"Oh dear. Of course." Her gaze shifts from me to over her shoulder as an ear-blistering string of obscenities echoes down the hallway, followed by the ringing laughter of her children. "Poor Leo. Must you all pick on him?"
"Well, he does still have a crush on Tarot Lavolier," Sean justifies. "The Candlewood leadership has taken the position that tormenting him with your children is the single most reliable form of birth control we can supply. If your children are what happens when nice people have babies, imagine what would happen if he and Tarot actually did."
The mere thought is enough to make us all shudder. Not because there's anything wrong with the pairing—except that Tarot's hoodoo magic makes everyone—even Leo—rather uncomfortable. And Leo's blistering sarcasm and passionate temperament annoys everyone but Tarot, though Arianrhod knows why.
"No one wants to imagine something like that. That's the stuff of nightmares." Rounding the corner, Jack makes a beeline for Darby. Resting his colossal paws on her dainty shoulders, he kisses her on the cheek. "You picked the wrong brother," he teases her. "Thomas and Tala are little angels compared to the Gallagher terrorists."
"I don't recall having a choice in the matter with your brother," she retorts, her plump lips pulled up into a sour expression. "You Weres are rather difficult to refuse."
"They are! They're also hard to resist," Lili, one of Jack's two mates, purrs as she wraps her arms around him from behind in a hug. "Stop annoying your Luna, Jack, or she'll turn you into a flower."
Releasing him, Lili follows the third of their trio, Anna, to the beverage bar and once there, the two share a light hug and a warm kiss before preparing cups of coffee for each other.
Plunking himself down beside Darby, Jack lets his sky blue eyes fix on Sean's face. "Okay, spill. Whatever is going on, even dumb as I am, I can read it."
Though it takes about another minute or so for Ian to arrive, by the time that he does, Anna and Lili have plunked down on the opposite side of the table too. "Lili, get your hands off my mate," Ian growls possessively, mostly in play. "You have two of your own."
Which is entirely true, but there's something entirely likeable about Lili in the way that she's always pushing people's boundaries. With a completely unrepentant smile, Lili yields her seat where she'd been nuzzling Darby's shoulder with little kisses through the gauzy sleeve of her robe and takes up the one beside me.
"Your hair's gotten so long, soulshine," she says softly to me, gathering it over the shoulder nearest to her, then sectioning it to braid. She flicks an almost challenging brow at Sean on my opposite side, knowing that such behavior turns on all three of the Candlewood triumvirate. "It's like a river of silver silk."
"There was some kind of disaster in Desert last night," Darby apprises Ian as he sits down beside her, wrapping an arm possessively around her nipped in waist. "We'll need to help."
"Of course we will." Ian's eyes fix on Sean, deliberately and obviously avoiding looking at Lili as he slides Darby's tea out from under her hand and takes a sip. "What's happened?"
"A residential neighborhood directly off the coast from Demons Tangle was hit by a mini-tsunami last night," Sean replies. "When I spoke to Silas in the aftermath, there were three confirmed dead, nine injured, and nineteen missing, but I expect those numbers will go up as rescue efforts continue."
Ian's gaze drops to the table in front of him, his thick, black lashes shielding his eyes. "Demons Tangle. Why does that sound familiar to me?" Unconsciously, he wraps his beefy arm tighter around Darby's waist, pulling her into the shelter of his embrace and I marvel at his instincts again. "There's something strange about that location, isn't there?"
Reluctantly, Sean nods. "It's—prone—to these—odd events. But the especially strange parts are the stories the survivors tell."
"Oh yeah!" Jack nods vehemently now. "I remember hearing that. Sea monsters, isn't it?" When Sean flicks an annoyed brow in acknowledgement, Jack's handsome face screws up in confusion. "Why do they let them rebuild there?"
Before Sean can answer, Leo calls irritably from the hallway. "How many times am I going to have to tell you guys to stop putting these kids up to this? One of these days, I'm going to burst into invisible flames and then you'll all be mad."
With a shambling gait, he crosses the hallway heading for the nursery with Ian and Darby's son, Liam, wrapped around one lower leg, their daughter, Lara on the other, and the dainty, faery-like Losa, tugging him with bouncing jumps along by one hand as the triplets giggle madly. "For the time being, I'm teaching them five new curse words every time you do this," he vows.
His feigned warning draws smiles from all of us, as does the infectious laughter of the children. We all know he has more control over his Fae element and talisman than to accidently ignite anything if he's startled awake. Even if he did, Ian and Darby's terrorist triplets are half Fae, which makes them immune to harm from Leo's Fae magic anyway.
As for the curse words, with the way those three get into trouble, I doubt there's anything Leo could teach them that they haven't heard in frustration from their mother or father.
Swiveling to face forward again, Ian glances under the table. "Tess, would you mind assisting?"
"So why don't they prevent them from rebuilding?" he asks after Tessa rounds the corner towards the nursery.
"They have," Sean replies. "Several times over the course of the years that the MacOmbs have controlled Desert territory. Every time they do, the—incidents—shift, either up or down the shoreline, whichever is more populated."
"Where the damage and loss of life will be worse."
"Exactly."
"So we are dealing with an intelligent presence and not an act of nature," Ian says flatly. While it raises the fine hairs at the nape of my neck that escaped Lili's braiding, it also makes me appreciate again how incredibly intelligent the Alpha of Candlewood is. He glances at his mate. "Darby, any light you can shed on this?"