What to Expect When Your Demon Slayer is Expecting Read online

“Oh, sure. Of course not,” I said. Just when I thought I’d gotten used to the biker witches…

  Grandma ignored my trepidation. “It’s just that moly…well, it attracts a certain type, if you know what I mean.”

  “No,” I said flatly. “I have no frickin’ clue what you mean. Spell it out for me.” I was going to work my butt off to save my mom, but I wouldn’t charge headlong into a situation where not knowing all the details could get someone hurt.

  Creely huffed impatiently. “Moly is an incredibly powerful, supernaturally attractive substance. Most of the plants we use in spells are pretty normal, the kind of thing you might find in a garden or greenhouse. Moly, though…legend says it grew out of the blood of a giant. You know about Odysseus?”

  I frowned, trying to remember back to eleventh-grade English class. “He’s the guy who got lost for a decade after the Trojan War, right?”

  “Yep, that genius.” Creely’s wallet chain clinked as she leaned forward. “He and his crew tangled with a witch named Circe, and she turned all of his sailors into pigs. She would have done the same thing to Odysseus if a god hadn’t given him moly beforehand.”

  I could go for that. If the legend was true. “This stuff really works, huh?”

  “It works like a charm,” Ant Eater drawled. “It’s just usually protected by vicious supernatural predators or crazy-ass witches who should put a damn sign up if they don’t want you accidentally crushing their singing begonias.”

  Grandma rolled her eyes. “Let’s not rehash that again. We have to figure out where to get some moly. Anyone hear about any giants that have been taken out recently?”

  My kitchen contained at least seven witches, who all stopped what they were doing to consider the question.

  A male witch named Bob stroked his gray goatee. “What about that earthquake in Belize?”

  A purple-haired witch next to him gave a dismissive wave. “That was the Martinez Coven trying to brew up a batch of magic tequila. No hangovers, but highly explosive.”

  “Anybody know any giants?” asked the short, stout witch spelling the cabinet next to my sink.

  There had to be an easier way to find this stuff than tracking down dead giants. I pushed to my feet. “I need to talk to Dimitri.”

  He was still outside, doing his best to remind Flappy that cars were not for bouncing on while trying to keep Pirate from arguing that of course they were, they were there, weren’t they? I took in the gashes in the paint on the top of Hillary’s sedan and winced. At least she had top-of-the-line insurance. “You boys have been keeping busy, I see.”

  Dimitri didn’t look amused. “This is the nosiest neighborhood ever. I swear every five minutes someone new comes along who just has to introduce themselves to me and ask about you. I’ve had to turn away three pitchers of sweet tea and a Coca-Cola cake to keep them from barging into the condo.”

  “And not a single treat for me!” Pirate added. “No Schnickerpoodles or Paw Lickin’ Chicken Bites. It’s like they don’t even remember me, Lizzie! Where’s the love? Where’s my cake?”

  “Now that we’re home and in a stable environment, I’m starting you back on Healthy Lite dog chow,” I informed him.

  “You see how I suffer?” he said to Flappy, who landed nearby and let out a warbling yaark.

  While Pirate took his case of injustice to his dragon, I turned to Dimitri. “Have you ever heard of a plant called moly?”

  He hummed thoughtfully. “Isn’t that mythical?”

  “Funny, coming from a griffin,” I told him. He shot me an amused look. “We need it to make a protection spell for my mom, and apparently it’s really hard to find. It’s Greek, though.” At least, I figured it had to be Greek. Odysseus was Greek, wasn’t he? “Maybe we can ask your sisters?”

  “They’re not herbalists, but it’s worth a try.” Dimitri pulled his phone out of his back pocket and pressed a button. A female voice answered a moment later, and his face lit up. “Hey, Dyonne.”

  Diana and Dyonne were Dimitri’s twin sisters and the whole reason we’d met in the first place. He’d needed a slayer to help him confront the demon Vald and rescue his sisters from a deadly curse. At the time, he’d told me he was helping me for my sake, that he was my protector. When it came out later that he wasn’t, well…we’d had words. Loud, angry words.

  Luckily, all that was in the past. I loved Dimitri, his sisters loved me, and he loved all of us. We were a regular old lovefest. If his sisters could help us, I knew they would.

