The few snags that hold back the apartment renovation take some time to overcome; Lilith fights the red tape necessary to buy the building as Eve deals with hiring workmen willing to work at night so that she and Adam can supervise the project. In that interlude all three of them spent time making plans . . . plans that include travel, investment and sweetly enough, pleasure.
"Travel, oh the freedom to travel!" Eve smiles. "Out of all the joys you've brought us, this freedom is truly the greatest, my delight."
"Travel with some restrictions," Lilith amends, but Adam can see she looks pleased herself. "Still, it's an improvement I'm sure, and with the two of you as guides, a lot more fun."
"We can do the Greek islands," Eve suggests.
"Lesbos?" Adam offers up without hesitation, making Lilith blush and Eve chuckle.
"Behave yourself my darling, or you may incur the necessity for us to correct you," Eve tells him in an indulgent tone. "You're getting very saucy these days."
"Nights," Adam can't help himself now, and flashes one of his rare grins at them from where he's lounging on the floor. "And I blame the present company."
"I'm a good girl," Lilith protests. "Mostly."
"Mmmmm. Debatable," Adam murmurs, earning a blush from her.
Eve slips her arms around Lilith and hugs her. "That one's definitely on his way to smacked bottom town."
Adam suppresses a little sigh of pleasure, and does his best not to show his delight, although it's difficult. He pretends to be interested in something on the carpet. "You don't frighten me," he taunts them both, and they shoot him knowing looks.
"Oh we don't intend to frighten you," Lilith assures him. "It's going far beyond that. You just lie there and think about what you've done, you."
"I regret nothing," Adam shoots back, adding, "well, beyond that brief infatuation with zydeco in late Thirties that is."
"As well you should," Eve tells him with a delicate shudder. "I don't think we'll ever be permitted back in the Big Easy."
It's Kit who brings it up. Adam has taken to visiting him on Friday nights, leaving Eve and Lilith to indulge themselves in whatever takes their fancy—shopping, academic debate, astronomy, spa nights—and sharing the hours with the older man is a comfort.
Kit is good company, and despite a few differences of opinion, Adam likes talking with him. It's clear that they share more than just affection for Eve between them, especially when Adam puts one of Kit's ballads to music, playing it for him in the quiet lull at the café.
"Marvelous," Kit tells him, clearly moved. "I can see why Mistress Eve keeps you around."
"I earn my keep," Adam responds lightly. "And if anyone tells you that one man can't serve two mistresses, it's a load of bosh."
Kit grins merrily. "Nobody loves a braggart, young Adam. Take it from a man who found that out the painful way in 1593. By the by, which of you intends to keep the blush of Mistress Lilith abloom?"
Adam strums a few chords before answering. "Neither. The lady's not for turning, apparently."
"Ah," Kit murmurs in a gentle tone.
Adam looks up from the guitar, feeling a pang of regret. "She's . . . considered it, of course. She knows all the advantages and disadvantages but . . . ."
"She's afraid?"
"Worse, she's pragmatic," Adam replies. "She knows there are matters for us that require someone who can move about in the daylight, and because there are, Lilith won't consider . . . the alternative."
"Alternatives," Kit corrects. "There are more, you know."
Adam glances at him. "Three: Alive, dead, and us."
"No," Kit shakes his shaggy head. "There is a via media as well, although the process is dangerous—more so than becoming as we are."
Something stirs in Adam's memory; a discussion centuries ago with a Balkan count. "The half-ones? I didn't think they existed anymore, that anyone even knew how to . . . produce one."
"It's arcane knowledge," Kit agrees slowly, "Risky too. But those who survive have the best of both worlds, or so the belief goes. Able to walk in the sun and pass as living, yet in the night as fast and strong as one of us on the good stuff."
Adam considers this. "So why aren't there any of them out there?"
Kit gives a sad smile. "Because there are so few of us, dear boy. It takes only one of us to make another, but to make one of them requires two."
They say little more on the matter, but Adam ponders the option for the next several days, wondering if Eve has even thought of it. When Lilith heads off to the hospital, right before he and his wife bed down for the day, he asks.
