“Houston, are you okay?” I heard my father say in a desperately worried tone. Who in the Goddess’s name was he talking to?

“Her pulse is fine and her breathing is normal,” Baba Yaga said, touching my forehead with her cool hand. “She’ll come to momentarily.”

“Was it Houston’s spell or the realization that Roger now has five wanks that made her faint?” Sassy asked in a hushed tone.

“Dat’s a lotta licking dat rabbit is gonna have to do,” Fat Bastard pointed out as my other furry familiars, Boba Fett and Jango Fett, grunted in impressed agreement.

Oh my hell, this had to be a dream. Right?

“This is not okay,” Mac growled as he adjusted the pillow under my head. “Zelda doesn’t need…”

“You mean Houston,” Sassy corrected my mate.

Mac’s sigh was long and I could feel his frustration even though my eyes wouldn’t cooperate with me and open. “You’re certain Zelda wants to change her name?”

“Positive,” Sassy replied. “She called herself Houston like twelve times—or a least once—and came close to announcing it to the entire town before she turned Roger into a porno star for a freak show.”

Damn it—not a dream.

“Accident,” I croaked out, forcing my eyes open and trying to sit up.

It was strange that I’d passed out. I’d felt no pain when I’d used the spell to heal… or rather enhance Roger. Normally when I healed someone, it took me an hour or two to feel okay again. Of course the first time I healed my friends, I was out for a week, but that was a long time ago. I was a pro now.

Or maybe not.

“Oh my Goddess, Houston. I was so worried about you,” Fabio, my dad, cried out as he took me in his arms and rocked me like a baby.

My dad was still making up for being absent during my childhood. He was doing a really good job, but I didn’t tell him that. I enjoyed being babied and spoiled by him.

“Who the hell is Houston?” I asked, making sure I hadn’t been dreaming when Sassy spewed her load of crap.

“Youse are,” Fat Bastard announced, hopping up on my bed and planting his furry and very large ass in my lap.

“No. I’m not.”

“Would you prefer Dallas?” Fabdudio inquired, looking puzzled.

“No.”

“Austin?” Baba Yaga suggested.

“Galveston?” Mac tried one out.

“Fort Worth?” Marge aka Cookie Witch added.

“San Antonio?” Jeeves the Kangaroo shifter aka Sassy’s husband aka Mac’s adopted son chimed in.

“No. No. No. And oh my Goddess, no,” I replied with an eye roll. “Sassy’s confused… as usual. I’m still going by Zelda.”

“Wait,” Sassy yelled in her outdoor voice, making all in the room wince in pain. “Were you speaking Chinese when you said all that stuff?”

Now everyone was confused—except me.

“Yes. Yes, I was speaking Chinese.”

“Goddess, what a relief,” Sassy said, flopping down on the bed next to me. “For a minute there I thought I was losing my newfound brilliance. I’m clearly going to have to learn to speak Chinese.”

“That would probably be helpful,” I said with the smallest eye roll I could manage without getting busted.

“So do you think you might have been speaking Chinese when you did the spell?” Sassy asked. “You know the Goddess might not understand Chinese either and therefore thought you wanted Roger to have a pentagon of penises.”

“I’m sorry,” Cookie Witch choked out with her hand over her mouth. “Did you just say pentagon of penises?”

“I most certainly did,” Sassy huffed, totally offended. “Pentagon means five for everyone’s information. It’s a French word. Roger now has five love muscles. So it stands to reason that he has a pentagon of penii. You feel me?”

“She kind of has a point in a rather unorthodox way,” Jeeves admitted, standing up for his deranged wife.

“But a pentagon is a shape with five connected sides,” Fabio said, bending over at the waist clearly feeling phantom pain for Roger. “Does it actually look like a pentagon? Are they connected?”

“Dat would be sumpin’ to see,” Jango Fett said, scratching his kitty head with his paw. “Youse would have a hard time takin’ a leak if the giggle sticks was connected.”

The room went silent. I felt like passing out again. Did Roger have a pentagon in his pants or just five unconnected man bits? Goddess, the images were endless and gross. I was definitely going back to the pokey for this one—even I thought I deserved time in the big house for this mess.

“Umm… what does a pentagon actually look like?” Sassy asked, looking somewhat bewildered.

With a wave of her hand, Marge produced a drawing of a pentagon and gave it to Sassy. Sassy studied the picture thirty-seven seconds too long for my sanity.

