It might be a kelpie, but Gabe was pretty sure there were vampires involved. Otherwise his papa wouldn’t have told him to take everyone into the basement.
Vampires were why he’d only been out of Minnesota once. Vampires were why Bjorn and another elf, Sif the Golden, had started training him in ways to protect himself and his siblings. They were going to start training Sophia too, now that she was almost ten, but there’d been new issues there.
Sophia was an oracle.
“No, I am not an oracle, dumbass,” his little sister said as she helped their little brother, Mateo, with his toys so he wouldn’t cry while they were in the basement room.
Gabe shook his head. Only oracles knew when someone else was thinking that they were an oracle.
She narrowed her eyes and shook her head as if to say Not now. Time’s a-wastin’, brother.
They practiced this with Ella and Mateo all the time, just like the tornado drills at school. They practiced with Mom and Dad, and without. With Bjorn or Sif faking that they were something super scary, and without. Ella mostly thought it was boring in her five-year-old way, but Mateo was three. He mostly found it fun because he had unlimited screen time with the good wifi in the room.
Dad had set up the room at the back of the basement, dug out beyond the house’s foundation and hidden behind a row of shelves holding their cross-country ski gear. The room wasn’t anything nefarious, or weird, or creepy. The previous owner had grown mushrooms, was all. But now the room was charmed and warded, and full of monster slayer stuff.
Momma closed and locked the door to the basement and waddled down the stairs behind the little kids.
“Your sister isn’t an oracle, young man,” Momma said. She wore a huge sweater and the black stretchy pants she’d had to buy because she’d gotten rid of her maternity clothes after Mateo. She’d been giving away all the baby stuff, too.
Gabe was pretty sure little soon-to-be Grace was not a planned part of their family.
“She’s something,” he said, meaning Sophia, not the new baby.
She was, too. She remembered things about the Alfheim Pack’s run under the Samhain moon which, from what he’d been able to pick up, no one else remembered. And they all knew she remembered things they didn’t, which meant that she really was remembering things that happened.
Sophia shrugged. “I know what’s true,” she said.
Which could mean anything, magically. And right now, understanding what they were dealing with magically was probably the most important thing to do.
Sophia threw him more side-eye. She looked like a miniature version of their momma, right down to the same pinched-lip frown when she was annoyed. Same dark hair with slight red highlights. Same dark brown eyes they all had. Same keen sense of the situation.
Which was probably why she’d been chosen to be the oracle and he hadn’t.
Sophia leaned close to him. “You were chosen, but not for this.” She nodded to their younger siblings. “We were all chosen. That’s why there’s five of us now.”
Momma stopped three steps from the basement floor. “What does that mean, honey?” she asked gently.
Sophia hugged Mateo when he grabbed her waist. “There’s been a lot of choosings since you and Papa came here,” she said. “I don’t know what it means.” Then she hit Gabe’s arm. “Because I’m not the oracle, dumbass.”
She said the oracle.
“Who’s the—”
Upstairs, something slammed into the side of the house.
Sophia slapped her hand over his mouth. “The truth is not for kelpie ears.”
That murderous death horse would rip apart his mother and sisters if he got near them.
A mournful wail echoed through the halls upstairs and what first sounded like stallion clomps turned to the steps of a man in boots.
Mom’s eyes widened. Her lips rounded, and she looked back at the door.
Ella and Sophia, too, but Sophia stiffened and the tops of her ears turned red.
She grabbed Momma’s hand. “He’s a murderer, Momma.”
Momma looked down at her daughter, then at her oldest son. “He’s a murderer,” she repeated.
“Yes, Momma,” Gabe said slowly. “There’s a kelpie upstairs. Papa and Bjorn want me to get you, Sophia, and Ella into the room, and for me to hold the key.”
Momma looked up the stairs again.
“He’s a Scottish fae, Momma,” Sophia said. “He lives in a big, deep lake there.”
“A loch,” Momma said. She didn’t move from her spot three steps up the stairs.
“Sophia,” Gabe said. “Take Ella and Mateo into the room.”
Sophia looked back at him. “The kelpie wants to be our pony,” she said.
What was it with little girls and horses? “He’s not one of Mr. Freyrsson’s horses,” Gabe said.
Sophie blinked. Her brow furrowed. “The horses,” she mumbled.
“Sophia!” Gabe snapped. “Take Ella and Mateo and go into the room.”
She looked from him to Momma, and back at him. “We must all go together.”
She wasn’t an oracle. She didn’t know. But he knew deep in his bones that she knew.
He nodded. “Momma.” He extended his hand. “Your son demands you heed his words.”
Bjorn had told him to say that. He’d said, “Channel Old World patriarchy, my smart young friend.” Not that Gabe understood what that meant until Bjorn told him to act like every dickhead in every old movie he’d ever seen about long-dead Europeans in puffy clothes.
So he’d act the lordly dickhead if it saved his Momma and sisters.
His mother took two more steps down the stairs. “What did you say to me, young man?”
It was working. “You’re going to listen to the man in front of you, understand, woman?”
Sophie chuckled, which caused Ella to chuckle. Mateo just sucked his thumb and looked confused.
Momma looked up the stairs again.
He didn’t dare yank on her hand, or try to force her to move. Not so close to her due date. He might accidently knock her off balance or something worse.
He tugged on her hand anyway. “Please, Momma.”
She blinked again and looked down at him with her big eyes.
His momma was a beautiful
