by Angie Fox
“Oh my.” They were going to turn my babies into Amazons straight out of the womb. “I—um—that’s a good safety precaution.”
Dyonne beamed. “I think so too!”
“They’re both here?” Dimitri demanded. “Lurking outside with a car full of enchanted weapons and horse tack?”
Diana crossed her arms over her chest. “They’re not lurking, they’re being respectful of yours and Lizzie’s privacy.”
Dimitri squared his shoulders. “Well, they can respect me to my face and talk to me about this ‘engagement’ stuff at the same time. Lizzie”—he turned to look at me—“I’ll be back in just a minute, all right?”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I’d made it to the void and back. Family should be a piece of cake. Still, I didn’t mind getting a little bit of breathing space. The more people crowded into this room, the hotter it felt. “Go talk with your sisters’ fiancés. I’d like to see them again.”
“Only after he vets them. Someone’s had his overprotectiveness gene activated,” Diana said with a sigh. “Lizzie, watch him, or you’ll be lucky if your daughters are allowed to date by the time they’re in their twenties.”
Dimitri paused at the door. “More like thirty-five, I’m thinking,” he said with a wink.
“I don’t know if he’s kidding or not,” I said out loud.
But Dimitri didn’t hear. He was already following his sisters out the door. “I never stopped you from dating!”
“Oh no?” Dyonne paused in the hall. “What about Niko?”
“Which Niko?” The twins followed Dimitri out of the room, and I went ahead and tilted the bed back a little farther. I really did feel pretty good now, just tired, like I could sleep for a week. I let my hand play across my stomach, wondering. When would I feel them move? Would I be able to tell one baby from the other?
“Hey, Lizzie!”
“Pirate!” I patted the bed, and he jumped up beside me, a fresh Sneak spell tucked into his collar. “Hey, buddy.” I scratched him behind the ears. “Did you have a nice walk?”
He nudged my wrist with a nice, cold nose. “Oh, Lizzie, it was the best! There are so many critters around this hospital, and the trash cans all smell really intense.” He let me work on his ears for another moment then turned and presented me with his butt and a hopeful look. I dutifully scratched right above his tail, and Pirate panted with joy.
“Where’s Frieda?” I asked, surprised that she hadn’t already come in.
“She stayed outside to have a cigarette, but she gave me a super important job!” He sounded proud. “I got to guide Philippa the Strange up to visit you! I bet I could be a guide dog, I’m so good at this stuff.”
I was startled. “Wait, Philippa is here? Where?”
“Well, I’m not about to walk in without an invitation, am I?” a familiar voice groused from over by the door. “Not the way you’ve got this room sectioned off.”
Grandma glanced up from a chair by the window, her eyes narrowing. “Tell her to piss off, Lizzie,” she muttered.
“Bold words from a woman who needed my moly to pull her shit together,” Philippa retorted.
“Come in,” I said, happier than I had any right to be.
Philippa entered, her hair just as wild as before, but her overalls had been swapped out for a stiff, polyester dress in a floral print. It had to be decades old—it still had shoulder pads, for heaven’s sake, and was nowhere near a match for the Birkenstocks on her feet. She carried a ceramic pot with a slender green stalk that ended in two tightly closed blossoms.
“Crazy Frieda got in touch just to let me know things turned out all right,” Philippa said, blazing right past the pleasantries, pointedly ignoring Grandma. “Her timing was good. I figured I’d give you this before you run back off to California.”
I didn’t accept the plant she held out. The shoot appeared tender and new, the blossoms a snowy white. I did lean—but not too close. I didn’t want it to bite my nose off or something. “What is it?”
“It’s a variant of an angel orchid.” Philippa set the pot on the bed next to me. “I treated it with your blood, fed a few spells in here and there, and now…it’s completely unique. Only opens at the touch of a person with angel blood in them.” She sounded proud.
