Mallory snorted, climbed to her feet. I did the same, and carefully handed Lulu back to her. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

   “Says the woman who out-ate me at my own bachelorette party.”

   “That was more than a year ago. When are you going to stop bringing that up?”

   “When it stops serving my purpose.”

   Mallory just shook her head. “Never change.”

   “I’ll do my best.”

   • • •

   Some children might have shied away from a room full of dozens of humans and supernaturals, from the cheery music and the bundles of balloons that filled the House’s cafeteria. Those children probably hadn’t grown up in a House of vampires, loved within an inch of their lives.

   Those children were not Elisa.

   “Happy birthday, Elisa!” they called out when we entered. She screamed and clapped her little hands together, tried to wiggle out of Ethan’s arms.

   “Okay, my little lemur. Hold on.” He put her on the floor and she dashed toward a rainbow-hued column of balloons that reached to the room’s high ceiling. She reached out a tentative hand and touched the column, watched it wobble beneath her touch.

   She shrieked with joy and touched it again, then tried to drag it away from its column.

   “Just to touch, honey,” my grandfather said, gently taking her free hand. Her face screwed up into angry lines before she realized who’d touched her. And that smile blossomed again.

   “Give your Papaw a kiss?” He bent down to her, leaning on the cane he’d been using more frequently these days.

   Elisa squeezed up her little face, closed her eyes, and leaned in, pressing her lips to his face.

   “She got that expression from you, you know,” Ethan said, putting a hand at my waist.

   I humphed.

   “Good kiss,” my grandfather said. “I hear it’s your birthday.”

   “Ree?” She looked back at me, her official translator.

   “It’s your birthday,” I said. “And do you know what birthday girls get?” I pointed to the giant sheet cake—chocolate with emerald green icing—that sat on a table near the rest of the food, a high chair posed next to it, ready for the birthday girl. Elisa’s eyes went huge.

   “Ree,” she said reverently.

   Ethan smirked at the sound, and settled Elisa in the high chair. And she started immediately squirming for a better view of the cake.

   She was definitely my kid.

   “Ladies and gentlemen, people and . . . other,” Ethan said, glancing around.

   The crowd knew their cue and chuckled just when they should have.

   “We’re here today to celebrate the first birthday of the most amazing girl on the face of the Earth. And we wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you for the support you’ve given us over the last twelve months. We couldn’t have managed it without you, without your love and support. Without your gratuitous diaper changings and willingness to experiment with pink milk.”

   Pink milk was the concoction of blood and milk it had taken us nearly three months to work out. Elisa was a vampire, but she was also a child. We were writing the book on baby vampire nutrition. In the unlikely event anyone else might ever need the book . . .

   I looked at Elisa, who stared happily around the crowd. “But I’m sure you’ll agree that she was totally worth it.”

   “Hear, hear!” said my grandfather.

   “To Elisa Isabel Sullivan,” I said.

   While the crowd repeated her name, which amused the tiny blonde to no end, I lit the candles on the cake. Elisa’s eyes went astoundingly round.

   “Ree,” she quietly said.

   “And that’s all for you, Elisa,” Ethan said. Margot cut a piece of the cake, handed me the plate. Ethan fastened on a bib—much good it would do—and I put the cake slice on the high chair table.

   Elisa stared at it. Gently, I dipped her finger into the green icing, then brought it to her mouth. She grinned and looked at her now-green finger, then dug her other hand into the icing and brought a sticky handful of it to her mouth. But before she dug in, she looked at me.

   “Go ahead,” I said, nodding at her.

   Elisa pushed icing into her mouth, giggling all the while, then dug both hands into the cake again.

   “And that cry of joy at the taste of chocolate pretty much confirms she’s your daughter,” Mallory said, slinging an arm over my shoulders. “I mean, in case the labor wasn’t proof enough.”

   “You just wait until Lulu’s a toddler,” I said, putting an arm around her waist. “There’s plenty of fun in store for you, too.”

   • • •

   We eventually said good-bye to our guests, and the Remains of the Cake (the lesser-known British novel) were finished off by a descending horde of hungry Cadogan vampires. It took two baths to remove Elisa’s skim coat of chocolate, and we were inching toward dawn by that point. She slept like a vampire—lights out at dawn, fully awake at dusk—with naps sprinkled during her waking hours.

   We’d just given her a late bottle when Malik found us in Ethan’s office, sitting on the couch as we perused one of Elisa’s favorite books.

   “Meek!” she said, clapping her hands together when she saw him.

   “Ms. Sullivan,” he said, and she squealed with delight. Probably didn’t know what it meant, but she enjoyed it all the same. “There’s someone here to see you,” he told her, then glanced at us. “Of the shifter variety.”

   Together, we walked into the foyer, found Gabriel with Connor in his arms. Connor’s head was on his father’s shoulder.

   Connor’s hair was as dark and curling as his mother’s, his eyes as blue as a spring sky. His fingers were clutched around a plastic giraffe, and he watched us with baleful eyes and the poked-out lip that said he was unhappy about his trip to Cadogan House.