“But if that’s the way you want to roll, then I can handle it. I promise, it will never happen again.”

  “Renee!” Someone called her name. She peered around Khalil to find a photographer pointing a lens at her. Why there was a photographer in the kitchen, she had no idea, but this particular paparazzo was familiar.

  Though the camera covered the young woman’s face, her purple dreadlocks were unmistakable.

  Khalil stepped to Renee’s side and put an arm around her. Though confusion swirled in her mind, the smile was automatic, ingrained from years of charm school and cotillions and that one summer her mother had believed models could be five feet three inches tall. Whenever a lens faced her, whenever anyone’s attention was on her at all, she smiled. I’m like a trained dog.

  “Great shot!” the strange photographer said and then turned to disappear back into the fray.

  “Wait!” Renee called, too late. She started after her, but Khalil’s hold on her shoulder pulled her back. His touch sat on her skin like cold grease.

  Then another thought stopped her short—what if Milo saw that picture? Suddenly, she feared she may throw up.

  “So, baby,” Khalil said, sliding his arm around her again, like he had for the pose.

  She pulled away and turned on him.“Don’t call me baby. We’re never getting back together.”

  His brows drew down. “Why?”

  She stepped as close to him as she could stand to whisper, “’Cause you never gave me an orgasm I could feel in my hair, that’s why.” And then she walked out of the party and straight to her car.

  It had been a week, so Milo decided to wash his sheets. They didn’t smell like her anymore and it was pathetic to keep sniffing, trying to catch a whiff of her scent in them. The house’s washer worked only twenty-five percent of the time, so he headed out to the laundromat on the corner.

  A few other students lounged in the chairs or laid across the wide tables, either studying or sleeping. The TV on the wall played the local news. As he filled his washers, the newscasters engaged in what they must have thought was witty banter. Milo was only half listening until the words “Senator Brookes’ white party” pricked his eardrums.

  He sat heavily, transfixed by the screen, as stills from the event rolled by. Not only were her parents black royalty, they also looked like movie stars. His breath caught in his chest when a photo featuring Renee popped up. The newscasters hurried on to the sports report, but Milo couldn’t get the image of Renee out of his head.

  It was almost easier to believe he’d made the whole thing up than think for a moment she had been with him last weekend, dancing to classic R&B from his dad’s collection.

  If it had all been a figment of his imagination, then he just might be a creative genius. He should give up engineering and study art instead—painting, or maybe he could learn to play the saxophone. That way he could use the swept up pieces of his heart for something useful, not just pining over a girl who was never real in the first place.

  When the laundry finished, he stuffed it back in the bag and headed home. The house was quiet, no parties tonight. A few roommates lazed on the couches downstairs, playing video games or texting. He almost wished for the chaos and the noise of the week before. It would have been a good distraction from sitting in his room alone—something that had never bothered him before. Not before she appeared in his doorway, like some kind of fallen angel.

  He climbed to the third floor, vaguely aware of soft music coming from up there. Maybe from the phantom roommate who kept vampire hours. He pushed open his bedroom door—he should get around to fixing that lock—and stopped short.

  Renee stood next to the record player in a heavenly white dress. If Milo had taken anything stronger than Ibuprofen that day, he would have thought he was on some kind of trip.

  Her expression was sheepish. She looked up at him through lowered eyelashes. He stepped fully into the room and dropped the laundry bag.

  And stared.

  Her phone was plugged into the stereo. The song that had been playing ended abruptly and she was pulling up another.

  The opening chords of Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” filled the room and broke him out of his fog. He closed the door and crossed over to her, without feeling his feet move.

  She swayed slightly, still in her angel dress, barefoot again, a pair of white heels next to his desk chair.

  She held out her hands and he grabbed hold of them, this time ready for the electricity that pulsed through him when their skin touched. He pulled her closer until her head rested on his chest.

  And then they began to dance.

  Every feeling he’d been trying not to feel for the past week came out full force, threatening to break him. When the song ended, he stepped back. She looked up, eyes overflowing with tears.

