Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(12)

There was only the small matter of my murderous mother.

“How’s that?” Lon asked. “You feel it warming up, or you want me to light a fire?”

“No need. It’s much better,” I said, holding the blanket up so he could crawl under with me on a wide wicker chaise. When he stretched out and wrapped his arms around me, his warmth chased the last of the chill away.

Lon often lounged out here, reading beneath the cover of the deep roof. From this vantage point, my gaze drifted over the wraparound redwood deck and the green lawn beyond, lush with palms and Monterrey cypresses. Past the cliffs, the moon-bathed Pacific spread out like a never-ending black carpet.

“Eleven weeks,” I murmured. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means the baby’s the size of a shrimp.”

He held up his fingers to demonstrate. This made my stomach flutter nervously.

“We’ll find an obstetrician,” he said, brushing my hair aside to tuck his chin in the crook of my neck.

“When? Before or after the Moonchild spell deteriorates my humanity? Before or after my mom realizes she’s got another living target?” I didn’t mean to sound so bitter, but goddamn. It wasn’t fair. How the hell was I supposed to find a spell my mother had used in some black-magick sex ritual during my conception twenty-five years ago? One that didn’t follow any of the original medieval Moonchild spells?

Priya had alluded to the possibility that my mother had constructed the spell herself, compiled from different sources. What if she was the only one who knew the details? And even if someone else could re-create the spell, it might take years of research, decades of trial-and-error. If they’d tried a different version on my deceased brother and failed, then God knew how many versions they’d experimented with before they conceived me.

She’d murdered an eight-year-old boy.

Her own child.

I pressed my palm against my belly as a slow, hot panic dripped down my spine.

“She can’t find out,” I whispered.

“We’ll go find the PI tomorrow.”

What if tomorrow wasn’t soon enough? Curled up with my back against Lon’s chest, I could easily drift into a lazy daze in minutes. If she tapped into me tonight, would she poke through my brain and see my knowledge of the shrimp-sized baby inside me?

I turned in Lon’s arms to face him. “I can’t take the chance.”

“Cady . . .”

“You’re willing to risk it? I don’t believe that for a second.”

“I would lay waste to the entire state and everyone in it before I’d let anything happen to you or that baby. And I would gladly kill your mother a hundred times over. Should’ve done it in San Diego when I had the chance.”

I shook my head. “It was my choice to give her up to the albino demon. And it was the wrong one.”

“No use thinking about that now.”

“What if Priya’s right? What if she finds a way to cross over, takes possession of me, and disappears with my body and the baby?”

Lon didn’t say anything for a long time. He was upset. So was I. And the longer it took him to come up with a logical argument, the more panicked I got.

“We know she can tap into my thoughts,” I said, thinking aloud. “I don’t know how deep she can go, but when I had those dream conversations with her, you were there in those dreams, lying next to me. And she clearly remembered you from San Diego. She remembered you, and she knew we were together, because she wanted to hurt me by killing you.”

“Yes,” Lon said impatiently.

“By that logic, we can assume the only reason she didn’t know about the baby already was because I didn’t—not when she was tapping into my dreams.” I sat up in the lounge chair. “She doesn’t have some all-seeing omnipotent power, Lon. She could only see inside my head. Like you, when you’re transmutated. Or . . . maybe more like Arturo.”

“Memories.”

“Exactly. So if I don’t know I’m pregnant, neither will she.”

“But you do.”

“But you know a way to change that.”

Lon sat up, brows drawn together. His eyes flicked back and forth between mine. Then his face fell. “The book of memory spells.”

“Yes.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why?” I challenged. “You’ve tried two of those spells, and they both worked. You retrieved my lost memories from childhood, and you wiped Riley Cooper’s memories.”

“That was a permanent wipe.”

“But there were other spells. Temporary ones. Think about it, Lon. You could remove my memory of the baby just until we have a chance to track down the PI or fly down to Florida or whatever we need to do to stop my mother.”

“Those spells are hundreds of years old. What if it wipes your memories for months?”

“Well, you did say the baby’s healthy.”

“It is, but—”

“And you said you wouldn’t let me do this alone.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Which means you’d be with me, so you could stop me from doing anything that would put the baby in danger.”

“But—”

“And it can’t last forever. Spell or no spell, I think I’ll eventually figure out something’s up when my stomach starts ballooning. Hell, if you’re afraid I won’t remember, you can just tell me about it.”