“Pretty,” she seriously said.
“Yes, it is. Are you ready to go see Aunt Mallory and Baby Lulu?”
She nodded seriously. “Baby.”
Ethan stepped into the doorway, eyes glowing green with pleasure. “How’s my birthday girl?”
Elisa squealed, raised her chubby arms.
With the pride of a lion, Ethan walked forward, lifted her up. She wrapped her little arms around his neck, then kissed his cheek. “Ree! Ree! Ree!”
Ethan arched a brow at me. “Did she have coffee for breakfast?”
I patted her little bottom. “Not that I’m aware of. She’s in a really good mood, though. Probably because you’re so pretty.”
Elisa nodded solemnly and patted his face with one hand, the other hand wrapped tightly around his House medal. “Pretty.”
Ethan chomped at her hand, and she laughed wildly, swinging her head around.
“Not as pretty as Elisa or Mommy,” he said.
I grinned, always amused to hear a four-hundred-year-old vampire call me “Mommy.” And still awed that it had happened. That we’d conceived her, that my body had been able to nurture her, and that we’d brought her into the world.
It hadn’t been a perfect journey. The “morning” sickness (albeit at dusk) had been horrific, the cravings completely bizarre, and, at the end, labor that had to be halted twice when the sun rose. And there’d been a moment of complete and utter terror when we’d thought we’d lost her. Even now, when she was healthy and happy and here, the memory made my body clench with fear.
She was the first vampire child in history—the only vampire born of vampires. But more important, most important, she was ours. She had been born of love, and born into a House of vampires who loved her nearly as much as we did. She was part of me, and part of Ethan, and so much her own person. I loved her more than I’d have thought possible.
I owed my life to Ethan, and I gave him my heart. And now Elisa held them both.
• • •
We headed to the House’s first floor with a diaper bag; the House was big enough that it was faster and simpler than traversing it every time Elisa needed a diaper or clothes change. Which was often. I liked to joke that she was the only person who could throw up on one of Ethan’s expensive custom suits and live to tell the tale. There wasn’t a vampire in the House who wasn’t wrapped around her tiny little finger.
As far as we could tell, she hadn’t been negatively affected by the magic that made her. She was usually hungry, and had a quick temper, but those seemed perfectly explainable by biology and genetics, no magic required.
Mallory, Catcher, and Lulu sat on the couch in Ethan’s office, Lulu nestled in her mother’s arms. She was a tiny pale doll of a thing, except for the head of thick dark hair she’d been born with. Mallory had put a tiny polka-dot bow in it today.
“Hi, Elisa,” Catcher said.
“Catch!”
Elisa didn’t have a shy bone in her body.
I walked over, pressed a gentle kiss to Lulu’s forehead. “How’s the World’s Tiniest Yeti today?”
“Uninterested in sleep,” Mallory said with a yawn. There were circles under her eyes, and Catcher didn’t look much better. “I’ll give her to you for a dollar.”
“I will take you up on that temporarily,” I said, carefully taking the tiny package and sitting on the floor at their feet. Every newborn was tiny, but there was always something surreal about holding a creature so tiny, so delicate. She looked up at me, blinked Mallory’s blue eyes.
“Hi, baby Lulu.”
She blinked again, her lashes nearly as thick and long as her hair.
“You’re going to be on the porch with a rifle when she’s old enough,” I told Catcher, brushing her hair back.
“Like he’s going to be any different,” Catcher said, gesturing to Ethan, who was kissing the palms Elisa held out to him.
“Aspen stakes, but probably, yeah. Although I’d think you’d have to be pretty brave to call on the daughter of a Master vampire.”
“Especially the only daughter of a Master vampire,” Mallory said. “Her suitor is gonna have to come correct real quick.”
“That’s a good girl,” Ethan said as she squirmed in his arms. “Do you want to say hello to Lulu?”
Elisa nodded, and Ethan put her down. She waddled toward me, reached out a hand to touch Lulu’s hair. But before she made contact, she looked up at Mallory, who nodded.
“You can touch, Elisa.”
“Elisa,” I said, “do you remember how we said to love the baby?”
She nodded solemnly, her blond hair bouncing. “Careful.”
“That’s right.” I put my hand over hers, helped her softly touch her.
“Soft,” Elisa quietly said, raising her emerald green eyes to mine. “Baby soft?”
“Yes, she is. Like your baby?” Her baby was a floppy-eared, floppy-legged rabbit nearly as tall as she was that she’d dragged around by an ear as soon as she started walking. It had been a gift from Mallory, her first stuffed animal.
Elisa nodded gravely. “Baby,” she agreed. “Soft.”
“Good girl,” Mallory said. “You’re really good at that, Elisa.”
“Hep.”
“She likes to help,” I translated. “Ethan let her put a book on the shelves in his office yesterday, and she was pretty sure she’d earned her own House.”
“So she got his looks and his attitude?” Mallory said, glancing up at Ethan.
“And my charm,” he said.
There was a knock at the threshold. We looked back, found Margot in the doorway. She smiled at us. “We’re ready if you are.”
“I think we’re ready.” Hands on his hips, Ethan looked down at Elisa. “Would you like some cake?”
She just blinked up at him, gaze blank. This would be her first experience with cake, which made it special for both of us.
Ethan held out his hands, and she abandoned Lulu and me, practically jumped into his arms. He situated her on his hip again. “Let’s see if you can hold as much sugar as your mother does.”
Mallory snorted, climbed to her feet. I did the same, and carefully handed Lulu back to her. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“Says the woman who out-ate me at my own bachelorette party.”
“That was more than a year ago. When are you going to stop bringing that up?”
“When it stops serving my purpose.”
Mallory just shook her head. “Never change.”
“I’ll do my best.”
• • •
Some children might have shied away from a room full of dozens of humans and supernaturals, from the cheery music and the bundles of balloons that filled the House’s cafeteria. Those children probably hadn’t grown up in a House of vampires, loved within an inch of their lives.
Those children were not Elisa.
“Happy birthday, Elisa!” they called out when we entered. She screamed and clapped her little hands together, tried to wiggle out of Ethan’s arms.
“Okay, my little lemur. Hold on.” He put her on the floor and she dashed toward a rainbow-hued column of balloons that reached to the room’s high ceiling. She reached out a tentative hand and touched the column, watched it wobble beneath her touch.
She shrieked with joy and touched it again, then tried to drag it away from its column.
“Just to touch, honey,” my grandfather said, gently taking her free hand. Her face screwed up into angry lines before she realized who’d touched her. And that smile blossomed again.
“Give your Papaw a kiss?” He bent down to her, leaning on the cane he’d been using more frequently these days.
Elisa squeezed up her little face, closed her eyes, and leaned in, pressing her lips to his face.
“She got that expression from you, you know,” Ethan said, putting a hand at my waist.
I humphed.
“Good kiss,” my grandfather said. “I hear it’s your birthday.”
“Ree?” She looked back at me, her official translator.