Page 9 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

"You should go talk to Lilith this afternoon. She can get you into that archive the coven has been hoarding for decades. I don’t recognize them, but she’s far more knowledgeable about things like that. Show her the sigils and get her take on things," Clio suggested.

“Brilliant idea, Clio.” Nana nodded in agreement. "We need information, and Lilith has more of it than any of us. We can’t exactly go to Omniscientia. She’s the next best thing." I hadn’t considered the Library of All Knowledge for a while. The place was wild, but it might be worth trying to get to if Lilith couldn’t help.

"I'll call her and let her know I’m coming," I agreed. "But I’m not ruling out Omniscientia."

"Aidon should go with you," Mom added.

"I wouldn't try to leave without him. He would be pissed if I did," I replied.

Mom kissed my forehead and stood. She took Melaina from Stella and held her against her shoulder the way she'd held my older children and me when we'd been that size.

Stella helped me up off the floor. “I want to go with you, too.”

Accepting her hand, I shot her a smile. “Of course. We’re a kickass team. We’ve survived Tartarus, being kidnapped and left on an island, demons, and evil witches.”

Clio passed Nyssa to me without a word. The weight of my daughter against my chest steadied something inside me that hadn't been steady since the first text had come through down in the kitchen. I headed for the door, saying, “Let’s get breakfast. I’ll need to feed them soon, too.”

The others filed out ahead of me, and I lingered in the doorway to scan the nursery from corner to corner one more time. Guilt was crawling up the back of my throat for missing something this enormous in my own children's room. I felt cracked open, stupid, and furious with myself, all in one ugly knot. I couldn't afford to miss anything this size ever again.

Mythia darted through the doorway just as I was about to step out. Her wings were a quick blur of color. Damn, she hadn't made a sound on her way in. She had something cupped in both of her tiny hands.

“I have something for you, Phoebe,” she said as she hovered in front of me and pressed something small and warm into the center of my palm.

“What is it?” I asked.

It was wrapped in a cloth and tied off with a thin strip of the same fabric. The warmth of it wasn't that of something that'd been tucked against her body. It was hotter than that. And alive in a way that made my heart skip. It pulsed against my fingers like a creature settling itself in.

She folded my fingers shut around the bundle with both of her hands and held them closed. "I'd like you to wait until tonight, after the house has gone to sleep, and then open this on your own," Mythia requested. Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper. "I'd rather you didn't show it to Aidon. Or anyone else under this roof, until after you've had a chance to look at what's inside of it."

My hand tightened around the bundle without my permission. "Mythia, you can't ask me that," I argued back at her in a whisper, glancing down the hallway after the others. "Not this morning after some stranger told me they’re coming for our babies."

"I'm not asking you to keep it from them forever, Phoebe," she countered, her voice still pitched low. "I'm asking for you to evaluate it first."

"What is it? And why can’t we all look at it together?" I pressed her.

"If I'm right about what's wrapped inside that cloth, it isn't safe for Aidon to see it before you've seen it first," she explained to me. Her eyes had gone the color of moss on the north side of an old oak, and they didn't waver from mine. "If I'm wrong, then nothing in that bundle matters, and all he's lost is one night of sleep over a worry of mine that came to nothing. It’s important that you look at it first, Phoebe. I wouldn't be asking you at all if it wasn’t. I've been hunting for this since the day the triplets were born."

"That's a long time to have been hunting for something without ever mentioning to me that you were looking for anything at all," I accused her. “You’re asking a lot of me at a time when shit is hitting the fan again.”

"I'm aware of how it sounds and what I’m asking of you," Mythia acknowledged with a grimace. "You'll have your answers by tomorrow morning, one way or the other. By breakfast, if I've been wrong about even a single piece of what's wrapped in that cloth, I'll resign my position in your house."

“You’re not staff, Thia. Your family. And this is your house, too,” I told her. “I trust you.”

Her shoulders lifted, and her face brightened. After pressing a kiss to the baby’s head, she flew away. She was halfway to the landing before I remembered how to work my throat around the lump that had risen in it. The bundle pulsed against my palm once more before going silent again.

I tucked it into the pocket of my cardigan, where it settled warm against my side like a second small heartbeat keeping time alongside my own. Then I shifted Nyssa more securely against my chest and started down the stairs toward my mate. Whatever Mythia had given me had to wait. We had other things to tackle at the moment. I just prayed it would help our situation, rather than making it worse.

CHAPTER 4

"Has anyone called Lilith to let her know we're on the way?" I slid onto the stool, Nyssa already rooting against my collarbone like a tiny, determined heat-seeking missile.

The bundle in my cardigan pocket pulsed against my side—it had been doing that since the top of the stairs, and now it felt heavy enough that I kept expecting someone to notice the lopsided drag on my sweater. My eyes cut to Mythia. She didn't look up or pause whatever she was doing at the counter. Part of me wanted to slap the thing down on the marble and ask the room what the hell I was supposed to do with it. I didn't. I trusted that pixie with every life in this house, including the small one currently trying to eat my shirt. If she said wait, I'd wait.

"This isn't our first rodeo, sweetheart." Nana's voice pulled me back. Nyssa was making increasingly insulting noises against my chest, so I shifted her in the crook of my arm and tugged my shirt up. She latched the second my skin was exposed, and the relief was almost embarrassing. "First, you eat. Before your milk turns to water and we've got three babies screaming instead of one rooting around like a piglet."

A plate slid in front of me with a warm croissant. It had butter so fresh it was still weeping into the flakes. My mouth watered just looking at it.

"I'd love to point out," I said around the first bite, because she wasn't wrong and I was starving, "that I am actively nursing and currently down to one functional hand. So, if you're taking volunteers for the Lilith call, I'm going to need someone else to raise theirs."