“It feels weird.”

“So?”

I questioned her with a quirk of my brow.

“Are you going to explain? Why did you, of all people, quit caffeine?”

After a quick glance over my shoulder, I said, “We’re pregnant.”

Kit had a knee-jerk reaction to that bit of news. Like literally. Her knee jerked and hit the steering wheel, sending us careening into oncoming traffic. Or it would have if there’d been any traffic at that moment.

She corrected the wheel, took a deep breath, then said, “No way. For real? You? A mom?”

I gaped at her. “What the hell? I can be a mom. I’m going to make a great mom.”

“Oh,” she said, trying not to look so shocked. “No, you’re right. You’ll make a great mom. You’re going to take classes, though, yes? Learn what it takes?”

“Puh-lease. I so have this. I’m going to buy a goldfish. Try that on for a while. You know, start off small and work my way up to a kid.”

“You’re comparing raising a goldfish to raising a kid?”

“No.” I was getting defensive, even though her gut reaction had been spot on. I could think of no one less qualified to be a mother than moi. “I’m just saying, if I can keep a goldfish alive, surely I can keep a kid alive.”

She stifled a giggle behind a fake cough. That was original. “You do realize there’s more to raising a kid than just keeping it alive?”

“I do indeed,” I said, sounding way more confident than I felt. “Believe you me, I got this.”

“And once you work your way up to a kid, where’re you gonna get the kid? You know, to practice on?”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I was focusing on the goldfish.”

“Ah. Good idea.” She said it, but she didn’t mean it. I could tell.

I turned to look at the trees as Jessica chimed in from the backseat. “That poor child. Having you as a mother? Talk about cruel and unusual.”

Reyes must have shot her another glare, because she shut up. Not sure why he bothered. Jessica was right. And though Agent Carson had been teasing, she still nailed it: I knew nothing about being a mother. The only example I’d ever had was that of a witch in wolf’s clothing, a stepmother who thought more of her begonias than she did of me.

Who was I kidding? This kid was in so much trouble.

A heaviness pressed into me. The same heaviness that had been pressing into me since I first learned of our little bun in the oven. The pregnancy was an accident, of course. We hadn’t been practicing safe sex by a long shot, but who’d have thought Reyes could get me pregnant? He was the son of Satan, for goodness’ sake. I’d just figured it an impossibility.

So, Satan was our daughter’s grandfather. Her father was literally created in hell. And her mother worked part-time as the grim reaper. We were the very definition of dysfunctional, and that was on a good day. I usually saw the gun clip half full, but this was just not a pristine situation. Nothing about her environment would be safe. I caused more trouble than gonorrhea.

My phone chimed. I glanced down at Reyes’s text.

Look at me.

I didn’t want to. He had to feel what I was feeling, and he probably felt sorry for me. Possibly even defensive. But both Kit and Jessica were right.

He sat waiting patiently for me to turn around. I swallowed back my self-doubt and turned to look over my shoulder.

To my surprise, his expression had hardened. He studied me with a crackling storm glittering in the depths of his irises. “Stop,” he said, his voice soft, dangerously soft – so soft, I had to strain to hear him. He reached out and ran a thumb across my lower lip. “Je bent de meest krachtige magere hein ooit en je zou je door meningen van anderen aan het wankelen laten brengen?”

Translation: “You are the most powerful grim reaper ever to exist, and you would let the opinions of others give you pause?”

Response: Apparently.

I raised my chin and tucked a brown lock behind my ear. He’d told me that a dozen times – the most powerful reaper bit – but none of them, not a single reaper who came before me, had ever gotten knocked up. We were breaking new ground here, and he would just have to deal with my insecurities. Normally, no, I would not let the opinions of others give me pause, but I was, after all, still human. At least in part. And being a mother was serious business.

The fact that he was speaking Dutch was not lost on me. It was what he called me: Dutch. What he’d called me from the day I was born. But I’d never heard him speak it, and the beautiful foreign language expressed in his deep, smooth voice felt like warm butterscotch in my mouth.

He lowered his lids and gazed at me, my reaction stirring him. He reached out with his heat, like tendrils of liquid fire, and it washed over me. Pooled in my abdomen. Settled between my legs. They parted involuntarily, as though to give him permission to enter. But now was certainly not the time.

“Stop,” I whispered back, echoing his command.

A dimple appeared at one corner of his mouth. “Maak mij.”

“Make me,” he’d said, the challenge glittering from between his lashes almost my undoing.

“This is it,” Kit said, either oblivious to our flirtations or choosing to ignore them.

Just as she pulled the car onto a dirt entrance to the campgrounds, my phone rang. It was Cookie.

I drew in a deep ration of cooling air as I answered, pretending my affianced was not trying to seduce me. I couldn’t take him anywhere. “Hey, Cook.”