Page 64 of Witchy Chick

“Maybe, but who wants to work so hard?”

“You know why they’re here. That’s why you’ve been sitting in the rain, to prepare for it.”

“They’d probably like to kill you and me, plus the Millers, but the twins they’ll keep, wiping their minds so they don’t have any memories of us. They’ll try to do that to Sage, but they’ll fail, so they’ll end up having to kill her.”

My skin went cold, and my feet had been so warm. I clutched the sheet until he scowled and rolled out of bed, pulling on jeans as he went then he wrapped me in his arms and held me close while he glowered down at me.

“That’s what they think they want, but they actually want to survive today, which means that after they attack and I kill a few of them, they’ll offer us a deal. I’ll turn it down because it’ll insist that I’m either stripped of my magic or that I work constantly for the council without you. I can’t live without you, and you certainly can’t live without me, so of course no deal.”

I swallowed hard and grabbed the waistband of his jeans, needing some connection but not ready to actually touch that warm, beautiful skin. “So then what?”

“Then we’ll have a real battle, and I’ll wipe them out, but my life force will go to the house once I die, and it will be able to protect you and the kids.”

I stared at him, gaping like a fish. “Are you insane?” I shrieked, yanking hard on his jeans. “You can’t die!”

He bumped my forehead with his. “You just say that because you’ve never seen me die. I promise I’m quite mortal and capable of dying as well as anyone else.”

“You can’t die trying to save me. Absolutely not!”

“Agreed. I’ll die saving you and the kids. Might as well add the Millers while we’re at it.”

I hit his chest as hard as I could, and the feeling that went through my fist was electric, leaving my whole arm numb then throbbing. “Why don’t you ever listen to me? When I say I’m getting a divorce, you say, ‘sorry, no,’ and now when I say you can’t die, you’re like, ‘sure I can.’ I’ve never met a more stubborn, infuriating, bull-headed man in my entire life!” I hit him again, and that time the shock of electric numbness went up to my armpit.

His smile was almost genuine. “You make me sound practically special.”

“I changed my mind. Go ahead and die!” I crossed my arms, the one still weirdly numb and tingling.

His eyes glittered while he copied my pose, staring at me like he might completely electrocute me if I touched him again. “You’re so beautiful. Thank you for giving me the best send-off a wife could give her husband.”

I punched him again. I couldn’t help it, and that time I used all of my strength, hitting him right in the stomach. The shock of his power went through me in a rush hit me back. Somehow, I shoved my energy back at him with the same power, my energy that wrapped around him with tendrils of dark, shivering vines, curling over his bare skin up to his chin in a pattern that contrasted creepily with his glowing eyes and face-tattoos.

I stood there reeling while he winked at me, so incredibly creepy. “My perfect wife. Let’s go greet the family, hm?”

nineteen

. . .

We stepped out onto the porch, tendrils of darkness still wrapped around him, and weird lines of light wrapped around me. The tiger was on his right, the grizzly on my left, and for the first time, I thought it might be a good idea to have them in my life.

The iron fence shuddered but didn’t shatter. I couldn’t tell if the group Lark seemed to be leading was doing anything but standing around in their tidy suits, except for the quivering iron bars and the bursts of dirt exploding up here and there, as though the ground was pitted with mines.

“Peregrine!” Lark called, raising a hand to wave, like a neighbor greeting us casually.

“Lark,” Peregrine said, but his voice came out not casual. No, his voice was death and dismemberment. It almost sounded honest.

“You managed to merge your magic with the Heir of Hoar House? That must’ve been incredibly painful.” Lark’s smirk was so creepily like Clark’s and yet completely wrong. I preferred the tattooed version to the evil twin.

“Don’t talk to them,” Claire, my husband’s ex-fiancée, said, shooting a glare at me that made me want to pull her hair and scratch her eyes out. Catty. It made me want to be incredibly catty. I glanced past Clark at the tiger.

He turned his large head while his golden eyes blinked at me and his mouth seemed to smile as if to say, of course you should get catty. Have your undead yet animated tiger rip off her head.

“You have Robin with you,” Clark said coldly. “You’ve compromised your high ground if you give her authority after the dictates she’s ignored.”

A blonde woman with pale skin and perfect posture stepped close to the gate. “You married the Heir of Hoar House! Dictates? If you followed any of your own laws, you’d have her head on a platter, not her magic twining around you like a soul-sucking octopus!”

“Is that your sister?” I whispered, because I couldn’t quite see the Scilla I’d had so many fun times with.

“She was. Now she’s just a corpse who doesn’t know she’s dead yet.”