Born Magic: The Diary of Scarlett Bernard Read online

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  Also by Melissa F. Olson

  The Old World Books

  Dead Spots

  Trail of Dead

  Hunter’s Trail

  Boundary Crossed

  Boundary Lines

  Boundary Born

  Midnight Curse

  Blood Gamble

  Shadow Hunt

  Boundary Broken

  Boundary Haunted

  Bloodsick: An Old World Novella

  Companion Pieces: Stories From the Old World and Beyond

  The Nightshades Trilogy

  Nightshades

  Switchback

  Outbreak

  Other Works

  The Big Keep

  Born Magic

  The Diary of Scarlett Bernard

  By Melissa F. Olson

  Copyright © 2020 by Melissa F. Olson

  Artwork by Abigail Ewbank

  Graphic Design by Elizabeth Kraft

  All Rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever without prior written permission by the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  MelissaFOlson.com

  Part 1:

  Wolves at the Door

  Tuesday, January 1st

  To whom it may concern (but probably Corry and I guess maybe Charlie?):

  My name is Scarlett Bernard, and I am the first null to have a baby in…well, hundreds of years, as far as I know. As I write this, my daughter, Esperanza Jamie Cruz (Annie), is six days old, and to say that she was a “surprise” baby is the understatement of the millennia.

  Wait, let me back up. For as long as I’ve known about the Old World, I was told that nulls are sterile. I think my whackjob former mentor, Olivia, even included it in her introductory speech when we first met. “We’re nulls, magic is real but it doesn’t work around us, we can’t have kids,” was pretty much the whole thing.

  If it had just been Olivia I would have probably questioned it, like I eventually came to question everything else she told me. The thing is, everyone thought nulls were sterile—my cardinal vampire, Dashiell; Kirsten, the most powerful trades witch I know, the few other nulls I’ve talked to…everyone.

  So you can imagine my surprise when I got knocked up after a one-night stand with another null.

  Okay, I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair. Jameson and I may have only gotten one night (well…afternoon) together, but he wasn’t some random stranger. I knew him well enough to be certain that he was a good man. He got mixed up with some bad people, though, and he did some really bad things. He thought it was the right thing to do…well. No need to get into all that.

  The bottom line is that Jameson and I had just one day together before he was murdered. Since then—even before I found out I was pregnant—I’ve given a lot of thought to what would have happened if Jameson hadn’t died, if he’d have come back to LA with me when I asked. Would we have fallen in love? Would we still be together?

  To be perfectly honest…I don’t think so. I hate to admit it, because it’s mushy and gross and that’s just not my brand, but I think a part of me has been in love with Jesse Cruz since the first time he kissed me, three years ago.

  I could be wrong, though. Maybe everything Jameson and I shared—including a baby—would have been enough of a foundation. I’ll never really know, and that’s hard, and it sucks. I’m sure, though, that Jameson would have been a great father, if he’d ever gotten a chance to meet Annie, or even find out I was pregnant.

  Anyway. The past nine months have been absolutely terrifying for me—not just because, hello, pregnant, but because I have absolutely no framework for a null conceiving a baby. Everyone tells me that it’s totally normal for new mothers to feel like they don’t know what they’re doing, but Annie is not a normal baby…well, she is and she isn’t. Basically, my infant daughter, whose interests currently include pooping and my boobs, is going to grow up to be a badass witch messiah. There’s no “What to Expect” book for that.

  My partner, Jesse, has apparently gotten sick of me complaining about this, because he suggested I start a diary or journal or whatever, so there is a record of what it’s like to be a null with a newborn. He even bought me this very fancy notebook, with paper made out of linen or palm trees or something. Whatever. It’s fancy.

  I resisted the idea at first, because I’m fucking exhausted all the time and I don’t need one more thing to worry about. Then Jesse pointed out that someday one of the other nulls I care about might want kids, and it would be really helpful for them to have the guide that I didn’t.

  I super hate it when Jesse is right about stuff.

  So, fine. Every afternoon, Jesse and Cliff, the baby’s daytime bodyguard (more on that later), take Shadow and Annie for a run with our ridiculously overpriced jogging stroller, so I’m going to try to use this time to make some notes for future nulls. I don’t know how long I’ll keep going or what-all I’m going to include, but I’m going to try it. You better fucking appreciate this, Corry.

  I’m kidding. I know you will.

  Scarlett

  Wednesday, January 2nd

  Dear Corry et al,

  Well, Jesse and Cliff just left with the baby and the bargest, so here I am again. I started a load of laundry (how, how does one tiny person with tiny clothes multiply the amount of laundry by like 600 percent?), and now I’m sitting here trying to think about what would be helpful for you to know, nulls of the future.

  Yesterday I wrote about the total surprise of getting pregnant. I guess I should mention that the pregnancy itself was normal…if anyone can call morning sickness, swollen ankles, hemorrhoids, etc “normal.” Annie was born healthy and completely human…which is more surprising than it sounds.

