Page 30 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

Mom was already crossing the floor with both hands out, catching Astrid by the arm and warming the whole room in the process. "Oh, don't mind her. She likes to give everyone a hard time. You're welcome here, every last one of you." She squeezed a shoulder, beamed at the next face down the line, and looked like she'd start hugging in earnest the moment anyone let her. "I'm Mollie. There's coffee and far more food than sense."

Mythia nudged a platter toward the center of the island and tipped her chin at the spread without slowing down. "Help yourselves to all of it. I wasn't sure what each of you preferred, so I made a variety. I hope you like Dubai chocolate. We’ve developed a bit of an obsession with it in the house. Mollie and I have created just about everything you can imagine with pistachio cream and chocolate."

“Dubai chocolate is one of my favorites,” Astrid enthused.

Chairs scraped as everyone found a place. Aidon drifted close enough that I could feel his warmth. His gaze remained on the other witches with an intensity that had me shifting where I stood.

Brenna set her coffee down with a soft click and held Aidon's stare without so much as a blink. "I'd trust you a great deal less if you weren't this paranoid, son of Hades." She waved the strawberry pastry she was eating as the corner of her mouth tipped up. "You’re smart to be wary. You don’t know us. I promise we're here to help."

"Speaking of." Elena pushed back from the island with her coffee still in hand and tipped her head toward the back door. "Let's go explore your property before we lose the light." She was already moving, so I handed Thaniel off to Mom, pressed a kiss to the dark fuzz on his head, and followed her out.

“It’s more of a swamp at the moment,” I called out. Two days of rain had turned the back acreage to soup.

My boots sank to the ankle before we'd cleared the patio. Behind me, Astrid muttered something in a language I didn't know. I recognized the tone of voice, though. Stella brought up the rear with the tablet clutched in both hands. When I shot her a grateful smile, I noticed a woman on the screen. She must have called Claire.

"Walk me toward the old wards, if you would." Wilhelm lifted his chin at the tree line where the magic had hummed since before the house was built.

“Sure thing. Careful,” I cautioned as we picked our way over the mud.

"We can't find the location for the bridge with our eyes," Wilhelm explained. “We find it with our magic. You will feel it before you see it. If there is one here at all."

"We should spread out and cover more ground," Astrid suggested as she flung an arm to scatter us across the field. "You're hunting a cold that doesn't move. This will be very different from the wind. The one you want sits in a single spot like it's got business there. If it drifts when the wind turns, it’s not right. We want the place where the dead stay put."

“I can manage that,” I vowed as I started to walk away.

"You take direction better than Ava warned me," Elena called out. Her bangles slid to her elbow as she trailed her fingers through the wet air like she was reading a page only she could touch. "Most mothers fight me the whole way down. They want the cold to be somewhere convenient. Near the house or in the garage, and it never is. The dead don't arrange themselves for our comfort, mija."

"I don’t imagine they do,” I replied as we spread out and began searching. We were several feet apart, but still within sight of one another.

It was Brenna who went rigid first. She was a good thirty feet inside the tree line where the old wards thickened. "This spot is promising." She walked in a slow circle and then dropped into a crouch. She pressed her palm flat to the sodden ground, then glanced back at me without a flicker of doubt in her. "This one doesn't wander. I've stood in three like it in my life. They all felt exactly the same. It is a cold that settles in your bones and waits."

The location she selected wasn’t far from where I’d seen the silver-eyed woman a few nights before. I crossed to her, and the temperature fell off a ledge. It was like wading into the deep end of a cold lake. It wasn't the clean chill of a Maine winter. This kind grabbed you. My magic surged up under my skin on instinct before I pushed it down. Holding it in check was a challenge.

"That's the one, Pheebs." Claire's voice came through the tablet speaker, thin. I turned to find her leaning so close on her end that her face filled the whole screen. "I can feel it through the connection, which I should not be able to do over Wi-Fi. That alone should tell you how loud this ground is."

Wilhelm came to stand in the cold beside me. "This feels like the place. Though we found it too easily, which I do not entirely like." He turned those tired eyes on me. "An easy door means a crowded room behind it, Phoebe. That weight you feel is not the veil. That is how many of them are waiting here for somebody to open the road."

"How many are we talking about?" I pressed, because I didn’t think I could deal with one, let alone several. My stomach had already begun its slow drop.

Astrid answered before Wilhelm could. "More than one mother ought to carry across on her own." She crouched and scraped a line in the mud with her thumb, frowning at it as though it had insulted her. "The bridge takes its toll from whoever holds the living end. It also takes more for every child that crosses. You'd best walk in knowing you're spending years off your own life to do it. Anyone who told you different was being kind, which gets people buried."

“Morrigan is here. Layla and Murtagh did not sense anything from her. Neither did Tseki. She also passed the glass test.” Tarja's voice was bristling when it entered my mind. A breath later the cat herself slipped out of the wet grass to crouch on the old fence rail. Her tail was swollen to twice its size, and her green eyes were fixed on the back of the house. “Be careful, Phoebe. I don’t trust her.”

I turned, and the woman picking her way across my flooded yard didn't sink into the mud the way the rest of us had. Her boots came up clean with every step, raising the hairs on my arms for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold. Silver threaded through her dark hair, which was pulled back. She had a wool coat buttoned to her chin but didn’t appear cold.

"You'll be Phoebe." Morrigan halted at the edge of the cold spot and smiled.

I gave her a tight smile. “And you’re Morrigan. Nice to meet you.”

Beside me, Astrid had gone stiff. The chill rolling off her had nothing to do with the dead. "Nobody wants you here," she bit out, shifting half a step ahead of me without taking her eyes off the older woman.

"I’m here to help with the warding. You can’t do this without me," Morrigan insisted. "I see you've already found your seam. The warding for a crossing this size won't be easy. I could’ve left her to fumble it and bleed out in her back garden."

That was the piece only she had, and every one of us knew it. Astrid herself had warned me that she was the only living person who knew the ward-craft. I hated how badly I needed her, and I hated worse that she knew it.

"You'll forgive me if I keep my people close while you're here." I met her gaze as I laid it out for her. "I've been told you're worth listening to and must be watched at the same time."

"Ava told you I lie." Something old and bone-tired moved behind Morrigan's smile. "She's right, and I won't insult you by swearing I'll stop. Watch me as close as you please. I’m here to help with the warding."