Page 5 of Midlife Demigod Unexpected

“I wanted to make you something to eat.” My mother motioned to the food she had set out and ready to cook. “Do you want an omelet? Pancakes? Fresh fruit?”

“All of the above?” I asked. “Don’t get all nostalgic on me, Mom. It’s not as if you liked cooking for me.”

“I did my best,” she protested. “It’s, well, you know.”

I gave her a quick squeeze. “I understand. You had other things to do.”

“Plants were always my thing,” she said with a shrug. “Plants and magic.”

“I got the message,” I said.

“It was never meant to be something bad for you,” Hilda said. “It’s the same way you love O’Halloran’s. It’s your thing.”

“It’s the only thing I’m good at,” I said. “Serving alcohol and throwing a party,”

“Well, you wear it well,” Hilda said. “Can I get you a drink with breakfast? A coffee?”

I looked at her and chewed my lower lip, wondering if I should tell her what I wanted. What the hell. I wasn’t a kid anymore.

“Bloody Mary?” I asked, with a smile.

“Coming right up,” my mom said. “In fact, I’ll have one as well.”

I raised my eyebrows and my smile widened. “All right then. Shall we have breakfast in the garden?”

With glasses in hand, we stepped out into the yard she had turned into a complete fairy garden oasis. This was her private spot. When she wasn’t at the professional nursery, working on plants that she was going to sell, she was here in the backyard creating a wonderland of miniature fairy gardens that existed on berms and stumps or in the corners of trees. Everything flourished and grew, no matter what season it was, even winter. She had a way of making evergreens and deciduous trees look like sculptures crafted together.

My mother led me down a trail she must’ve newly paved, because I didn’t recognize it. It led through a tiny handmade glen and had a couple of seating areas by a little table. She moved beyond a bamboo wall, and into a spiraling passageway leading to a very small circle at the center, where there were a couple of large comfy chairs and a small table.

I shook my head at it all. “How do you even dream this stuff up? Much less make it.”

“Well,” Hilda said, giving me a sideways grin. “I do use magic to make it, so it’s not like I hand planted all the bamboo or have to deal with watering.”

“That’s right. You cheated,” I teased her.

She grinned back. “Maybe a little bit.”

“Well, it turned out amazing,” I said, settling back in my chair and breathing in the fresh warm air. It was like its own little ecosystem in here. Had I not known we were in southern Oregon, I would’ve thought we were somewhere in Southeast Asia.

“There’s been a lot going on,” my mom said.

“Are you OK?” I asked, suddenly concerned. We might not be close, but she was still my mom. “Did you go to the doctor?”

My mother shook her head like I had said a dirty word. “No, I am perfectly fine, fit as a fiddle,” she said, “but we’ve been having problems in the cemetery.”

I had to consciously stop myself from rolling my eyes. I didn’t want to hear about my mother’s coven. It seemed impolite to say as much though. Instead, I took a deep breath. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“The cemetery’s been breached,” she said.

“What exactly does ‘breached’ mean?” I asked. I knew only members of the coven could go into the cemetery and so I’d never been in. “What exactly is going on?”

“Well, the dark Fae, vampires, and monsters tried to break the seal on the cemetery and bring the dead to life. They got the skeletons to come back and then they made the bodies corporeal. They sent wraiths to gather the nightmares of the dead people and spread them around the population of Cougar Creek, but we stopped them in time.”

“That’s quite the story,” I said, taking a big gulp of my Bloody Mary. It’s not that I didn’t believe her. It was the exact opposite. I knew she was telling the truth. Mostly, I felt helpless and on the outside looking in. “How many are in the coven now? “I asked casually.

My mother looked at me quietly. There was no fooling her. She knew I always felt like an outsider looking in on her life. “Five,” she said. “The situation is so bad the pentacle of time has been enacted.”

“You say that like I know what it means,” I said.

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