Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(88)

Tabitha Rose Bell Butler was born two weeks early, after fifteen grueling hours of labor. And three years later, even through the postpartum depression and the nights I sat awake scared out of my mind that I didn’t know what I was doing—or that she was too good to be true and something horrible would happen to rip her away from me—it was worth every second.

Tabby likes collecting shells, coloring on the walls and floor, clementines, birds, and building sand castles down at the beach. Every Saturday, she watches cartoons with Jupe. And every Sunday night, we call up her favorite bird of all, Priya, who shows her all the threads that connect us together and how big his wings expand.

She loves to tell wild stories, so when she informs the checkout lady at the grocery store that Mommy can turn into a dragon lady and Daddy has horns, we just shrug and smile.

And as for horns of her own? The verdict’s still out on that, I suppose. Apart from her halo, there’s nothing unusual about the way she looks. But she can already kindle Heka, as Jupe knows all too well, and although we haven’t seen any definitive proof of an early knack, Lon and I have been a little on edge. This past Christmas, Jupe rushed downstairs in a frenzy to tell me that Mr. Piggy wasn’t waking up. He was already on the far side of normal life expectancy for a pygmy hedgehog, so I knew the day would eventually come. And he might not be the coziest of pets, but it still broke my heart.

However, after I raced back upstairs with him, we found Tabby in Jupe’s room, sitting in the middle of the floor with Mr. Iggy, as she calls him. The hedgehog was sniffing around her shoes, looking perfectly normal. Tabby smiled up at us and said, “I woke him back up.”

Maybe it was nothing. But it sure freaked Jupe out. Hell, it freaked me out, too. I’d experimented with a lot of my own knacks over the last few years, but reviving the dead sure as heck wasn’t one of them. Lon said we were both crazy, but I could see the fear in his eyes. Kid with a persuasion knack? A headache. Kid with the power to reanimate dead things? A waking nightmare.

But I’m no walk in the park, either. I still didn’t completely know the outer limits of my own abilities. The rotating smorgasbord of random knacks stopped after Tabby was born, thank God. Turns out maybe it was a side effect of my pregnancy and not a sign that I was losing my humanity. And although I could still access some minor knacks when the sun was out—mostly sensory-based ones, such as empathy and clairaudience—they were nowhere near as strong in the daytime as they were after dark.

For the past year, I’d been seeing Jupe’s old psychiatrist, Dr. Spendlove, the Earthbound doctor who specialized in knacks. Naturally, I was his favorite patient, and not just as a curiosity—he said I was helping him better understand the limits of demonic abilities. I’d definitely done a lot of experimenting in his office. Most of it was harmless.okay, maybe I’d set a few things on fire and accidentally transported his desk out of his office. Where it went, I’m still not sure. Maybe I’ll find out one day.

A tiny snore erupted from Tabby’s open mouth. Lon and I stifled laughs and watched her twitch her way into dreaming. His fingers twined with mine over her back. The sliver of his halo glowed as bright as ever in my engagement ring.

Our wedding was no-frills, just us, Jupe, Kar Yee, the Holidays, and the Giovannis—minus Yvonne, who may very well be going on two years of sobriety in Miami but is not invited to family functions. Father Carrow, the retired Earthbound priest who played Cupid by introducing us, performed the ceremony right here in this yard.

A couple of months later, Lon, Jupe, and I went to his adoption hearing and made Jupe officially mine. A piece of paperwork wasn’t half as binding as my tattooed sigil on his hip, but you wouldn’t have known it from all the crying he did that day. Granted, I might have shed a few happy tears myself. Lon, too, although both of them would deny it if you asked.

Lon and I haven’t had time for a honeymoon, but he’s promised we’re still going to France alone this winter. I might have to work my way up to it. Right now, I was struggling with the decision to send Tabby to day care. It was only a block away from the shop, so I could be there in two minutes if I ran, but it felt like a bigger step than starting a new business.

“How about you put her in bed while I bank this fire?” Lon said. “Jupe won’t be back until two—”

“You’re welcome.”

“—and she’ll sleep like the dead.”

That she would. Until exactly seven a.m., at which time she’d bang around in her room or sneak into ours and whisper, “Mommy, wake up,” until I gave in.

“We still have that bottle of wine,” he said. “And we can clean the rest of this up tomorrow.”

“Or never.”

“And Rose and Adella will be here next weekend.”

“And Adella’s new boyfriend,” I reminded him. I was a little excited to meet him. Sexy professor, she’d said. He taught at her university in a different department. And—scandal of scandals—he was two years younger.

“If people don’t stop coming to visit, I’m going to build us a separate cabin out here.”

“A sex cabin?”

“The floor will be nothing but one big mattress,” he promised. “No, I take that back. It will have everything built just the right height for every imaginable position: the counters, tables, holes in the walls—”