"You could be drinking that beer at the beach. Followed by a really swell dinner with your friends. I'm here to make sure you go."
I sighed. It was Memorial Day, and Memorial Day had a special meaning now for the Wardens. We didn't officially have ceremonies--hadn't since the first year--but all of us thought of Memorial Day as the day we honored our fallen friends and comrades. And we gathered, wherever we were, to break bread together and just ... be glad we were still alive.
Over the past eight years, a lot had changed. The destruction wrought during Mother Earth's brief, angry wakening had changed the face of a lot of communities around the world ... and utterly obliterated a few. From the ashes, people rebuilt, and they rebuilt well. The remaining Wardens had helped, too. Finally, eight years out, the trauma was starting to lessen, but it would never really fade. Not for any of us.
I made a decision, and popped my head in the kitchen. As usual, Lewis had persuaded Tommy that they didn't really need to wait for permission to start on the pizza. I shook my head and said, "Go ahead, boys. Eat up. It just means you can't go swimming for thirty minutes."
"Mom!" Lewis promptly said, and looked very disappointed. "That's not even true. It doesn't matter if you eat."
"It's true today, buster, because you've had half the pizza in about five minutes and you need to stop. Now go get your beach stuff."
He and Tommy dashed off toward Lewis's bedroom, still clutching their last pieces of pizza. I sighed and closed up the box and put it away in the fridge, retrieved a six-pack of bottled beer, and added it to my always-ready beach bag.
Then I went into the office, unmuted the call, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention?"
The voices fell silent. Twenty Wardens, all waiting for me to say something profound.
"Go enjoy your holiday," I said. "We'll pick this back up tomorrow. It can wait."
Nobody argued. There was noticeably more good cheer in their voices as they signed off.
Cherise had brought her car--a sedan, not a Mommy-van; even if she eventually had a dozen kids, I didn't think she'd ever go to that extreme. It was a brand-new Ergani, the sleek electric one, and she seemed to like it. I missed the feel of the engine, but I had to admit that hers was more planet-friendly.
We spent a few blissful hours at the beach, sipping our beer and watching our kids play. As the sun began to sink toward the western horizon, we packed up, whistled for Lewis and Tommy to drop whatever arcane thing they were doing with shells and sticks, and piled back into the car, tired and happy.
Cherise drove us to the restaurant where we always seemed to congregate for these types of events: Fuego. It was full to capacity in the dining room, with benches of people sitting outside admiring the sunset and waiting for tables, but Cherise strolled right up to the desk and said, "Warden party."
"Right this way," said the flawlessly decked-out greeter, and led us past all the mildly resentful people to a private dining room along the side of the building.
It was already full, which confused me--I'd just been on a long-distance conference call with most of these people, and yet here they were, in Miami. Marion Bearheart in particular looked smug. She was sitting near the end of the table in her gleaming wheelchair, resplendent in black leather and Navajo turquoise. She inclined her silver and black head toward me--more silver than black, these days--and smiled a warm welcome at all of us.
Other friends were at the table, too. Peter, the new head of Weather operations; Anjali, who was over Fire; Carl, fresh from getting his hands dirty with Earth powers; a few others, too.
"How ... ?"
"We had help," Marion said, and nodded farther down the table, where a very small blond girl sat kicking her feet in a chair too big for her. Venna inclined her head gravely. On the other side of the table, so did Rahel, with an absolutely enigmatic smile that still managed to be terrifying.
And at the end of the table, standing, was David.
Lewis ran to him immediately, and David whirled him around and picked him up in a close embrace, then immediately let him slide down when Lewis started to wiggle. I didn't go to him immediately; I loved seeing the two of them together.
Cherise shoved me from behind, pointedly. "Well, go on, jump the hottie, or I'm all over that !"
"Mom!" Tommy protested. "That's disgusting."
"I know, kiddo." She kissed the top of his head and shooed him off to join Lewis in picking out seats where they could cause the most mayhem possible. David reseated them next to him, which was very smart.
I walked over to my husband, no longer leader of the Djinn, and stepped into his warm, sweet embrace. I rested my head against his neck, touched my lips to his ear, and whispered, "Thank you."
"You're welcome," he said. "Lewis says hello. He's renovating Jonathan's house. I think he likes the challenge."
I had to laugh. Lewis would like trying to knock out walls in an eternal structure. Maybe he'd manage to put some paint down, though.
"Hungry?" he asked me.
"Starving," I whispered back. "Let's go home and do something about that. A whole lot."
"Later," he laughed, and did terribly provocative things just by drawing his fingers lazily up my back. I shivered in total delight. "I promise you, you'll get your fill."
"And you?"
"Never," he said, and tipped my chin up so I could meet his eyes. "You know that. Now stop flirting and sit."
As if it had been my fault. Hardly.
The servers were already circulating, putting out trays of appetizers and pouring wine and other drinks, and we were all sitting down together, human and Djinn. It hadn't seemed possible, just a few years ago; some of the Djinn had wanted me dead for bringing back the ability of humans to claim them.
Lewis had simply broken the ability. No more claiming. And now, no more reason for us to hate--other than the normal reasons people always seemed to come up with.
Sitting down to a meal with them still felt ... ground-breaking, somehow.
I kicked it off by picking up the glass the server filled up with red next to me, lifted it, and said, "To Lewis."
Everyone looked up, and one by one, they lifted their glasses in response, and drank.
"To humans," Venna said, when I was about to sit down. I looked up, startled, to find her smiling. "You may learn something yet."
With my hand in David's, I looked around, and I couldn't help but think we already had.
There was always tomorrow to worry about, but for now, I was focusing on tonight. And so I lifted my glass, inclined my head, and toasted the human race--flawed, fallible, crazy, and wrongheaded as it usually was.
We all did. Just this once.