Harvest of Holidays Read Free

an eight hour shift at McDonald’s, and it’s double-time today. He couldn’t turn it down. His landlord is an unforgiving bastard.” She tossed her black hair over her shoulder. It was stippled and striped with light grey, almost white streaks, but her face was a thirty-year-old woman’s. She had told Carson once, when she was a long way from sober, that she had noticed the first streak in her hair not long after her first successful kill and every hunt after that added more. “But if I’m still around when it goes completely grey, it’ll be a miracle, so what the fuck, huh?” she had added with a disdainful shrug and knocked back more of the sour cider she had been drinking. “It’s not like I’m ever going to be a mother, like Donna, and have to worry about staying around long enough for them to get their driver’s licenses.”
    Jimmy nudged Carson in the ribs and held out a well-rolled joint. “Hair of the dog that bit you,” he said.
    “Never did understand that one,” Carson murmured. He eyed the joint, still thinking about Connie’s live-fast philosophy. “Why not?” he decided, feeling some of the same recklessness, and reached for the joint.
    Damian emerged from the kitchen once more as Carson was drawing the thick, musky smoke into his lungs. He put another coffee cup in front of Tally, who was still eating in slow, delicate mouthfuls. She looked up at him, a brow lifted.
    “It’s herbal,” he told her.
    “Thank you.”
    Carson coughed as facts coupled up and pointed to an incredible, mind-blowing conclusion. He coughed harder as the remainder of the pot smoke got into his eyes and up into his nose and Jimmy took the joint from him. It took a good minute for Carson to get his lungs clear as he coughed and spluttered and tried to open his eyes and really look at his wife. All the while his heart skidded and bumped about in his chest.
    Finally, with his eyes streaming and his throat raw from the hacking, Carson got to his feet. Everyone was watching him, alarmed or amused. He ignored them. Instead, he lowered himself to his knees next to Tally’s chair and pressed his hands around her waist. She was watching him with a touch of wariness.
    “You’re pregnant?” he whispered.
    Tally bit her lip. Then she nodded. It was a tiny movement. And abruptly, her crystal green eyes filled with tears and they cascaded down her cheeks.
    Carson shook his head. “Don’t,” he whispered. He wiped her cheeks. “It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
    Tally threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his shoulder. She was crying fully now, shaking with the force of it. He held her and rubbed her back and let her know silently that everything would be okay.
    Everyone, he realized, had fallen silent around them. He glanced around. None of them looked happy and a baby was supposed to be happy news. For normal people it would be.
    But they weren’t normal.
    He closed his eyes. “Everything is going to be just fine ,” he said, but it sounded weak, even to him.

Halloween
    Andurag
     
    “You have to understand,” Oscar said gently, turning his coffee mug with his long fingers, “that yours is a high risk business. The chances of you being hurt are one hundred percent. Sooner or later, you will be injured. Quite apart from the fact that what you do is so secret, not even members of your family get to find out what you do. The CIA are allowed to tell their spouses who they work for and everyone knows who the CIA are fighting.”
    Tally bit her lip. “We know all this, Oscar. No insurance. Never. Except what a day job might offer. That doesn’t solve the problem.” She rubbed her belly as the baby kicked and wished that she could kick out like that, too. This had been a long, trying afternoon.
    “I still don’t see what the problem is,” Nick said shortly.
    “Me, either,” Damian added. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere anytime soon, Tally. If something happens to you or Carson,