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  “Because a good mother sets a healthy eating example for her children,” she explained, staring at the palm of her hand.

  “How much is he paying you?” I asked calmly. I mentally debated if I would shrink all of my father’s clothes, sneak over to his house and put his hand in warm water while he slept, or zap him bald.

  “Who?” she asked with wide eyes

  “My dad. How much is he paying you to spout the no-carbs bullshit?”

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” she lied as she crossed her legs and checked out the bottom of her shoe with great interest. “Eating non-processed, organic vegetables and fruits lowers your chestercall and is good for your barn.”

  “My what?” I asked.

  “Um… wait a minute,” she replied leaning closer to her foot and squinting. “Chestercall and barn… or maybe it’s brain. Shit.”

  “Show me your foot.”

  “No.”

  “Show me your foot and your hand or I’ll give your chestercall a venereal re-catch-on.”

  “What in the Goddess’s name does that even mean?” she shouted, completely bewildered.

  “You tell me,” I countered as I tore off another hunk of bread and dangled it in her face.

  “Great Goddess in a banana hammock,” she shrieked, grabbing for the bread and stuffing it in her mouth. “He said he would buy me a Birkin bag just like yours if I started eating healthy and got you to do it too.”

  “So you wrote all that shit down on your shoe?” I asked, trying not to laugh.

  My dad was crafty, but clearly not right in the head if he’d stooped to using Sassy as bait.

  “And my hand,” she added, holding her palm out.

  “Brilliant.”

  Sassy inhaled the bread and then began frantically opening kitchen cabinets looking for more. I sat back and watched until she got dangerously close to my secret stash. No one was going to lay a finger on my Twinkies and live to tell about it.

  “Stop— or you’ll be the proud owner of male genitalia,” I warned her.

  “How many times have I told you I don’t speak French?” she shot back as she opened the cabinet hiding my precious booty. “You have Twinkies!”

  I watched in abject horror as she downed four without even taking the wrappers off. It wasn’t until she went for the Ho Hos that I came to my senses and zapped her ass so hard it left a smoking hole in the butt of her jeans.

  Wait. Her jeans looked suspiciously like my jeans…

  Was she wearing my True Religion jeans? I let my head fall to my chest as I confirmed that she was indeed wearing my favorite jeans. What was happening to me? I was maiming people over Ho Hos? I was decimating my own wardrobe over food that had a shelf life longer than I’d been alive?

  “That’s going to leave a scar,” she shrieked with a mouthful of Ho-Ho. “You don’t understand. The entire town has gone off carbs. It’s awful. Everyone is a cranky butthole.”

  “The entire town?” I gasped and sat down unsteadily at the enormous oak kitchen table. Dropping my head to the cool surface with a thud, I realized this was war. Fabdudio was the enemy and he would pay. “How did he do it?”

  “Everyone in town owes him money,” she explained as she joined me at the table with a family sized bag of Munchos.

  “Half of the card playing community in the United States owes him money. He cheats. However, I don’t understand what owing my dad money has to do with giving up carbs.”

  It took her a minute and a half of chewing and almost choking on the chips she’d shoved in her cakehole before she was able to speak intelligibly. “He’s forgiving all the loans if everyone gives up carbs for nine months so you will too.”

  I ripped the bag from Sassy’s hands and ate the entirety of it while I tried to figure out what my next move should be. Fabio was good, but I was better.

  “There are no carbs in town?” I demanded as I generously handed Sassy the bag of chip crumbs.

  “Or sugar.” She ate the tiny pieces and then licked the bag clean.

  My hands lit up like fireworks and Sassy dove under the table for cover. While I rationally knew that my dad was doing this out of love and concern, his method sucked. He didn’t understand the needs of a pregnant, starving witch who was possibly carrying wolf puppies.

  A slow evil grin pulled at my lips and I yanked Sassy out from her hiding place. “We’re witches.”

  “Duh,” she replied.

