Page 12 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

"That’s all you’ve got? Surely you can come up with a better cover story, Stella." I snorted, laughed, and choked over Lilith’s cheeky response. "Aidon. You may stand wherever you'd like, but if your shadows touch my books, I'm going to kick you out. They’re in a destructive mood, and we have priceless tomes in here."

"I'll keep them to myself." Aidon tucked his hands into his pockets, and his shadows retreated. "Phoebe says you might have information for us."

Lilith lifted a shoulder. “I’ve got a man waiting in my back office whom I think can help.”

Aidon's hand found the small of my back automatically. “Why’d you bring him here? You don’t like him,” Aidon observed while watching Lilith’s face.

“I respect him,” Lilith corrected as she turned toward the door. “Liking him would require a level of recreational masochism I haven’t yet reached. Though this morning is testing my range.”

Stella followed Lilith up the porch steps. “That sounds as promising as a suspicious stain on a hotel carpet.”

Lilith opened the front door and stepped aside. “Dr. August Caolinn is sixty-eight and a folklorist by training. He's an archivist by obsession. He’s the only man I’ve hired who refused a bonus because he considered it a gateway drug to corruption.”

“I already hate him a little,” Stella admitted as she crossed the threshold.

“He’ll know,” Lilith replied, closing the door behind Aidon. “He has the emotional warmth of a tax audit, but his instincts are obscene.”

The house was too quiet. I’d been inside Lilith’s home enough times to know its normal hum. There was always the distant ring of business calls, the footsteps of assistants, and the soft chaos of a woman who ran several operations from one address while knowing where every paperclip lived. Today, there was none of that. The silence was deafening.

“You cleared the house,” I accused as Lilith led us down the hall.

Lilith didn’t look back. “I gave our staff the day off. They didn’t need to hear this.”

“Why did you clear the house?” I repeated, because pretending with Lilith only worked when she allowed it.

Lilith stopped at a narrow table near the hall and set her coffee down with unnecessary precision. “You're so persistent. I cleared the house because I think a dead woman has been texting you. We know infants are being marked by an unknown entity. And the man in my office doesn’t like phones, witnesses, surprises, or being asked reasonable questions.”

Aidon’s fingers pressed once on my back. “Does he know who I am?” Having a god walk into the office would be one helluva surprise.

Lilith finally turned. Her gaze moved over Aidon with the careful respect people tended to use when they understood that the man beside me was not merely tall, handsome, and overprotective. “He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell him,” she admitted. “He’ll know within thirty seconds. Don’t mask yourself for him, son of Hades. He’ll respect the truth more.”

Aidon inclined his head. “I can manage honest better than polite.”

“That’s fortunate,” Stella muttered while dropping her phone into the basket Lilith indicated. “Polite was never your most convincing costume.”

With a chuckle, I pulled my phone from my bag and hesitated with it in my palm. Every nerve in me hated giving up the little rectangle connecting me to the house, the babies, Selene, Mom, Nana. Not to mention every possible disaster that could bloom while I was twenty minutes away. The bundle in my cardigan gave a low pulse of warmth, as if even it had an opinion.

Lilith caught the hesitation and softened. “Selene has my landline, my emergency line, and the number of the private security company across the road,” she assured me. “If something happens at your house, the phone in that basket won’t save your children faster than the people already guarding them.”

“That was both comforting and deeply irritating,” I complained as I dropped my phone into the basket.

“That’s my brand,” Lilith quipped as she opened the door at the end of the hallway.

The room beyond wasn’t what I expected from Lilith or from a man she treated like a necessary infection. It was small, warm, and crowded with old wood and older paper. Cedar shavings and book glue lived in the air. A green-shaded banker’s lamp cast a pool of light over a long table, where a water-damaged journal lay open like something dragged from a river and forced to confess.

The man standing behind it was tall, narrow, and white-haired. He had the irritated posture of someone who had been disappointed by history and most of the living. He didn’t offer his hand. He didn’t smile. His eyes went to me first, then Aidon, then Stella. Lilith did introductions, and he dove right in.

“Lilith tells me you have infants who have been identified by an unknown entity,” Dr. Caolinn stated. His voice was dry enough to scrape paint. “She also tells me you’re not stupid enough to yank it loose without knowing more. I’m willing to call that a promising beginning, Mrs. Duedonne.”

“Phoebe is fine,” I replied as I walked to the table rather than waiting for an invitation. “And if that was your version of a compliment, I’d hate to hear what happens when you’re being rude.”

Stella took the chair to my left before anyone offered one. “I wouldn’t hate it. I’m curious now.”

Dr. Caolinn’s eyes flicked to Stella’s chopsticks, then to her face. “Curiosity gets people buried in footnotes, young woman.”

Stella settled back with a bright, mischievous smile. “I’ve survived worse.”

Aidon remained standing behind my chair, his hand resting on the back of it. Lilith moved to the head of the table as Dr. Caolinn grunted. “Sit down, son of Hades. You’re making the lamp dim.”