and your Lord of Darkness uncle broke out of prison. Add your current summons and I’m just waiting for you to crack.”
“So you can pick up the pieces?”
She lets out a snort. “That’s Lucas’s job. He married your crazy ass.”
“True, and he’s done a great job so far.” I fill the teapot with soapy water and tip it over, letting it come out through the spout. “And I’m pretty good at keeping myself together. I might be just hanging by threads, but I haven’t crumbled just yet.”
“I know, and it’s rather impressive.” She folds the towel and puts it on the counter. “I’ve seen people fall apart over a lot less. And I know…I know it can be hard holding it all together.”
“Trust me, sometimes I don’t feel like I am. I have plenty of days when I don’t think I can do this anymore. That this is the end, that I’ve run out of luck.” I rinse the teapot and put it upside down on the towel. Rising the suds off my hands, I let out a deep breath and turn around, looking into Eliza’s pretty blue eyes for a second. “My life is kind of a mess, if you haven’t noticed.”
“A blind man would notice.”
“If he hung around me enough, for sure.”
“How do you do it?” Eliza asks softly. “How do you keep going when the world is holding you back?”
My head slowly moves back and forth. “I don’t know. I just do. There are people in my life, amazing people, who are worth fighting for.” I look through the kitchen in the direction of the office, lips pulling up into a smile on their own accord at the thought of Lucas. Casting my gaze down to my stomach, my smiles widens. “Now more than ever.”
We finish washing and drying the tea set, and then I try to find a place for it. My kitchen is small, and I don’t have any cupboard room left. Thinking it’ll look pretty displayed in my china cabinet in the dining room, I go in there to rearrange a few things before I get it set up.
I don’t use the dining room often. As much as I love having my friends over, we usually end up taking our plates into the living room, crowding around the coffee table as we talk, eat, and laugh. This room has become a bit of a catch-all, and I use the china cabinet to store extra magical supplies instead of fancy dishes.
“I think it’ll look good here,” I say, grabbing the mismatched set of extra wine glasses from the counter part of the cabinet. I crouch down, opening one of the cabinet doors. I’ve also been meaning to go through all my magical supplies, taking out the almost-empty jars so I know what I need to replenish. Might as well knock that out now, since I need to make room for the wine glasses.
I take a few jars out, thinking they’d be better stored upstairs in my closet, though now that Lucas’s clothes are in it, there’s hardly any room at all. We really need to move. This house hardly fits the two of us. There’s no way it will fit the two of us plus a baby.
Eliza brings the rest of the tea set in while I take everything out of the cabinets, a project I’m sure I’ll regret the second I stand up and look at the mess I have to deal with. Some of the herbs have been in here for well over a year, and while they haven’t gone bad, they’ve lost their magical potency and need to be recharged.
It takes a few minutes to get things rearranged, and I get the last wine glass in right as Eliza picks up a Mason jar from the floor. I notice at the very last second.
“No! Don’t open that!” I telekinetically swat the jar out of Eliza’s hands. It clanks to the floor and rolls over to where I’m sitting.
“What the fuck?” She looks at me, arching her perfectly filled-in eyebrows.
“Those are demon ashes. If you open it, it will resurrect.” I pick up the jar and look at the ashes before tightening the lid.
“Do I even want to ask why you have a jar full of demon ashes?”
I shrug. “You never know when it might come in handy.”
“You’re lucky the jar didn’t break.”
“The glass is magically reinforced, don’t worry. I should probably label this. I almost mistook it for cinnamon once. Which would