Page 121 of Breaking the Dark

The second set of remains has been identified as being those of John Warshaw, the Harlem Vampire himself, who, it appears, died of natural causes. But the most startling revelation of all is that he appears to have been dead for at least five years, drained of all of his blood and kept in a state of mummification. The woman claiming to be Debra Phipps is still being held, refusing to speak, and Grace Partridge is still unable to cooperate. The other girls, Amina and Audrey, are both in intensive care.

For the first time since the morning in early October when she nearly let Speckles the cat escape, when Hell’s Kitchen was rolling blackly with thunder and the rain came down like bullets, when she felt bad things in the air and saw the girl in the silver coat, for the first time since then, Jessica feels her head still. It’s like the sensation when a background hum that you haven’t noticed stops and the sudden peace that follows has a curious empty feel to it, like something’s missing. It’s gone. All that’s left is a sense of surprise that you didn’t notice the noise all along.

She has only one thing left to do.

One last loose end.

Once that’s done, she will take a holiday. Amber’s payment went through the day before: twenty thousand dollars. She will use some of that and head out to one of those places that women go to in the movies when they want some space: Cape Cod, maybe, or Madison, or Providence? Windswept beaches and ramshackle clapboard seafood restaurants. Handsome weather-beaten men, and rustic cabins with open fires. She will take her unborn child, her tired and ridiculous body, and her existential crisis and she will lie with them for a while until she comes to terms with all of it. And then, when she comes back, she has to find a way to tell Luke.

But first she calls the number on her phone that says Avengers Mansion. It’s answered a moment later by someone whose voice she doesn’t recognize, and she says, “Hi, this is Jessica Jones. Is there anyone there I could talk to about OB-GYN stuff, for, you know, women like me?”

The screen fills with oscillating patches of black and white as the doctor swooshes the transducer around her belly. It could be the bottom of a garden pond for all Jessica can see until, suddenly, there it is.

“There,” says the doctor. “There’s your baby. Looking very snug in there.”

“Which way is it sitting?”

“Well, look, there’s the top of the head and that there”—she swooshes down again and presses hard into the flesh of Jessica’s abdomen—“is a pair of adorable tiny feet.”

“Oh!” says Jessica as the image starts to come together for her. “Yes! Look at that. That’s…”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Jessica nods, numbly.

Then she says, “You know, and this is gonna sound crazy, but a few times after I first thought I might be pregnant, I saw her.”

“Her?”

“Yeah. Her. She’s a girl.”

“Oh, right.” The doctor moves the transducer around the image of her baby again. She does so for a full minute before saying, “It’s a little early to ascertain the baby’s sex and I’m not seeing anything clearly enough at this point.”

“No, I already saw her. That’s what I’m saying. But she wasn’t a baby. She was about five years old. At first, I thought I was going nuts, you know? Losing my mind. But every time I saw her, she was so real. I could, like, see a thread hanging off her coat. And I just wondered, in your experience of treating women like me, with, you know…”

“Super-powers?”

“Yeah, with super-powers. Have you ever known someone to have an unborn child that could already express its powers?”

“No…” says the doctor, pulling off her latex gloves and dropping them in a trash can. “No, I haven’t. But I could see that it might be possible in the case of a child with heightened powers. For example, if both parents had powers?” She hitches an eyebrow and Jessica feels herself flush slightly.

“Yeah,” she says. “That would be the case here.”

The doctor nods and for a minute Jessica thinks maybe she knows about Luke. But then she remembers that she has a reputation, that Luke is not the only guy with super-powers she has shared a bed with in her messy life, and that the doctor is probably just wondering which one it might be.

“Well,” she says, “that’s kind of exciting. What was she like? When you saw her?”

“She was—well, she was spectacular, you know? I mean obviously!” Jessica laughs, nervously.

“Obviously!” the doctor returns.

“And very strong. Kinda fearless. She talked me through a rough patch over in the UK. She’s kickass and beautiful and I…” She suddenly finds herself tearing up slightly. “I don’t know if I’m going to be good enough for her.”

“Oh my goodness.” The doctor steps across the room and takes Jessica’s hand in hers. “Jessica. No, don’t ever say that. You are an incredible woman. Look what you just did in this city. Look how many people you helped and saved. How fearless you were. You are going to be more than enough for this baby—and then some. You already are!”

Jessica sniffs and nods. But she doesn’t believe the doctor, and she knows she has a lot more work to do before she will be ready to accept that she can be a good enough mother, especially to a child like this who is already better than her in a hundred different ways.

“Sure,” she sniffs. “Yes. Thank you.”

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