My body finally relaxed when I was facing Nico and Orion, and I could breathe a little easier again. I slid my arm over Nico’s toddler belly. “Go back to sleep, sweetie.”
He furrowed his brow in deep thought before producing the question we’d come to expect on a nightly basis: “Are ghosts real?”
No need to ask what the bad dream was about. It was always the same.
And even though Orion and I knew firsthand that ghosts were real, and that they haunted the Asmodean Ward, I didn’t see any reason to fill Nico in just yet. If we did, we’d be sharing our bed with him until he was at least a teenager.
“I don’t believe they are,” said Orion. “And even if they were, so what? They can’t do anything. They’re just like fog. Maybe the fog is a little sad sometimes, but the fog can’t hurt us.”
Nico nodded.
“And let’s pretend,” Orion added, “just for fun, since none of this is real anyway, that a ghost managed to get past the magical wards and then somehow got into our palace. What do you suppose would happen to that ghost when Mommy got a hold of it?”
“No more ghost?” Nico asked.
“That’s right.” My eyes started to drift shut. “No more ghost.”
Of all the scary things in the world, especially in our world, my baby had, for some reason, glommed on to ghosts as being the worst kind of nightmare fuel. While I was no fan of hauntings, they posed no threat to any of us. Ghosts were insubstantial as smoke.
In any case, when it came to threats, our little Nico didn’t have much to worry about.
Not once we learned what the gods had bestowed upon him.
*
With a smile, I cracked another anzu egg into the bowl and whipped it. The scent of coffee filled the air, and sunlight streamed into our kitchen. Amon still came over for dinner in the evenings, but the mornings we had all to ourselves. At some point in the night, Orion had carried little Nico back to his room after he’d kicked us too many times in our sleep. Now Nico was slumbering away upstairs after an exhausting night of thinking about ghosts.
We’d moved into a new palace—larger than Orion’s cottage, but smaller than the Tower of Baal. A palace of golden stone, filled from top to bottom with libraries, right across from the clock tower in the Asmodean Ward.
While we had several cooks, I liked making breakfast for my two boys, Orion and Nico. Granted, I also liked it when I slept in and Orion woke me with hot coffee and fruit.
I pulled out a loaf of fresh bread and started cutting slices to toast in the oven. I’d be slathering them in butter before piling them with the anzu eggs. We hadn’t had any anzu eggs since before Nico was born, but now our son had developed a taste for scrambled eggs. An anzu was like nothing else, so I was already smiling at the thought of him tasting it for the first time.
There were only about three anzu in the Elysian Wilderness, demonic birds three times the size of condors, each one with the head of a lion. When they were hungry, they thought nothing of taking a horse or a cow for lunch. They loved to eat pigs. Demons weren’t generally on the menu, but if the anzu were hungry enough, mortals would be advised to take cover.
Anzu eggs fetched a premium when they came to market, as harvesting them was a nasty, bloody business. If a group of hunters found a nest with a clutch of eggs inside and managed to spirit them away before the mother tore them all to pieces, they could live for a year or more on the profits.
As I was popping the bread in the oven, warm magic slid over me. I turned to see Orion crossing into the kitchen, shirtless, his silver hair ruffled. Even now, every time I looked at him, my breath caught.
His gaze swept down my body, and I heard his appreciative growl. “You’re wearing my favorite silky green robe. Are you trying to tempt me?”
I rested a hand on my bump and felt the thump thump of little hands as the baby made his presence known. “I can barely move. I’m not trying to tempt anyone.”
He quirked an eyebrow at the bright red eggshells. “Where did you get the anzu egg?”
“A gift from the Duchess of the Luciferian Ward herself, also known as Lydia.”
Orion ran a hand through his hair. “Which means she wants something from us for the next meeting of the Council.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Apart from extra financing for Shalem Square, she’s always wanted you.”
“Of course.” He slipped the green robe off my shoulder and started covering my bared skin in kisses. Heat tingled along every point of contact. “But she can’t have me. Not for all the anzu eggs in the world.”