Chapter 18
HAILEY
By the time we’d been home for ten minutes, there were seventeen people stuffed in our living room, into a space meant for seven, a chihuahua in formalwear, and at least three bloodstains on the couch that I didn’t have the energy to acknowledge yet.
The air vibrated with the thrum of my family in full, feral mode. I didn’t mind.
Flint slept on Jax’s chest, curled in his new little-boy form, his thumb caught just under his nose and the rest of his fingers clamped into a death-grip on Jax’s shirt.
Every so often, his lips smacked open and closed, maybe working through some dream about dragon feasts or beating Goldie in a thumb war, and Jax, whose discipline had always fallen apart when faced with actual children, shifted him higher, then ran a hand through his hair with something like reverence.
Around them, the noise pitched and rolled, but it never once touched Flint’s sleep.
After everything, the kid had earned it.
The furniture situation had gone off-book somewhere around guest number ten.
The girls sat cross-legged on the rug, an impromptu island of pink and purple socks and boots, passing a cell phone back and forth.
The grownups, who were more supernatural than grown, had claimed every armrest, windowsill, and kitchen chair.
At the center of the storm was Luke, in rare form, holding court as he relived his greatest skip-catch story for a crowd who, by rights, had probably heard it three or four times already.
But repetition only made his embellishments bolder, and the sound of his voice, sharp, relentless, always an octave above where it needed to be, provided the engine for the whole damn circus.
“So. There I am,” he said. “Ten bucks down at Catch and Release’s bingo night, a ninety-year-old banshee in the back row, and she’s cheating with a double-inked stamper.
I’m supposed to quietly escort her outside, but instead she starts wailing, and not the bingo kind, the eardrum-shattering, your-blood-is-now-jello kind,”
“Pff, you’re making it up,” said Xander, who’d materialized with a drink and a scowl, both of which he nursed with equal intensity. “We would’ve heard about this from the bartender.”
“Swear!” Luke held up both hands. “She punched me!”
Cleo laughed, her voice dry and silty as always. “Who among us hasn’t been punched at least once in public?”
“What happened to the banshee?” Goldie piped up from the floor, her feet in Emily’s lap, phone angled so they could both see the screen.
Ivy, perched on a footstool nearby, looked over with the wary interest of someone who had lived through four generations of supernatural drama and still found most of it exhausting.
Luke flicked an imaginary speck off his shirt and said, “What happened is, I played her game. Outwailed her, right in the middle of the sixth round.”
“That’s not physically possible,” said Xander.
“I’m a very strong vampire,” said Luke solemnly. “And I was raised by a family of competitive whiners.” That much was true, but our twin sisters always won.
Emily cackled. “Goldie’s better,” she said, and Goldie responded by attempting a wail that, for a split second, threatened to shatter glass.
Flint stirred, but only enough to whimper and nestle closer to Jax’s ribs.
Jax gave Goldie the parental death-glare, but she just grinned, because she knew darn well he wasn’t going to do anything except for the said glare.
Ransom, who’d kept mostly to the far corner, gave a long, theatrical sigh and muttered, “I think that’s the one part of the story you haven’t actually exaggerated.”
Luke, never one to leave a compliment alone, replied, “Thank you, but I like to think I have room for growth.”
Ransom’s lips twitched. He leaned over, touched Luke’s shoulder. The rest of the room took it as a sign to shift topics, and in the next thirty seconds, three overlapping conversations set up shop on top of the last one.
“I’ve got pictures of the new Academy library,” Emily announced, waving the phone. “You have to see it. It’s gorgeous.”
“Show me,” said Paige, who was sitting on the floor beside Claudia, the two of them hip-to-hip.
Goldie obliged, flipping through photos as Emily narrated every hallway and hexagonal classroom. Ivy leaned over to get a better look, her cat-shifter eyes gleaming gold in the low light. Claudia grinned, her hand resting on Paige’s leg.
“That’s the spell lab,” Goldie said, showing a shot of a table covered in safety goggles and beakers. “They let us work with real mercury now, as long as you don’t have any open wounds.”
Paige whistled. “That’s crazy.”
“We had to pass a test on not poisoning each other first,” Goldie added with pride.
“What about your new classmate?” asked Ivy, her voice direct and no-nonsense as always. “The one who shot milk out of her nose in the cafeteria?”
Goldie’s face split with delight. “You mean Susie? She’s legendary. She made a mud golem in third period, and it ate half the teacher’s desk.”
Emily giggled. “Her golem got detention. Not her, the golem.”
