Page 1 of Haunt Improvement
Chapter 1
“SHE SAYS SHE NEEDSmore cookies,” Asher, my eight-year-old nephew announced.The sly appeal was made extra adorable by his Aussie accent.I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but I’d become the little munchkin’s favorite person.Though, the fact that I was holding his cousin hostage in my swollen belly might have had something to do with it.
“Is that so?”I chuckled as Asher lifted his head off my stomach and nodded eagerly.
“She’s very hungry,” he said, rubbing his own belly and eyeballing the owl cookie jar on the counter.“So am I,” he added softly.
“Ditto, kiddo.”I sighed.
Thanks to the special pregnancy diet my doula had recommended, the past month had been dubbed thegreat cookie famineat the Hernández house.If not for the bat baby in my cave, I had a feeling Asher would have adopted Marge, a.k.a.Cookie Witch, as an honorary auntie.
“Well, maybe justonemore,” I finally relented.
Asher pumped both fists in the air.“Yes!”
A little foot jabbed the inside of my ribcage as if the baby were celebrating with him.At least, Ithoughtit was a foot.The sharpness of the poke could have been a bony wing tip for all I knew.It was either that, or someone had smuggled a pair of heels in there for her.But if the worst thing she inherited from my side of the family was a shoe addiction, I could totally live with that.
Of course, we wouldn’t know exactly which way the little whippersnapper leaned until she got here—in anotherfourmonths.But who was counting?
This witch.I was counting.
And,holy poppy fields, I was already bigger than a house.Which was concerning DeeDee, my deer Shifter doula.Hence the sweets-free diet.But today was a cheat day.It was Halloween, and Dylan and I were hosting a party.Which meant a baking playdate with my nephew while his mother worked at the Assjacket Country Club.
The party had been Dylan’s idea, though I suspected he had ulterior motives.If everyone came here, there would be no need for me to go broom-vrooming around town in my delicate condition.That was assuming Broomzilla would even come out of the belfry when I called for her.
Our last ride had been tense.I wasn’t sure if her bristly bitching had more to do with the extra weight or my awkward balancing act on her handle.The baby bump had appeared almost overnight, and I was still trying to figure out how to navigate around it.
Asher pushed a barstool up against the kitchen cabinets and used it to climb on top of the counter.He pulled the ceramic owl between his knees before prying its head off.A rainbow streaked through the window over the sink and painted a glittering path across the kitchen, ending at the cookie jar as if it were a pot of gold.My magic was a little wonky from the pregnancy hormones, but I’d take rainbows over storm clouds any day.
“One for bitty bat,” Asher said, handing over the first cookie.“And one for me.”He placed his cookie on the counter and reached back into the jar, rearranging the remaining pawpaw-doodles.“If we stack them in a pyramid on bottom, Uncle D won’t be able to tell.”
“Able to tell what?”Dylan asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway, clad in a terrycloth robe.
“What my costume is,” Asher squeaked.He pushed the owl behind him and back into the shadows under the cabinets.On top of having a vivid imagination, the kid was a fast thinker.
I held my cookie close, keeping it out of sight so his ruse wasn’t foiled—and so I wasn’t lectured.Todaywasa cheat day, but that didn’t mean I could gorge without disapproving looks from the daddy bat—or the granny bat.
“I thought you were going to be a lion,nieto,” Mama Hermosa said, pushing past her son and into the kitchen.“Or was that last week?”She yawned and straightened the hem of her sleep bonnet.It was well after noon, but my husband and mother-in-law had spent the night flying with the bat colony.
“Last week was Dracula,” Dylan reminded her, then fetched them each a coffee mug from the cupboard.I contained my snarl of jealousy.Caffeine was on DeeDee’s no-no list, too.I was lucky she had promised to look the other way at the snack table during the party tonight.
“So, what will you be now?”Mama Hermosa asked as she helped Asher down from the countertop.His cookie was gone, snatched in a stealthy grab that even I had missed with my java coveting.
“It’s a surprise!”Asher’s excitement sounded genuine, though I had to wonder if he was covering for our cookie heist.“Mum will be off work soon, so I better fly home.We have lots to do before the party.”He darted through the kitchen, then backtracked a step and planted a kiss on my cauldron-sized belly.“Bye-bye, bitty bat!”
Mama Hermosa watched him go with a furrowed brow.“Fly home.”She harrumphed.“There are three empty bedrooms upstairs, and a nursery.”
“We’ve offered twice.”Dylan shrugged.“What more can we do?”
“Their home should be here,” Hermosa grumbled.
“I agree.”I nodded and took a bite from my cookie, hoping Dylan’s mother wouldn’t scold me so long as I sided with her.And anyway, Ididwish Asher and Daisy lived with us.
It was a rather drastic change of heart, considering I’d hated Daisy’s guts when they’d first dropped in nearly six months ago.I’d been convinced that Outback Barbie was looking to make my husband her sugar bat.Thankfully, she’d only been looking to make Dylan—and me—Asher’s new parents, since she’d thought she was on her deathbed.
A hex on the Australian banana farm they’d fled had made her very sick.She’d been dying, and with no one to rely on for help with her batling.First, she’d tried to contact Asher’s father, Dylan’s brother Drew, not knowing that he’d succumbed to the Hernández family curse.Then she’d come here, looking for any remaining family.
Assjacket was not the kind of place I would have chosen for myself.My late gran’s bespelled broom had dropped me here to find a friendly face that could direct me to the rest of my inheritance: a savings account in the Caymans.It had been Dylan and his Shifty—mostly ghostly—family that had convinced me to stay.