Eve sighs. "Yes it occurred to me," she confesses. "It was one of the first considerations I had when you told me of Lilith. But darling, it's so very dangerous. I've only participated in the process twice, and only one of those was successful. Barely, I might add."
Adam curls himself around Eve. "Tell me how it's done."
She's silent for a moment, and he waits, cradling the long, pale form of her body, aware that the memories are troubling her.
Finally Eve speaks. "It's a bit like the usual process . . . drinking the good stuff and being drunk from, but it can't be the same person. One of us would have to drink from Lilith, letting our genetic material seep into her, and then she would have to drink from another of us so that the two strains would weaken each other. A sort of horizontal genetic transfer, allowing Lilith's human DNA to accept ours, integrating it into her own."
"Rather like a vaccine," Adam notes. "A weakened version of . . . us."
"A bit," Eve agrees, "although those of us making the attempt ages ago didn't fully understand the process, and there were several complicating factors involving incompatible blood types. There's where part of the danger lies, my love. Lilith isn't able to type us: we have no good stuff of our own until after we drink, and when we do, it's possible it changes within us."
"So you're theorizing that even if I drink O negative, it may not stay O negative once it's in me," Adam murmurs.
"Precisely," Eve nods. "We have our preferences, and it's easy to apply Occam's Razor to assume that our preferences were our types back when we were alive, but it's not provable. Therein lies one of the huge risks, Adam."
He sighs. "Damn."
"Yes. And if it doesn't work . . ." she trails off and shudders; Adam instinctively tightens his arm around her.
"Shhhh-"
"If it doesn't work," Eve persists, "Then Lilith will die, poisoned by the wrong blood type. Or something else—the turning has a hundred different possible problems which is why I rejected it almost as soon as I thought of it. I won't put her into that sort of danger, Adam. I can't. WE can't."
He's silent a long time, feeling torn between the frustration and the fear and yet a deeper truth is there, a truth Adam has learned in dealing with Lilith.
"We can't," he murmurs, "but we can't deny her the option either, my love. If I've come to understand anything about our mutual wife, it's that she makes her own choices. She should be allowed to make her choice on this too, Eve."
He feels her turn in his arms, her dark eyes locking on his. Adam swallows. "I know, I know—I don't want to lose her either, but she'd be furious if she thought we were treating her as any less than one of us."
"She's not less, she's alive, and fragile!" Eve blurts. "Oh Adam, the living are so susceptible to everything! It's all I can do not to worry every time Lilith goes out!"
It's clear from the anguish in Eve's voice how much she's come to love Lilith herself, and Adam pulls her close, comforting her.
"I know, I know," he sighs, "but I'm right about this; we must tell her that there is another option and let her choose."
"Choice," Eve mutters. "Mine was forced and yours taken away; between us we've got very little experience with choice, my love."
And because it's true, Adam says nothing.
-oo00oo-
That night Lilith brings home a beautifully bound leather journal, the vellum pages creamy blank and presents it to Eve, smiling.
"Today is your birthday," she announces.
Eve gives a little laugh. "Really? And how did you decide that, my angel?"
"The stars," Lilith tells her proudly. "I remembered what you told me about what you saw in the night sky back when you were a child and checked the constellation positions against Barnard's star for a rough date. I'm not going to reveal your age, but you said you were born in the spring, and today is as lovely as any to celebrate it."
Adam watches as Eve takes the journal, her pale hands stroking the cover. "Lilith," she sighs, and her smile flashes out. "You've made this ancient woman feel-"
"NOT ancient," Lilith interrupts. "Timeless. You've got stories to tell, Eve, and I want you to share them; that's what the journal's for. Write your life, weave your magic there, all right?"
It's in that moment Adam sees Eve struggle, sees her realize that the truth truly is the only right course of action here.
"Lilith," Eve begins, shooting him a glance. "Adam and I have something to tell you. Something you need to know in regards to what we are and what you are. About the middle choice."
Lilith looks from her to him, smiling crookedly. "You mean becoming Dhampir? Yes, I wondered if you two were ever going to bring that up, you luftmenches."