So it was a very loud and large birthday dinner at which Isabella found herself just a few hours after settling in New York. Though slightly jet-lagged, she was also working on her wine and hoping to be slightly tipsy, though the idea of being affected before the first course was wholly embarrassing and she refused to let that happen. But it was very good, very expensive wine inside of a very big, very expensive Italian restaurant, and with no one present under the age of twenty one, the conversation was becoming colorful after only ten minutes of exposure to it all.

It was Isabella's ninety-seventh birthday, and if that didn't call for inappropriate behavior in a public setting, nothing ever would.

Until she hit one hundred.

"I would just like to say that nothing is a greater gift on my birthday than to be sitting near men so much older than I am."

"Until you remember that your son--and that son would be me--just turned seventy five."

"I knew I should have crossed my legs when you wanted to be born."

Alice snorted so loudly that between covering her face and trying not to laugh more, she turned beet red.

Hannah arrived at Fusion Blues, ready to spend another night playing her music to people who were only halfway listening. It didn't matter to her whether they listened or not. The point was the playing of it.

( Prelude )

“Shh. Papa’s working on his Confounded Podcast.”

Tate didn’t seem to care, wiggling in her bouncer on the kitchen table. Fists balled at her face, legs gently kicking, a coo here and there when she could spare the time, she was the picture of perfection, in Alice’s opinion. Tate seemed to agree, and every time she was administered her dummy, spat it back out again with a likely artificial grin.

Upstairs, Robert was working on a lecture and attempting to master technology he didn’t understand. Downstairs, Alice was washing dishes by hand, without any technology at all, except running water.

“I never made your brother wash dishes,” she was telling her daughter, who had four out of five fingers in her mouth and was gumming them without paying attention. “In fact, I never gave him any chores at all. Oh—well, no, I once punished him by making him clean his room for the first time in his life, but I felt so guilty that I made him pizza.”

( Tate had nothing to say, but had her eyes fixed on her mother. )

She was crying when she got there, which was something of an accomplishment, as until she got into the taxi, she didn’t know where she was going at all. To a shop, she thought, and then quickly had to change her mind, and the first thing that sprang to mind was the person who had lately been occupying it.

Isabella missed Ian, and it was all that she expected it to be, all that she put off for two years. She never wanted to think of him again. Andy was inevitable, having been there with her for a year of the two. Andy was inevitable, as she shared her life directly with his for fifty years, and twenty more deceased. Ian (and behind him was no shortage of other people) was preventable on the grounds that he wasn’t there with her now, and hadn’t been there with her for a significant amount of time.

She really should have figured it out before it happened. The longer without him, the more pressing his memories would become, until she would think of him on the same level as Andy, and all of her attempts to weakly construct a new life for herself would be in vain.

She thought of it as she told the driver to take her to the cemetery. She hadn’t been there in life to see him buried, having died almost twenty years before, but she watched his funeral, standing in the large crowd comprised of his enormous family, ignoring everyone easily.

( The funny thing was that Ian was already quite dead and thus Isabella had already talked to him. )

On Mondays, Fusion Blues was closed. It gave the staff a chance to get over their hangovers and to have a sort of weekend for themselves. For Hannah and Nicholas, it was their night. Nicholas spent it with Hannah without fail, and that made Hannah feel special. Like she was more important than his random dates with random women, because his one actual night off, he was with her.

Hannah was stretched out on her velvet sofa, watching the late spring breeze flutter the curtains that shrouded her open windows. Her apartment was small, but quite nice. She was glad that Nicholas never asked her how she could afford it even though he knew exactly how much money she made. Hannah didn't want to explain the Grays to Nicholas. They were the one thing in her life he didn't know about. Couldn't know about. He wouldn't believe her anyway, he would have her committed for letting people feed on her blood, and he might even have them arrested for taking the blood. It was her secret and it had to remain that way.

Hannah looked sideways at Nicholas, who was nursing a beer while flopped on one of her chairs. The yellow one. Hannah was quite fond of outrageously coloured furniture. "What are you thinking?" Hannah asked, a small smile gracing her lips.

The jazz club, Fusion Blues, was located quite near the French Quarter in downtown New Orleans. It was on Burgandy Street, which made Hannah smile. She was quite fond of telling people, while tending bar, they should be drinking burgandy in honour of the club's location. She tended said bar three nights a week, and played in the club's house jazz band a further two nights. She would have preferred making music every night, but that wasn't yet in the cards.

( Yin and Yang )

[May 3; consequently when I started writing this, too.]