  With an eye roll, I pulled her away from my Ho Hos and seated her back on the couch. We were a good two hundred feet from the chocolaty goodness. If she made a run for them, I was pretty sure I could blast her ass out the window.

  “We can just conjure up all the carbs we want,” I explained. “No worries.”

  Sassy’s brow wrinkled in deep thought—never a good sign. “No can do.”

  “Are you serious? You’re going to go without cookies for nine months?” I shouted.

  “Oh my Goddess,” she wailed. “When you say it like that it sounds even worse.”

  Squatting down in front of her I shoved another hunk of bread in her mouth so I could speak without being interrupted. “We can do this, Sassy. We’ll just take long nature walks together and eat doughnuts and cheesy noodles when no one is looking.”

  “No one will buy us taking long walks together,” she pointed out through a mouthful.

  She was correct, but I was irrational and pregnant. I was bound to do many out of character things. However, spending all my free time with Sassy would raise eyebrows.

  “We’ll just secretly meet up and pig out. It’ll be fine.”

  “Your dad warded the area with alarms and little tiny carb-eating fairies will show up if there’s so much as a scrap of bread within fifty miles.”

  I gaped at her and considered removing the bread from her mouth to store away for later, but that was even too gross by my standards. This was going downhill fast, but…

  “I call bullshit,” I snapped. “I’ve never heard of carb-eating fairies and my house is loaded with carbs at the moment. If they were in the vicinity, don’t you think they’d be partying down in my pantry right now?”

  Sassy swallowed her bread and glanced wildly around the room. She got up and searched the area, slipping a few Ho Hos into her pocket when she thought I wasn’t looking.

  “You think he made the fairy thing up?” she asked, now back in her usual state of confusion.

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” I said with far more confidence than I felt. Knowing my dad, I couldn’t be sure. “And even if he didn’t, I could take out a fairy. I popped a buttload of honey badgers who wanted to kill me. I could definitely blow up fairies who are after my Captain Crunch.”

  “I’m in,” Sassy yelled, bounding across the large room and throwing herself at me. “You’re brilliant!”

  “No. I’m pregnant.”

  “Same difference,” she sang as she danced around the kitchen with joy. “Your kids are so lucky to have you for their mom! I would have killed for a mom like you.”

  I stood silently and tried to figure out what was wrong with her statement, but I was so muddled with the raging hormones in my body due to getting knocked up by a werewolf that I couldn’t find the indignation I was looking for. Something was definitely off here. Was I being a good mom? Wait. I wasn’t a mom yet. I still had nine long months before I popped out my litter. I was still just me—albeit a little hungrier than usual.

  “Okay,” I said, now far less sure of my plan. “We’ll start walking tomorrow morning. Deal?”

  “Deal. What will you wear?” she asked, excited to cheat the system with me.

  “Um… green.”

  “Green?”

  “Yep. Tennis shoes and loose green clothing so we’ll be camouflaged by the bushes if we have to hide from carb-eating fairies,” I said, feeling an uncomfortable pit growing in my stomach.

  “Goddess, you think of everything!” she squealed with delight. “I knew you would be my best friend th
e minute I saw you in the pokey.”

  “No you didn’t,” I shot back with a scowl. “You thought I was a well dressed jackass and I thought you were a busty imbecile.”

  “Not true,” Sassy denied vehemently. “I thought you were a murdering jack-hole who spoke a foreign language. But thankfully times have changed. Now I’d say just a jack-hole who speaks French.”

  “Well, that’s certainly a relief,” I said in a voice laced with sarcasm.

  “Right?” she agreed in all seriousness. “I’ll meet you here in the morning, partner.”

  On that terrifying note, she pilfered a few more Ho Hos before leaving me with my own discombobulated thoughts. I knew this was a mistake, but my cravings and my brain were working independently of each other. It was a tremendously bad plan, but it was the only one I could think of. Carb eating fairies had to be fiction.

  It was a risky scheme, but living on the edge was nothing new to me. Pushing my unhealthy strategy to the back of my mind, I hid the remainder of my Ho Hos and Twinkies in the back of the cabinet with the paper towels and napkins. Just in case the tiny, flying, bread eating freaks were real, I needed backup.

