Page 87 of Which Witch is Willing?
Drustan joined in, back-slapping and elbowing Nick with manly jibes. Killian’s deep laughter was added to the din even as he held his daughter, so tiny against his deep chest.
Aerin stood, if only not to be rude, but couldn’t seem to make her feet move to join.
Julian unfolded himself from the chair next to her, but slid his arm around her waist to breathe into her ear, “You’re troubled.”
Aerin made a wry noise. “Don’t read my mind, we’re not bonded.”
“I can read you, Aerin, because you are my favorite thing to study. Tell me what is wrong.”
Well… if he wasn’t the rightest thing-saying mother fucker alive.
“I’m not troubled,” she admitted, pasting on a false smile as Moira turned to beam at her. “I’m scared.”
She’d never uttered those words to another soul.
“Scared of the evil that threatens to take all this from us?”
She shook her head. “Scared to hope we can defeat it.”
41
“I’m assuming the shotgun wedding didn’t work,” War remarked the next day during a traffic jam on the grand staircase as all seven of them waited with varying degrees of patience for Moira to finish waddling down on her swollen feet.
Aerin almost plowed into her when Moira stopped abruptly and turned to address Dru. “You don’t have to assume anythin’ as you might use your immortal powers of observation to deduce that I’m obviously still knocked up and wide as a pontoon.”
Seven voices clamored in ardent and overblown disagreement as they each filed behind her into the den. They praised her grace and goddess-like beauty, miraculous maternal body, magical glowing skin, and glimmering hair.
“Oh, stuff your pie holes y’all, I ain’t blind, I looked in the mirror this morning.” Moira, clad a pair of Tierra’s yoga pants slung below her belly and an oversized T-shirt that simply readY’all need the Goddessmore tipped over than sat down, landing on the overstuffed couch with a moan of relief and an uncouth sprawl. “How does anyone do this for months?” she bitched, glaring at her stomach. “Just get it out!”
Nick, his concession to casual being that he rolled up the sleeves on his silk Bruno Magli shirt, perched a butt cheek on the arm of the couch next to her. The idle fingers of one hand wound their way beneath Moira’s lustrous hair to absently work at knots in her neck and shoulders.
“Put it in. Get it out. Make up your mind woman,” he leered at her, receiving a swat on the thigh for his troubles.
Aerin appreciated the joviality their conversation brought to the heavy purpose of their mid-morning meeting. The gist of it being: What the fuck did they do now?
Killian, who was the last to file in the room, planted his boots in a wide stance in the doorway. The leather of his coat creaked as he tested its mettle by crossing his ginormous arms. A man that monstrous needed some give in his seams. Death’s own sentinel, he scanned each of their faces with his dark gaze and opened their conclave with all the ceremonious candor of his years, immemorial.
“Sooooo…What the fuck do we do now?”
Crickets.
Aerin looked to a flowy, pajama-clad Tierra, who was usually a fountain of ideas—a few so wild and wide of the mark they had to wade through some hippie crazy sauce to get to the expert ones. She found it deeply unsettling that her eldest sister kept her eyes trained on the antique carpets the hue of Bordeaux, as if silently callingnot it.
Dru claimed the other end of the couch from Moira, Claire curled up so close to him she was practically in his lap. The couple said nothing, but held some sort of intense, silent court with their eyes.
“Didn’t anyone tell you it was rude to mind-meld in public?” Aerin flung herself into the Queen Anne chair opposite them in a fit of pique and adjusted the cuff of her cream blouse.
Claire dashed her a conciliatory glance. “We were trying not to argue out loud, which is also rude.”
“By all means, have at it.” Aerin gestured for them to continue. “It would be nice to hear just about any idea right now, no matter what it is.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t have all the answers that bothered her, it was that, for once, she didn’t haveany. She was a data miner, goddammit. And, while magic was a code she was learning to hack, what the fuck did she do about fate? Destiny?
Prophecy.
Dru made a growly noise and pulled Claire closer, tucking his hand beneath her hip. “If we agree on any one thing, it’s that we are every which way but fucked.”
“If I may.” Julian, resplendent in a navy checkered morning suit and butter-soft gloves, stood with his hand resting on the high back of Aerin’s chair like a monarch posing for a portrait. “I think it’s safe to say a cohesive strategy thus far has been woefully—you’ll forgive me—preposterously nonexistent. Because we were unable to arrive at an initial consensus regarding how many of us were for or against the apocalyptic prophecy, and accept or decline our part in it, we’ve frankly buggared the whole business.”