  Dimitri had to work to keep Dyonne on track. From what I could hear on the other line, she’d wanted to talk about his birthday, asking way too many questions.

  At least I’d woken him up with a birthday surprise this morning.

  “Yeah, moly.” Dimitri pulled the phone away from his ear a moment later as his sister’s voice went up an entire octave and several decibels. He shot me a wide-eyed glance. “I take it that’s a no?”

  The voice on the other end grew louder. He winced and held the phone out to me. “She wants to talk to you.”

  Ah, well. This should be interesting. “Hi, Dyonne.”

  “Lizzie! What on earth do you need moly for?”

  “It’s for my mom,” I told her, not giving an inch. “You remember her from the wedding.”

  “Hillary? She cornered me with a hairstylist and gave me the updo from hell. Of course I remember her.”

  “Well, listen,” I said, ignoring her tone. “My mom is in big trouble. We need the holy grail of anti-possession spells, and moly is the key ingredient. If you know where to find it, you’ve got to tell me.”

  Dyonne sighed heavily. “Oh, Lizzie, I’m sorry. I’d help if I could, but the Isle of Aeaea’s been scoured clean for centuries. There probably hasn’t been any moly growing there since the end of the Bronze Age. I went there to look for it myself back when I thought it might help Diana and I get out from under Vald’s curse. There was nothing left but black rocks and old blood.”

  What a lovely image.

  “I hate to be the one to tell you,” Dyonne continued. “Even if I knew where to find moly, it’s rumored to be incredibly dangerous to transport. The last person I heard of trying it dropped dead before he’d gone fifty feet.”

  This just got better and better. “Thanks,” I said mechanically, and handed the phone back to Dimitri. He took it with a worried look, but I headed back inside before he could talk to me about it. Too much sympathy from my husband right now and I would break down, and my mom needed me to be strong.

  Pirate walked with me, tail wagging. Oh, to be a dog.

  I sat back down on the couch between arguing witches, pulled Pirate into my lap, and listened, hoping we could figure this out.

  “—in Newfoundland,” Ant Eater was saying. “It’s just a rumor, but a rumor might be worth chasing down at this point.”

  Grandma shook her head. “We don’t have the time. Even if it’s true, we’ll still have to fart around for days finding the thing, and we can’t risk taking Hillary that far. If we jostle her too much, our holding spell won’t be worth shit.”

  “We could consider making a deal,” Creely said, and every other witch in the room made outraged noises. “Look, I don’t like consorting with demons that way either, but they do know things,” she defended herself. “If we get a lower-ranked soldier. If we’re careful enough when we set the terms—”

  “We can’t trust a demon to abide by terms,” Grandma scoffed. “Not with Lizzie in the mix.”

  Great. It was even more my fault that my mom couldn’t kick her possession. Astonishingly, I felt a tear well up in the corner of my eye. I stiffened and carefully wiped it away. Yes, I cared, but I wasn’t a crier. What was wrong with me?

  Frieda broke the tension by strolling into the living room and pulling my mom behind her. “Ta-daa!” she announced, holding her hands out toward Hillary like she was a magician revealing her great new trick. “It suits her, huh?”

  Sweet switch stars, I almost di
dn’t recognize my own mother. She wore a leopard-print spandex bodysuit with an attached rhinestone belt sporting a huge cowgirl-style buckle. To top it off, a neon green bra peeked above the bodysuit’s décolleté. She wore her own jewelry and shoes, no makeup, and an intensely peeved expression.

  “Not a word,” my mother ordered as the witches collectively drew a breath. “Not. One. Word.”

  “How about two words?” Ant Eater asked. “Such as nice knocker—”

  “No!” Hillary held up a hand. “I am not having this conversation. I am not looking in the mirror. Now tell me what you are going to do to get me out of this mess.”

  Grandma stood to face her. “We’ve got a spell in mind that we think will work.” She held up a hand before Hillary got too excited. “But it needs an ingredient that’s hard to find. Real hard.”

  Frieda frowned. “What d’ya have in mind?”

  “Moly,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, for Praesidium?” She placed a hand on her hip and chewed her gum thoughtfully. “That’s a good idea. You know what? You should ask Philippa about that.”

