Elain’s stomach rolled. It felt wrong talking about this with her infant nursing in her arms, but she knew she’d have limited opportunities like this with the former Immortal. “How can I tell what the cockatrice did and what was human-made?”
“Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes, cockatrice used humans and human allies for their purposes. You have to trust your instincts.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “I must leave.” She kissed her fingers and then touched them to Ellie’s head. “You are a wonderful mother, Elain. Do not doubt yourself in the least in that regard.”
Baba Yaga reached under her collar for the amulet and disappeared as a knock sounded on the bedroom door.
“You awake?”
Lina.
Elain glanced to where the former Immortal had sat. “Come on in.”
Lina popped in, a smile on her face and a steaming mug in her hand. “Thought I heard your TV on. Not sure if you were feeling like coffee, but how about a mug of mint tea to start your day, and see where we go from there?”
Elain couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you. I’d love that.”
Lina walked in, closing the door behind her, and set the mug on the bedside table next to Elain.
Which, unfortunately, spotlighted the missing baby monitor.
Lina frowned, picked up the plug, and held it up. “Do I want to know?”
Elain, fortunately, could lie to Lina. “I had an accidental poofing incident.”
“Huh?”
Elain pointed out the sliders. “I had taken it outside yesterday, and when I tried to bring it to me, it ended up in the pool.”
Lina snorted and held out her fist for a bump. “Good one, girlie. I don’t feel so bad now. No offense, but I’m glad you have your shortcomings.”
“None taken.” In fact, it gave Elain a lot of relief that Lina had bought the lie.
On the heels of that, it made Elain feel guilty as hell that she could lie to her friend.
“Where are the guys?” Elain asked. “And Mom and Dad?”
“We have several cows all giving birth at the same time at our place. One is having problems, so your guys are helping my guys learn the ropes. Dad’s helping supervise things here on the ranch. Cail said he’d be back when he could this morning. I begged Mom to swap places with me for the morning, so she took Joss and went over to help Kael and Zack with the Beasts, and to let Joss play with them. Connor’s asleep with a full tummy out in the living room. I was going to ask if you want me to handle the nursery laundry for you?”
“Oh, sweetie, you don’t need to do my housework.”
“Hey, new mom perks. Remember how we pampered Mai and Mom? Now it’s your turn, like it or not, to sit back for at least a few days and let us take care of you. Please?”
Elain wasn’t used to sitting back and being pampered like that, but she knew Lina was sincere. “I would really appreciate that, thank you.”
“No worries. Want me to leave the bedroom door open for you?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
It was great having friends like Lina. Friends who were family.
I don’t know what I’d do without them.
* * * *
Lina was actually treating this morning as a mini-vacation from her own crazy life, even if only for a few hours. Zack and Kael were doing more research this morning, yet another reason they needed Mom as a backup babysitter. Hell, Connor was easy to take care of, compared to her two darling little hellions.
Lina had asked Mom to swap houses with her for the morning under the additional pretenses of wanting to talk Seer stuff with Elain.
Not exactly a lie, although it wasn’t the only reason Lina had wanted Mom and Joss over at her place today.
And Lina had needed a break from her brood.
Goddess help me if they both start breathing fire.
Apparently it would still be a little while before they could definitively tell what George and Luke’s special abilities would be, or if they were Elementals or not. Elain hadn’t been able to tell, and Lina wasn’t exactly an expert on baby dragon lore, but ancient Arnost had finally gotten a cell phone so Lina could call him with questions.
This Seer shit is hard enough as it is.
She walked into the nursery and grabbed the laundry hamper, carrying it out to the utility room where the washer and drier were located. As she started to dump everything in, however, she froze, her nose wrinkling.
It wasn’t just normal baby stink, either. She smelled something…very familiar.
Rooting through the clothes, she found a blanket and a couple of onesies that had all been touching…
Lina closed her eyes and tried to place the odd scent. It was a wolf, one she didn’t recognize, but felt like she should. It wasn’t like she was a shifter with a super sniffer, either. Finally, she shoved everything into the washer and grabbed the empty hamper to take back to the nursery.
This time, she walked around and paused at Connor’s crib. Eyes closed, she rested her hands on the siderail and an image of Brighton sneaking into the nursery at night appeared in her mind. The vision wasn’t blue, either, meaning it’d already happened.
She saw him staring down at Connor, and it wasn’t exactly a look of uncle-ly love on the wolf’s face.
In fact, his murderous expression terrified Lina.
Brighton looked like he wanted to kill the baby.
Lina dashed down the hall and opened Brighton’s bedroom door, not bothering to knock first. She suspected he was gone, since she hadn’t seen him and his vehicle wasn’t parked in the yard. But if she found him there she’d utter a whoopsies and pretend she’d accidentally walked into his bedroom instead of the guest bath next door.
He wasn’t there.
Eyes closed, she stood there and tried to sense anything out of order.
Nothing.
Dammit.
She opened her eyes and then it hit her. Closing her eyes again, she placed her hands on his bed, fingers spread.
