"Really?" A smile burst onto her face. "Oh, that's wonderful. I'm so pleased." She eyed me. "You two are going to have to have that wedding soon if you don't want to be showing."

"Oh," I said. I hadn't thought about that. "I don't think so."

Griffin raised his eyebrows. "You don't want to get married anymore, doll?"

"Of course I do," I said. "But not while I'm pregnant. That's tacky."

Griffin laughed. So did Beverly.

"What?" I said. "Like every woman on earth, I have dreamed of my wedding since I was a very little girl, and I'm not going to rush it, and I'm also not going to be fat in my wedding photos either. Those last forever."

"That doesn't leave you many options," said Beverly, still chuckling at me.

"We can wait," I said. "We can wait until after the baby is born, and I've exercised off all the baby fat. Then the baby can be in the wedding pictures."

"Actually, I like that," said Griffin. "Because when I was a kid, I always wanted to be in the pictures at my parents' wedding."

"Well, it's not traditional," said Beverly. "We're not traditional," said Griffin.

"But if that's what you want," said Beverly. "Besides, it will give me time to recover from this gunshot. I'm in favor."

I smiled. That was settled, then.

It felt like things were moving awfully fast.

Beverly and Griffin talked for a while longer. She tried to convince us to go home and leave her here in the hospital by herself, but Griffin wouldn't hear of it. He said they weren't leaving her alone. Besides, he figured we were all safer in the hospital anyway. So, there would be no leaving.

Eventually, it became clear that she was getting tired, so we left her to rest.

Christa was back in the waiting room.

She wanted to know all about the baby. "What do you want, a boy or a girl?"

I settled down next to her. "I, um, I hadn't thought about it. A girl would be fun, I guess. But little boys are neat too." I tried to picture them. Both the little girl and the little boy had Griffin's dark hair and grey eyes. They were beautiful.

"What about you?" Christa asked Griffin.

"A girl," he said with finality.

"Really?" I said. "You don't want a boy to teach to be manly?"

He snorted. "Who says I'm manly?"

"You're very manly," I said. I leaned over and kissed him.

"Eww, get a room, you guys," said Christa.

"Anyway," I said, "since when did you know this? You said you didn't think about having a baby."

"Yeah, I kind of skipped over the baby part whenever I thought about it," he said. "I always thought of the kid as being like three."

"Who you were teaching to shoot guns," I said.

He laughed. "Stop picking on me, doll."

"Why do you want a girl?" asked Christa.

He shrugged. "Don't know. A boy would be cool too, I guess."

I drew in a long breath. "I can't believe this is actually happening." My life was moving at the speed of sound lately. I wanted a chance to breathe, but I had a feeling I wasn't going to get one anytime soon.

Christa fell asleep after a while. She'd been so worried about her mother, and now that she was relieved, she seemed exhausted.

Griffin said I should try to sleep too, so I curled up on one of the couches in the waiting room. But I couldn't do it. I kept thinking about the fact that there was some other person growing inside me. It was part of me, and it was part of Griffin, but it was also itself. A completely different being.

It made me feel sort of awed and excited.

But it was also kind of creepy.

Whenever I closed my eyes, I couldn't help but feel like I'd been invaded, that I was going to be taken over by the thing in me.

I tried to tell myself it wasn't a thing. It was a baby. I should like it. I should want it.

I did want it.

I didn't want it to grow in me, though. It freaked me out.

Eventually, I couldn't stand it anymore. I sat up and opened my eyes.

Griffin was across the room, staring listlessly at the news on TV. He turned to me. "You okay, doll?"

There was an element to his voice I didn't think I'd ever heard before, a deeper kind of concern and respect. I liked it. It made me feel sort of fuzzy all over. "I'm..."

How could I tell him that I was terrified of being pregnant?

He crossed the room and sat down next to me. He pulled me close.

I snuggled into the crook of his arm and chest. "I'm scared."

"I know," he said. "Everything's pretty scary right now."

"I didn't mean about Marcel, although that's scary, too," I said. "I meant about... being pregnant again."

"Yeah, I get that," he said. "It's a big deal, having a kid. Our whole lives are going to change, and who knows if we'll even be good at it, and what if we're pregnant with the bad seed or something?"

I giggled. "The bad seed?"

"Don't laugh," he said.

