son?"
"I know where Ruaridh is. Or, at least, I'm in the process of knowing."
I just stared at him.
"The accident-that-couldn't-be-an-accident? We weren't alone on the CCC. A few calls went out to 911 that night. The authorities arrived on the scene too late for us, but they've been examining all of the cars, including mine, for evidence. My contacts have probably been sending updates to my phone."
Said phone was sitting on the bedside table. I reached for it; sure enough, there were dozens of texts and voicemails left unaddressed from that morning. The phone had been set to silent. "You think of everything," I said softly.
"Rule number one of being the villain." He cracked a bit of a smile. "Always be at least one step ahead of the heroes."
I shook my head. He had ceased being a villain at some point long past. "There's nothing here about Ruaridh."
"It wouldn't exactly be in plain text." Blair took the phone and paged through its texts. "Well. This one is interesting."
"What?" I peered over the phone.
"Ransom note."
"Ransom..." I felt my jaw drop. "Who is it? What do they want?"
"It isn't addressed to us. It's to our attackers. It was forwarded to me."
"So someone new has Ruaridh."
"Yes."
I sighed and stretched myself out beside Blair. "This is complicated."
"Yes, it is. But we'll sort it out."
I turned his head to face me.
"Don't," he whispered.
"Don't what?"
"Make this more complicated."
"By falling for the man who got me into this because he wanted to use me?"
He sighed. "Yes. That."
I leaned back. "I'm sorry I'm an inconvenience to you."
"Ros, no, just...." He shifted again. "We've been through trauma. I've saved your life. That's all it is."
"No, Blair. I know what I feel. And I know that right now, you're hurting me."
He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah."
His low voice was barely audible. "How do I fix it?"
"It can't be fixed, Blair, it isn't an - an equation to be solved or an - experiment, it's...." I stopped as he reached for me and kissed my forehead. Then he kissed my lips, gently, breaking away just before I had a chance to respond.
"I can say 'thank you' and hope it will be enough for now."
I nodded and rested my head on his chest. He lifted his right hand and brushed his fingers through my hair. And for those few minutes, everything almost felt fine.