Robert had four things: a sleeping wife, a sleeping son, a newborn daughter, and a prism.

Of course, three of the four things weren't really things; three of the four things were his family, and two of the three were fast asleep. The first was in bed, red curls obscuring Robert's view of her (perfect, beautiful) face. The second was asleep on the chair he'd been in for the past ... well, the past while, anyway, Robert wasn't about to shift to be able to see his wristwatch or pocketwatch either one, and the clock on the wall was blocked by a monitor.

( The third of his family was the one Robert would've expected to be asleep, perhaps, but no – little day-old Tate was awake in his arms. )

“Hi, Mummy. How’s my baby?”

“Sleeping like a little angel.”

“She wasn’t any trouble?”

“No, sweetheart. Not at all. Where’s Robert?”

“I’ve sent him ahead. Is Auntie asleep?”

( Yes, I think so. )

Tate was asleep.

It was eerie.

Not, of course, her sleeping, but of how she looked, and how she felt to hold, and where she was.

The Surrey house for the weekend, so Anne could show off the family’s house to the first tourists of the season. Isabella had gone with Alice in order to visit Anne, and they had spent the whole day chatting as though not a day had passed since the 40s, when Anne was as young as Isabella looked now, their ages separated by only four years.

Isabella had bitter feelings for the mansion, which had never been a real permanent home to her but had served as a shelter during the war and a shelter during the war on their family. Alice was born here, and looked a great deal like the two week old infant Isabella was babysitting so her parents could spend a night at the films.

( She didn’t mind babysitting. )

Alice went downstairs because she was hungry. Or thought she was hungry. It felt like hunger, but she didn't know half of what was going on inside her. So she made a sandwich while Robert was upstairs (doing Alice-didn't-know-what), and wandered (refused to think of herself as waddling) into the sitting room. And there she sat. And there she ate. But within three minutes, the sharp hunger pains felt like indigestion, and the indigestion felt, even twenty five years later, very familiar and very not like indigestion at all.

Tate was due in less than two weeks (on Fabian's birthday, in fact), so it wasn't as though Alice was unprepared for the sudden onset of contractions--it was that the sudden onset of contractions hurt like a bitch, and she couldn't finish her sandwich.

But she could yell for (at) Robert, because that was easier than yelling at the sandwich, and would probably get her to a hospital sooner.

But she also needed her mother. Her mother, who was in London with Cary for his birthday.

Deep breath.

"ROBERT!"

Takes place the first week of March.

It began as most things usually did, with a moment of silence followed by the call of Alice's voice as she said, "Robert! Are you ready?"

Some amount of years had passed (twenty five of them, in fact) since the last time she had called after Robert so that they could go to childbirth classes. She had supposed, for a short while, that she wouldn't need them again, but it had been some amount of years, and she had only ever given birth once, and with all of the stress since Fabian had long outgrown his nappies she supposed it might be nice to refresh her memory, after all.

So she dressed, feeling rather too round to leave the house so close to her usual popcorn and film before bed, and stood by the door, and let Tate have her way with all of the organs within reach of her unborn feet and fists.

Alice would need a pit stop just to get to the car.

"Just a moment!"

( Robert had been trying to find the right tie. )

"So, we have time," Isabella was saying, being perfectly level and reasonable and serious, because this was a topic in which she took great interest. "Five minutes, maybe, if you relax enough."

The London Library was the world's largest lending library. They would happily announce it if you asked them, if you looked at their website or their brochures or gave their hotline a call. The thing about that, though, was that the world's largest lending library had a tendency to attract some of the world's largest crowds. People from all walks of life, and the only thing they needed to have in common was that they wanted to read.

Katie Cross wanted to read the London Review of Books. She loved the LRB; she loved its personals, too. They made her laugh. She'd thought once or twice about writing one but could never come up with anything clever enough. Nor was she sure how she'd handle any responses. Either way, the section itself made her laugh; she wondered, sometimes, who those people really were. She never wrote because she didn't want to pay for postage.

( So she sat at a table and she read the March issue of the LRB, mostly tuning out the people around her because she was afraid of them judging her. )

this is a friendly neighborhood placeholder with what may or may not be the right date that was previously cut off at "fri". sorry 'bout that.

Alice had stopped pacing, which was quite nice for Charlie's nerves. He had called Scott an hour earlier and both brothers were keeping their eyes trained on their sister, if only because she was their sister, and they were nothing if not protective (and often cruel).

So when Alice fell asleep on Scott's shoulder, Charlie was left alone to think through things, as talking through things would wake her up, and he didn't want to wake her up. Ruth would yell at him.

