Eden's Charms by Jaclyn Tracey

on the sports channel. His crippled fingers were all but welded around the tiny device that could cause a war in the wrong hands, the remote. The television blared loud enough that Olivia Spencer heard them in the next room. The first, an announcer recounted blow-by-blow freeze-frame shots of the birth of an infant girl at Yankee Stadium with a filter over the lens giving the woman back her dignity, and the second story, the world nightly news, telling an incredible to impossible story of a set of conjoined twins who were half lycan/half vamp, stolen from the hospital in Tennessee. The PEON’s, the Preternatural Exterminating On-sight Neutralizers, put out a BOLO for the babies and a shoot to kill order—no questions asked—on the babies, not the abductors.
    The baby story caught Olivia’s attention better than the catcher did through the first few innings. The man had butterfingers today. Olivia padded into the room silent as a great cat, with deadly intent. Seeing the birthmark on the baby girl stirred an emotion deep within her. With a quick glance from the corner of her eye, she scowled seeing the old man she’d married, remote in one hand with a bottle of cheap beer in his other, nursing it. He reminded her of an over-grown baboon suckling at his mother’s tit. Oh, how she loathed his very existence.
    Oliver sneered in her general direction then tipped his beer toward the television spilling a few drops.
    “Buffoon.” Olivia stared in disbelief at the television without so much as another word. The black casing surrounding her heart crumbled, like an icepick hacking at a glacier.
    She had a granddaughter. Guilt consumed the new grandma and rightfully so. Had she known there would be such a strange expansion of her heart, she’d have released the curse she set in place the day after she condemned Lucian and André to being childless for one hundred years. She hadn’t meant to include André, but being Lucian’s identical twin, well, she’d gotten a two-for one special.
    “Oliver, that’s Serina, my baby. Remember her?”
    Oliver looked at his wife, tipped his head to the side, shoved the bottle of ale through his pursed lips and gulped. After a loud, wet belch, he swallowed the fluids back down and went back to watching the game, ignoring Olivia.
    Olivia’s body tightened with revulsion as she listened to his disgusting body functions. It was only a matter of time before the beer found its way to the other exit. She went in search of a can of air freshener, and a phone book.
    ****
    Cherié, I just spoke with Lucian. Everyone is fine. They’ll be staying a few more days in the city. Where are Raven and Donovan?
    In the library. Well, Jonah and Payton are with Raven. Donovan’s disappeared. Nothing’s broken yet.
    Other than a few hearts.
    André, I’m going up to the nursery. Join me?
    I’ll be up soon. Jules and I are going to the police station to make certain Ethan is out of the picture for a few days. A few of the guys owe us a favor or two and we’re going to have them hold the kid until we can straighten this mess out. We won’t let anyone skin him alive. That’ll be my job if the little bastard doesn’t straighten up. Lock up.
    André, you know don’t you? About Ethan?
    Yes, I know. Time will tell, my love. If it is meant to be between Savanah and he, then he’s got some serious changes to make. And we must help him. I know this goes against my every instinct to put the kid to the curb and slap a free sticker on him.
    André you horde things. You’d never get rid of him. What of the two Ethan traveled with?
    That’s the other stop Jules and I are going to make. I’d hoped to sidestep this part of the conversation with you.
    I want to come.
    Jovan, you are pregnant with our child. Please, mon amour, stay put, just this once, for me? For our child?
    Children.
    Gasping, André asked aloud, “What—did-you—say?”
    I found out at the doctors yesterday. He had to give me the okay to fly