Emmy And Me

I did manage to go out for a run the next morning. Overnight the clouds had cleared, leaving the streets clean and damp, but not wet. It was cold, sure, but not cold enough for anything to freeze so no ice in the shade or anything like that. A perfect morning for a run, even if it meant gloves to keep my hands from going numb and a headband to cover my ears.

I'd definitely rethink my commitment to getting outside if it had been hailing, but it was a pretty early winter morning in New York, so I was going to take advantage of it.

There was hardly anybody out on my favorite Roosevelt Island loop, and the few of us early-morning runners gave each other little waves to say 'Hello, fellow masochist'. All in all, a great way to start the day.

Emmy was awake but still in bed when I got home.

"Oh! Your lips are cold!" she exclaimed when I gave her a good-morning kiss.

"It's nice outside, but cold," I agreed, stripping out of my running clothes.

"Are you going to take a shower?" Emmy asked, her voice showing her interest.

"I was planning on it, yeah," I agreed. "You know, I wouldn't mind a hand, if you feel up to it."

"Would I be using my hand to feel you up?" Emmy asked.

"I wouldn't mind," I confirmed as I pulled my tights off.

"I do not think I would mind that, either," Emmy said, climbing out of bed to follow me into the bathroom.

"Soapy time is the best time," I said.

"The very best?" Emmy asked for clarification as she stepped under the shower head.

"Maybe not the very, very best of all, but it's top ten for sure," I confirmed.

"Yes, it is," Emmy agreed with a sensual groan as I lathered up her hair.

I'd given Wally the day off to spend with his family, so we just stayed around the house. For dinner Emmy and I (and Jeremy, of course) walked a few blocks to an Italian restaurant that Luisa had heard was good, but a bit too pricey for her.

She'd heard correctly- it was unpretentious from the street, but was a nice, low-light white tablecloth traditional Italian restaurant. They claimed to make their pastas and sauces in-house, and it was easy to believe. The service was good, too, and nobody batted an eye at a world-famous charcoal-skinned lesbian rock star and her amazon wife dining in the corner.

Back home, Emmy and I settled in with some wine by the fire in the parlor.

"I have been thinking…" Emmy said as she lay back against me on the couch.

"Uh oh," I joked.

"Do you need to go back to California soon? I am asking with the possible idea of bringing the family here for Christmas. Grace and Rosalie, your mother and Tiffany, too. We have the room for them, and none of them have been to this house yet."

"I don't need to be back for work or anything," I admitted. "And it would be nice to take Mom and Tiff skating, or to see the Christmas tree at the Rockefeller Center," I said, warming to the idea. "Hey, it's only six in the evening back in California. Let me text Mom and see what she thinks of the idea."

I slid my hand under Emmy as if I was fishing for my phone in my pocket, but she realized quickly enough that it was just an excuse to cop a feel of her sweet little bubble butt.

She didn't object though. In fact, she squirmed around a little bit to make sure I got just the right spots.

"I thought you were going to call your mother?" she asked after a few minutes of fooling around.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I got distracted," I said, but we both knew I wasn't sorry one little bit.

After texting Mom, I set my phone on the coffee table and pulled Emmy in closer, wanting to feel her warmth. It was nice, just snuggling on the couch like that. It was a wonderful way to finish off a nice, low-key weekend.

In the end, Mom, Tiffany and Grace (but without Rosalie) did come to New York for Christmas. We went to the Rockefeller Center to see the tree, we enjoyed ourselves ice skating, and we ate roasted chestnuts from street vendors. It was the sort of fairytale New York Christmas that could only have been better if there was an actual snowfall.

Grace's only explanation for Rosalie's absence was that she had "Family stuff she couldn't get out of," which worried me a bit until I overheard Grace talking to her on the phone one evening and from what I could tell it sounded as if things were good between the two.

Mom absolutely loved the townhouse but Tiffany wasn't as impressed. For one, there wasn't a room that was specifically hers, and for two, no racing sim rig- a terrible oversight on our part, by all accounts.

Mom made it her mission to fill the empty shelves in the library with books she found at used bookstores. Somehow she talked Emmy into going out with her and buying a small, but excellent hi-fi stereo system for the library as well. After that, Mom's scavenging expanded to include used records.

I was perfectly O.K. with all of that- after all, the room was basically unused as it had been, and a nice little reading library with good music had a very strong appeal.

Unfortunately for me, year-end reports and financials took up a big chunk of my time, so after Jeremy and I did our morning workouts at the compound I generally spent the rest of any given workday in my home office. Thanks to the time zone differential from California my hours typically ran until seven or eight in the evening.

It wasn't as if I didn't get to spend any time with the family, though. We had dinner together every night and went out in the evenings more often than not to see Broadway productions or things like that. It would have been nice to have been able to spend more time with everybody, but I think everybody understood that it was crunch time for me and I had to put in the hours.

