Phantom of the Library - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,83
Louisiana and Baton Rouge was becoming known as a hub for familiars to gather, instead of mainly being known for vampires. We had flipped a lot of witchy homes and sold them to familiars after they got their magical education at Chester Hall under the instruction of a shy sugar glider who had seen and learned it all while serving under the boot of an ambitious former council member…
I worked my ass off for ten years before I wanted to even think about having a “litter”, but then one day I realized I was just ready.
I was still extremely relieved to find out that I was only carrying twins. Twin girls, at that. It was not what Jake expected, but he was the happiest of all fathers when the girls were born. I had no idea whether the girls were his or Jasper’s technically, but no one cared anyway. They were dark haired, bright and active just like their dads, and they were easily mistaken for Graham and Byron’s children as well. One convenient thing about the fact that my dad felt all my husbands looked like “barbarians” because they had dark hair, and too much of it, I guess.
Still, sometimes we started to think that five parents still wasn’t enough to handle twins on top of everything else we had going on.
“How did our parents do this?” Jasper would often say.
“Because we were raised by our grandma and about twenty aunts, uncles and cousins on top of our parents,” Jake said. “So we’re actually short-staffed.”
I didn’t really want more kids after that, or so I thought.
But lately I’d been starting to change my mind again. I was forty-six. A witch’s childbearing years could be stretched out a little farther than a normal human, since our average lifespan was longer in general, but it was definitely getting to the point where I should think about it. Byron needed an heir, although he never pressured me about it. Graham seemed too busy and in love with our daughters to think about having his own kid, but he would be our second…
Any kid born of those two would be too gorgeous for words.
It was almost intimidating.
But I’d accomplished so many other things by now. Plus, my brother’s family had a little succubus girl and Anna was hitting her teenage years now. So far, so good, although admittedly…the worst was yet to come.
“Here’s the baby pictures,” Byron said, handing Hulda the correct album. Hulda and Brigid loved looking at their own baby pictures, of course, and who wouldn’t? I loved looking at them too because I snapped hundreds of incredibly sexy shots of my guys tenderly holding the babies. Byron reading to them? Swoon. Graham with Brigid asleep on his chest? Adorable. Jasper feeding Hulda? Aww. Jake taking them to a Red Sox game and giving them a sip of his beer? Well, I didn’t take that one. Their great-grandma did. What an enabler.
“Where’s Uncle Bevan?” Hulda asked, as she was looking through photos from other holidays. It was the first time the girls had noticed that some of the family was missing from the early photos, that for twelve years I didn’t see Bevan and I thought he might be lost to darkness.
“Yeah, where’s Aunt Jenny and Uncle Variel?”
I paused. “They were living in Etherium.”
Someday, maybe they would hear that story. But not today. The girls didn’t understand a lot of rules of the magical world. Like how demons could enslave people, or covenants could bind one race to another, or a nymph had to marry just to gain a soul and freedom. When I was a little girl, my parents taught me that even though we had lost our kingdom, it was still our right to rule over lesser beings. I didn’t want them to think about any of that. They still thought the world was fair and good, and I would keep that safe as long as I could, although I knew it might not last much longer. They’ll be ready for the world when it comes, I thought. They have all of us to support them through anything.
Later, I pinned Brigid into a starry wedding dress that was way too big for her, and Hulda made enough Smores to feed everyone twice over, and they ran all around the maze and the graveyard down to the water with their friends until they were all tired out, but just in case, I put a little sleeping potion in their juice.