Old Habits

Tish: today is cancelled

Tish

I didn't bring up calling Mel again. I didn't want Conor to get on the phone with how tired he sounded. He took a nap before lunch and then I put him back to bed the second he had eaten six tacos. Mike was more helpful in the kitchen than Stefa was, who could only manage a handful of tasks before hyperventilating and needing to go outside. Jackson was getting better at catching her and being any flavor of helpful, but it did not come naturally to the man. Mike shook his head as Jackson escorted Stefa out of the room for the fourth time this morning, and he continued washing the skillet.

"Stefa is going to need more time than today," he said. "I'm not sure Conor will be ready to go tomorrow morning either, Tish."

"I know," I sighed. "It's a good thing that Jackson bought enough food for us to be here for a week, though I hope we're not staying that long. Mel will start to worry about us, if she isn't already. Who would do that to Stefa? I don't know her at all, but she doesn't seem like she was worth all the effort that someone made to kill her slowly."

"Oh, she is," Mike assured me. "Or was. She told us she had been in a bad way with the hunters, but she had just been sold out and was being tortured for science day in and day out. Conor got her through that. It is my hope that Jackson can learn to help her through this. Conor is more compassionate in nature. Jackson is kind of an asshole."

I snorted. "You're not wrong."

The bedroom door opened; Conor was up again. He looked a little better, but the bruises on his arms were not healing as well as they should have been. He didn't think shifting was a good idea given how tired and weak he felt and I believed him.

"I don't think I can sleep anymore," he admitted. "Can I sit out here with you?"

"Of course," I told him. "Do you want to watch a movie or something?"

He wrinkled his nose and sat down on the couch with a thump. Mike shooed me away with sudsy hands to go sit with Conor. He was cool to the touch and much thinner than he had been in Montana. It had been only four days, I worried. No one should lose weight so quickly.

"Do you have a name picked out for the baby?" Mike inquired, probably trying to think of a topic of conversation that wouldn't worry us more. We had talked about it before, though not with Conor.

"Clara Jean," I said, nudging Conor's side.

He grimaced. "I don't know," he admitted. "This is not something I have spent much of my free time thinking about."

"Even after I asked you to?" I questioned.

He shrugged. "I didn't want to pick something you didn't like."

"What's the baby's last name?" Mike asked.

I blinked; I hadn't really thought about it. Becker-Herrington was a mouthful.

"Probably Becker," I said. "Because if something happened to me, I would want Mel and Ralph to not have any problems.

"Nothing is going to happen to you," Conor told me. "And your whole family is gone. Shouldn't we have a little Herrington?"

"He has a point," Mike said. He set the last plate on the drying rack and came over to sit with us. "I had wondered what kind of hunter you were."

"What do you mean?'

"Hunters are either born that way or made," he pointed out. "Grant was born into a hunter family. Your family was killed, yes? In some ways, hunters are more similar to werewolves than they want to admit."

"You aren't wrong," I reluctantly agreed.

"So if you're last name is Herrington, you'll want something that is less of a mouthful," Mike mused. "Sam is a good name. And it doesn't sound like a tool. Or Matt."

I thought about my dead hunter former friends, not sure I could name my child after them. Mike leaned back after grabbing the remote, flipping through channels as if that was more entertaining than just watching something. Stefa and Jackson came back into the house. Stefa seemed be sharing her despair; Jackson looked more and more worried every time he returned. Conor scooted over and we all crowded on the couch like a bunch of college kids after a long night drinking.

"So this is a bad time to bring this up," Jackson began. "But I'm having a hard time getting anyone to answer the phone. The only people I've talk to in days is the rest of my clan in Canada. But no one else is answering. Not Lacy, not other clans, not even the werewolves I know. No one."

"I could call Peter?" I suggested. "Or maybe we have bad signal out here?"

"We have signal, I'm able to dial through, but I've been sent to voicemail a dozen times in the last two days," Jackson replied. "And Lacy would call me back. You've been talking to Mel?

"Um, no, just texting," I said with a twist in my stomach.

"Can you call them? I would feel a lot better about our staying here if I knew that the apocalypse wasn't going on out there."

I moved to stand, got my phone from the charger and dialed Peter first. He didn't answer, leaving me to deal with his voicemail. I called his office, hoping that maybe I maybe I had simply caught him at a bad time. But there was no answer there either. Jackson's frown looked a little comical on his young face as I called Grant, still unwilling to call Mel if I didn't have to.

But when he didn't answer either, I was forced to call Mel, hoping at this point that the cell grid was down rather than all our people be unable to reach their phones.

"Hello, Tish, what's up?" Mel questioned.

The relief in our cabin was palpable.

"Just checking in," I said. "Are things...fine there?"

"Everything is in hand," she told me. "Do you know when you'll be headed back?"

"No," I admitted. "Maybe tomorrow. If not, then the next day; I'll try to keep you posted."

"I'd say take your time, but you know what I mean, right? I want you two to be safe. And try to keep any more vampire drama away from the house."

"I understand," I replied.

"I have to go, but please call if anything changes with you, all right?" Mel said.

"I will, bye Mel."

I hung up the phone and sat down next to Conor.

"She sounded stressed," Conor noted.

"We're gone and are with three vampires wandering the country," I countered. "Of course she's stressed."

"Yeah."

He didn't look convinced. But regardless of what was going on with Mel, we couldn't do anything for them because we had our own worries to attend.

"Do you want to eat something?" I asked Conor.

"Not really," he said. "I'm a little nauseous. Not from the food, I don't think. Just from being sick. I've never been sick before."

"Well, you're a lucky bastard," I told him.