Something clicked inside my head. “Is that why you asked for my blood?” She hadn’t used it for power or control. “You just wanted to grow me a flower?”
“Is that a bad reason?” Philippa bristled. “It’s about the most benign thing I can think of to use blood for, better than stuffing it in a spell jar and hurling it all over kingdom come.”
Grandma practically growled. “Watch it, woman.”
“Oh, go soak your head.” Philippa focused back on the orchid. “Angel orchids are generally beautiful things, growing in all sorts of colors and shapes. Some look like flying angels, some like they’re praying.”
No kidding. “What do these ones look like?” I asked.
Philippa broke out into a grin. “I don’t know. No angel blood in me.” Her smile widened. “Why don’t you touch it and find out?”
I glanced at Grandma, who nodded.
“Here goes nothing.” I reached out with one finger and gently stroked the backs of the delicate blossoms. For a moment, nothing happened. Then bit by bit they began to unfurl, one layer of petals spreading like a pair of wings, the next uncoiling into a pair of tiny arms. A long, luxurious petal unfolded below the top two like a robe, all the petals swaying softly in an invisible breeze.
The flowers had started off pure white, but as I watched, a deep purple expanded from the heart of each one, overtaking the white until it was gone. Then the color changed to pink. Then gold. Then a vibrant shade of orange. They were the colors I’d seen when my dad had come back to me—the colors of angels. After the amazing display, the flowers settled, bringing their petals back in close and nestling up together like…like…
I glanced over at the picture that Grandma still held in her hands. Two babies nestled together inside me. Two blossoms, just the same.
“Oh, Philippa.” It was too much. “They’re beautiful.”
“They’ll always bloom in pairs,” Philippa said quietly, her eyes still rapt on the orchid.
Amazing. “What else do the flowers do?” I asked. I’d never seen anything like it.
Philippa blinked and shook her head. “Nothing else. They exist, and they are lovely. What else should a flower do?”
Well, after hanging out with the biker witches all these years, I never could tell. “No angel fire?” I prompted. “No weaponized scent? No razor petals?”
“Ah, Lizzie.” Philippa patted my hand. “You’re going to have very special, very powerful children who will be given many special and powerful things and be expected to use them for all sorts of reasons. It doesn’t hurt to have something around that lives just for the sake of living and is beautiful without needing to be more. Do you understand me?”
I finally think I did. “Yes,” I replied, turning my hand over and giving hers a squeeze. “I do understand you. And it is an incredible gift.”
Epilogue
A year and seven months later, we gathered again in my mother’s cream-on-white living room to celebrate the twins’ first birthday.
You could tell where Rory had been by the festive pink smear left behind on the carpet. Of the twins, Rory was the more mobile one—getting her to sit still and eat one of Hillary’s gorgeous, way-too-elaborate birthday cupcakes was a losing proposition. Instead, the dark-haired, olive-skinned little girl triumphantly squashed the icing between her fingers and then took off for the back porch at the run-fall-run-fall pace that was her trademark right now.
“She gets that from Dimitri,” I said to my mom.
But she wasn’t listening.
“Aurora!” Hillary called after her. “Wait for Grammy, honey!” She left without a second glance at the floor, which was practically a miracle. Heaven knew I’d have gotten an earful if I
made such a mess as a child.
I stayed on the couch and shared a glance with Grandma. “It’s like Mom’s had a personality transplant where the kids are concerned,” I said, still turning over my parents’ gift for the girls in my hands. It was a Baby Genius thingamajig—one of those toys that came with lights, music, and various tactile accessories meant “To Start Your Baby On The Path To Learning!” At least that was what the box promised. Personally, I thought we’d be lucky if it lasted a week of the twins’ very robust affections.
“Eh, why should she worry?” my grandma said from where she lounged with Helena on her lap, who was more sedately eating a tiny cupcake of her own. Helena had my coloring, and she liked to stay neat most of the time. She wore a flowered dress, along with Grandma’s birthday present to her, a denim vest with a red skull emblazoned on the back of it, and astonishingly, it was still mostly acid-wash blue and not icing colored. “The Sweeper spell is gonna clean it up anyway.”
