Page 133 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
He took off along the railing, walking it like a tightrope, and then disappeared around the side of the house.
With a sigh, I headed into the cabin and thanked Raeanne for the guest room, flopping down on the bed as soon as she left and the door was closed behind her. She had the kids for the moment, and I had my husbands.
“Don’t worry yet,” Spectre told me, planting his hands on his hips.
“See, it’s the yet part of that statement that truly freaks me out.” I leaned back on my palms and looked around the room. There were plenty of Christmas decorations in here, sure, but I imagined the deer heads on the walls, the buffalo plaid comforter, and the myriad wooden ducks were year-round décor items. It was … um, rustic? “There’s no way in Hael they’re going to waltz into the Seelie Court, strike a deal, and then prance back out. If something can go wrong, it will.”
“Graceley, darlin’,” Caine said, moving over to stand beside Spectre. “If you think I’m going to let you sit there and worry for the next few days, you got another thing coming. It’s damn near Christmas, and we’re going to do hokey family shit with my pack.” He leaned down to look me in the face, and I frowned at him. “We’ll roast marshmallows, and you’ll watch in jealous envy as the rest of us enjoy alcohol that you can’t have—”
“I can still kick you in the nuts,” I warned him, and he grinned, reaching out to ruffle my hair.
“That’s my girl. Come on, sugar. Pretend you’re human for the day and enjoy some festive shit.”
“Pretend I’m human? Gross.” I snorted as Caine grabbed my hand and dragged me off the bed and down the stairs, Spectre chuckling as he followed along behind us.
We spent the rest of the day doing exactly what Caine had suggested: festive shit. Holiday movies, baking, more crafts. By the end of the day, I had glitter in my hair, my ears, and somehow also up my nose. Thanks, Fey. My daughter was a true artist, that was for sure. She’d managed to glue her newest creation to her brother’s fur, forcing Caine to snip it off and leaving Legend with a big bald patch on his left side.
Good stuff.
Bastet was regularly reporting back to us and, thus far, nothing of interest had happened. Argent, Hex, Monster, Schatten, and Bast were in Faerie and currently camping in the woods. They’d paid a brownie—a small household fae creature with bark-like skin and large, pointed ears—to carry a message to the queen.
Now, we were all just waiting to hear back.
As for me, I was in bed with a mug of hot tea, a purring Connard by my side, and two dutiful husbands who’d just put the kids to sleep and were in the process of getting ready for bed.
“Can we kick the cat out and have some time to ourselves?” Spectre suggested, his words a clear invitation for a threesome. Oh, I was so down for that, especially after the day I’d had. The pregnancy symptoms had gotten much worse seemingly overnight. I’d had morning sickness which, of course, had caused my powers to amplify and exploded half the lightbulbs in Raeanne’s house.
That’s how it was with witches: the worse our pregnancy symptoms got, the more our power grew. A heavily pregnant witch was carrying the magic of two witches inside of her. Nobody was more powerful.
At the rate we were recovering from our spell, I could almost believe my baby truly was the Witch Queen.
Whether she was or not at this point was almost irrelevant: Coven Wyrmwood and Cabal Ungeist believed she was, and they were gunning for us either way.
“Why kick me out?” Connard asked innocently, raising his head up to stare at Spectre. “It’s not like I haven’t seen Hex—”
“Nope.” I pushed the cat off the edge of the bed, and he hissed at me. “Don’t ever mention Hex’s past to me. I don’t want to hear a single thing about it.”
“Single? Oh, there isn’t just a single story, there are hundreds of them.”
I threw a pillow at Connard, but he just danced nimbly out of the way.
“Scat, kitty cat. We got things to do,” Caine growled out, shirtless and in the process of unbuttoning his jeans.
He didn’t get very far.
See, the fire in the fireplace was hot. Roaring hot. I mean, we’d really pushed the limits as to what was safe as far as the size and scope of it. But then I noticed a piece of what appeared to be charcoal, tumbling down to land amongst the flames. It was just a small bit at first, barely noticeable.
But then there was a shift in the wards, a rippling of magic that made it look like the cabin walls were coated in soapy water. They glimmered and shook as more pebbles and bits of soot and charcoal rained down the fireplace, dimming the flames slightly.