  The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry… or in my case, witches and Ho Hos.

  Chapter Three

  “You’re gorgeous,” Mac said as he tossed the huge salad and then arranged the grilled steaks and asparagus on the platter.

  The sun was setting on the horizon and we sat on the wraparound front porch of the rustically beautiful log cabin Mac had built. The wood in the outdoor fireplace crackled and danced and all was right in my world. It was all kinds of sexy to have my man cook for me. It was also a very good thing since everything I cooked was inedible and occasionally sent people sprinting to the bathroom.

  I eyed the healthy fare warily, but my mouth was watering. “No bread?” I asked casually.

  “Weirdest thing,” he replied as he put the food on the table and sat down next to me. “The bakery was out and so was the grocery.”

  I glanced over at him to figure out if he too was my enemy, but he seemed truly flummoxed by the absence of wheat products. Grinning with relief, I dug into my dinner with gusto.

  “I’ll try again tomorrow, baby,” Mac assured me with a smile that sent tingles of happiness all through my body.

  I’d fought like a champion to stay away from the wolf who was made for me. It had taken painful therapy sessions with Roger the porno loving Shifter rabbit—more excruciating for him than me—to figure out my fear of commitment. Ironically, it took my playing Joan Crawford in the now infamous Assjacket community theatre production of Mommie Dearest to make me understand I was worthy of being loved.

  Baba Yaga, the most powerful of all the witches—and my dad’s current gal pal—had come to see the horrifying show. She had been dressed as a Madonna wannabe and had her bevy of boring warlock lackeys in tow, but that wasn’t what made me realize I was a lovable witch. Nope.

  She also brought my real mother. My mother, the very same woman who’d told me I was worthless while growing up, and had even tried to kill me and steal my healing magic. She was also the woman who’d turned my father into a cat when he realized I existed and wanted to find me. Of course, that ended up being a clusterfuck with a happy ending as he’d become my familiar and I’d mowed him down with a car accidently. Thank the Goddess cats really do have nine lives.

  My mother no longer possessed her power because I took it from her. She was now locked up in the same magical pokey where I’d recently vacationed myself. There had been no happy ending for us—no revelation that she loved me. No, what she gave me instead, with the tiniest nod of her head, was the confirmation that she was incapable of loving anyone.

  It wasn’t my fault that my mother didn’t love me. She simply didn’t have it in her. As sad as it was, the admission had set me free. Just because my mother didn’t love me didn’t mean I wasn’t lovable to others. Hence the mating and subsequent buns in the oven…

  “Sassy and I are going to start working out,” I told Mac, tearing into the steak and veggies.

  “I’m sorry? I’m sure I just heard you wrong.” Mac paused mid-bite and stared in surprise.

  “Um… no,” I said weakly with a shrug as I studied my salad with scientific fascination. “I think it would be good um… bonding. You know since Sassy is dating Jeeves and all,” I choked out.

  Mac handed me a glass of water and continued observing me in silence.

  As far as lies went, I thought it was pretty good. Jeeves was Mac’s adopted kangaroo Shifter son. He’d found him on the side of the road while visiting Australia long before I’d been born, took the bizarre marsupial under his wing, and raised him as his own.

  Sassy and Jeeves were now an appallingly affectionate item and were the proud caretakers of the adopted chipmunks. Yes it was all very strange, but also somehow totally right. The real blessing from the Goddess in this particular case was our currently empty nest. Since Jeeves had increased the size of his family to six, he’d moved out of Mac’s house—or rather our house.

  “That doesn’t make much sense,” Mac said carefully. He was getting savvy to my hormonal outbursts and was a smart man. Treading lightly he continued. “Why not get some fresh air with Wanda or Simon?”

  “Wanda is busy at the diner and she’s still a little miffed about the anchovy cookie request. And Simon has started a music school for Assjacket. Skunks are very musically talented,” I replied easily. At least that was truthful…

  “Interesting.”

