Screwtape was still young, but Vega already had lofty goals for him. She threw a party and muttered about those lovely Jones-Brown girls that recently celebrated their 14th birthdays.
Angelique, Bethany, and Clarissa were all there. Vega was impressed; she saw them grow up, and they turned out so well. Her fingers were crossed for one of them to be Screwtape’s bride.
However, the most important part was Sheila’s birthday party. She didn’t get the attention that Screwtape got, and Vega tried to keep the thought of Sheila’s inevitable death out of her head while the girl was so young. Eva, though always in the art studio, still loved Sheila and felt torn about her angel growing up. Hopefully she’d still keep that adorable little smile.
Sheila blew out the candles, though the party started to dissipate. Most of the guests left, and even the housemates were busy with caring for Screwtape, reading at the library, or in Harwood’s case, going through the red tape at City Hall after learning that Julienne named their third daughter Chiquita.
With a new world of opportunity opened up for Sheila, she decided that it was time to paint at the fire station. Or Vega decided that for her; after all, Eva wasn’t getting any younger.
Vega wasn’t getting younger either, and she gave Wei some of her invigorating elixirs and gave him instructions on catching special fish late at night. At the cemetery. Wei was wise and mature, so could a mere cemetery scare him?
The answer was yes. Something about old age did that to a man.
Screwtape’s toddler days were coming to an end, and the household would be spared from his tiny set of lungs.
Though he was still crawling, which Vega had to rectify in the best way she could: tell Harwood to stop hanging out with Julienne and their three or four daughters all day and get Screwtape on his feet.
Her little boy was a fast learner, and was soon steady on his tiny feet. It made Vega so happy to see him chattering away with the adults of the house, or taking his wobbly steps through the halls. It was just the perfect age.
Unlike poor Nick, Vega was going to miss having a toddler. It marked plenty of bad things, mostly the passage of time and one very big failure.
—
They call them ops for short. They are small tasks that each immortal must do to prove their proficiency in a skill. Vega hoped that someone in Twinbrook would ask her for five elixirs, or even for a handful of mandrake roots, but nobody wanted either. She had to do six such tasks before she could become immortal, and it seemed hopeless enough for her to beg a man she barely knew for advice.
“Isn’t it awful when you have no ops?” she said to Marc Brandt with her usual grumble. All she knew about him was that he could paint, and for Vega, that indicated that knew something about dynasties that no one else did.
“When you have no what? I don’t know who you are, and since I live across from Officer Goode-”
“Please Marc, what can I do to prove myself?” The desperation was clear in her voice.
“Wait, weren’t you the amateur psychic at Summerfest last year?” Marc asked.
“I was the only one.”
He glanced off to the side, his form of apology. “Thanks for the advice about quitting the military. Best decision I ever made. Your foresight might be useful, so why even worry?”
“I just feel time slipping away.” But there was a solution under her nose. Perception, premonition, intuition; Vega had all those things, far more than the average plebe.
Officer Sargeant immediately accepted Vega’s application for a private investigator. It wasn’t a job that held the most appeal for Vega, but she had to accept it. Being a PI was her only chance if she wanted to be immortal.
It all became more real as she watched her little Screwtape grow up.