Once the delivery team had cleared and it was just the three of them in the room, Martin held out his hands.

"Can I hold her?"

Sheila smiled softly. "Of course, you can, Daddy."

She passed the baby over. He took hold of her the way he'd been taught, under the bum and cradling her head in the crook of her arm. She cooed and he bounced her softly. Her blue eyes—they would turn green soon, like her grandmother's—blinked up at him but she couldn't see her parents yet, just hazy shapes. She could sense their love, though. The love they had for her and for each other.

It had blossomed naturally during the pregnancy. They'd spent so much time with each other it would have broken them if there hadn't already been a connection between them. He'd cut down on the drinking—just a celebratory drink here and there—and she'd taken the last few months off of work to rest at the doctor's insistence. They hadn't moved in together but Martin had spent the night in Sheila's guest bedroom so often it seemed like they had.

She'd invited him into her bed many times. Pregnancy tended to raise the sex drive, according to their birth instructor. During the last trimester, Martin could surely attest to it.

Their baby reached up and grasped his index finger. He shook it lightly, as if to introduce himself. "Hello," he said softly. "Hello, baby Violet."

"Violet, huh?" Sheila said. They still hadn't decided on a name. He shrugged.

The baby smiled. It wasn't just gas. She liked the name. She felt like a Violet.

"I guess she likes it." Sheila smiled herself. "It's a fine Gaelic name," she joked, and Martin laughed.

Maybe theirs wasn't a normal family. But as Sheila once told him, "normal" was a fantasy. Make-believe.

Another side effect of the pregnancy, other than causing them to reevaluate the things that meant most and casting aside what didn't, was a heightening of the senses. He'd learned that women might experience a heightened sense of smell during pregnancy, some kind of evolutionary trait. What he hadn't expected was for his own senses to evolve.

He'd known, for instance, that Violet would not only survive the delivery but would be born with blue eyes and a full head of hair.

He knew she would grow up strong and empathetic and patient like her mother. He knew she would acquire a love of language like her father. That she would have a fiery temper like Ruby's, be fiercely loyal and brave like Rosalee, and have a deep interest in the human psyche, like both of her parents.

He knew that she would remember the past, but never be tempted to repeat it.

The Savage blood ran in her as it ran in him. The spirit of the Chadrach, passed from Ruby Savage to Rosalee Creemore at the standing stones, black smoke like a snake entering her body at the moment of conception and filling a new soul with life.