By evening the party was in full swing, motivating Poesie and Naya to spend the evening on the front porch. They leaned close to each other, speaking in hushed whispers. They wanted to look like they were just gossiping, and they did look that way, but in truth they were cycling through a tautology about sneaking away as soon as nobody was looking.

They sat side by side on the porch swing. It was as well-oiled as papa’s Schiavona from his paladin days, and so it didn’t make a sound as they drifted back and forth. They would be just as silent in the coming night. Or they believed so anyway.

“So,” Poesie said, “what are we going to see?”

She could tell Naya wanted to scoff at her, “not saying a word,” said the blonde. She was swinging her feet back and forth as though testing the temperature of a swimming hole.

Poesie shook her head. “Come on, it’s not as though I won’t want to go if you tell me. I’ll go. I like getting out of the house.”

Naya shook her head. “Nope.”

Poesie exhaled sharply. She tried to imitate Naya, but now she was whipping her legs back and forth quickly, as though eager to run. “Will you at least tell me why not?” Poesie scooted closer to Naya, “pleeease?”

Naya inclined her head. She narrowed her eyes into ivy-green slivers. “If I tell you what we’re doing, you won’t come with me, and you won’t let me go either.”

Poesie huffed, “that... makes me want to know what you’re talking about even more.”

Naya touched the tip of Poesie’s nose with her finger. “Yes, it does.”

The gaggle of adults that had been gallivanting on the porch funneled inside. The girls held still in tense anticipation. Now seemed as good a time as any to run off.

“You ready?” Poesie asked.

Naya grinned, then she flung herself off the porch and started running.

Poesie shook her head and grinned. “Wild ass,” she said, and vaulted herself off the porch. She hit the ground running and rushed to catch up with Naya’s light, flapping skirt.

“Poesie,” said her father’s low voice, carrying heavily across the front yard.

Poesie stopped in her tracks and turned on her heel to face him. Up ahead, Naya did the same.

The most discernible thing on the porch was the burning end of Dom’s cigar as he took a drag. It would have been about halfway smoked by now. He had one hand behind his back. “What do you girls think you’re doing?”

“Uuum,” what do I say? A pared down version of the truth, maybe? “Naya wants to show me something. She can’t say what it is.”

Dom did not respond at once. Blue and gray smoke swirled around him like a weightless mantle.

Poesie blinked. Naya probably did too.

Dom threw something long and heavy at Poesie with all the force of a stone launched from a sling. Poesie held out her hand and the object slammed into her open palm, shocking her flesh and bones up to her armpit.

It was her wooden saber. Poesie clipped it to her belt. She wanted to shake her arm but didn’t.

“For catching that…” Dom paused to puff and exhale again, “and not complaining, you may leave. Do you have your Paladin Call?”

Poesie reached into the collar of her shirt and pulled out a small, ornate flute. It was a three-note instrument issued to many of the citizens of the Divine Crown. It served as the Shade Possession equivalent of a rape whistle.

Poesie inclined her head at her father. He mirrored her. She put the Call back in her shirt.

“Have fun girls,” the older gentleman said. With that he went back inside where he would continue smoking. Hopefully, he would also be distracting mama from their absence.

The girls turned back and Poesie followed Naya back into town. She looked back one more time, to be sure that Dom wasn’t still watching, then she started rubbing her arm.

Those girls, thought Domenico. He shook his head to himself as he went back inside. He shut the door as gently as he could, hopefully so Sharla wouldn’t hear.

There were enough rowdy people in their house, so she probably wouldn’t.

Probably.

Domenico reintegrated himself into the party by heading straight for the wet bar. He placed a chunk of ice into a wide glass then filled it nearly to the brim with equal parts brandy and a special amaretto liqueur that Sharla’s sister Mathilda liked to supply them with. The rich, sweet scent curled up and through his nasal passages every bit as silkily as good tobacco smoke. He spotted Mathilda across the room and raised his glass to her. The alarmingly short woman saluted in kind with her ornate stein.

She was talking with Sharla, who noticed him saluting. Her face became serious and she started towards him from across the room.

Oh, great.

Someone else was in the mood to mix a drink, so Domenico met Sharla in front of the bar. “Darling,” he said, using the tone he always used when he didn’t want her to worry.

Sharla gave him a suspicious glare.

Oooh, great.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Dom,” she said, “that isn’t a happy smile. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Sharla’s beautiful eyes narrowed slightly. “Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly more. She sipped from a glass of wine so red it was almost black. “Where are the Poesie and Naya?”

Domenico started to say, ‘on the porch’ but stopped just short of ‘on.’

Sharla pointed at him with her wineglass finger. “You should be saying, ‘on the porch.’”

When he didn’t confirm they were on the porch she slipped away before he could say another word.

Well, this won’t be pleasant.

Domenico allowed himself a deep sip of his drink before he joined his perturbed wife outside. He communed amiably with his guests on his way out.

He found Sharla sitting alone on the porch. She was staring off in the direction where the girls had gone. Her wine glass was empty now, not even a drop to stain the bottom of the glass.

Domenico sat down next to his wife of fifteen years. He puffed his cigar, then he sipped his cocktail. Sharla plucked his cigar out of his hand and took a puff, then she put it back into his waiting, rigid finger as though it were a smoker’s clip.

They exhaled gray smoke with the same, perfect unison with which they did most everything else.