  Milo cupped her face in his hands and brushed away the wetness with his thumbs. “I saw you on TV tonight.”

  A look of horror and regret crossed her face. “I don’t know who invited him.”

  “Invited who?”

  She shook her head. “My ex. I wasn’t sure if you saw—if they showed…”

  “No. I mean, I’m not sure. But that’s not—”

  “Listen Milo, I wanted to apologize. I’m not used to people really seeing me. Nobody ever seems to. There’s this girl who’s an extension of her parents’ brand, whose picture gets in the paper but the caption only ever says ‘and daughter’. You said I wasn’t real—you were right.”

  Her tears came faster now, and shame punched him in the gut for the fact that he’d had any part in putting them there. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “No, it’s okay. I mean it’s not, but you know that.” She sniffed. “I left that day because it hurt too much, being seen. It felt like standing naked in the middle of campus.”

  He couldn’t not pull her into his arms then. But she was still too far away, so he lifted her, and sat in the desk chair with her on his lap. “You weren’t naked in the middle of campus, you were just naked with me.”

  That brought a little smile to her face. “I know. And….” She swallowed before meeting his eyes. “It’s kind of the only way I want to be.”

  “Naked?”

  She laughed and nodded. “With you.”

  Her eyes were hopeful, staring up at him. He was speechless. He leaned in to kiss her and fell all the way down. The kiss was slow, full of things unsaid. Full of hope and care and tenderness.

  She rested soft against his chest. He held her tightly, breathing her in.

  “So…” she said, tracing a pattern on the exposed skin of his neck.

  “So?”

  “About that naked part? Can we start now?”

  He laughed and carried her to the bed.

  Delilah backs away from the window and floats down to the ground. In a shadowy alley surrounded by trash cans, she transforms into her human form, scaring a patchy gray cat who squawks and bounds away.

  “Sorry,” she calls out, the bells in her hair tinkling merrily.

  She approaches the purple Volkswagen Beetle parked on the corner and turns back to Milo’s house with a smile. “I love my job,” she says, before hopping into her car and driving off to her next assignment.

  Copyright © 2018 by L. Penelope.

  Juliet Marillier is a multi Aurealis, Tin Duck, and Sir Julius Vogel Award winner and recipient of the Le Prix Imaginales for her historical fantasy fiction. Her novels are published simultaneously by major publishers in United States and Australia and are translated into other languages all around the world. Known for combining folkloric fantasy with historical fiction, her novels are often filled with sensitive depictions of the transformative journey a person can go through, metaphorically and physically, to protect their family and future partner—even characters who once thought themselves too broken or incapable of love. Born in New Zealand, Juliet now resides in Western Australia with a delightful menagerie of elderly dogs.

  JACK’S DAY

  by Juliet Marillier

  The waves wash in at my feet, lapping against the rocks that cradle me. The sun is making its slow dive into the inky waters of the Indian Ocean. No surfers linger at the Point.

  I’m starting to feel chilly and thinking a glass of red would go down nicely. But something holds me. A voice whispers, Don’t go yet, Beth. Stay with me a while longer.

  The wind stirs my hair, intimate as a lover’s breath. Oh, Jack. If you’d stayed longer with me, how different things might have been. You could have seen all our son’s milestones: the first ride without trainer wheels, the first day at school, the first football match. The first girlfriend—I’m glad she didn’t last—and the first holiday with his mates. Goals kicked, exams passed, graduation day…. “You might have had a daughter, Jack,” I murmur as the sun touches the water. I imagine a little girl with his curls and dimpled chin. “You might have had the dog you always talked about. You might have coached Rick’s team and gone fishing on the weekends. We might have grown old together, loving each other a bit more every day.”

  Gulls fly over me, their harsh comments mocking my flight of fancy. Might have, could have…what’s the point of that? Suddenly the beach feels empty, the rocks too big, too dark, the ocean immense and powerful. My footprints make a track down from the dunes and along the sand to this, my thinking place. A lonely track.