  There was a chorus of groans. “Setting aside the fact that she loathes us and has for decades, nobody even knows where Philippa the Strange is anymore,” Ant Eater protested.

  Frieda shrugged. “Oh, sure they do. I mean, I do. Battina kept in contact with her.” Battina had been the coven’s healing witch who was killed in a battle against a demon months ago. Frieda was doing her best to step up and take her place, and apparently that meant getting her address book too. “I guess she didn’t want you all to know because of the whole—” she waved a hand indistinctly “—thing you had with her.”

  I didn’t care about the witches’ grudges. I only cared about my mom. “Where is this witch?”

  “Philippa?” Frieda snapped her gum. “Oh, she’s right here in Atlanta.”

  Ha! I set Pirate down and surged to my feet, newly energized. “Perfect, let’s go talk to her!”

  Frieda’s smile slipped away. “What, you want…you want me to go talk to her? Oh no, I couldn’t do that.”

  Yeah, well, I didn’t have time for this. “You just said you know where she is.”

  Frieda grimaced and tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear. “Well, sure, but she doesn’t really like us Red Skulls. I tried reaching out to her a while back and got nothin’. She might give you a pass because you’re a slayer, but me?” She shook her head. “I might as well stick a target on my forehead as go talk to Philippa the Strange.”

  I came over and gripped Frieda’s skinny shoulders. “It’s got to be you. You know what moly looks like, right? I have no idea! I wouldn’t know if she was giving me a moly or a magic bean stalk.”

  “Well, you see, a bean stalk has pointed leaves—” Frieda began.

  “Cut it,” I told her.

  “Lizzie’s got a point,” Grandma said. “Most of us, we wouldn’t be able to see it anyway, not with Philippa’s damn curse. You weren’t a part of that mess, Frieda.”

  “That doesn’t mean she likes me!” Frieda squeaked. “Philippa is really fussy, prim and proper, cup of tea and all that. She didn’t even like Battina—they barely tolerated each other!”

  “She thinks we’re loud and uncouth,” Ant Eater said, picking at her fingernails.

  Gee, I wonder where Philippa had gotten that idea.

  “You’re my mom’s best chance,” I told Frieda. As far as I was concerned, it was nonnegotiable.

  Hillary stayed silent, but reached out and took Frieda’s hand. The yellow-haired witch glanced between us and sighed.

  “Oh, fine. But you’d better be on your guard, Lizzie.” She pointed a glossy pink nail at me. “I can’t watch my butt and yours at the same time.”

  “I’ve been taking care of myself for a while, thank you,” I told her.

  “I’ll come along as well,” Dimitri said. “To provide extra security.” He shared a glance with me that said just try to stop me, like he was expecting me to argue.

  “That’s perfect,” I told him. I’d rather have Dimitri by my side than anyone else. I looked back at Frieda. First, we needed a plan. “Okay, what I’m hearing is that Philippa is the anti-Red Skull.”

  Frieda lowered her chin and gave me a look. “She hates our guts.”

  I nodded. “Then I know where to start.”

  6

  “Did we really have to take the van?” Frieda protested, squirming in the passenger seat as if it was going to haul up and bite her.

  “It’s all part of the plan,” I said, seeing her go a bit pale when we pulled up to the place I had in mind.

  “What’s going on?” She stared at me as I put the van into park and shut down the engine. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Deep down, she knew. She had that same look Pirate got when I took him to the groomer’s.

  I opened my door first, while Frieda refused to move. I strolled over to the passenger side, half expecting her to lock the door. She rolled down the window instead.

  I considered it progress. “Before we even think about talking to Philippa, we’re both getting a makeover,” I told her.

  She gaped at the glass store windows in front of us, and at the blue sign on top that proudly proclaimed we were at the Gap. “No way in hell,” she said, stiffening. “I look great the way I am.” A rainbow of plastic bracelets jingled as she tossed out an arm. “Fabulous!”

  “Think about it,” I told her. “Philippa hates the Red Skulls. She thinks you’re a bunch of rowdy biker chicks.”

  “And I’m proud of that,” she shot back.

