Page 61 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness

I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of iced tea, desperate to avoid traveling down the path of guilt any more than I’d already done.

Temperance was still trying to sway me on letting her go to the party as she got two glasses down from the cupboard. She filled them with ice and slid them toward me without really paying any attention to it all.

We’d always been like that. In sync in many ways. Before I’d become a mother, the idea of children kind of freaked me out. Plus, it seemed foreign, like something I’d never get to have. I’d really believed I’d die young. That the slayer lifestyle would take me out—like it had taken out my parents and so many others.

Now that I was a mother, I knew that I’d gladly die for my child if it meant keeping her safe. And I’d kill anyone who tried to harm her without losing a wink of sleep over it.

I filled the glasses with tea and put the pitcher back into the refrigerator.

Temperance lifted her tea and sipped it. She smiled. “I love that you’re trying to inch me in to super sweet territory.”

“I’m not sure any tea I ever make will be as sweet as what they make around here,” I returned.

She snorted. “Sorry that I spit mine all over you the first time I tried it. I wasn’t expecting that much sugar.”

“No one ever is.” I smiled.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mina

We’d been livingin Grimm Cove just two weeks. Temperance was enrolled at Grimm Cove High School and seemed to love everything about it, except how much I was there. I wasn’t a hundred percent sold on the town being safe, not that anyone listened to me. My daughter wasn’t helpless. She’d been born with my slayer traits as well as my other ones. That wasn’t all. She’d gotten a lot from her father.

A whole lot.

I’d only known him one night and didn’t even catch his real name, but I had a constant reminder of him with me daily. Temperance looked a great deal like her father. She had his hair color as well as his height. She could also turn into a cauldron of bats and travel short distances before reforming into human form without issue—something I’d seen him do eighteen years ago when everything had gone to hell at the Gallows Lane house.

Willa and I called that night Armageddon. Somehow, that name even fell short of what had gone on that night. Ghouls,werewolves, zombie-like creatures, vampires, and crazy dudes wearing robes who had one-track minds.

“It’s just a harmless get-together,” pleaded Temperance as she leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping her tea.

“The word you’re looking for is party.”

“Mom,” she groaned.

I wanted off the subject but she was like a broken record. I could hardly fault her. I’d been the same way at her age. “What do you say to pizza tonight? I’m starving.”

“Fine but can we please talk about tonight and the party?” she asked, progressing with finally calling it what it was.

“It’s on campus, Temperance. You’re in high school. You have no business hanging out on the university campus,” I stated clearly so she’d catch every word.

“I’m a senior. I’ll be attending that university in the fall,” she said, her voice whiny. “This is helping me meet people there now. You want me to have a good social life, don’t you?”

I snorted. “Nice try. No. There will be alcohol and grown men there. Men who would be breaking laws touching you.”

“Isn’t seventeen the age of consent here or something like that?” she asked, focusing on her nails.

I did my best to avoid squeezing my glass too hard and shattering it. “The fact I’m sure you looked that up says you have no business at a party on campus.”

“When you were my age, you dated who you wanted,” she said with a smirk as if that was going to win the argument for her.

“When I was your age, my aunt and her twisted boy-toy were plotting my death and carting me off to Romania to be a sacrifice for an ancient master vampire. Want to sit down and go through all the things I was doing at your age?”

She grunted, set her tea on the table, and shook her head. “Not especially.”

“Tempi, don’t be in a hurry to grow up. Adulting sucks,” I said with a wink.

“You can have cake for breakfast if you want,” she said, grinning as she did.

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