Chapter 14
Jack
I’m pretty good at remaining calm under the most unexpected and even dangerous circumstances, but a flying chair was a new one. I jumped down, yanked the flying furniture to a halt, and wrestled it to the floor.
“Rose? You could have just said you wanted the last piece,” I said as mildly as I could manage while fighting an overstuffed inanimate object.
Rose’s face turned bright red, and she clapped a hand to her mouth. The chair stopped moving, and I gingerly put it back where it had been. Tess, unhelpfully, was laughing so hard she was bent over the back of the couch where she’d been standing. Alejandro, who’d probably been through more than his fair share of this kind of thing over the past nine months, sat hunched over on the couch next to his wife. He groaned and put his head in his hands.
“I’m so sorry, Jack! It’s the babies. They are fierce about food,” Rose said.
“The babies tried to launch me and my chair out the door,” I said dryly. “That’s what you’re going with?”
“That’s her story, and she’s stick … stick … sticking to it,” Tess gasped out between peals of laughter. “Jack. What were you thinking? You should know better than to get between an expectant mother and her food, let alone a powerful witch. Oh! The look on your face!”
Rose sighed and slumped back. But not, I noticed, before waving a hand and levitating the pie plate into her hand. “Babies like pie, too,” she muttered.
“I have more pie,” Tess said, finally straightening and catching her breath. But before she could move, Rose reached back over her shoulder and patted Tess’s hand.
“Thanks, Tess.”
Alejandro gasped, and I leapt forward to catch Tess if she fell.
“Rose! Honey, you know you can’t touch Tess,” Alejandro said, jumping up.
I clenched my jaw against any recrimination. Rose wasn’t in any state to be thinking about Tess’s vision, and?—
“I’m fine,” Tess said, tilting her head and clasping Rose’s fingers in hers, a wondering expression in her eyes. “I don’t see anything about your future. Nothing. But it’s more than that … there’s a feeling of … peace.”
Rose squeezed Tess’s hand and then let go and reached for another bite of pie. “Alejandro. Sweet cheeks. Did you really think I’d let Tess be hurt by us being here?”
“What did you do?” Tess asked.
“Sweet cheeks?” I asked.
This time, Alejandro flushed. “It’s a long story,” he muttered.
“Not that long,” Rose said cheerfully. “I made his pants disappear soon after I met him, after he turned into a caveman.”
“He went hunting woolly mammoths?” I could see it. Alejandro had a magical gift that made him a deadly ally in a fight—when he aimed a weapon at anybody, anytime, he never missed.
“He threw me over his shoulder and abducted me.”
“I only took you to the park, and you were running away to there already,” Alejandro protested.
Tess still looked bemused. “What did you do, Rose?”
“I cast a protective spell over myself, the babies, and Alejandro. It’s permanent. So, you could hold our hands all day long and you’d never see a vision about any of us.”
Tess’s eyes widened, and her entire face lit up. “You can do that? Oh, Rose! Is there … is there any possibility that you could do it the other way?”
I didn’t get it. “The other way? They don’t get a vision of you?”
“No.” Tess took a deep breath and clasped her hands together. “Can you block me from ever seeing another person die?”