Now the visions swarmed over her, nothing in blue, of him sitting there, earbuds in and listening to something on his laptop. Doing research of some sort, but she couldn’t make the vision’s focus shift so she could see what, exactly, was on his screen. Everything was jumbled, distorted, jumping around.
Probably mirroring the insides of Brighton’s brain in the first place.
The overall feeling was that whatever the hell he was up to was no damn good.
We have got to get him out of this house.
Except it wasn’t her house.
But she’d bet the farm—literally—on Brighton being overall bad news.
The nagging question was why?
Or, perhaps, how?
Chapter Twelve
Elain had managed to get a shower, and Lina had cooked her breakfast, before Cail returned a little after eleven that morning. Elain was stretched out on one of the couches, Ellie sleeping on her chest, and Lina had been stretched out on the other couch. They were watching a movie on TV and talking.
Especially about how nice it was having Brighton gone for the morning.
Elain wouldn’t tell Lina the truth about the baby monitors. That would mean telling her she’d been talking with Baba Yaga, and trying to keep Lina from blowing Brighton up.
And Lina would likely try to blow Brighton up first and ask questions later if she thought he was a danger to anyone in their family.
For now, Elain knew she’d have to watch her back around him until she could figure out the best way to ease him out of their house without creating any suspicion.
What she really wanted to know was what he was up to, and ironically she realized that might be easier to do with him under their roof.
Juju and Bea, who’d been evicted from same said couches, lay on the floor, on either side of Connor, who was asleep on a blanket.
“Nice to see I didn’t miss the staff meeting,” Cail teased as he leaned in for a kiss from Elain.
“Everything go okay?”<
br />
“Yeah.” He turned to Lina. “You now have three more head of cattle than you did when you got up this morning, and should have a fourth fairly soon.”
She gave him a thumbs-up. “I wonder how long before my guys are begging you to just cut a hole in the fence between our properties and let ours mingle with yours?”
“Oddly enough,” he said, “Jan seems to have the stronger stomach for it.”
“That’s no shocker. Rick still gags and nearly passes out over baby poop.”
“Won’t be much longer before you’re potty-training them,” Elain said.
“Who? Jan and Rick?” Lina grinned.
Cail shook his head as he chuckled. “I’m going to grab a shower.”
“You want lunch?” Lina called out. “I was going to make us some sandwiches.”
“Sure, thanks.” He disappeared into the master bedroom and shut the door behind him.
“I really thought Rick would have been the stronger of the two,” Elain said.
“Me, too.” Lina sat up. “Not so much, actually. And if I can keep Luke and George from dropping trou in the middle of my yard to take a crap or piss, life will be swell. You know, minus the whole ‘trying to stop a nuclear catastrophe’ mess.”
Elain giggled. “I haven’t caught them doing that yet. The dropping trou, I mean.”
“They just started last week. I don’t want them teaching that to BettLynn.” Lina frowned. “Then again, when BettLynn’s shifted, a lot of time that’s what she does. Hell, she’s better housebroken than my Beasts, and she’s younger. Maybe they’re imitating her.”
Elain shrugged. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Well, it’s generally frowned upon for children to take a poop in public, yes. Dragon shifters or not. Eventually, my two brutes need to learn manners and how to use a toilet, even if their antics amuse their fathers and uncles.”
“If you had a choice to poop in a diaper, or shift and poop in the yard, wouldn’t you choose shifting? Dr. Alberto says that BettLynn is likely far more intelligent than we’re thinking she is, despite her disabilities. That it takes a high level of intelligence to shift as young as she is. She’s self-mitigating.”
Lina looked like she was about to answer, stopped, then arched an eyebrow at Elain. “Quit using that devil logic on me, woman. That’s not fair. I’m not a shifter, so I can’t answer that question.” She hauled herself to her feet. “Although I have to admit, I might beg Mom to swap places with me again tomorrow. This has been like a spa day.”
“Why didn’t you bring the Beasts with you?”
“Because as soon as we approach your front door, they start fussing and fighting and trying to get over to Mai’s house since they know that’s where BettLynn lives now. Poor Mom probably hates me today.”
“I appreciate you guys taking care of me like this, but I can handle it.”
Lina didn’t even turn as she headed for the kitchen. “Stop complaining and enjoy it. I told you, we’re pampering your ass, whether you like it or not.”
Elain carefully got up so as not to awaken Ellie and placed the baby in her carrier. Then she followed Lina to the kitchen.
“You know that thing you said you could do, seeing people’s intent? Like at the meth house? The supernatural heads-up display?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you see when you look at Brighton?”
Lina turned, her brow furrowed. “I’ve never seen it come up when I look at him. Why?”
“Just asking.”
“It’s not like it’s active all the time. Unfortunately, it seems to activate only when I’m busy doing something and not really thinking about it. Especially if it’s something intense and adrenaline-worthy. When I actively try to use it, it doesn’t seem to work.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, exactly, oh. We need to write the Triad/Seer 101 manual and sell it on Kindle for the future generations.”
Elain didn’t want to think about the “next” generation. “I honestly wouldn’t wish this gig on anyone.”
“Neither would I,” Lina said, “but I don’t want to spend the rest of my existence doing it, either.”
