The coffee shop had gone warm around us in the way old places went warm.... not from heating exactly but from having been occupied for long enough that the warmth was in the walls now and arrived without being asked.
Someone across the street was selling flowers from a cart. I could see them through the old glass. Purple ones. I didn't know what they were called.
Liliana was still holding my hand across the table.
She hadn't let go since. I hadn't tried to change that.
"Eleanor," I said.
Liliana looked at me.
I had been circling it since she finished talking about the three of them. Not avoiding it...working up to it the way you worked up to the question you'd been sitting with the longest because it required the most care.
"The pregnancy," I said. "I've been thinking about why."
Liliana tilted her head slightly.
"Vampires don't usually," I said. "It's not supposed to be straightforward. The biology isn't built for it the same way. Eleanor knew that. We both did."