The Sweeper spell was one of a dozen new magical inventions the witches had invented after the babies were born. It was a flat, squishy thing that worked like a mystical Roomba, trailing after whoever was making a mess and sucking it into the ether.
It worked great—too great, sometimes. We’d had to have Grandma put some limitations on it after Pirate woke up one morning with the Sweeper on his head, casually sucking out “all the smells that make me me!”
They’d been archenemies ever since.
Speaking of Pirate… He sat attentively at Grandma’s feet, whispering up at Helena, “Just a few crumbs! Good, perfect! Now, see that globby bit there on your hand? Push it off with your—yes—yes—you’re so close—”
“No begging the babies for food.” It had become his favorite pastime.
He looked at me with a hangdog expression. “But, Lizzie, if I don’t get it, that smell thief will!”
“No, it won’t.” It really wouldn’t, because Helena had apparently just decided she was done with eating politely and mashed the entire thing against her face with a cry of glee.
The cupcake oozed off after a second, leaving a baby-nose imprint in what was left of the icing as it fell to the ground. Pirate snarfed it up before I could utter a word, then hightailed it out of the living room with a “Thanks, Lenny!”
Grandma cackled. She held Helena out to me. “Mom’s turn to take her.”
I’d noticed that it was usually only my turn to hold the twins when they were messy, smelly or crying. When they were being perfect angels, everyone else wanted a go. Frieda had even started using nicotine patches on the days we got together so she wouldn’t reek of smoke around the babies.
I got up off the couch and took Helena, who grinned widely at me. I grinned back—it was impossible not to. “Let’s get you cleaned up, huh?” As much as I like the Sweeper, I wasn’t letting that thing anywhere near my kiddo’s face.
“I’ve got her, Lizzie,” a sultry voice murmured.
I turned around just in time for Dimitri to sidle up to me and press a kiss to my cheek as he reached for Helena. “You wiped off the last round of food.”
“True.” Bananas didn’t have the staining power of frosting, but boy, did they get everywhere. I leaned in and kissed his lips. “Thank you.” Then I kissed him again, just for good measure. Then again…
Sticky hands pawed at our faces, and Dimitri pulled back with a chuckle. “Feeling neglected?” he asked our older daughter. Older by three minutes, but according to Diana and Dyonne, it still counted. “Let me fix that.” He carried her off to the nearest bathroom, and I headed to the backyard to check on everyone else.
The twins’ first birthday party looked like a roaring success. I leaned a hip against the frame of the kitchen door and looked out at the lawn. Creely had set up a—what had she called it, a trebuchet? Mangonel? Whatever it was, it flung chestnuts at floating balloons spelled to look like the witches’ ex boyfriends, and all the witches were taking potshots at them and making bets.
Nearby, the garden was in full bloom. Yet I could see the angel statue my parents had installed shortly after my dad’s death. Close to it, in a bed of forget-me-nots, stood a small cement Red Skull.
A firm hand clapped me on the back, and I turned to see my mentor, Rachmort. He’d been out of purgatory for a few months now and had good color from the last two months on the beach in Boca Raton. “You did good, kid.” He smiled, his cheeks red and his white Einstein hair wild about his face.
“I had help,” I said, not only from his training, but from my friends, my family.
He raised a frosted copper glass, the watch on his gold waistcoat jingling against a gold button. “I’m gonna grab another one of these. Heaven knows what’s in it.”
“If it’s Hillary, it’s top-shelf,” I told him. “If it’s the Red Skulls…”
“Anything goes.” He grinned and headed jauntily out into the yard to join the others.
Hillary worked her way around and between her guests with a tray of amuse-bouches, probably bacon-wrapped dates from the way Ant Eater was trailing along behind her, eating one for every two Hillary passed out.
