Page 28 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

Inside lay a journal that had been soaked by water. It had dried badly. The swollen spine cracked as I opened it. "Margaret was alive in 1847," I blurted. “The way they talked, I thought she was one of their contemporaries.”

Stella leaned over my shoulder. "That's the year from Caolinn's burned page," she breathed.

Next to me, Jean-Marc bent over it the way he'd bent over crossword puzzles since he was nine. "Tell me there's an actual method in there," I prodded as he began flipping carefully through the book. "Or is this just a grieving woman's diary?"

He turned the brittle pages like a man defusing a bomb. “There’s Latin and Greek in here. But I believe there's a method," he confirmed. "I need to decipher it all, but it looks like there are five parts. An anchor of death, an anchor of life, a convergence point where the veil already bleeds, a sacrifice of power, and one she calls le prix oublié. The forgotten price."

Mom read over Jean-Marc's shoulder. "Aidon, you're thinking you'll stand in her place, and you can't," Mom informed him. "You're a son of Hades. The magic will only ever see you as the death anchor, and that pays nothing. It's not your power it wants. It can't even take them. The bill only comes due on the living one."

"Sounds like I'll be the second life anchor. We can’t let Mom do it all on her own. You protect me from infertility, and we’re good," Nina offered before I could head her off. Her chin lifted in the exact stubborn line I met in the mirror every morning. "Remember, I'm a Pleiades too, Mom."

"The agreement was that we would be able to circumvent the price altogether," I cut her off, my pulse already climbing my throat. "We can’t take the risk. You're seventeen. I will burn this journal in the yard before I let it brush you."

"Nobody is doing anything yet." Aidon stepped between us, his hand settling at the small of my back. "We've got to decipher everything, find a way to funnel all of this away from you both. There might be a way to send it to Kaltherax or Orenthiel. We aren’t taking a single line until we've fought to keep the cost off both of you." His gaze steadied on me through the chill. "I'll go talk to my father."

He didn't need to. His father was already coming. “Or he’ll come here,” Aidon muttered.

I felt the Lord of the Underworld's power roll through the house a breath before he stood in the kitchen. All three babies startled awake with hiccupping cries. “Hello, family,” Hades called out as he crossed straight to the living room and lifted Melaina from her crib before I'd finished my own breath.

"Who is frightening my grandchildren?" he demanded. The words had gone low and dangerous even as he bent to coo at Nyssa and Thaniel. Nyssa's little shadow curled trustingly around his pale knuckle.

It still undid me, watching the god who'd merely tolerated me for two years go soft-eyed over the three lives we'd made. "It isn't a who, exactly," I corrected, then made myself lay it all out.

"Aidon wanted to take her place," Mom interjected. “He can't. And the only other living witch close enough to her power is Nina."

His head came up at the mention of my oldest daughter's name. Something protective flickered through that ancient face. He'd taken to Nina and Jean-Marc the same way he'd taken to the triplets. Claiming my older two as easily as if they shared his blood. "There is no way even one hair on your head will be harmed, Nina. We cannot let you shoulder it all either, Phoebe," he rumbled. "I cannot tell you how to move a price like that off the living. But Persephone reads the dead and the dying better than anyone breathing or otherwise. If there is a way around this, she will find it." He pressed his mouth to Melaina's downy head before he passed her back to me. "Do nothing until I send word. And trust no one who comes to this door after dark." With a hug for Jean-Marc and Nina, he vanished as quickly as he had arrived.

Nana, who'd watched the whole thing from her stool with her tea untouched, finally arched a brow. "You know," she drawled, taking a slow sip, "if your father-in-law's going to drop into our kitchen unannounced, the man could at least bring wine."

“I’ll make sure he knows,” Aidon quipped.

“I hate to tell you this,” Jean-Marc began, “but this isn’t everything. It doesn’t talk about how to ward this to protect the ritual before you do anything at all.”

A groan left me. “That’s the piece we will only be able to get from Morrigan. I just know it.”

“Let me text Elena and ask her,” Stella offered, grabbing my cell. Before I could respond, her fingers flew over the screen.

I had barely grabbed a brownie when the cell pinged with another message. “That was fast,” I observed.

The way Stella’s face fell told us all we needed to know. "Everybody keeps warning us off of her, so she is likely going to be a problem," Aidon interjected right away. "It’s your call, Queenie."

There was no choice. We had to get the information, so I dialed the last number. It rang four times before a woman answered. "You'll be the Pleiades, then," she observed. "Ava's very last resort. She does so love to make reaching out to me dramatic. I take it you’re going ahead with your insane plan. What do you need from me?"

"Morrigan," I returned, my pulse jumping. "I've got no idea how to ward the ritual when I create the bridge."

"Ward-craft of this size cannot be shared over a telephone, child," she chided. "Let me come and help before the whole thing curdles into a committee." I traded a long look with Aidon. Ava's dinner-table warning that this woman lied and could no longer help it made my gut churn.

“It’s already become a committee. There's no space at my house, but we would appreciate your help,” I told her, praying I hadn’t just made a mistake.

CHAPTER 11

"Are we sure it's a good idea to let the Morrigan into our house?" Aidon didn't really want my answer. He asked it the way men do when they already know what’s what. He scooped Melaina out of her crib, tucking her against the broad wall of his chest like she'd shatter if he breathed wrong.

My whole chest went stupid and soft watching him. This was a god who'd torn a demon's throat out with his bare hands and gone back to his coffee without a flicker. Here he was, undone by eight pounds of our drooling daughter. He also had a soft spot for my older kids. He’d caved on curfew with Nina twice this month, letting her stay out past the line we'd drawn, crisis or no crisis. He was big and terrifying, yet an absolute pushover when it came to his children.

"She wedged herself into this on purpose,” he continued. “Made herself necessary so she would be included." Aidon pressed his mouth to the dark fuzz of Melaina's hair as his went low and venomous over the top of her head. "I want to be furious about it, and I can't afford to be, because she's the only person alive who can tell us about the ward-craft. That doesn't mean I have to enjoy opening my door to a woman who can't get through a sentence without lying."

"I'm not throwing her a parade either." I dragged the brush through my hair and snagged on the tangles I'd been too wrecked to deal with the night before. I'd showered and never gotten around to drying it, because the triplets had decided sleep was for cowards. If one of them wasn’t nursing, they needed to be held all night. I swear they could feel how tightly we were all wound.