“Ran into a bit of trouble with Brem.”
Our witch neighbor sat up straight, as if in sudden shock. “Brem? What were you doing anywhere near that creature?”
Sophie was a witch of modest power and lived with her human husband, Luuk, next door. They’d been super-friendly from the moment we’d moved in, all of us becoming friends quickly. Not like the standoffish vampires living the other side. Thankfully, they weren’t part of Brem’s crew, just kept themselves to themselves—which was fine by me.
I explained everything that’d happened.
“He really is vile.” She picked up her glasses.
“He is.” I shrugged my coat off. “How’s our girl?”
“She only got out of bed once, for the toilet. Told me about the spider with the blue legs the other day.”
Dean chuckled behind him as I shuddered. “Don’t even go there.” I sat beside her.
“It was quite funny,” Dean added, standing over by the tree. “Surprised you didn’t hear the shrieking. Jake’s, not Louise’s.”
Sophie covered her mouth to hide her grin.
I gave Dean the biggest frown I could muster. “You admitted yourself how freaky it was.”
“Look, I’ve never seen anyone leap onto the edge of the bath like that.”
Sophie giggled. “Impressive.”
Fuck this mockery. “What if the poxy thing had been poisonous? It’d sucked down on a pod. Could’ve made it the most dangerous spider in the world. I mean, it was the size of a tarantula, multiplied by a friggin’ thousand.”
“It wasn’t that big.”
“Yeah, it was!”
“House spider,” Dean said. “That’s all it was. Yes, it’d been near a pod, but all it did was make it slightly bigger and turn its legs blue.”
“So Louise told me,” Sophie replied. “She did tell me about her daddy’s reaction.”
I folded my arms. “I’m living with traitors.”
The witch giggled again, getting to her feet. “Listen, I need to go.”
At first, Sophie didn’t want to accept any sort of payment for her child-minding services. After tons of insisting, and me telling her off, she finally relented and was now on the books as an employee—our daughter’s official nanny who worked completely random hours. It made me feel better when we had to be out on a job, but it didn’t lessen the guilt of having to leave Lou behind.
She was also Lou’s tutor, seeing as all schools had been shut down over the past year. The risk of pods was too great, with children running around a playground. The government implemented home-schooling as mandatory until a better solution could be found. Dean and I did some tutoring as and when we could, too. How long this temporary ‘solution’ would last was anyone’s guess.
It wasn’t like I could give all this up, to leave Dean to it so I could be with Lou for more hours in the day. I wouldn’t do that to him. He needed me—two heads being better than one and all that. Anyway, I was in too deep. I wanted to help the people who came to us with their problems, to solve their cases and sometimes save lives. Like that one time, we’d been hired by a frantic werewolf husband and wife to find their missing cub—a boy of four. We’d found him in the hands of a warlock who’d wanted his blood for some spell to make three women fall in love with him. We’d found him and brought down the warlock, who was now in one of the council’s island prisons for dangerous supernatural criminals.
To give up would be a shirking of my responsibilities. I had a duty to these people, to those who needed help in getting their head around whatever paranormal mess they were caught up in.
This was my new calling, as well as being a dad.
“Thanks again,” Dean said to Sophie, hugging her.
I got up to hug her too. “Sorry, it’s late.”
“Not a problem. I enjoyed the reading time.”
Sophie was all about the brightly colored clothes, no matter the season. She was clad in a yellow jumper with a kitten on the front, orange trousers, and pink ballerina shoes with sparkly silver laces. Her body, her rules in what to dress it up in. I respected that so hard. Sophie was who she was.
“Goodnight.”
Dean walked her to the door as I headed upstairs.
Lou’s door was at the end of the hall, past our room, the study, the bathroom, then the laundry cupboard. A cloud-shaped wooden plaque with her name written in bubble letters indicated it was her domain. We’d made that one summer afternoon when it was too hot to go out, and we had some daddy and daughter time. Who knew glitter glue and felt tips could be so much fun? I’d made a sign for me and Dean, too, which hung on our door.
I turned the handle and gently pushed the door open. Her nightlight was casting stars around the navy-blue room with posters of the solar system covering most of the walls. Our girl loved all things space. Her bookshelves were loaded with non-fiction books on the subject, as well as picture books featuring her favorite alien dinosaur’s adventures across the universe. Essential bedtime reading every night.
She was advanced for her four years, her reading ability scarily good.
I stood watching her, so happy to see her little face. She had Dean’s Asian features and her late mother’s hair. Her dark curls fanned out on the pillow. She was snoring gently, laying on her side, one arm outside her Jupiter duvet.
Jupiter was her favorite planet.
Footsteps behind me, a hand wrapping around my waist. I leaned back into him.
“The stone’s locked away,” Dean whispered into my ear.
“Cool.”
“She’s so cute when she snores.”
“Yep. Just like her papa.”
“I don’t snore,” he protested.
“Not like that, no. Lou’s is cute, yours is terrifying.”
He poked me in the side. “Cheeky.”
I closed the door, turning to face him, one of his arms still around my waist. “I’m always giving you a shove in the night to shut you the hell up.”
He pulled me down the hall. “You shove me? That hurts my feelings.”
“Aw, poor Deanie.”
He opened our bedroom
