pregnant is kind of like asking if I cheated on Lucas. He’s a vampire, and it’s not possible for him to father a child. “Lucas and I are going out to dinner later.”
“Must be somewhere fancy.”
“It is. He made a reservation somewhere in Chicago but won’t tell me where. It’s a surprise.”
“Are you celebrating something?” Danielle asks. She’s sifting through a pile of books, sorting them by genre.
“Making it through another month alive,” I say without thinking.
Danielle laughs and then looks at me seriously. “You’re not joking, are you?”
I shrug. “Not really, but we should all celebrate the fact that we’ve lived to see another day.”
“I like that outlook.” Betty puts the paper hearts down and gets more of our Valentine’s Day decorations out. Both Betty and Danielle know I’m a witch, and they’re both cool with it—now. After saving Danielle from a demon harvesting organs, she had a lot of questions that I avoided answering due to lack of time, which led her to have her suspicions. “And I need a boyfriend to go out to dinner with. I want to wear fancy dresses and go to fancy restaurants.”
“You don’t need a boyfriend to do any of that,” I tell her.
“True, but having someone pay for said fancy dinner would be nice,” she adds with a laugh. “Ugh, why are boys so much better in books?”
“Date a vampire,” I say with a wink. “The sex is at least as good as book-sex.”
“I went down a rabbit hole on Reddit the other night,” Betty starts. “It was a whole thread about people’s experiences in the bedroom with vampires. I’m not sure I can handle that level of aggression.”
“Aggression?”
“Like…borderline BDSM.”
“Oh.” I make a face. “Are you sure you weren’t on a thread about fetching?”
Betty laughs. “I might have been. It was interesting, to say the least.” Her cheeks flush a bit, and it reminds me how much Betty has come out of her shell in the recent months. “I think this is all the Valentine’s Day stuff.” She motions to two boxes on the ground. “This was with our summer stuff, for some reason.” She puts the strings of paper hearts on top of one of the boxes. “I think we have enough for our display.”
“I ordered more of those puffy paper things.” I hold my hands up like I’m holding a ball. “I don’t know what they’re called.”
“I think I know what you mean.” Betty stacks the boxes and tries to pick them both up.
“I got it,” I say and grab one. We take them up front so we can lay out what we need for the window. “The house is still good?” I ask, setting the box down.
“Yeah. It’s so nice having a place of my own again!”
I put my hands on my hips and step back, looking at the window to try and get an idea of exactly how to set things up. Betty eyes my stomach again, which is more prominent the way I’m standing. I’m not keeping my pregnancy a secret, and I know I’ll quickly come to a point where it’ll be obvious by looking at me. I still haven’t figured out what to tell people, since I’m married to a vampire.
We decided to go to a sperm bank, and Lucas used a turkey baster to inseminate me?
“What have you been up to?” Betty asks, dropping to her knees to start taking things out of the boxes. “I don’t mean to creep, but I do see you drive up and down the road occasionally.”
“We’re pretty much the only people who regularly use that road. And nothing much.” Other than obsessing over the fact that I’m Hell’s royalty and basically a ticking time bomb that will go off and alert my aunts and uncles. “It’s cold, and I don’t want to go outside, so we’ve been home a lot. We’re a boring married couple already.”
“You haven’t killed any…any…” She looks around, making sure we’re out of earshot of anyone. “Demons?”
“Oh, yeah, I have. Not a lot, and it’s been pretty quiet since I took care of those pesky ones around the Winter Solstice.”
Her eyes widen. “Are they always like…like walking around the town?”
“No, not always. And when there are, I handle it.”
“The woods behind the house kind of creeps me out,” she admits. “But I feel really safe once I’m inside.”
“I left the warding up around the house. They never failed me.”
Betty smiles. “That’s so cool. Do they, uh, fade away?”
“Yes, and if you want, I