"Mom, can I ask you a question?" I asked one night when I found her in the library, reading what was probably a first edition of something. She'd been populating the library with, well, not necessarily rare books, but certainly not cheap paperbacks.

"Hmm?" Mom replied, looking up from her book. She'd found this big, overstuffed antique leather chair at some consignment store and fallen in love with it, and I must admit that it looked perfect in that room. Next to it was a little marble-topped round table, on which her glass of white wine rested. Behind it was another antique Mom had scored, a beaded floor lamp. Its soft cream-colored light, combined with the fire in the fireplace, gave the room a warm glow. She'd selected a Sarah Vaughn record and had it playing nice and low while she read.

"What is it, Lee?"

"First off, let me say that I love what you've done here with this room. You know, when we bought this place the shelves were lined with fake books? Just interior decorator props. Not a single readable book in here," I said, waving at the shelves.

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"Seriously?" Mom asked, surprised, looking around, trying to imagine it.

"Yeah. So seeing all these- where did you even find a complete set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica from…" I said, pulling one off the shelf to open it up and look at it. "1888? Seriously?"

"They had a few complete sets from different years at this one bookshop I found down in Chelsea. This set was the oldest and best preserved," Mom explained.

"So… that doesn't answer why we needed it."

"Too much empty shelving," Mom said, indicating the room in general. Even with all her efforts it was still very far from full. "Besides, it's cool. A bit of a snapshot back into history. Look up something like the US Civil War to see what they said about it just a few years after it ended, or maybe the Boer War. Or… Luis Pasteur- he discovered penicillin in the early 1880s, right?"

Amused, I put the book back in its spot. "So I guess you've kinda answered the question I was gonna ask."

"Which was?" Mom asked, sipping her wine.

"I was going to ask if you were doing up this room as a sort of fantasy of the library you'd love to have, but…" I said with a shrug.

Laughing, Mom said, "Guilty as charged, your honor. I saw this library sitting empty and unused and it just about broke my heart. It was like an orphan from a Dickens novel, so sad and pathetic. It needed some love."

"You have plenty of room in your house in Fallbrook for something like this," I objected. "You could set up your own library."

"Oh, honey, it has been a long time since you've been to our place, hasn't it? I do have a nice library set up- You know the room with the sliding glass door to the patio? I love it and spend a lot of time there, but it's totally different than this. My home library is light and airy, with views out the back and down into the canyon. This, though, is old-school cool. My library is perfect for reading Joan Didion, but this- this is perfect for Agatha Christie," she said, holding up the hardbound copy of The Secret Of Chimneys she'd been reading. "A library like this would be ridiculous in my house in Fallbrook, but here in an old Pre-War townhouse in Manhattan? It's perfect."

"You have transformed it," I admitted, walking over to the stand holding the turntable. "Heck, even this record player looks good in this room," I said, admiring the highly lacquered rosewood body as I flipped the LP over.

"Emmy and I looked at a lot of stereo systems, but most that had this kind of sound quality were techno-geek wet dreams," Mom said. "This one sounded as good as any, but had a classy look to it. And the speakers blend in perfectly, too," she added.

Settling down on the velvet couch facing the fireplace, I said, "I think Tiffany isn't as impressed with this house as you are."

"No, I think you're right," Mom said, laughing. "She's been enjoying New York just fine, but she doesn't have much of an appreciation for this style. I hate to say it, but she told me that it seemed like a grandma house."

Chuckling, I set my feet on the opposite bolster and lay back. "She'll appreciate it more when she gets older."

"You know her thirteenth birthday is coming up, right? It'd be great if you and Em could come down for the party."

I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked the calendar. "Her birthday is on a Thursday. Is the party going to be that day or on the weekend?"

"Are you kidding? It's going to be that night. There's no way she'd be able to wait two days longer."

I smiled at the thought and had to agree. "We'll be there," I promised.

"You two can stay the night- I can set up the guest room," Mom offered.

"There are three of us these days, what with Jeremy going everywhere Emmy does," I said.

"Even to your kid sister's birthday party?" Mom asked, surprised.

"Pretty much every time Emmy steps out of the house, he's there," I confirmed. "I'm sure you've noticed that the last few days."

"Well, yeah, but I thought that was maybe just a New York thing," Mom admitted.

"Nope. Pretty much full time."

"That's a strange way to live life," Mom said, a touch of pity in her voice.

"It is," I agreed. "I miss when Emmy and I could go places and not have to worry about anything more than just a stare or two."

"I guess that's the price you guys're paying for her fame," Mom sympathized.

"Yeah, we knew it might come to this when we got Emmy started with the music thing," I admitted. "But it was important, so we did it anyway."

