Page 65 of Witchy Chick

I nodded like that made sense, although how could he talk about his sister’s death so casually? Sure she was psycho, but she didn’t have face tattoos. “She looks much better blonde than black-haired. It’ll be good for her to be buried blonde. You’re doing her a favor before she dyes it another color that does nothing for her.”

She hissed and grabbed the iron bars then a blue explosion hit her, throwing her back into the group like a bowling ball, knocking several of them over.

Laughter like a rumbling avalanche came from the back, and then the suits parted to reveal a long-white-haired guy in a Hawaiian shirt with a monkey on his shoulder.

Clark inhaled sharply and grabbed me, shoving me behind him while he crouched and summoned a ball of lightning around us, hurling it into the ground with a crack of thunder.

I shook with the reverberations, falling to my knees as I peered around Clark at the monkey man. He vaulted over the iron fence, one hand on the bars like Clark hadn’t turned it into a weapon. He didn’t look like a threat, just some out-of-place tourist, but Clark’s reaction was very clear.

“Come now, Peregrine. You can protect her, but can you protect them?” He gestured at the house, and I turned slowly to see the kids and the Millers standing on the porch, looking incredibly vulnerable without any lines of energy on their skin, or undead monsters around them, or a shimmering shield wrapped over them.

For a second, Clark flexed, and the world got tight and thin around the edges as he prepared to explode.

He exhaled, and the shield went out. He walked ahead of me, leaving me with the undead creatures, his hands out and up, like he was ready to be handcuffed.

The monkey man put a huge arm around my husband’s shoulders, and then I got to see how much larger the older man was. And I’d thought Clark was big. The monkey man was a giant.

“Good to see you!” the old giant said, pounding Clark’s shoulder. “Now introduce me to your wife.”

Clark’s eyes went white. “No. The council can take me, but not her. Not the kids. No deal. It would be better for all of us to die together.”

I felt the flex and the threat, that he could rip us to pieces so we didn’t fall into the council’s hands.

“Oh. You think I’m with the council?” The man laughed and turned to smile at me. “Isn’t he adorable?”

“My husband is incredibly hot, not adorable,” I said stiffly, the words automatic but not remotely making any kind of sense. “You’re going to fight with us? Will you swear it with a blood oath?”

He raised a brow. “No. I don’t do blood oaths anymore. They’re messy, and they stir the madness.”

He blurred then he was directly in front of me, his hands cold as they clasped my head, thumbs on my cheekbones as his cold eyes burned into me.

Clark screamed and brought a silver sword down on his neck, but the old man spun us so the sword would’ve chopped off my head instead of his. I stared at Clark then the world blurred, and I was in the room with the piano and the telescope, with the atlas on the floor. There was a younger version of the monkey man, but he was all silver lines of white lightning and reminded me much more of tattoo-faced Clark.

He opened a panel in the wall and snatched out a child, five or six, with big dark eyes, pale face, and long stringy hair. He wrapped his enormous hand around her neck, and then I remembered.

Memories slipped through my mind, filling in all the empty spaces that had stretched out before my years of foster care. My youth, filled with lessons in pain and shadows. Latin. I knew Latin! And what all the shapes on the floor meant. And what every tattoo on Clark’s body did.

I knew so much, crammed into such a small body, stretching my mind until I screamed and screamed and screamed. But the Council was coming, and I needed to stand against them. I needed to destroy them once and for all, to free the shadows and devour the world as was my birthright.

I blinked, and we were in the yard, Clark holding a sword up but not striking when the giant was using me as a shield in front of him, his bare hands enough of a threat.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” I asked, enunciating carefully.

The terrifying creature who’d been there at my parents’ deaths but hadn’t killed me murmured in my ear, “You cut through the madness. I liked killing too much, but I didn’t start as a bloodthirsty monster. You can’t start hungry for blood and power or you end up like Robin and her horrible hair dye. Your husband was the most balanced of his generation, like me. That’s why the Council used us as weapons, because we have some stability. Using the magic, burning with rage and destruction, is the opposite of sanity inducing. You gave me sanity the way you gave it to your husband. A null-void. Your family didn’t touch you much, did they, because they would’ve had to face the irrationality of their actions. I was supposed to kill you, but I put you in the foster system instead and then retired before I lost my mind again. Before it seemed logical to kill an innocent child because of what she might grow up to be. And look at you. Absolutely adorable. You haven’t killed a single person, even by accident, your entire life, and you married someone as annoying as Peregrine.”

Clark’s eyes dimmed, and he lowered his sword, swinging it down to his side in a flash that made me flinch. “You didn’t come out of retirement to take down the traitor?”

The monkey-giant laughed, and his monkey chittered in laughter with him. There was something absolutely off about the monkey. Was it dead? Yes, it was. I did not need another undead animal in my front hall.

The giant put a large hand on my husband’s shoulder. “Who’s the traitor? You, or your family who went against their code just so the House of Hoar would be ended for good? Her family was evil. She was and is not. Our family was excusing our its evil for the sake of destroying another evil. The end justifying the means. That’s irrational. Either it’s evil, or it isn’t. It doesn’t depend on who does it, or whether they’re easy to hate. If it’s wrong to hate then it’s always wrong to hate, no matter what person or group you’re hating. If it’s wrong to kill an innocent child then it’s wrong to kill an innocent child, no matter what that child might grow up into.”

“That’s very…logical,” my husband said with a slow smile that crinkled his eyes and stretched out his face-tattoos. “And the monkey?”

He reached up and took it off his shoulder and handed it over to me. I did not take it, but it climbed onto my shoulder, wrapping its tail around my neck like that was normal. It wasn’t normal. It was undead. I could feel the undeath, but at least it didn’t start talking to me.

“I took it as a memento from the Hoar House. It wasn’t animated until a few days ago. That’s what let me know that the House had awakened, and the heir had returned. I didn’t realize that you’d married her. And had three children. Plus one on the way.” He offered me a smile, which I suddenly found incredibly creepy. Never mind. I’d always found it creepy, but now it felt like a personal threat. Maybe it was the monkey’s tail around my throat like it might strangle me. Also suggesting that I was pregnant was always incredibly rude. Maybe I was bloated, but I didn’t look pregnant.

“One on the what?” I snapped.