Frieda chatted in the shade with Philippa, who, I was a little surprised had responded to the invitation. She wore a long flowered dress and appeared to be asking questions about the nicotine patches dotting Frieda’s arm.
Baby Rory entertained Cliff over by the gazebo. Cliff had icing all across the front of his shirt, but he didn’t even seem to notice. He had Rory perched on his hip, and he was doing the gentle bounce-bounce-bounce that seemed to be a requirement when it came to holding little kids like it was second nature. Rory and Flappy were cooing at each other, Flappy’s tail twitching back and forth in dragonly delight.
My parents really had been transformed by the babies. We all had. My family was larger and more loving than ever now, and I’d never been happier.
I felt Dimitri before I saw him, one hand trailing up my spine and coming to rest on my shoulder as he joined me at the door. He held Helena in his arms. She was clean as could be without completely changing her outfit. She smiled a gap-toothed grin at me, and I ruffled her soft, dark hair.
The girls looked so much like me and their daddy. I couldn’t wait to see how they turned out—whether their aunt Diana would get one of them interested in flying horses, whether they’d have the aptitude I lacked for casting spells. Whether they’d embrace their heritage as demon slayers or fight it like my mother, and even like I had for a while.
For now though, I was content just to lean into my husband’s caress, kiss my closest kiddo on the head, and watch the birthday party roll on. “I love this,” I told him. “You, the girls, my parents, the coven…it’s everything I never knew I wanted. I feel spoiled.”
“Cherish that feeling while you can,” Dimitri replied knowingly. “Because, babe…you’re up next on diaper duty.”
I snorted a laugh before I could stifle it. “Great, thanks for the reminder.”
He leaned in and kissed me. “Anything for you, Lizzie.”
And he meant it, too.
Note from Angie Fox
Thank you so much for joining me on this crazy, magical journey with Lizzie and the gang. This is the first series I ever wrote, the one that began as a scribbled idea on the back of a Macy’s envelope and blossomed into a series spanning ten years. That said, this will be the last demon slayer book. I’ve loved writing each and every one of Lizzie’s adventures. And heaven knows, the witches are going to make interesting babysitters, but I’ve decided to concentrate on other books for now.
Thank you for the love and support you’ve shown this series. I’ve read every one of your letters and emails. I have your character illustrations hanging in my office. I truly treasure you and this journey we’ve taken together.
—Angie
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Angie Fox writes sweet, fun, action-packed mysteries. Her characters are clever and fearless, but in real life
, Angie is afraid of basements, bees, and going up stairs when it's dark behind her. Let’s face it: Angie wouldn’t last five minutes in one of her books.
Angie earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri. During that time, she also skipped class for an entire week so she could read Anne Rice's vampire series straight through. Angie has always loved books and is shocked, honored and tickled pink that she now gets to write books for a living. Although, she did skip writing for a week this past fall so she could read Lynsay Sands’s Argeneau vampire series straight through.
Angie makes her home in St. Louis, Missouri with a football-addicted husband, two kids, and Moxie the dog.
If you are interested in receiving an email each time Angie releases a new book, please sign up.
Be sure to join Angie's online Facebook community where you will find contests, quizzes and special sneak peeks of new books.
Connect with Angie Fox online:
www.angiefox.com
[email protected]
Also by Angie Fox
Keep track of Angie's new book releases by receiving an email on release day. It's fast and easy to sign up for new release updates.
The following Angie Fox titles are also available in print format.
* * *
THE ACCIDENTAL DEMON SLAYER SERIES
The Accidental Demon Slayer
The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers
A Tale of Two Demon Slayers
The Last of the Demon Slayers
My Big Fat Demon Slayer Wedding
Beverly Hills Demon Slayer
Night of the Living Demon Slayer
What to Expect When Your Demon Slayer is Expecting