But it was awfully difficult to think through things when the person to discuss them with was utterly unconscious, so he took a nap, too, and when he woke up, Alice was pacing again.

"Al, come here."

"What?" she asked, stopping still (and swaying a little as her center settled).

"We should give John a ring about Elijah."

Alice looked impressed, so Charlie said, "Hey, see, I'm not a total loss to this operation--but what do you think? They know he's here, don't they?"

"I don't know," Alice said, and came back to sit down. "I don't--I don't know. I would assume so. They're his family."

Charlie nodded and got up. "I'll be back, then."

( He wasn't about to tackle this using his mobile. )

It was a nice drive. Very restful.

Admittedly, Lydia's new Irishman had abominable taste in music, so far as a scenic drive was concerned, but Lindsey had quite enjoyed the chance to argue his favorite argument – the merits of proper modern classical music – in his least-used native tongue.

About two hours after they left the outskirts of London, Lindsey drove carefully – meekly, even – through the town of Blackburn, as Ezra sat next to him and fondled a garter belt. Lindsey hadn't bothered asking, even though the garter belt was apparently their road map. Ezra looked troubled, which was a bit sad, but then most everyone had been at least a little sad on the drive up – sad, or motion sick, at any rate.

Ezra directed him further north, and warned him to beware of debris if they went off the road, as – and here it sounded as though he was quoting – it could explode and kill them.

Ezra had clearly never seen the specs on the van. Lindsey didn't bother correcting him. Instead, he kept driving.

"We're almost there," Ezra called back to the rest of them. "I'm still not sure where she is – I don't know this area as well – but I know she's close."

Half the room was pacing.

That might've been an overstatement, but for a room full of seats a lot more of the room's occupants were standing than they had to be. Many of those standing were, in fact, walking. Fabian, whose home it was, was circling around the coffee table, irritating Sully, who couldn't get at his coffee. Sitting next to her husband was Dawn, who had previously had Robert on her other side – he had gotten up to walk also, trailing after Alice, who had been and continued to be standing, like a lost puppy dog.

(Trailing after Robert was his puppy dog, Jenner.)

Bianca was leaning against the standing whiteboard she'd brought. Vaughn was walking back and forth past it. Ezra and Bertrand, at least, were actually sitting – largely because Bertrand didn't want to stand, so they had the loveseat. The larger armchair contained Danny, whose lap contained Lydia. Kita was taking up the other armchair, laptop running, and Charlie and Duckie inhabited the other sofa.

(Ruth was in the kitchen. No one was surprised, and everyone appreciated it.)

"That's it?" Fabian asked, continuing his table-circling walk. "We know it's connected somehow to Burton and Reinhart and them – have they got a name, did you folks come up with one yet? – and yet we don't know where? How many bloody homes –"

"Oh, about twenty," Bertrand grumbled from his seat.

"Not twenty," Cary interrupted, "but close to it. I don't know how the bloody fuck we're supposed to track them down from here! All we've got is what Mrs. ... Doctor ... uh, whatever, Sullivan –"

"– doctor, but 'Dawn' is fine –"

"– dreamed, and that got us pretty far but that's not far enough, is it?" He turned to Alice and Robert again. "You two are sure you can't ... feel anything?"

Robert just raised an eyebrow at him.

Eve's face stung.

That was the first thing she was consciously aware of after she came to – that her face stung, because she'd been hit with something, and shortly after that she felt the bedclothes around her and realized she'd gone to bed, and didn't remember at all when she had done that. Not at first.

( It came to her slowly. )

Isabella had never felt so disgusting and so sore in the whole of her life, and it was a long life. And it was that long life that continued to dog her, acting as a neon sign, attracting ugly moths to her buzzing light. The ugly moths were buzzing about her, now, or else that's how they sounded, far off and disconnected. Her head was throbbing into a neck that could barely move, and she was on her side to give her wings room. Her body was glowing, the whole of her person as inhuman as it could ever be, and it was all because she could not concentrate enough to regain control.

Her body was too hot, her forehead sticky with perspiration, and until quite recently she had drifted out of hallucinations that may or may not have been what she thought, may or may not have been hallucinations at all. She couldn't stand the light--it pierced through her--and she couldn't stand the sound--it beat through her. She kept her hands jammed into her eyes until the eruption of color behind her lids faded away and she saw nothing. And she kept her hands there, except when she had to cover her ears.

( The hallucinations had brought with them a sense of defeat and panic. )