Page 100 of Installment Immortality

Malena looked at me sadly. It made me want to scream and flip the plate whose contents I couldn’t eat into the air. I didn’t. I just sat there, shoulders tight, and returned her look with my own, trying to telegraph how much pain I was in without needing to come out and say it.

Instead, she took a sip from her own smoothie, and asked, “When was the last time you had a shower?”

“A week ago.” My voice dropped, embarrassment overwriting anger. “I’m too afraid of falling to shower when there’s no one else in the apartment.”

“Great. So tonight’s assignment is to get you clean, and then I’ll do your toenails for you, and you’ll feel better in the morning.”

I blinked. “You’re staying?”

“What, you thought you’d get a little bitchy and I’d be out the door? Valerie,please.I’ve seen you after a seven-hour rehearsal, when your feet were on fire and you were muttering about pulling people’s spines out through their noses. I’m not Lyra. I know you don’t have as much reason to trust me as you did her, but please believe me when I say that I care about your well-being, and while Brenna may have asked me to come, she didn’t have a way to force me. I’m here because I want to be.”

“Stop it, or you’re going to make me cry,” I said, swiping at my cheeks. “These stupid hormones have me all over the place.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” She smiled warmly. “Now drink your dinner.”

Several hours later, I sat at the card table again, clean and running a brush idly through my hair while Malena unloaded the small dishwasher into the cupboard above the sink. I’d tried to protest her doing the dishes, but she’d ignored me, and ordered me to sit down while she took care of the post-dinner cleanup.

She glanced my way, sliding a plate into the cupboard with the others. “How long’s it been since you did the dishes?”

“As long as I could find a clean spoon, I didn’t figure it mattered all that much.”

“Uh-huh. As I was getting around to earlier, you realize you’re going to have to move after the baby comes, right?”

I blinked at her, slowly lowering my brush. “Why? The dragons don’t have a problem with infants, and the soundproofing in the walls is good enough that I shouldn’t upset my neighbors.”

“You can’t refuse to bring your daughter home forever, Val. It’s not good for either one of you. She knows her father’s gone. There’s no way she doesn’t know. Let her grieve with you. Don’t let her think you blame her, or that you’re replacing her with the new baby.”

“I thought chupacabra didn’t do human-style family groups.”

“Not with parents, so much, but we have extended networks of older relatives who help to raise and care for the pups as they transition into children. My mother negotiated placement of her eggs with my father’s family, andhismother handled most of the work of raising me. She liked children, and so did he, and so did his two sisters, and all the other aunties and uncles in our den.Not all female chupacabra are temperamentally suited to child-rearing. He told me my mother was one of those.”

“Okay.”

“But when I was eleven, I met her. She recognized the smell of me as being kin, and after she figured outhowwe were related, she introduced me to the pups she’d cared about enough to keep. The ones she’d wanted.”

“But… didn’t you say you’d given your first clutch of eggs to their father?”

“Yes, and I visit them, and he never told them I didn’t want them, or that I was never going to raise children of my own. Our ways are our ways. It wouldn’t have hurt so much if I hadn’t believed that she wasn’t suited to parenting.Allmy pups will know the reasons they are where they are, whether they call me mama or amma.”

I didn’t know for sure, but I could guess that “amma” meant “noncustodial birth parent.” I frowned, looking down at my hairbrush.

“Do you really think Livvy will feel like I blame her if I don’t bring her home?”

“You sent her away when her father died, and you’re keeping her at arm’s length. You have good reasons—no one’s contesting that—but the timing has got to be eating at her. And you can’t ask her to share a room with a newborn baby. That’s not fair to anybody involved.”

I sighed heavily. “So I have to move.”

“Look at it this way—it’s not like you’ve done a lot in the way of nesting so far.” Malena shrugged broadly, indicating the barely furnished apartment with the spread of her arms. “And you have enough friends that you can probably get it done same day, if you ask.”

“The hard part is going to be convincing Candice to let me out of my lease,” I said glumly.

Malena laughed. “She’s not letting you out of your lease.”

I blinked. “What?”

“A human apartment manager who understands how to navigate human bureaucracy? You’re worth your weight in gold to those dragons, and they know it. I’ll be surprised if they charge you more for moving into a larger place.”

“You’ll be surprised ifdragonswant to charge me more.”

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