  The sun’s setting. Time for the ritual. I stand, lift my arms, hold my head high. I think about the two of them, Jack and Bill, mates serving together in a war most of the country didn’t understand. Jack was a shooting star, one of the SAS’s youngest, lauded, decorated, sent off on one secret mission after another, doing things he never talked about, though I saw them slowly darken his eyes. Bill was a plodder, an infantryman, three tours of duty in a hell-hole of swamp and jungle and snipers in the dark, till the day they wheeled him off the transport with a head full of monsters and one leg blasted to nothing. Jack never came home.

  I whisper into the wind. “Happy Birthday, Jack. I love you. I miss you.” A last sliver of gold flashes at the rim of the world and is gone. The beach is full of shadows. Time to go home.

  The driveway’s empty, the house deserted. Inside, I take a quick look in the fridge. Outside, magpies exchange evening warbles. The sound of a car, passing, fading. Jack’s photo on the wall: Trooper John Miller, SASR. Strong shoulders under the camouflage. Sunset hair under the sandy beret. Sea-blue eyes, bright as diamond and hard as steel. February 1940—August 1966. I wonder what you’d have been like now, Jack. I wonder if you could have borne the time when it all had to stop. How would it have been to wake to a day with no rushing adrenaline, no life-or-death choices? I wonder if you could ever have slowed down.

  Old grief stirs in me; old weariness wraps around me, a familiar garment. It was hard in those first months after Jack was killed, when Rick was a tiny baby and my Mum got sick. I hadn’t known a person could be so tired and still go on. But you do. Help comes from the least likely places. The kids grow up, and you look back and think, maybe I didn’t do such a bad job after all.

  I put on the kettle, get out a mug, pop in a bag of Earl Grey. Turn on the TV news to swallow the silence. Catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and chuckle. Look at me, Jack: picture of a lonely old woman, drinking tea in the dark. At least it’s not whisky.

  Light flashes across Jack’s handsome features as a vehicle turns into the car port. Another pulls up behind it. Doors slam; kids chatter. They’re here! Sally marches straight in, dumps a laden platter on the table and switches on the light. “What are you doing sitting in the dark, Mum?” My daughter-in-law casts her eye over the empty table. “You didn’t forget the salads, did you?”

  As Natasha comes in the door, carrying a wriggling baby and an immense pavlova, I open the fridge and start getting out the food I prepared this morning, before the heat of the day. Nat’s older kids, well trained, set the table. I hear clinking sounds as the men unload bottles from the cars. By the time Rick and Matthew join us, the meal’s ready. A summer feast; a celebration.

  I glance at Jack’s stern image. We’re a tribe, I tell him. There’s your son, Captain Richard Miller, SASR, enjoying his leave, pouring wine and promising his niece and nephew he’ll play beach cricket in the morning. If he has shadows in his eyes, he’s learned to deal with them. There’s the daughter you never had, and there’s her man Matthew. There are my beautiful grandchildren. I hope that doesn’t make you sad. I hope it makes you smile.

  “We talked to Tom on Skype last night,” Sally’s saying. “He’s looking well. He sent his love. We don’t know when he’ll be home.”

  I ask no questions. She and Rick have just the one son: Private Thomas Miller, twenty-one this year and on his first overseas deployment. Back in the sixties, when Jack went away, I played a lot of mind games. Made crazy bargains with God. I pray Tom’s girlfriend never has to go through what I did.

  “I’m glad Tom’s well,” I say, but I feel the weight of it all.

  After we’ve eaten we sit and talk awhile, exchanging our news. Rick proposes a toast to the father he never knew; we raise our glasses. To Jack! Happy Birthday!

  The girls do the dishes. Matthew and Nat gather up their yawning kids and head for home, a five-minute drive away. Sally and Rick are staying over. We linger over our last drinks, not saying much. Beyond the fly wire, the shrill sound of cicadas overlays the wash of the waves.

