Page 2 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

"Binx and I have been talking to other familiars for a week. It is unclear what is happening. I didn’t mention anything because I had nothing really to mention." Her ears flicked flat, the small tell that she was annoyed she missed something. "We can confirm fifteen families, scattered from one coast to the other, have seen her. Every one of them is a witch with an infant under a year. And they have all been sleeping poorly. Many of the witches have reported dreaming about the woman with silver eyes.

“Those with familiars tell us the mothers' magic has gone skittish,” she continued. “It's been snapping at things in the dark that no one else can see. Or rather, things no one else can see yet."

My head felt fuzzy all of a sudden as the weight in my chest got heavier. Fifteen women were lying awake at this exact hour, worried about their babies and some mysterious stalker. "I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, so I can protect the triplets," I muttered, and heard how unfair it was even as it left me.

"I didn’t tell you because I had no idea this affected you. Binx and I have been gathering information so we can advise the familiars involved on what was happening and how to support their witches. How was I supposed to know you were having dreams when you didn’t tell me?" Her tail curled over her paws as she looked up at me.

"What's wrong, Queenie?" Aidon's voice came down the hall a step ahead of him. It was rough with sleep and sharpening fast past it.

He filled the doorway a breath later with his hair shoved sideways. The heat of sleep was still coming off him, and the cold that lived under his skin came with it the way it always did when he was agitated. The son of the God of the Underworld didn’t stop being a powerful god because it was the middle of the night and his daughter needed burping.

His eyes went to me, then to Nyssa, then to the black window. "Your fear came through the bond like a hand closing on my throat. What happened?"

"I saw the woman from my dreams. And before you say a word, no, not in a dream." I held his gaze. "She was at the tree line. The lightning lit her up plain as day. And Tarja says fifteen other mothers are dreaming about the same woman. Something is going on."

He crossed the room and ran the back of one knuckle down Nyssa's cheek before his gaze moved to the window. "You haven’t slept more than three hours a night since the babies were born," he whispered. "Twice this week, your magic has flared in your sleep enough that I had to wake you. After Lyra, your mind sees enemies everywhere. It’s building new monsters out of the wreckage of the old ones, because the old ones are gone. You haven’t learned how to stop hunting."

"Don't you be so condescending. That is not what’s going on." The words came out with more edge than I meant. "If you had seen what I just did, you would not be standing in this nursery talking to me about trauma responses. You would be out in that swamp we call a yard, peeling bark off trees with your bare hands. And you know it, so don't stand there and tell me I'm jumping at ghosts when you'd have the whole forest on its knees by now."

That reached him. The wild dark thing he kept on a short leash for the children's sake moved behind his eyes. "You’re right, and I'm sorry. If I had seen it, I would already be out there. But I didn’t see it. I can’t stop thinking about three nights ago when you swore there was a man on the stairs who turned out to be the coat rack. I want to believe that we can live in a world where my mate gets to be tired and frightened without it meaning something has come for our children."

Its honesty took the fight out of me faster than any argument could have. He believed me. He just wanted, with everything that enormous heart of his could hold, to live in a world where there was nothing after us. I wanted to live in that exact world so badly I could have wept for it. The trouble was that I had been in too many rooms where everything was out to get me.

"I wish that were our world. Sadly, I have come to realize, it never will be," I told him, shifting Nyssa so she would not wake. "Because of that, we need to double the patrols. I want them to scour the tree line for any footprints or other evidence."

"Consider it done. I’ll message Tseki to have them out there before the sun clears the trees. I'll even walk the tree line myself." He said it with no hesitation at all.

That was the whole of Aidon in one breath. He would move the underworld to protect us. Being wrong about our children’s safety was a risk he would never take. He lifted Nyssa out of my arms, and before he laid her down, his shadows poured ahead of his hands into the crib. They were feeling along the corners of the bedding, checking what his eyes could not.

"Thank you for checking that," I said to his back.

"I will always sweep her crib." He settled her down and tucked the blanket without turning around. "Come to bed, Phoebe. You need your rest."

He tucked me into his side as we returned to our room. I lay against the long, cold-warm line of him with his arm a bar across my waist. Tarja jumped up and became a heavy comma at our feet. Somewhere past four, the storm finally wore itself down to a drizzle. Against everything I expected, I slept.

She was at the tree line in the dream, the way she was every night. Her coat was heavy with a rain that never seemed to reach her skin. This time, she moved. Not toward me. Her chin lifted a fraction so the silver in her eyes caught what little gray light there was. Her mouth shaped words. ‘Count them before you trust them.’

I came up out of sleep with the gray of almost-morning at the window and the words playing through my mind while I surfaced. Count what? Trust whom? I lay there with Aidon's slow heartbeat under my ear, wondering about what they meant.

CHAPTER 2

"You have whispered that phrase at least a dozen times now. Yes, I’ve been awake with you. Apparently, sleeplessness is the family curse this morning." Aidon propped himself on one elbow behind me. His voice was still thick at the edges with sleep, but his eyes were clear and watchful. "What does ‘count them before you trust them’ mean? Why is it making you hold your breath like you're waiting for a blow?"

"It means nothing, which is the entire problem. It’s what the silver-eyed lady told me. I’ve been trying to make sense of it for hours and can’t. She might as well have spoken in another language." I sat up and dragged both hands down my face. The phrase rattled around the inside of my skull where the dream had pressed it in. "I'm opening the curtains. This room is darker than a tomb, and it’s not helping my mood."

Aidon swatted my behind as I got up. “Sleep would help your mood more than sunshine right now, Queenie.”

Ignoring the desire to snap at him, I crossed to the window. He meant well. Hell, he wasn’t even saying anything that wasn’t true. I would feel better with some sleep. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option with my mind gnawing on the latest threat.

I hauled the heavy blackout fabric back to let the wet gray morning in. My hand stopped halfway through opening them. “What the hell?” I blurted.

“What is it?” Aidon asked before I heard the rustle of sheets.

I lifted a finger and pointed to the child's handprint on the outside of the glass. It was pressed flat against the pane two stories above ground that had been soup for two days. The fingers were spread wide, and the palm imprint was clear. Every line of it was sharp where the rain had washed the rest of the window clean. The print sat untouched in the middle of all the runoff like someone had set it there after the storm passed. Had it been left for me to find?

"Tell me you're seeing this, and I'm not hallucinating. I’m not sure Clio can heal schizophrenia." I didn't raise my voice, and I did not need to.

He was off the bed and at my shoulder before I finished the second syllable of his name. I felt him stiffen beside me. It was a particular ancient stillness that came over him when the predator in his blood took over. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. And it kicked my fight-or-flight reaction into overdrive. The primal part of my brain understood he could wipe me out with the snap of his fingers. Thankfully, he would never harm a hair on my head.