I tuned out for a moment, scanning the rest of the room. Grim and Nash had just entered from the kitchen, each with a mug in hand. Grim’s was black, emblazoned with the words “World’s Okayest Bloodhound,” while Nash, who never cared for slogans, cradled a plain white cup.
They handed out mugs to the nearest vampires, who sipped and compared flavors with the gravity of wine snobs.
Once the goods were delivered, Grim dropped to the floor and slouched against the wall, while Nash took the only remaining seat, at Cleo’s feet.
He stretched his legs out, rested an arm on her knee, and looked almost relaxed.
The three of them formed a kind of accidental tripod.
Cleo’s hand combed Nash’s hair with absent affection, while Grim’s shoulder pressed against her thigh.
They didn’t talk much, but the bond was in the way they shared air.
Kendra, who’d spent the last ten minutes pacing the far side of the room with her phone in hand, finally stopped, checked her watch, and said, “I need to head out.” She smoothed her skirt, then double-checked her lipstick in the reflection from her phone.
“Howard’s picking me up at six-fifteen and I still need to get ready. ”
“Where are you going?” Claudia asked.
Kendra adjusted her earrings. “Magpie’s. Cleo gave us a coupon.”
Cleo raised her hand, fingers wriggling in a salute. “It’s good for one free drink, or whatever the bartender’s special is that day.”
“Don’t get kicked out,” said Paige, but Kendra was already halfway to the door.
She left with a wave, her departure immediately filled by Zara, who’d moved from the crowd to the corner, where Xander waited.
The two of them bent their heads together, voices lowered, fingers brushing in a way that was one hundred percent not accidental.
Every few seconds, one or the other would glance at the rest of the room, then at each other, then back again.
Janice’s phone buzzed, the sound slicing through the laughter.
She glanced at the screen, went pale, and muttered, “Oh, hell, it’s Pearl.
” She mouthed a quick “wish me luck” and ducked onto the porch, already tensing up for the confrontation.
Through the glass, she paced, shoulders stiff, hand gesturing furiously as she tried to convince the world’s scariest hunter that things were, in fact, under control.
In the eye of the storm, Jax shifted just enough to catch my gaze. “You okay?” he asked, low and private.
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything that wouldn’t sound stupidly sentimental.
He smiled. “You can sit. Flint’s not as heavy as he looks.”
“I like standing,” I lied, but slid onto the armrest anyway, careful not to disturb the sleeping dragon.
The room was so full it should have felt suffocating, but instead it was like the inside of a heartbeat. Constant, rhythmic, necessary. There was nothing forced here. Nobody was performing for the family. They were just being it, in all its noisy, sarcastic, frequently embarrassing glory.
Luke’s story was nearing its climax. He mimed wailing at the top of his lungs, then pretended to faint, landing across the laps of Ransom, Izora, and Courage in one dramatic heap.
“In the end,” Luke declared, “the banshee admitted defeat and left with a coupon for half-price bingo. I consider it a win for supernatural relations.”
“Or a loss for the human eardrum,” said Xander, but he was smiling, and even Zara giggled, her head resting on Xander’s shoulder.
Izora looked at Luke and said, “You’re the loudest person I know, and I know seventy-seven banshees.”
Courage, awakened by the disturbance, opened one eye, sneezed, and then, finding nothing more interesting, went back to sleep, burrowed deeper in his bone sweater. Ransom’s laugh was low and nice to hear.
I looked around the room, my eyes lingering on every face. There were vampires and witches and dragons, a cat shifter and her grandma. A human. More vampires. There was a costumed chihuahua and a baby dragon. And there was me, standing in the middle, somehow the glue, the bridge, the punchline.
I thought about calling Ollie tomorrow, inviting him and his family to dinner. I thought about taking Goldie, Emily, and Flint to the zoo, or maybe just out for pizza, or maybe just nowhere at all.
The story reached its conclusion, the final laugh rolled through the crowd, and for a few seconds, there was nothing but the hush of togetherness. No threats, no pending apocalypse, no urgent need to fix the world. Just people, just us, this.
Jax looked up at me, his green eyes soft, and squeezed my hand. He knew exactly what I was feeling, thanks to the bond.
I watched Flint’s chest rise and fall, felt the warmth of Goldie’s laughter, saw the way Ransom and Luke fit together, the way Grim, Nash, and Cleo leaned against each other like a single animal with three hearts. I let myself belong.
This. This is what it all was for. The moment lasted as long as it needed to, and then someone knocked over a cup, and the room exploded with noise, and the world went on. But I didn’t forget. I never would.