  When I first found out I was pregnant, Maven, the cardinal vampire of Colorado, told me that when two nulls have a baby, that baby becomes a “witchling,” an adorable name for what is supposedly an insanely powerful super-witch. I don’t totally get the science, but if I’m understanding this right, the use of witch magic powers the ley lines, which in turn power all of magic—like the ability for vampires and werewolves to reproduce. So the more witches who practice, the stronger magic is.

  The problem is that witchblood gets diluted over time when witches marry humans, so witchlings are supposed to jump-start the bloodlines…or something. I even got the sense that Maven thinks the whole existence of nulls may be because witchlings need parents who can neutralize their magic until they’re old enough to control it.

  So that didn’t make me feel special.

  Anyway, witches don’t come into their magic until puberty, but Maven once met a toddler witchling who was already using powerful magic. Which is terrifying, if you think about it. I mean, toddlers are pretty scary anyway, so a toddler with super powers is basically a horror movie.

  …wait, am I crazy or is that an actual horror movie?

  Never mind, I digress.

  The point is, as soon as I felt Annie moving in my belly I started feeling for the white-noise buzz of an active witch in my radius, the area of non-magical space that surrounds me. There was nothing (I mean, other than the completely creepy feeling of an independent entity moving inside you, but my OB assured me that it’s supposed to be like that). Annie didn’t feel like a witch in utero, she didn’t feel like a witch when she came out, and she doesn’t feel like a wi
tch now, when she’s a week old. When she’s out of my radius, there’s no sign of magical activity either: no weird telekinesis or invisible wards that go up when she doesn’t want her diaper changed, or anything else that I’ve seen in a creepy movie. I mean, the kid can projectile vomit like nobody’s business, but apparently that’s a human thing.

  Jesse and I spent months worrying about what to do with a powered-up newborn, but magically speaking, so far our baby is a dud.

  (Jesse doesn’t like this joke.)

  For the record, I have no idea what this means. I called Lex—well, Jesse did; for some reason he doesn’t find her scary—and she asked Maven, but the cardinal vampire didn’t know when Annie would come into her witch power, or if she even would. Maybe Annie won’t be a witchling after all.

  God help me, Corry, I hope she won’t. I would never say this to Kirsten or Lex, but I don’t want Annie to be the next coming of powerful witches. The poor kid was already born into the world’s weirdest family situation; she doesn’t need to spend her life being the savior of magic too. I have this dream that she gets to grow up totally normal, totally human, and just…thrive.

  Jesse feels the same way, although we’re careful when we talk about it. We’re trying not to get our hopes up, and neither of us wants to imply that we won’t love Annie as much if she is a witchling. It would just be nice if she gets to choose her own future. As you know, nulls don’t usually get that particular privilege.

  There’s also the danger aspect—hell, I’m literally immune to magic, and I’ve almost been killed by magical beings a hundred times by now. What the fuck kind of mother would want that for her baby?

  I’ll keep checking, though. At this point, as I’m changing diapers and breastfeeding and falling asleep in front of the television, part of my brain is always listening to Annie, waiting for the slightest hint of magic.

  I just don’t know what I’ll do if I find it.

  Sunday, January 6th

  Dear Corry,

  Well, it’s been a few days since I was able to write here. Jesse and Cliff haven’t been running, because we’ve had rain. Rain, rain, rain, for four days straight. You’re in Berkeley now, so I imagine rain is pretty much a constant, but the houses here just aren’t built for…well, any kind of weather, really, other than “hot.” So the rain sounds deafening on the roof of my little guest house.

  Annie hates the sound—she cried the whole first morning—so eventually I dug out an umbrella and we went over to the Big House to wake up Molly…who was delighted, of course. We’ve spent most of the rainy days over there ever since. Molly adores Annie, and the feeling is pretty much mutual.

  I get a bit jealous, in fact—not because Annie prefers Molly (I’m still her favorite, on account of my boobs), but because of how Molly is with her. When she was human, Molly had a ton of younger siblings, and even now, a hundred years later, she’s just so easy with Annie. She holds her and sings to her like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Meanwhile, Jesse and I are both youngest children, and even two weeks in, we’re constantly afraid we’re going to break the baby, or like she’ll do a dolphin twist and flop out of our hands and crash down to the floor. Her little head is so wobbly, and her little body so squishy, and God, she’s just so fragile.

  I said something like this to Molly last week, and she gave me the special amused smile she reserves for when she thinks I’m being particularly daft. “Now you know what it’s like for vampires to interact with humans,” she said.

  She didn’t have to be so smug about it.

  Molly keeps offering to babysit so Jesse and I can get a break, but so far I’ve been begging off. If I’m being honest, I have this impulse to keep Molly in my radius whenever the baby is nearby. It’s not that I think Vampire Molly will suddenly decide to eat my child, but…if she wasn’t in my radius, would she still like Annie so much? Would she be as careful and easy with her? Or would she forget about the baby’s needs and get distracted?

