Page 19 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

“Aw man, why’d you have to say that? I’ve been thinking they would look like a random kid. Taking one of our kids’ faces will be the last thing they ever do," Aidon replied.

“Thank the gods you’re so scary.” I wound both arms around his waist and let myself stay there longer. I kept my cheek to his chest and my eyes locked on the blanketed hallway mirror.

"When I come back," I warned him, "we are having an entirely separate conversation about how much I hate being reasonable. It's unbecoming, and I miss my impulsive era."

Aidon's mouth brushed my temple. "Don’t worry, Queenie. Your impulsive era is alive and well," he assured me. "It’s simply traveling to Bar Harbor tomorrow with snacks and adult supervision."

Stella leaned around the island with a grin bright enough to punch a hole straight through the dark. "Phoebe's Impulsive Era, Supervised Coastal Edition."

Despite all of it, I laughed, and the sound cracked out of me. For one brief, fragile moment, the house felt like ours again instead of a place being infiltrated by an unknown enemy. The covered mirror was proof enough that we were facing another deadly enemy, and this peace was temporary. I had to put an end to this and get my happy home back. I was hormonal and tired of this shit.

CHAPTER 8

"If you reach for that thermos one more time before we hit the highway, Stells, I'm going to curse you with diarrhea." I had my knees pulled up on the passenger seat and the brass key in my fist. I was watching my house in the side mirror while the gravel turned to wet pavement under the tires. "You've had enough caffeine to summon a demon without breaking a sweat. I'd rather not explain to Ava why we brought a third entity to lunch."

"There's no such thing as too much caffeine. We’re going to interrogate a woman who faked her death." Stella took the curve out of the property without slowing. "Besides, you're one to talk. You hugged each of those babies four times before getting in the car. And that was after a dozen rounds in the house where you cried into Thaniel's onesie."

"I did not cry. My eyes were leaking from the cold." I pressed my forehead to the window and watched the tree line slide past. "What was I supposed to do when Thaniel made the bottle warmer spark every time I put him down?”

Stella laughed and shook her head. “It’s hard being a mother. I’m glad we weren’t chasing evil when my kids were babies. I’d have never made it.”

Chuckling with her, I turned my smile to her. “I’m not sure I will make it. My son’s version of goodbye is nearly electrocuting the kitchen counter!"

Stella prattled on about things the babies had done that topped the toaster incident while I thought about how Aidon had stood in the driveway with Thaniel strapped to his front, and Mom and Nina beside him holding the girls. He had told me to be careful because he couldn’t help himself. But he hadn't told me not to go. All he'd said was, “Come back to me, Queenie.”

Conversation drifted to the face cream line Stella wanted my mother to work on with her. By the time the harbor came into view below the road, gray and chopped and ringed with shuttered summer shops, I'd decided Stella’s plan was solid. It’d likely make us a lot of money and would give my mother something she could build while helping us keep the fine lines at bay.

"There." I pointed to the one building on the pier with its lights burning against the off-season gloom. "She said the diner, and it's the only one open. Park anywhere. The whole town's asleep until June."

“Remember the summer after high school when we came here determined to test out those fake IDs?” Stella laughed as she parked in front of the diner, and we got out.

We were both going off to college and had spent money buying a fake ID from a kid who graduated a few years ahead of us so we could get into bars. “There was never a chance those were going to work. Dan printed them on cardstock!”

My heart accelerated when Stella shouldered through the door ahead of me. A bell clanked ominously instead of chiming. The smell rolled over us both at once. There was nothing like scorched coffee and griddle grease coupled with the damp of a building that had breathed sea air since before either of us was born.

Three booths down, in the corner where she could watch the door and both windows, an old woman sat with her hands wrapped around a white mug. She tracked us the way Nana tracked a demon. Her eyes, when they found mine, were the silver of the woman who'd stood at my tree line in real life and in my dreams.

"Sit before you fall over, girl," she ordered, tipping her chin toward the bench across from her, the iron-gray pin in her hair catching the bad fluorescent light. “You've been bleeding magic into the air the whole drive up. You’ve attracted half the demons and Tainted witches in the country, so we need to be fast."

"You must be Ava," I noted as I slid into the booth. Stella dropped in beside me, putting us both on the same side of the table.

"Yes, and you are Phoebe Duedonne, and she’s Stella Hawkins." Ava's hand trembled hard enough that coffee slopped over the rim when she went to lift the mug. "Don't watch the hands. They've been like this for forty years. They started the night the echo children came for mine, and they've never once gone still since."

A waitress drifted over with a pot, so I ordered coffee even though I had no intention of drinking the sludge. The woman filled my cup, topped off Ava's, ignored Stella's bright refusal, and faded back behind the counter like she'd been trained to.

"We followed your advice and didn’t have any trouble last night, so thanks for that." I wrapped my fingers around the hot mug to keep them busy. "We didn't drive six hours to say thank you. We need to know what's actually chasing my children and how to stop it, not how to tape a napkin over a microwave."

That earned the first flicker of something close to a smile. "Good. The ones who only want the safety measure don't survive long. Though stopping this is not going to be easy. I’ve been trying for a very long time."

She turned her mug a slow half-circle on the chipped Formica and sighed. "Its name is Kaltherax. That’s the only time you’re going to hear me say that. Names not only have power, but they also open doors. And I've spent four decades learning which doors to leave shut."

"Kaltherax." Stella pulled out a pen and her notebook and then began taking notes. "I'll memorize it and burn the notes. Can’t be too careful. Besides, Phoebe's enemies have a documented habit of being resourceful."

"I built the Wayfarers' Bridge," she continued as if Stella hadn’t spoken, her silver eyes steady. "Here's what that means, plainly. Some children don't pass on when they die. They get stuck in the gap. It’s a sliver of nowhere between the last breath and whatever waits in the dark to take them. They can't finish dying and can't come back. They just hang there while the dark holds them."

She turned her mug a slow half-circle. "Twelve were trapped like that the year I first created the bridge. I was young, arrogant, and had power to spare, so I built them a road out of the gap. It was a crossing to true rest where the dark couldn't follow. All twelve walked it and got free.

"I've never once been sorry I did it. It cost me everything," she continued before Stella could speak, flattening her voice.