Page 8 of Fiends and Familiars
Adrienne
“Adrienne, does the vulture really need to be inside?” Cassie asked, glaring at Drake. “We made Hadur’s raccoon stay outside.”
“And I think that’s a horrible way to treat a member of the family,” I countered. “Diebin is just as important as Lucien.”
The demon bristled at my comparing his value to that of a raccoon and a vulture, but I ignored him. He might be the son of Satan, but I knew he enjoyed our family squabbles. Did he have any brothers or sisters, I wondered? Maybe we could have some giant multi-family holiday dinner. We’d need to rent a conference hall because I didn’t think there was room enough in our family home for even the Perkins’ extended family.
“Drake isn’t going to eat the meatloaf or get up on the table,” I told Cassie. “He brought his own meal.”
The vulture’s meal was outside. Even though I insisted Drake be allowed to socialize with the rest of us—because vultures were extremely social creatures—I did agree that the groundhog roadkill he’d picked up off the side of the highway needed to be as far away from our own dinner as possible.
I looked around at what had always seemed like an enormous dining room and winced. Honestly if our family got any bigger, some ofusmight need to eat outside just from a lack of space. We were seven sisters, and our cousin Aaron, all over for Sunday dinners, but five of my sisters had shacked up which meant instead of eight, we needed to set a table for thirteen. Our table didn’t hold thirteen, so Cassie had added a folding card table to the end along with those metal folding chairs typically used at funerals. We all drew straws each week because no one wanted to sit at what amounted to the kids’ table.
Lucky for him as well as us, Aaron was off on a weeklong cruise he’d been suckered into by some time-share spiel the travel agent had given him. That meant we could all squash along the dining table, cheek-to-jowl, rather than four of us drawing the short straw for the kids’ table.
I’m not sure which was worse, being teased for ending up eating on the card table, or packed so tightly against my family that I could barely raise a fork to my mouth. I looked around, thinking that if Cassie knocked out a wall, or stuck an addition onto the back of the house, we might be able to get one of those enormous U-shaped conference tables and use it for dining instead.
This Sunday I was here early, feeling the need for family time—for human interaction. Cassie hadn’t even started the meatloaf yet. The two of us were peeling potatoes while Lucien sat at the kitchen table and snapped fresh green beans. It was kinda funny that the son of Satan was prepping veggies for dinner, but I kept my amusement over that to myself.
“So how’s your week been?” Cassie asked as she waved a potato peeler.
“Not bad. There’s lots of bat removal now that the babies are out of their nests and I can legally evict them. I include two bat boxes with every service, and even hang them up for people. It’s important to educate folks on the value of having bats in their neighborhood.”
Cassie didn’t look particularly interested in hearing about that, so I didn’t elaborate further.
“I had a drunk and disorderly case, and it looks like my assault charge is going to go to trial after all,” Cassie told me.
I made a sympathetic noise. “Yesterday I moved four squirrels out of a woman’s attic. I couldn’t get them to relocate to the woods, so now they’re inmyattic.” In my living room, actually, but I was reluctant to admit to that.
Cassie wrinkled her nose. “Can’t you just tell them to get out?”
My sisters knew my powers. I could communicate with animals, and I could persuade them to do my bidding—usually. Every now and then, like with the squirrels, an animal blocked my attempts at communication and refused to cooperate. I had one other skill, but I refused to break out the nuclear bomb unless a life was on the line. A witch has to have ethical limits after all.
“They’re not so bad. I named them Oak, Maple, Pine, and the leader is Hemorrhoid.”
Lucien snorted. “You named a squirrel Hemorrhoid?”
“Rhoid for short,” I told him. “He’s the leader of the crew, and a bit of an asshole. He’s really wary of strangers. I hope I can eventually win him over.”
“Hard to win someone over when you’ve named them Hemorrhoid,” Cassie commented.
She had a point. “I’m hoping once the weather warms up in the spring, they’ll leave my house and head for the woods, but I’m pretty sure they’re here for the foreseeable future.”
“So they’re hanging out in your attic?” Lucien asked. “That’s not too bad other than the noise of them running around.”
Crap. Here’s where I admitted I was a total softie. “Um, they’re living downstairs. They’re actually sleeping in my bedroom,” I confessed. My sisters already knew I was weird. One more thing wouldn’t send me over the weirdness cliff in their eyes mainly because they believed I’d already gone over that edge.
“That’s gonna totally kill your sex life,” Cassie said.
As if I had a sex life.
“I’m pretty sure Drake is enough of a mood killer on his own.” I laughed. “The squirrelsdidruin a really awesome sexy dream last night though. Actually, it wasn’t really their fault. That huge dog-thing was back in my front yard and they were all freaking out about it.”
“I totally want to hear about this sexy dream,” Sylvie said as she walked into the kitchen.
“Me too.” Eshu, her main squeeze, was right behind her. He had a case of beer and handed us each one before he began stacking them in the fridge.
“Please tell me you’re not going to take in the stray dog as well,” Cassie pleaded as she popped open her beer. “You’ve already got a vulture and a bunch of squirrels. Soon you’ll be sleeping on the couch and all the animals will be in the bed.”
