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the tea,” Lynette said, heading off to the mini-kitchen in the back.
    “I’ll get the cupcakes,” Bettina said.
    “And I’ll call the traveling house sprites to do the cleanup afterward,” I said, to cheers all around.

     
    “This feels like the old days,” Rosie said as we settled around the crackling gas fireplace with our snacks and our knitting. “We haven’t had a knit night in forever.”
    “Blame me,” I said, casting on a tiny six-color stranded cap I’d been dying to start. “I think I’ve done nothing but eat and sleep since I found out I was pregnant.”
    A round-robin of knowing looks were exchanged.
    I patted my belly. “Hello, people. I am with child. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
    “Honey, it’s not your pregnancy changing things, it’s that troll you and Luke are living with,” Midge said, patting my knee with one plump, perfectly manicured hand. She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “She is—you should excuse the expression—a real beyotch.”
    My pals nodded like a gaggle of bobble-head dolls.
    “Midge is right,” Verna said. “I know that Elspeth is one of your distant relatives, Janice, but the woman is a bigger buzzkill than Prohibition.”
    “Don’t blame me,” Janice said. “She’s here to midwife Chloe. When the baby arrives, she’ll go back to Salem.”
    “She’s not here to midwife me,” I protested. “She’s here to make me crazy.” At least that was the way it felt.
    “She’s a troll,” Verna persisted. “You don’t have troll in your background, Janice. I’ve been meaning to ask how she fits in your family tree.”
    Janice sighed. “Witch on her mother’s side, troll on her father’s.”
    “His looks, her powers,” I observed with maybe a tad more snark than I had intended. Janice’s eleventh cousin four times removed was a toothache you couldn’t get rid of.
    “I know the type all too well,” Renate chimed in. “She’ll never leave. Mark my words on that.”
    “If she doesn’t leave, I will,” I said as my fingers deftly maneuvered the brightly colored strands of fine merino. “The way she creeps around, all cloaked up and hidden—” I gave a mock shiver. “It’s a good thing Luke and I got pregnant before she got here because it sure couldn’t have happened after.”
    “I hear you, sister,” Janice said as everyone laughed. “Lorcan’s mother came to live with us after his father pierced the veil and it was the longest seven years of my life.”
    “She was there eight weeks,” I corrected her with a grin. “It only seemed like seven years.”
    “It couldn’t have been that bad,” Rosie said. “You and Lorcan managed to pop out five kids in four years.”
    Janice laughed louder than anyone. “Safety in numbers,” she said with a wide grin. “I figured if we outnumbered the in-laws we might have a chance.”
    “Don’t get me started on in-laws,” Midge said. “George’s folks were from the old country.” She rolled her saucer-sized eyes for emphasis. “Out every night hunting, sleeping all day while I was homeschooling the kids. Bloodstains everywhere. They’re the ones who got the boys involved in that whole retro-feeding movement, but that’s a whole other story. It wasn’t until I made Ina Garten’s roast chicken with forty cloves of garlic five nights straight that they decided it was time to get their own place.”
    “You should thank your lucky stars Luke isn’t a mama’s boy,” Lilith said as she nibbled the edges of a cranberry muffin. “Archie doesn’t change his socks without consulting his mother.”
    “Get out! That’s impossible. Archie’s way too—” I stopped midsentence before I insulted the woman’s husband.
    “Oh, go ahead,” Lilith said with a good-natured chuckle. “He’s a troll. I know he’s a troll. You know he’s a troll. We all know he’s a troll.” Her smile widened. “And I don’t just mean his lineage.”
    The thought of the gruff,