  “Shame Dad couldn’t be here,” Rick says, glancing at me. “You all right, Mum?”

  I nod and we say our good nights. Later I stand on the veranda in my pyjamas, letting the sea breeze cool my skin. A familiar sound breaks the quiet, the engine of an old Holden ute. Headlights pierce the night. Home so soon? My heart clenches tight. What’s happened?

  The car lights go off, and he’s opening the door and getting out, awkward with the prosthesis. Blue jumps down and bolts ahead to greet me with a doggy kiss. And here’s Bill, limping towards me with a big smile on his tired face.

  I throw my arms around my husband, loving the warmth of him, the roughness of his work-worn hands, the way he lays his cheek against my hair, still so tender after all these years.

  “I wasn’t expecting you back until Monday!” I say. “What happened? What about the boys?”

  “The boys will cope without me this once,” Bill says. “I know you said it didn’t matter if I wasn’t here for Jack’s Day. But it felt wrong, somehow. And…well, I missed you.”

  I stand on tiptoe and kiss him; he smells of wood smoke. He’s been at the annual reunion, a bunch of vets out bush, taming their demons and sharing the stories nobody else ever gets to hear. Bill doesn’t need it any more, not for himself. But he has to go. He’s the one who makes it all happen: organiser, chauffeur, counsellor and best friend. The brother they always wanted; the comrade they don’t lose.

  “Hungry?” I ask as we go inside. “Your daughter made her special pavlova.”

  Bill shakes his head. He’s standing in front of Jack’s photo, looking into his old friend’s eyes. I expect him to wish Jack a happy birthday; that’s our ritual. But what he says is, “You saved me, Beth. You know that? You pulled me out of the swamp.” His voice is hushed in the stillness of the sleeping house.

  I lay my hand against his back. “You saved me,” I tell him. “I’ve been so lucky, Bill.” Without him Rick would have had no father. There would be no Natasha, no Matthew, no laughing children in my life. I’m blessed with the best husband in the world, a man who lost so much and still had love to give. “I’m glad you came home.”

  Copyright © 2011 by Juliet Marillier.

  An award-winning author and an Amazon bestseller under a different pen name, Olivette Devaux writes LGBT contemporary and paranormal romance. Her novel Like a Torrent, book 2 of the Disorderly Elements Series, has won a Honorable Mention in the 2017 Rainbow Awards. She enjoys swimming the rivers in Pittsburgh, PA.

  I AM HERE FOR YOU

  by Olivette Devaux

  The Prague International Airport guided Adam into the “Arrivals” hall without his luggage, without local currency, and with a bank card that’s been cut off by the overactive Fraud Prevention Department.

  His guitar strap dug through his thin, short-sleeve button-down shirt. Its weight was comforting, as was the knowledge that both the cord and the small amp were securely nestled in the soft case’s side pocket. His current duffle bag was stuffed to bursting with basic necessities, and for that, he was grateful.

  He tried so, so very hard to keep his usual upbeat attitude, but considering he couldn’t even buy a cup of coffee, optimism was a little hard to come by.

  Adam searched out the exit sign. Ten in the morning meant it wasn’t sweltering hot yet, not even in this hotter-than-usual June. The one-hour time change from London had left him alert even though he had to get up at an ungodly hour to make his flight.

  You’re not jet-lagged. Count your blessings. Although that cup of coffee wouldn’t go amiss. Even instant would do.

  No drummer, no luggage, no money. His parting words with Seth had been bitter—because what kind of a drummer gets drunk two days before a concert and breaks his arm at a party?

  He turned on his phone, resolved to swallow the massive roaming charge and call their manager with a plea for help. As soon as his screen lit up, however, a new text came in.

  I am here for you.

  Adam could’ve cried with relief. Finally, after the nightmare of the last two days, with the money issue and the luggage issue and his severe caffeine withdrawal, his phone showed evidence of his vocal coach’s undying, ever-present support. The phrase was as familiar as it was welcome. Adam wondered whether he and Maurice shared some kind of a psychic connection.