Demon

They were in the crow's nest, a garret rising over the main house at Tuxedo Junction. There were windows in each of the six walls. One ladder went down to the third floor, and another up to a belfrey that housed Chris's carillon. Two dozen ropes ran along one wall, through holes in the floor and ceiling.

"Yowee!" Cirocco cried, and stretched an arm toward the ropes. She selected one and gave it a yank. The largest brass bell above them gave a joyous peal.

"That good, huh?" Chris said, and collapsed on top of her.

"I tell thee thrice," she said, and rang the bell two more times. Then she wrapped her arms and legs around him and hugged as hard as she could.

There were good and bad things about living in Gaea. Some things, such as the unchanging light, Cirocco hardly noticed anymore. The passing of day into night was just a vague memory. One of the good things she usually didn't notice was the low gravity. The one time she did notice it was during the act of love. Even a man as large as Chris did not weigh much. Instead of becoming an oppressive burden, his body was a warm and comforting presence. They could lie this way for hours if they wanted to, he utterly relaxed, she in no danger of being squeezed. And she loved that. Once a man was inside her, she always hated to give him up.

Chris raised himself slightly and looked down at her. He glistened with sweat, and she liked that, too.

"Did she say anything about ... " He didn't know how to finish the sentence, but it didn't matter. Cirocco knew what he meant.

"Nothing. Not a word. But I know it's coming, and soon."

"How do you know?"

She shrugged. "I don't. Call it sexagenarian intuition."

"It's been a long time since you were a sexagenarian."

"What are you talking about? I've made it there twice. I'm a double sexagenarian, plus ten."

"I guess that makes you twice as sexy as anyone, plus ten."

"Damn right. I-"

They both heard it at the same time. Not far away, Titanide voices were raised in song. Chris kissed her and went to stand in the window looking down toward the bridge. Cirocco rolled on her side and looked at him. She was pleased at what she saw, but wondered what Robin would think.

From the waist down, Chris was the hairiest human she had ever seen. He might have been wearing trousers made from bearskin. It was light brown, like the hair on his head, and nowhere less than ten inches long. It was soft and fine, the nicest possible pelt to wrap one's legs around.

Chris was turning into a Titanide. He'd been doing it for five myriarevs now. There was no hair at all on his chest or arms. His beard had stopped growing long ago and now his chin was smooth as a boy's. In the right light, his face could pass for that of a twelve-year-old. There were other things here and there that would surely startle Robin ... such as his tail. The fleshy part of it was only about six inches long, but he could twitch it and make the long hair fly like a frisky horse. He was smugly proud of that tail, and no more in control of it than a dog. It twitched back and forth in excitement as he looked down at the party crossing his bridge. He turned, smiling.

"It's them," he said, and his long ears stood up straight, higher than the crown of his head. Cirocco's mind flew backward a century and a quarter, to a movie which had been old even then: cartoon boys shooting pool and turning into donkeys. A little wooden boy, and her mother holding her hand there in the darkness ... but she could not remember the title.

"I'm going to meet them," he said, starting down the ladder. He paused. "You coming?"

"In a minute." She watched him go, then sat up in the huge straw-filled bag they had been using for a bed. She pushed the thick mass of white hair away from her face, stretched, and looked out the window opposite the one where Chris had stood.

Gaby was out there. She was sitting on a tree limb level with the belfrey, not more than fifty feet away.

"Was it good?" Gaby asked.

"Yes." Cirocco felt no embarrassment or resentment when she realized Gaby might have been out there for a long time.

"You'll have to be careful with him. He's in great danger."

"What can I do?"

"There are some things I don't know." She looked sad, then shook it off. "Two things," she said. "One, he's the father of both of them. He might as well know it, because Robin is pretty sure of it already."

"Chris?"

"Yes. You'll see it. With Nova, anyway. The boy, too."

"Boy? What boy?"

"Two," Gaby went on. She gri

"Gaby, I-". Then Cirocco gasped, as Gaby rolled off the limb and dived toward the pool below. She had one glimpse of her, arms pointed down, toes straight behind her, then the apparition was swallowed up in the greenery.

She listened a long time, but there was no splash.

THREE

The Titanides prepared a feast. From their happy singing, Robin assumed they were oblivious to the human tensions around them. She was wrong. The Titanides knew more about what was going on than Robin did, but they also knew they were powerless to affect any of it. So they employed a tactic that had worked reasonably well for almost a century. They left human affairs to the humans.

Robin had forgotten how good Titanide food could be. Shortly after her return to the Coven, just before the birth of Nova, she had ballooned to twenty kilos over her fighting weight. Ruthless dieting had taken it off, and kept it off for twelve years.

At some point she had lost interest in eating. Keeping slim had not been a problem for five years. During that time she had to remind herself to eat at all. Nothing tasted good. Now, digging into the heaping plates of food the Titanides offered, she wondered if she was going to have to be careful again.

It was a curiously joyless, brittle occasion. Chris, Cirocco, and Conal smiled a lot but spoke little. Nova, of course, had taken her plate to the most distant corner of the room. She ate furtively as an animal, always watching Cirocco.

"Nova," Robin called to her. "Come join us at the table."

"I prefer it over here, Mother."

"Nova."

The girl dragged her feet and scowled, but she came. Robin wondered how much longer she would do that. The virtue of obedience was strong in a Coven child, where families were quite different from the traditional human model. Nova owed Robin total allegiance until her twentieth birthday, and a great deal of respect after that. But she was eighteen now. A year or two years... it had little meaning in Gaea.

There were small blessings, though. The two of them had not fought since arriving at Tuxedo Junction. Robin was grateful for that. The fights tore at her heart. When fighting, it helps to know without doubt that one is right, and Robin hardly ever knew that anymore.

In fact, Nova hadn't said a dozen words since they got here. She had sat silently, either looking at her hands or at Cirocco. Robin followed her daughter's gaze to the Wizard-sorry, she corrected herself, to the Captain- who was singing some incomprehensible bit of Titanide to Serpent, then looked back at Nova.

Great Mother save us.

"Have you had enough, Robin?"

Flustered, Robin shook off her surprise and tried to smile at Cirocco. She dipped a spoon in the bowl of baby food the Titanides had prepared, and put the spoon in Adam's mouth.

"Me? Yeah, I'm doing great. It takes him longer, though."

"Could I talk to you? In private?"

There was nothing Robin wanted to do more, but suddenly she was frightened. She scraped food from Adam's mouth and gestured vaguely.

"Sure, as soon as-"