  “Look,” I said, placing both hands on the window ledge so she couldn’t roll it up again, “first impressions count. Or in your case, second impressions. We need to show her we’ve changed. We’ve turned over a new leaf.” I tapped a hand on the ledge. “We’re even driving a van!”

  Sure, it had flames down the side and a dragon’s nest on top, but it was progress.

  Frieda looked like she’d swallowed a lemon.

  Dimitri smiled from where he lounged on the back bench seat. “I’ll wait in here,” he said, feeding Pirate a beef jerky treat.

  Spoken like a man on a shopping trip.

  “I’ll see what they have,” Frieda said, reluctantly opening her door. “But I’m not wearing plaid.”

  “Think of it as a costume,” I said, tossing a wink to Dimitri as I led a stiff-legged Frieda into the store.

  Dimitri had already dressed up. When I’d told him my plan, he’d changed into a pair of gray trousers and a black button-down shirt. I realized I had nothing to wear except for my leather and satin. I’d need a few things too.

  We emerged a scant ten minutes later, with me in a gorgeous, flowered dress that flowed down to my new leather booties and Frieda wearing a denim shirt dress, minimal jewelry, and white tennis shoes. We’d used the dressing room mirror to comb down her blond bouffant into a sensible ponytail, and we’d added a simple tortoiseshell clip.

  I gave a little spin, which Dimitri appreciated, while Frieda stumbled over the curb toward the van.

  “I can’t walk in these things,” she said, picking up her feet like she wore alien shoes. “It’s like my heels are sinking into the ground.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” I said, stuffing the bag with our clothes and her mounds of jewelry into the back. “Thank you, by the way.”

  She gave a quick nod, her face drawn. “I’m doing it for your mamma,” she vowed, as if I’d asked her to walk naked down the street during rush hour. “Now let’s go see where Philippa is hiding.”

  * * *

  I pulled to a stop in the parking lot and just stared for a moment. “The Atlanta Botanical Garden?”

  Of all the spots an earth witch might hide, this was one I hadn’t expected. It housed a lot of unique plants, true, but it was so public.

  I shut down the van and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.

  I’d only been here a few times befo
re, mostly to attend charity events Hillary had set up in the rose garden, but I remembered the layout of the place. The most isolated it ever got was the canopy walk, and that was still fairly crowded, especially over the weekend like it was now.

  “Isn’t it nice here at this time of year?” Frieda asked, fidgeting with her blond ponytail. “This is the kind of place that puts people in a good mood. I hope.”

  I shared a glance with Dimitri. Frieda’s obvious nerves weren’t doing the rest of us any favors.

  Then again, Dimitri wasn’t much better. He practically vibrated with pent-up energy as we set off on the sidewalk that led into the gardens.

  “How can anyone live here permanently?” he asked. “Wouldn’t they be discovered eventually?”

  Frieda slowed her pace. “Not if she’s warded to kingdom come and back,” she said. “Philippa the Strange has always preferred plants to people, from what I understand.”

  “Lizzie! Lizzie, put me down. I need to sniff, pronto!” Pirate wiggled vigorously in my arms and I worried he might fall free and brain himself. I set him down, and he immediately put his nose to the ground. “I bet I can find her! I’ve got a great nose for trouble.”

  “That’s unfortunately true,” I said dryly.

  Dimitri lifted his sunglasses off and tucked them away. His handsome face appeared sharper than usual, his jaw tensed. “If she’s as dangerous as she sounds, then you won’t have any trouble finding her yourself, Lizzie.”

  That was also true. As a demon slayer, I had an instinct that led me toward danger rather than pushing me away from it. Still, Philippa the Strange wouldn’t be actively trying to kill us, right?

  My fingers danced over my switch stars. Right.

  “People are looking at me,” Frieda said, eyeing our fellow visitors. “Is my dress falling off?” She ran her hands over her torso. “It’s so loose I can’t tell.”

  “You look good,” I assured her, “and nobody is even noticing you.”

  It had to be a first.

  Just before we headed under the arches and into the gardens, I bent down and fixed an inky black Sneak spell to the back of Pirate’s collar. They didn’t allow dogs here, and the entire concept of covert didn’t compute for him.