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She had her arm resting protectively over the slight curve of her stomach, protecting the child she couldn’t tell the rest of the Kingston hunters about. If they learned that the father was anything but human…

It was enough of a risk sharing her apartment, even temporarily. Janice sighed, sitting up to look at the man staring out the window. “What do we do, Alex?”

He turned away, giving her a good look at his face. “Take care of the child, I suppose.”

Janice sighed again, pulling a hairbrush through the dark brown strands. “I meant in the short term. I… know you have difficulty seeing things from one day to the next but what do we do now?”

Alex grimaced, running a hand through his hair. “It would be safer if I left you and you married someone human. Not pleasant, but safer. I told you one story, how my kind rarely stay with a human for more than ten years.”

Janice bit down on her lower lip, surveying him. She had used to wonder why so many of Alex’s kind, male and female preferred long hair, now it made sense if many of them had lived before her twentieth century time. “Because it hurts to see the partner… age and die while you stay the same.”

“Not quite the same,” Alex sat down next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “We… change, names, identity. They don’t mean much to one of my family.”

“The Order calls you…” Janice trailed off, hesitantly, unsure of the wisdom of saying it. “Demon born.”

Alex smiled halfhearted. “A minor mispronunciation, one that got stuck with a negative connotation. It’s daemon born. Not demon.”

He emphasized the difference carefully for her. “I’ve followed armies, seen things you couldn’t begin to imagine. Some London hunters say I was the one to burn the city back in the seventeenth century. Not that they’d recognize me or my name nowadays.”

Janice rested her head on his shoulder, drawing both knees up to her chest. “What was it before?”

Alex frowned and then laughed. “My name? Oh, I’ve been called Christopher from time to time. Robin at least once. Even Remus briefly though I didn’t prefer it. Alex is… tolerable.”

He looked away, running a lock of Janice’s hair between his fingers. “I was here when Port Royal was a city. Before the earthquake destroyed it.”

Janice let him muse on that for a minute or two before pulling the lock of hair from Alex’s grip. “Where did your… species come from?”

Species seemed a kinder word to use than kind any day.

Alex shrugged idly. “It’s suggested that our origin came from a few mortal witches, looking to preserve their power. That we were human once. I don’t entirely buy that theory, myself. I’m probably one of the few still alive who knows the truth.”

“And you’ll tell me?” Janice couldn’t help feeling a flicker of hope and intrigue at the prospect.

Alex regarded her for a moment, wariness replacing ease on his face. “We were never human to begin with. Those ancient witches might have called upon my kind but they never had the mastery, later tales say they did. Potent, yes and skilled but creating a shapeshifter. That was beyond them.”

He grimaced, running a hand over the flannel bedspread. “You asked me how old I was once. I didn’t tell you then because it didn’t seem right. Now…”

It was Alex’s turn to hesitate and look away. “I’ve seen five thousand years of your history. Egypt, Rome… I was walking those streets before they became archeological curiosities.”

Janice swallowed, feeling trepidation. She’d suspected Alex was old but not by quite that much. He’d spoken briefly of Cierco and Caesar. Hadrian. It made her feel small and easily forgotten. She closed her eyes, fighting the prickling sensation of tears at the corners. “What about our… child? What will she be?”  

“I don’t know, in truth,” Alex’s voice was quiet. “Remember what I told you a month or two earlier? About some of those witches.”

“I remember,” Janice nodded despite the lump in her throat. “A couple could have had your kind somewhere in the family tree. But I wonder what that means for our child? I thought the common perception was that shapeshifters couldn’t have children with humans.”

At least that was the common belief of the Order. The more distance between the average person and Alex’s kind- the better. They weren’t human so it was easier for hunters to attribute bad things to them.

Alex stood again, glancing towards the half packed knapsack lying on the hardwood floor. “It’s difficult but not impossible. One percent, maybe. Or half of that. No one’s taken measure to be sure. I didn’t want to believe it when you said the child could have been mine.”

He spoke without looking at Janice. “If I had to hazard a guess, however. I’d say the child would be human.”

The sound of knocking on the front door had them both freezing, exchanging looks with each other. Janice tossed the pillow aside, sliding the clip of her gun in without fumbling at it. “Get out,”

There could be no sign of Alex’s presence in the apartment. Not if it was hunters at her door. She made her way to the front door, keeping the safety of her gun on and her back pressed against the corridor wall next to the door. Alex was visible out of the corner of her eye, pulling t-shirt and jeans off. Discarding them roughly under the bed before he changed form, taking on the shape of a ordinary housecat. The cat jumped onto the balcony railing and then was gone.

“Janice?”

The voice and the knock that sounded was all too familiar. Janice closed her eyes for a moment, breathing a sigh of relief as she concealed the gun in a convenient basket of artificial flowers on the small table in the hallway. “In a minute.”

It was only her mother come by for an unexpected visit, not a hunter. She unlocked the door, standing aside to let Eleanor inside. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

Her mother wrinkled her nose in distaste before relenting. “Your father worries. After you cut off contact with us so suddenly…”

“It was a mistake.” Janice tried to sound contrite. “I had to get out of something that wasn’t as healthy as I thought it was.”

Well, it was truth, of a sort even if it wasn’t the whole truth. “I’m quit of them now.”

Eleanor looked around the kitchen, the look of distaste returning to her expression at the sight of fast food boxes and takeaway in the rubbish can. “I can see that.”

The older woman bent down and retrieved one of Alex’s t-shirts, lying discarded over the top of the couch. “You know I don’t approve of your relationship with that man of yours.”

“It’s my business, not yours.” Janice retorted softly. What she did with Alex was none of her mother’s affair but it seemed like Eleanor was noticing more than she should have.

“Why is your balcony window still open? I didn’t see Alex pass me in the hallway.”

Janice swore silently, cursing her mother’s perception and her nosiness. “The shirt- that was from a couple days ago. You know I don’t care much about housework. I just forgot to pick it up afterwards.”

She was praying that the older woman would give up and leave sooner rather than later. “I’ll get around to it, I promise.”

All she wanted was her mother to leave so that she could give a decent farewell to Alex. And to pass on his backpack to him. The chances, after all, of him ever seeing his child were remote. Better now than too late.