  “Also,” I added, now on a roll of sorts. “I think Sassy needs me. Since she played my daughter Christina in the show, she kind-of, sort-of looks up to me now.”

  Another truth. She needed me to help her break my father’s new law and I needed her for the very same reason.

  “You want me to run her out of town?” he asked with a mischievous grin, always looking out for my best interests.

  “Um… no,” I replied with a giggle. “She belongs here—as much as it pains me to admit it. And Jeeves would be devastated.”

  “This is true,” Mac agreed with a shake of his head. “He wants to research his family tree because he has children now.”

  “It’s a little alarming to imagine a whole bunch of Jeeveses.” I took another steak off the platter and ate it practically whole. “Do you think he even has a family to make a tree?”

  “Not that I know of, but I told him I’d help.”

  “Does that make you feel bad?” I asked as I cut the last steak in two and put half on his plate.

  If that wasn’t love, I didn’t know what love was. I could have totally eaten the steak and everything else on the table. However, I was hoping he’d let me have all the bones. Goddess, I’d become disgusting.

  “Why would that make me feel bad?” he questioned as he sliced his half into equal pieces and put a section back on my plate.

  “You raised him. You’re his dad.”

  Mac tilted his head and smiled. “I don’t worry about that. I’m Jeeves’ father—maybe not his biological father—but I was there for everything strange and important in his life. Pretty sure that counts.”

  “Yep. It counts,” I told him. “Is it hard?”

  “Is what hard?” he asked slowly as a grin pulled at his lips, clearly wondering if it was a trick question.

  “Not your Bon Jovi,” I scolded him with a delighted laugh. “That thing is always hard. I meant is it hard to be a good dad?”

  “It saddens me greatly that we’re not discussing my Bon Jovi. However, the answer to your question is no. It wasn’t and isn’t hard at all. Jeeves wasn’t exactly easy with his, um… ”

  “Quirks?” I suggested.

  “That’s one way to put it,” Mac said. “Oddities works too.”

  “Peculiarities.”

  “Eccentricities,” he added.

  “Freakishly weird and unsettling habits,” I threw in, starting to get into it.

  “Yep,” M
ac said with a chuckle. “But I love him—bizarre ways and all.”

  “What if our kids are stranger than Jeeves?”

  Mac and I both froze as we considered the ramifications of raising people weirder than Jeeves. Goddess, was that even possible? My breathing grew erratic and the lack of oxygen made me dizzy. Making the babies was all kinds of awesome, but the reality of it all? Not so much.

  “We’ll love them to the moon and back because they’re ours,” Mac promised firmly, taking my hands in his. “Are you scared?”

  Was I? Hell to the yes, I was scared. I grew up with a mother who didn’t want me and an absent father—as in never around—because he didn’t know about me. There was a distinct possibility I was going to suck butt as a mother.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it,” I whispered in wide-eyed confession mode. “What if they don’t like me?”

  Mac leaned in and pressed his forehead to mine. “They’ll love you as much as I do. And do you know why?”

  “Um… because I’ll buy them stuff?” I asked, knowing it was a lame answer, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

  “Nope. You don’t have to buy them anything. Ever.”

  “Seriously?” I asked, shocked. I was actually looking forward to that part.

  “Well, diapers and food and stuff like that would probably be a good idea,” he said, trying to suppress his grin. “But our son and daughter will love you because you love them. It’s really pretty easy.”

  I digested the mountain of food I’d just eaten more easily than his words. Was it really that simple? They would love me because I loved them?

  “Have you thought about names?” he asked.

  Mac stood up and we both cleared the table. Of course there were no leftovers as I’d eaten everything…

  “I’ve been calling them Lucky and Charm in my head,” I admitted with a giggle.

  “And would that have any relationship to the cereal?” he inquired with a lopsided grin.

  “Possibly,” I replied as I held the door open with my butt so he could pass. “However, I have no intention of naming them after a marshmallow breakfast treat, no matter how magically delicious it is.”