"Lee," Mom said, setting down her book and sitting a bit more upright. "I've never asked- I figured you'd tell me when you were ready, but that just doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to piece together that there is a whole lot more going on in your lives than you've been telling me. Now, some of it is obvious, and I've heard the stories that you've told. Stories that might be believable to most, but I'm your mother. I think I know you better than most people do. Years ago you told me that Emmy is an actual princess of her people, and I've met enough of those people to understand- I think- what that's about. The skinheads in an alley story always seemed a bit fishy to me, but again, I never said anything. The guys that attacked you in Atlanta… They were related somehow, weren't they? It's others of Emmy's kind you're most worried about, isn't it?"

I let out a long breath. "Mom, the reason I haven't told you about everything that's been going on- well, O.K., there are several reasons," I replied, looking up at the ceiling. "But the main reason is that I never really wanted you and Tiff to get wrapped up in our… um, drama, I guess. I figured that it was nothing you had any agency over, so burdening you with the knowledge would just be another worry you didn't need."

"But Emmy has almost been killed twice, and Angela was killed- not to mention your two unborn babies," Mom objected. "You're probably right that I can't really do anything to help your situation, but maybe if I knew the background I could understand what's been happening better."

Just then Luisa knocked on the doorframe to announce herself. "I'm about to head up to my room for the night," she said. "Can I get you two anything else?"

"Can you make me a Manhattan?" I asked.

"If there's any of this wine left, I'll take it," Mom said, holding up her glass.

Once Luisa was gone, Mom asked, "How much does she know?"

"She's pretty much fully clued in," I replied, sitting up. "Emmy and I explained the situation when we hired her, and Mia and Wally, too. It wouldn't have been fair to keep them in the dark when things might have a direct impact on their lives."

"So what is the situation? It's pretty clear that this is probably political, since Emmy is the heir to her parents' throne, right?"

"Well, she is and she isn't," I hedged. "Yes, she's the titular heir to the throne of the Lascaux nation, but with the moon-kissed thing everybody knows that her parents will probably outlive her, so she'll never actually become queen there. I think the assumption is that Emmy's baby, when she has one, will fill that role. If not, there are some nieces and nephews who are in line. I haven't met them, but Emmy tells me they're a decent bunch so the line of succession is in good hands. But really, that isn't our concern," I said.

Just then Luisa came in with our drinks and said goodnight.

"I really like her," Mom said after Luisa had gone.

"We do, too," I said, sipping my drink. "She was one Hell of a lucky find."

"So, if Emmy's position as heiress isn't what all this political violence is about, what is?" Mom asked after growing impatient with my failure to add details.

"Mom, here's the thing. Well, O.K., two things, but they're related. First, Emmy's people, the Night Children, they've been hiding for thousands of years, right? Emmy's parents were the first in modern history to live openly and not hide under layers of makeup to disguise their nature. They raised Emmy that way from birth to prove to their people it could be done."

"But I've seen a number of… Night Children? out in public," Mom protested.

"Showing their true skin? Yeah, I mean, of course you've seen Emmy's parents, and Jeremy, and Michael and Jassie, but you've also probably seen some other Night Children and never knew it because they were in disguise. But that gets us to the second thing. Emmy and me, we've started a new nation of Night Children here in the New World. We've been finding them where they've been hiding and offering them jobs, housing, medical attention and so on if they follow us, but our number one rule is 'no hiding'. Emmy's parents were convinced that the days of their people being able to hide are coming to an end, and set out to prove it. Well, we're doing just that. Our people don't hide. We've been integrating them into the wider society."

Mom didn't say anything, just making little "Mmm hmm" noises to let me know she was paying attention.

"Well, we've gotten some pushback," I said. "Both here locally, and internationally. Some of the other, old Night Children nations are very, um, conservative and don't want change. To be completely fair, in some parts of the world they probably would be hunted down and killed for being different, so I can understand it, in a way," I admitted. "But here in the Americas and in Western Europe and Japan, that isn't much of a risk. Being outed by technology and better identification systems is, though. I know for damned sure that the UK and French governments are aware of their existence, but have poor grasp on the actual details of the Night Children living within their borders-"

"How do you know that?" Mom asked, interrupting.

"I've had personal dealings with British intelligence officers on the subject," I said with a shrug.

"I'll just let that one pass," Mom said with a sigh.

"Probably best," I agreed with a smirk. "Anyhow, representatives of one of the other nations were behind both the attacks you mentioned. They want to stay hidden and don't want to be outed by Emmy. They see her fame as an existential threat."

"Is it?" Mom asked.

"Honestly… maybe?" I said with a 'who knows?' hand gesture. "But as long as they think it is, they'll continue to be a very real threat to us."

Mom looked at me for a long time, clearly thinking about what I'd just told her and its ramifications. She took a sip of her wine, then another sip.

"Leah Farmer," she finally said. "You're planning for war, aren't you." It wasn't a question.

I sighed. "Yeah, I am."