Page 6 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

My phone was still in my hand. And I was still staring at the screen. “Count them before you trust them. They are coming.” I was gripping it so hard my thumb had gone numb against the glass. My chest started aching from holding my breath. It felt as if with each breath, things would unravel.

"Phoebe." Mom's tone changed. She had moved beside me. My head snapped up when her hand landed on the back of my wrist. "Whatever it is you’re thinking, remember you're not alone in this."

Emotion burned the back of my eyes momentarily. Everyone in the kitchen had stopped what they were doing. Mythia's pan was still on the heat, and the eggs were past done because she had not taken them off. Selene's hands were frozen above her keyboard. Nina had Thaniel pressed against her chest with one hand spread wide across his back. The look on her face reminded me of the night Lyra had come through the wards.

"What does it say, Queenie?" Aidon prodded from the doorway. The air thickened the way it did when his shadows started to come up under his skin.

"Count them before you trust them." My voice did not sound like mine as I recited it without looking down. The words had burned themselves into my brain. "They are coming."

The pan hissed, but Mythia didn’t move to deal with it. Nobody did. The smell of eggs scorching to the bottom of the pan rose up under all of us, yet nobody acknowledged it.

Nana broke the silence first, because she always did. She set her shotgun down on the kitchen table. "Well, hell. That's a hell of a way to ruin breakfast," she drawled, and squinted at the smoking pan. "Mythia, honey, I love you like one of my own, but if you don't move that skillet, I'm going to do it for you."

Mythia jolted as if she'd been pinched and flitted over to the stove. She lifted the pan off the burner and set it on the cold side. The eggs were blackened and well past saving. Her wings had pulled in so tightly against her back that I could see a tremor running along the upper ribs of them.

"Where did it come from?" Nana mused as she grabbed a croissant from the platter

"I have no idea. There’s a number, but I don’t know who it is. What I do know is that it's the same phrase from my dream this morning," I told the room. "Whoever sent this text knows what I dreamed before I told any of you."

Aidon took my face in both hands. His palms grounded me

"Whoever this is, they're going to have to come through every single person in this kitchen before they get within ten feet of our babies. Do you hear me, Queenie?" He didn’t make the promise to placate me. He was stating a fact. Everyone in the house would die to protect our babies.

"I hear you. I also heard a woman in my dream tell me to count them, and I have no idea what she’s talking about. For a second, I thought she might have meant the footprints Layla found in the woods," I argued back, because the part of me that solved problems for a living was trying to work this out. "What am I supposed to be counting? The only thing this text clarified is that there's more than one of whatever that is. They're coming for our children, Aidon."

"And the babies in countless other houses, too," Selene reminded me from her stool. "Maybe we should focus on what connects you, rather than what it is. We might find out who’s coming for them."

"They're not coming, Selene. They've been here," I snapped. My tone was uncalled for, but I couldn’t dial it back. Fear was riding me too hard.

"There has to be something they left behind," Mom insisted. "Aidon, come upstairs with me. We're going to search the nursery. It's possible there’s something we missed in the room."

“I’ll call Stella,” I offered as the vice around my chest loosened enough that I could breathe easier. “She will want to be here to help.”

"Stella’s already on her way," Mythia announced as she paused in scraping the eggs from the pan. "I sent her a message a bit ago, figuring she could help us." What she wasn’t saying was that she thought Stella could help keep me from going scorched Earth on everything.

My emotions had been more volatile since the triplets’ birth than while I was pregnant. Hormones were a magical thing. They could affect more than anyone understood.

As if our conversation had conjured her, Stella walked through the back door with Clio one step behind her. Both of them wore expressions telling me they’d been briefed on at least some of it. Stella had her sleeves shoved past her elbows and her hair stabbed through with the chopstick she kept in her car for emergencies. Clio had her healing kit slung crossbody. Her eyes were on me before her foot cleared the threshold.

"Are the babies okay?" Clio demanded.

"They're fine. Nyssa and Melaina are asleep,” Aidon told her as he gestured to the monitor on the island, where I could see my daughters sleeping peacefully.

"We need to go check the nursery for anything,” Mom prodded.

Everyone automatically began heading for the stairs at the front of the house. "Don't y'all stampede up those steps," Nana called after us as she picked up her shotgun and tucked it under her arm. "You sound like a herd of cattle. The girls are sleeping."

"You're carrying a shotgun and worried about the noise we’re making?" I tossed back over my shoulder.

"It’s for our safety. Besides, I'm not tracking it. My footsteps are light as a feather. I’m so stealthy I could be a spy, and you know it as well as I do," she returned, climbing behind us with the careful tread she was just boasting about.

We went up in a jumble. Aidon was first, and Stella was at his shoulder. I was behind them with Tarja on my heel. Mom was behind me with a salt jar against her chest. Nina was holding Thaniel and ascending next to Nana.

The stairs groaned under all of us at once. Thaniel let out one thin, questioning cry from Nina's arms as if he could feel the tension in our group. He was worried for his sisters, who were still in their cribs.

"It's okay, buddy. We’re just checking on them. They’re safe," Nina assured him as we entered the nursery.

"Nobody touched the cribs yet," Stella commanded. "I want to see them with nothing disturbed. Aidon, send your shadows. Lift everything off the rails but the babies themselves."