"What is that?"

"It's this old black and white movie about these people who adopt a little girl. She was nearly killed by her father when she was a baby. And then she starts killing people, because killing is genetic."

"Killing isn't genetic," I said.

"How do you know that?" he said.

"Besides, it's not like we kill-" I broke off.

"Yeah," he said quietly.

I reached up to stroke his chin. He hadn't had a chance to shave, and now his chin was p.r.i.c.kly. "Griffin, we aren't going to have the bad seed. We're fine."

"I hope not."

But since he had irrational fears, it made me feel a little better about sharing mine. "That isn't what I mean, anyway. I think we'll be fine after the baby's born. I'm afraid of... being pregnant."

"Is that scary?"

"There's something growing in me."

He laughed.

"Griffin, it's not funny," I said.

He kissed the top of my forehead. "You're really freaked out about that?"

"It makes me feel weird," I said. "I know I'm supposed to be all glowing and stuff, but instead I feel like... an alien vessel or something. I feel invaded."

His voice was a soft rumble. "You said something like that before, when we were arguing. I thought you only said it to hurt me."

"No, I don't want to hurt you. Does my saying that hurt you?"

"Well, I mean, if you feel invaded, I'm kind of the person who did the invading, aren't I?"

I looked up at him. "No. I don't think that. It's not your fault. I mean, the, um, invasive part was really fun."

He laughed. "I'm glad you still think so."

"I just don't feel like myself. I feel... like I'm nothing more than an incubator or something."

"Doll, no one thinks that." He disentangled from me so that he could look at me in the eye. "Are you saying this because you don't want to have the baby?"

"I want to have the baby," I said. "I just don't want to be pregnant with the baby. And I don't want to have to go through labor. That scares the h.e.l.l out of me. I'm bad with pain. I really don't like it."

"Well," he said, "I don't really know how to fix all of that, but I can at least rea.s.sure you a little bit about the delivery part."

"What?"

"I was there when Beth had Dixie," he said. Beth had also been an a.s.sa.s.sin at Op Wraith. She and Griffin had escaped together. Tragically, she'd been killed last year. "And she said it wasn't that bad."

I made a face. "It wasn't?"

"Well, I think the serum helps a lot," he said. "Cause it heals you so fast? Like your body kind of can handle all of it a lot better?" He shrugged. "She did it all by herself, at home in the bathtub. I was supposed to help, but I kind of freaked out when I saw a bunch of blood, and then while I was recovering, it was over."

At home? In a bathtub? "Why didn't she go to the hospital?"

"We were trying to keep a low profile," he said. "And she didn't have insurance or anything. We didn't want Op Wraith to find us."

I felt a little horrified. "Do I have to deliver this baby in a bathtub?"

"No," he said. "I'm not saying that at all."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Look, doll, you don't have to go through with it if you don't want," he said.

I shook my head. "I don't want to have another abortion, Griffin. I told you that already."

"I don't want you to be scared," he said.

I squared my shoulders. "Maybe I have to be. Maybe that's just part of it. Your mother said that we'd never feel ready, didn't she?"

"If you're afraid, though, then you're suffering and-"

"Lots of women have babies," I said. "Heck, I think most women do. And if everybody else can do it, I can do it too."

"Are you sure?"

"No," I said. "But maybe it's okay that I'm not. I mean, maybe we're going to worry about weird things. Like you're worried about the bad seed. Maybe it's normal."

He pulled me back into his arms. "Nothing about us is normal."

I laughed a little. "Maybe that's okay, too, though. Because normal is boring."

His hand moved over my stomach, resting against the small curve of my belly. I felt emotion swell within me at his movement. I wasn't sure why it was so powerful. It was only a simple motion. But I suddenly felt protected and cherished and loved so deeply. It was heady and intense. I closed my eyes and leaned into him. We were bigger than ourselves. We'd made something together.

"You're not an incubator," he murmured into my ear. "You are my sweet, beautiful doll, and I would do anything to make you happy."

I smiled. My voice was quiet too. "It doesn't feel so scary somehow right now."

"No?"

"No, I think it's easier when I'm close to you. I think if I have you with me, I can handle it."

He sighed softly, kissing my neck. "Is that why you did it, doll? Because you were scared like this, and I wasn't there?"

"Yes. Haven't you been listening to me?"