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Clark put his warm hand on my lower back, and some of the stress eased out of me. I still had white lines going through my skin but having him with me helped everything feel slightly less out-of-control.

And then he said, “Feels like two,” and my whole life became madness and mayhem and absolutely not okay.

I whirled around, grabbed Clark’s wrist and squeezed it like I might rip off his arm and beat him with it. “What do you mean ‘feels like two?’ I’m not pregnant!”

He stared at me with glowing lightning eyes that gradually faded to a pale blue. “Of course not. It would be ridiculous to start a war pregnant.”

The older, bigger, crazier Clark slapped his back. “War? It’s only a little familial dispute. And can’t you see the twining magic, Marigold? I think Clark’s right. It’s twins.”

I stared at the mad uncle then down at my stomach, which was hidden beneath a nice black shirt. My former knowledge came back to me, how to look through the physical to see the layers of energy, and there, like mini supernovas, was the ridiculously strong energy of two small souls.

I collapsed into a squat, the stupid monkey patting my head like that would help. Did undead monkeys have lice? It was too late to worry about that now. Two more kids when my husband was a sorcerer with face-tattoos? Five kids and all of them magic of some kind? I couldn’t do this. I could barely keep up with the kids I had, and Clark wasn’t the man I’d thought he was. And his family wanted to kill us. What kind of psychos go to kill their grandchildren?

I stood up and searched through the crowd behind the fence until I found them. Her. She was the power behind the council, pale blonde hair, distinguished wrinkles because she was too proud to do Botox. And she’d come here to watch her grandchildren die?

I pointed at her. “What kind of a psycho wants to kill their own grandchildren? Are you seriously here threatening them and me and your own son? Why? Your daughter is a psychopath. If you have a problem with reckless misuse of magic, maybe you should start with her. Unless you’re actually the psycho behind her bad behavior and you think it’s completely fine to introduce yourself to your daughter-in-law and her children with a threat against their lives! Are you? Is that what the council is? Rabid, paranoid, bloodthirsty to the point of…” I sputtered because I was so furious. What was wrong with these people? Maybe they weren’t people anymore.

I whirled around and jabbed Clark. “And we’re still getting a divorce. I don’t care if you got me pregnant. Although, how could you?”

He raised a brow. “It wasn’t my idea.”

I gasped and looked at the porch to see if my children had heard that bit of shocking rudeness. They were all following Sage off the porch, her face a scowl of stubbornness that made me sigh internally. Because one thing this situation needed was an outraged teen.

“Wait, you’re all my relatives? And you want to kill us? Even these guys?” She grabbed the twins’ blonde heads and looked down at their angelic faces before refocusing on the group behind the gates. “Seriously?”

The older woman who held the reins walked regally through the rest of them until she stood directly outside the fence. “Of course not. We’re here to make a deal with your mother and father.”

“A deal? Because that usually means blood oaths, right?” Sage demanded. She barely glanced at the tiger, like he didn’t registered as a threat. Her voice, her magic, was compulsion, and Clark’s grandmother’s was the same. They could battle it out in words.

I shook my head and closed my eyes, shutting out the rest of their conversation, because if I was pregnant, what was I going to do? Defend my family. Yes. That’s what I was going to do no matter what. And the seeds for that had been planted thirty-five years ago.

Hundreds of small creatures had been buried with crystals inside their chests. I’d had to learn how to put something to sleep so I could raise it properly later. I hadn’t been strong enough to raise them before the council came with their claws. Ah. Clark’s uncle was the claw while he was the teeth. His uncle certainly had a better title. There was also an old crumbling mausoleum back in the forest filled with larger beasts.

To protect my family, I’d do anything. I’d even get really, publicly weird.

I grabbed Jerome’s hands and squeezed while Sage stood off against the family with her courage and sass.

“Call your bug friends to help us,” I murmured to him then I called mine.

It took so much focus to find and slip inside the minds of each and every slowly rising creature. They were confused until I planted in them the will, the need, the knowledge. They had an enemy, and they would fight to protect the family. My mind ran over the family to protect: Sage, Jerome, James, Donny, Ray, and Scilla. And Clark. Of course Clark, even if he was a psychopath with terrible parents and face-tattoos, and he’d knocked me up when we were still getting a divorce. Because I loved him, and I’d love him forever. No matter what.

I kept my eyes closed, focusing on the creatures until they were in place. I opened my eyes and saw Sage’s dark magic swirling around her hand, like she was about to throw a fireball. At me. Somehow, Clark’s mother had gotten into her head. Somehow, as if years and years of experience would always trump the emotional intensity of youth.

Clark threw a shield around her, sealing her away from us right before the council attacked. The monkey man, without a monkey because it was still on my shoulder, was talking to James about how to take the energy and turn it into a weapon. That’s when I saw what James was, and it was like Clark and the Claw. A weapon of lightning and violence. I did not want my son to become that, but then someone screamed as a beetle ran across his face. Jerome giggled, and then the baboons came out of the woods, and I was in the heads of the birds falling down on the opponents, pecking at the old woman until she screeched and lost control of Sage.

Squirrels. So many undead squirrels and birds, all of them mine, happy to hunt for me, targeting eyeballs and soft flesh like armpits.

Between my birds, squirrels, and then the larger creatures that were slower than the baboons and Jerome’s bugs, it was a horror film I’d never want to watch over on the other side of the fence. But I was there, inside all those heads, murmuring Latin back in my body to hold my focus and hold them to life even when they were targeted by strong neutralizing magic. That was Grandpa. He had the magical knowledge, while she had the will, the manipulation. What a power couple. But they didn’t get to come to my home and hurt our family. Not now. Not ever.

“Enough!” the woman cried, flinging a squirrel that had almost gotten out her eyeball. The squirrel was thinking about nuts for the winter, how her round eyeball would be so good for that. I may have encouraged him in that direction. “Call off your abominations or we will raze you to the ground!”

Clark started laughing. “You’ll raze us to the ground? With squirrels, robins, and cockroaches nibbling on your skin? No. I’m going to kill you one at a time until you understand exactly where the balance of power is.”

He became raw energy, but with the bounding darkness of my magic still wrapped around him. He pointed at his sister, and she threw up her hands, bringing up a defense spell before she cast against him, a line of light that the fence blocked.

Clark smiled and threw another bolt. And another. And another until her defense crumpled and she would’ve been roasted if Lark hadn’t thrown a shield for her.

“Brother, you don’t want to do this,” he said, like my husband should be ashamed.