  In a way, I feel like vampires have a sort of reverse-ADD. Human lives move so quickly in this rigid daily schedule; most of the vampires I know can’t be bothered to pay attention. When you live only at night, but you can have an endless number of nights, you’re always outside the human rhythm of life. Jesse calls this Detached Id, because vampires do whatever they want, but most of them aren’t actually invested in anything that’s happening in human life.

  Molly, of course, is very different. I understand that she chooses to be invested in me, to think like a human, and not just when she’s in my radius. We spent a long time (to me) apart, but ever since Oscar, Molly and I have been ride-or-die.

  Sometimes I wonder, though, if she wasn’t hanging out with me and getting these regular humanity boosters, would she still care about me?

  I never used to worry about this stuff, before Annie was born. I mean, I worried about some things, but now I feel like my thoughts are 70% worrying and 30% devising elaborate schemes in which someone else is taking care of Annie for forty-five minutes so I can get some goddamned sleep.

  I wonder if I can blame all the worrying on hormones. You sort of expect to have mood swings when you’re pregnant, but no one told me that breastfeeding leaves you hormonal, too. If anything, I feel more moody now, like my feelings are just an exposed nerve waiting for the slightest prod so they can explode.

  I wish, more than anything, that I could talk to my mom about it. I couldn’t ask her about vampires, of course, but I would love to be able to ask if she felt like this, how she got through the long days of having a newborn, whether breastfeeding made her lose weight or if she was just hungry all the time, like her body was storing up rations to go to war.

  Mostly, I guess I just wish my mom was around to reassure me that everything is normal and I’m doing okay, even if it’s not true.

  Corry, if you’re reading this because you’re having a baby, I hope your mom is around to help you and tell you you’re doing great. If she’s not, or if you guys aren’t on good terms, call me and I’ll tell you. (Same goes for you, Charlie.) Maybe hearing that you’re doing okay will make it true.

  I guess I don’t really know.

  Monday, January 7th

  Dear Corry,

  I kind of remember sleep.

  When you’re pregnant, or if you talk to literally anyone who’s ever had a baby, they warn you about the sleep deprivation. And I’ve gone full nights without sleep before, especially when Jesse and I have worked a case. But I’ve never experienced anything like constant, relentless lack of continuous rest. Annie is only twelve days old, and already I can’t remember what it feels like to sleep for eight hours straight. Jesse and I are basically punch-drunk all the time.

  At first we tried napping in shifts, but we missed each other, and both of us missed sharing the baby’s little “firsts” with the other person. First projectile vomit. First smile in her sleep. First time she woke herself up farting.

  So we’re trying to stay on the same schedule, and we’ve actually got kind of a routine going, believe it or not. Obviously in the afternoons he runs and I write, but in the mornings we have one, if not two, breakfasts together, and then there’s usually a chunk of time when Jesse goes into his office inside the Big House to work and I…well, lately I’ve done very little, because of the fucking rain.

  When it’s not raining, though, I’ve started putting Annie in the carseat and taking her into the back yard in the mornings to throw knives. Wait, that came out wrong. Annie doesn’t throw knives (at least not yet). I put the carseat on the decorative marble bench, and she hangs out and watches me, or naps.

  That probably sounds crazy—throwing knives fifteen feet away from a newborn—but Shadow drapes herself on the other side of the bench, next to the carseat, and I am positive that if I had a seizure or something and sent a knife in Annie’s direction, the bargest would jump up and take the hit. And not just because she’s stab-proof.

  Anyway, I used to be so great with the knives, but I
stopped practicing a few weeks before Annie’s birth, and picking it up again, with all the changes in my body, is harder than I thought it would be. Between you and me, Corry, it’s frustrating to have regressed, to be not as fast or accurate as I was before the baby. Sometimes when I particularly flub a throw, I catch Shadow sending Annie this eye-rolling look, like, “yeah, your mom does that sometimes.”

  (The word “mom” still feels completely weird to me.)

  I tell Jesse that I need to keep practicing because eventually I’ll go back to work, or there will be some other horrifying magical crisis, and I want to be prepared. And that’s all true, but also…I just like it. It helps me remember that I’m capable of doing something other than the duties of a particularly sleep-deprived cow. I’ve got another week or two before my body is ready to do anything more strenuous than a leisurely walk, so throwing the knives is pretty much the only time I feel like a human adult in charge of her own body. Even if most days I’m out there in pajama bottoms with spit-up in my hair.

  What was I talking about? Right, routines. In the late morning I throw knives while Jesse works. He just started a job as a consultant for some new cop show: every week he reads the scripts and give notes on the authenticity of the LAPD. They offered him a buttload of money to come be in the writer’s room every day, but he insisted on working from home. He’s been trying to lower his profile since he and I got together, because you can’t be famous and be involved in the Old World in any capacity.

  We thought he was doing pretty well staying out of the limelight…until this morning, when Cliff knocked on the cottage door to warn us that there were two men out front with cameras.

  For a minute, this scared the living shit out of me, because I thought someone might be hunting Annie— maybe doing some recon for a kidnapping attempt. I was thisclose to sending Shadow out front before Jesse recognized one of them and we realized that they were paparazzi, looking for a photo of Jesse Cruz, supercop.