* * * *
By the time Brodey made it back to the house later that afternoon, Elain’s energy had tanked out again and she was asleep on the couch. Lina had already called Zack and asked him to send their baby monitors home with Mom for the Lyalls to use until they bought a replacement set.
Brodey still wasn’t sure he quite understood Lina’s explanation of what Elain said had happened to the baby monitors, but with Elain feeling so exhausted right now, he wasn’t about to question her over it.
If a baby monitor ending up in the pool was the weirdest thing to happen at their ranch on any given day, he’d consider it a win.
Elain awakened long enough to eat dinner, nurse Ellie, then crashed back into an exhausted sleep that nearly made Brodey’s body ache at a soul-deep level, feeling through their mate bond how worn-out she was.
Mostly from trying to be strong for everyone else for so damn long and barely taking a moment for herself.
Elain was a go-go-go kind of person, and being nearly eight months pregnant when they’d adopted Connor had zapped a lot of energy out of her when she should have been resting. She babysat for the other women, she did housework.
Add to that the damned Seer and Triad gig.
He got it, they didn’t have a say in it, she was doing it regardless because she’d been picked to do it.
Didn’t mean he had to like it.
And he definitely didn’t like it.
* * * *
Baba Yaga didn’t turn when she heard the sliding glass doors open behind her and someone stepped out onto the screened porch.
“You are lucky Oscar sleeps like the dead when he’s been well laid. Otherwise he would have been liable to rip your throat out, mistaking you as an intruder.”
“I know the truth about Connor.” Baba Yaga turned. “What I want to know is why you thought you could hide that from me.”
Gigi stood there in a man’s bathrobe that smelled like her Bengal tiger mate, her arms crossed over her chest and her fiery red curls long and loose down her back. “Who told you?”
Baba Yaga smirked. “You just did.”
Gigi stared at her for a long, angry moment. “You’re a real bitch, Babs. You know that? Did you engineer me to meet Oscar the way you did Callie and Daniel?”
“Engineer? No. That was pure dumb luck.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“You will or won’t believe me. That’s none of my concern.”
Gigi stared at her for another long moment. “You wanted the Triad dissolved. Why?”
“I thought you were ready to continue with the rest of your life?”
“What’s your game, Babs?”
“No game.” She examined her fingernails. “However, I am upset with you, that you’d think I’d deliberately harm a baby, cockatrice or not.”
Something finally rattled Gigi’s calm. “How could you see that? You can’t read my thoughts.”
“I didn’t. That was a reasonable guess on my part. I can, however, tell an occlusion when I see one, and Connor is occluded. Elain is desperately concerned about me not knowing that cockatrice bitch’s spawn is now, for all intents and purposes, a wolf. There’s only one reason for that. Like Callie, your powers are now gone. I’m not an idiot.”
Gigi finally took a seat in one of the chairs. “And here I thought I got one up on you.”
“Have you also forgotten that we are Seers?”
“Were.”
“Whatever.” Baba Yaga took the seat next to her. “I knew Aliah was going to try to capture Lacey.”
“Then why didn’t you stop it?”
“I couldn’t if I was off-Earth, now, could I?”
Another disgusted sigh from Gigi. “You let it happen. You knew this would happen. Why did you want Callie and me to give up our powers?”
&n
bsp; “Are you complaining? I didn’t hear it all, but I caught the tail end of your…” She cleared her throat. “I’ve seen Oscar naked, before and after he’s shifted. He is not poorly endowed.”
Gigi didn’t respond at first. When she finally did, the weariness in her voice drilled through Baba Yaga’s soul. “I was ready to let it go,” she softly said. “I’ll admit it. I was jealous of Callie. In the good way,” she added. “She was happier than we’ve seen her in hundreds of years or longer. Daniel is the perfect mate for her.”
“And then you met Oscar.”
“And then I met Oscar.”
“I will admit I saw you happy in the future, but I couldn’t see who your mate was. Only that you’d mated.”
Gigi turned in her chair. “How could you see me? Our powers cancel each other out.”
“The future you.”
“That must be pretty far in the future, then, if the connection faded that much.”
“It would seem so.”
“Huh.” She sat back again. “Children?”
“That I didn’t see, but it doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”
Before Babs could pull away, Gigi reached out and grabbed her hand and held on tightly. “You occluded BettLynn, using George’s and Luke’s energy to mask her, but they are alive. That means you had to give up something of your own, hmm? So how are you still able to move about the country, so to speak? Much less to off-Earth realms?”
“I might have struck a deal with the Devil.”
Gigi released her hand. “You despise Ryan Ausar. You always have.”
“Not true. I’ve had nothing against him personally.”
“You know what I mean.”
Baba Yaga stood and pointed in the general direction of Gigi’s bedroom, where Oscar lay sprawled, sound asleep, in their bed. “You have your hobbies and I have mine. Just because I wished to move on doesn’t mean I don’t have interests still.”
“Why not find someone for you?”
She dodged the question. “Connor is safe. Even had you not occluded him, I’m sure that him growing up in the Lyall home practically guarantees him a bright future. Feel free to tell Elain that the next time you speak with her.”