“Why did you let them run off?” Sharla asked.

Domenico raised both eyebrows, “what makes you think I let them run off?”

Sharla pointed at the porch floor without looking at it. “Your cigar ashes weren’t there earlier, but they are now. That has me thinking you talked to the girls a few minutes ago. You’ve spent most of your time during this party inside.”

Domenico gave his wife a perturbed look that she didn’t have the decency to even look at. He sighed smoke and followed her morose gaze. “Well damn. I’d hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

Now Sharla looked at him. Predictably, she wasn’t happy. “How am I supposed to not notice when my gay daughter runs off with another girl?”

Domenico allowed himself to groan. It wouldn’t improve his wife’s mood, his groaning, but they’d been over this more times than he could recall. “Naya likes boys, darling. The love those two have for each other is chaste.”

“I certainly hope so,” she said, plucking his cigar again for a couple of drags. She always did this. “But I’ve been fooled before. Poesie could be fooled too.”

“Well,” Domenico groaned as he leaned forward, another gesture his wife openly disliked, “this is both surprising and upsetting. I thought you liked Naya.”

“I love Naya,” Sharla corrected, plucking up his cigar and taking another puff, then giving it back again, “I’m just afraid of what she might become.”

“Naya likes boys,” he said again.

“Naya is twelve, she doesn’t know what she likes yet. She may soon find that she likes our eldest more than she can presently admit.”

Domenico gave his wife a long look. She wasn’t looking at him. Her lovely countenance was shrouded equally in gray smoke and her sour mood.

He couldn’t blame her for that. He knew better.

When Sharla had been a budding young woman herself she’d had a close friend named Roasia. They had met in early adolescence and became close friends quickly. They developed that easy intimacy that most girlfriends enjoy and boys tend to be averse to. Casual, friendly touches became gentle strokes, then those gentle strokes became curious kisses, then those curious kisses became knowing applications of ravenous suction. Their relationship had been discreet, of course. According to the Divine Crown, homosexuals were more likely to become Erus–sexual revenants–because such people don't mate for life. Love like theirs could only be conducted in secret.

Then Roasia died. Her autopsy had revealed a heart unusually weary for someone her age. Sharla had wondered if the poor girl had died of homosexual shame. She had mourned Roasia every bit as ardently as the girl’s family.

It wasn’t long before Roasia’s Shade Returned and Possessed an innocent, becoming an Erus. As such a revenant, Roasia found young Sharla the way a pig finds a truffle, remembering the intimacy that had made her feel most alive while living, that which she had with Sharla in gasping, adolescent secrecy. She existed only to harass her former lover for sex, loudly, and openly outside her home. The revenant did nothing else. She couldn’t even recall her own name.

The local paladins found the Erus Roasia and executed her on sight with no resistance, but the damage had already been done to Sharla’s heart and reputation. It was a very long time before her parents spoke to her again.

That had been forgiving of them. Very forgiving indeed, by Divine Crown standards.

Sharla spoke next. “My father thought my and Roasia’s love was chaste as well. We had them fooled. It was easy.”

Domenico gave that statement its requisite silence. “Surely you could see through our daughter’s guise of chasteness then, if it were indeed a guise.”

Sharla didn’t shake her head, but it somehow felt as though she did. “Maybe not. She’s my daughter. It’s hard for me to see all of her flaws. For all I know, she may be the best liar in the world.”

“She can be the best liar in the world and still be honest with us.”

At that, Sharla laughed, and her insincere, dry laughter hurt his heart. He couldn’t think of another time in their lives when her laughter had done that to him.

She sighed. “I wonder if I made her the way she is.”

Domenico leaned back, he took a sip and a puff, then chuckled. “Darling, if you’re suggesting the urge to please women is congenital, I think she’s just as likely to inherit that from me as she is from you.”

A smirk cracked through Sharla’s stony demeanor. She cupped his knee then gently dragged her fingertips across it. A callback gesture to evoke their first date. “That’s a good point darling. Thank you.”

The couple sat in silence for a strong minute. Sharla blessedly left his drugs in his hands.

“Are we really talking about our thirteen-year-old having a sex life?” He asked.

“Yes darling, we’re parents, we don’t really have a choice.”

Domenico grunted.

“I’ll probably regret asking this, but do you know if she’s actually seeing anyone, or is she just identifying as a lesbian?”

Domenico tapped his chin with the shaft of his cigar in thought. What had that girl's name been? “I think she mentioned the name Francesca with some affection.”

Sharla’s eyes shot open. “Francesca?” She demanded. “Francesca Conti?”

“That’s the one!” Domenico said cheerfully.

Sharla looked away, aghast. “Oh lord, give me those.” With that, Sharla snatched the cigar out of his hand and inhaled until it was more of a sliver than a nub, then she snatched his drink and finished it in one swallow. The sliver she flicked into an ashtray on the porch. The glass she replaced into his hand.

Domenico looked at his empty glass. He allowed himself to sigh, even as he felt the expression beckoning his wife’s irritation. “You know darling, we don’t get to choose who we love.”

Sharla sighed with exasperation and bowed her head. “I know darling.” She rested her head on his shoulder and curled up against him. “I know.”

Domenico looked down the street in the direction the girls had gone. The sun had been gone for some time, but the street looked somehow darker now that he’d had this talk with Sharla.

The party went on inside. Their guests didn’t notice their absence for a long time.