No matter how hard I tried to push it aside, it was yet another thing to keep me up at night. That, the fear of a gentry attack, and my own pining for my Otherworldly lands continued to wake me up sporadically. I spent my days exhausted, having to nap a lot in the afternoon to make up for what I missed when the rest of the world was sleeping. One night, about a week after Volusian’s visit, something else startled me out of sleep, though I couldn’t readily figure out what it was.

I lay there in the dark, panicked, stretching my senses to see what had made me wake up. There was nothing magical around, nothing out of the ordinary. I stayed awake for some time, listening and waiting, but still found nothing. I had finally allowed myself to begin to drift off again when a small pain in my pelvis brought me back to alertness. It wasn’t the most uncomfortable thing I’d ever experienced, but it certainly got my attention. A lot of the muscles in my abdomen and back tightened as well, and I caught my breath, waiting for it to pass. After several seconds, it did, and my body relaxed.

I rolled to my other side, wide awake now. I had no clock in my room and couldn’t say for sure how much time passed, but eventually, I felt that same muscle seizing and pain, only slightly more intense than before.

“Crap,” I said aloud.

I eased myself out of bed and turned on the light. I found some drawstring yoga pants that I put on with the oversize T-shirt I’d gone to sleep in. Trudging down the hall, I made my way to Candace and Charles’s bedroom door and knocked. She opened it in about five seconds, an athame in one hand and a gun in the other.

“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately, peering behind me.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think I might be in labor.”

“Has your water broken? Are your contractions more than five minutes apart?” Before I could even muster an answer, she turned and yelled, “Charles, wake up! Just like we practiced!”

And to my astonishment, it appeared they really had been practicing this. I was glad someone had because I certainly hadn’t. Most of what I knew about childbirth came from TV, when people would boil water and make bandages out of sheets. I was pretty sure modern medicine had advanced past that, but I hadn’t bothered taking any sort of labor class. There’d been too much else going on, and I figured I could always do it “later.” I’d kept telling myself I had plenty of time. In fact, that was the problem.