“Nope, it doesn’t look like this,” she announced to a very relieved audience. “Looks more like a hand and finger weenies with balls.”

“Well, that certainly makes it all better,” I snapped, shoving Fat Bastard off my lap and Sassy off my bed.

Hopping to my feet, I began to pace the room. I knew I was coming unhinged, but this was horrifying. Roger must be a basket case. He was always a slight basket case, but this… this would make a sane rabbit a freakin’ mess.

“I have to fix it,” I muttered, pacing like a caged tiger hopped up on a vat of caffeine and multiple boxes of Twinkies. “I really didn’t want to touch it, but I’m going to have to. Maybe if I wear gloves I won’t puke on him. I mean, it would be bad if I hurled on him after I gave him a pants-full of peckers. And who ever even heard of a spell going this wrong? It’s appalling. I’m completely willing to hand myself over to the authorities and go back to the pokey. I just want you all to make sure my children know how much I love them and don’t tell them why I had to live out my life doing hard time until they’re at least thirty… or fifty… or never. Just make something up that sounds good. The only thing I request is that I don’t have to wear orange. It clashes so badly with my hair, I don’t think I would survive it. Do you all feel me here?”

“Zelda, calm down,” Baba Yaga snapped in a brook no bullshit voice.

I was actually relieved she was so bossy until I looked over at her and lost the use of speech.

She was dressed in sunshine yellow spandex from head to toe. Her wrists were adorned with so many black rubber bracelets, I figured she could bounce or float on water. The silver sequined cone-shaped bra over the unitard could put an eye out. But the gauzy purple skirt trimmed in feathers and tiny pictures of Madonna’s face was the topper—from hell.

Baba Yaga, aka Carol, was working an enormous hairdo that must have taken ten cans of hairspray to hold up and her eyes were rimmed with yellow glitter. The most shocking part of all was that even though the woman looked like a reject from a Madonna video, she was still gorgeous.

Unreal.

As much as I wanted the voice of reason to tell me what to do, it was going to be difficult to make eye contact with her and not laugh.

“Trying,” I said, staring at her nose. It was the only thing on her face that didn’t sparkle. “I’m just going to have to reverse the spell.”

“Bad idea,” Marge said.

Thankfully Marge had taste and was easy on the eye. She and Baba Yaga were sisters and looked alarmingly alike, but Marge wasn’t permanently stuck in the eighties.

“Why?” I asked. “I gave him too many John Holmeses with a spell. I can take them away with a spell.”

“What exactly does John Holmes have to do with this?” Marge asked with tremendous trepidation.

She feared my answer—as well she should.

However, Sassy decided to take over and we all became terrified.

“There was a genitalia—another French word or possibly Swedish—naming ceremony about a year ago,” Sassy informed an increasingly pale Marge. “Roger admitted he named his member John Holmes—which I have to say is wildly inaccurate. Anyhoo, Zelda is just avoiding having to come up with polite penis terms by calling Roger’s wang by its proper name.”

“I see,” Marge said, pressing the bridge of her nose and biting back either laughter or bile.

“So I say we just decide on one single name for the salami and this will all go much smoother,” Sassy suggested as if that would solve the heinous fact that I’d more than doubled Roger’s salami.

“I put my vote in for rod, tallywhacker or dong. Youse can’t go wrong with dem names,” Boba Fett volunteered.

“Youse is forgettin’ 100% beef thermometer, The General and pork sword,” Fat Bastard added.

“Nah, youse guys got it all wrong. I’d go for tent pole or meat popsicle,” Jango Fett rounded out the disgusting suggestion pile.

“How about this?” I stated calmly as I waved my hand and rendered my revolting familiars mute.

“Thank you,” Marge said. “However, until we get to the bottom of what happened, I don’t think you should use magic, Zelda.”

“That’s kind of harsh,” Sassy commented, coming to my defense.

It was harsh—really harsh, but Marge was right. I’d used dark magic on Roger and didn’t even realize it was happening. Goddess only knew what other tragedies I could conjure up.

Twisting my hair in my fingers, I sighed and plopped back down on the bed. “Marge is right,” I said, defeated. “I’m a danger to myself and others right now. If I keep going like this, we could have a town of seventy-five people with enough genitalia for three hundred.”

Thankfully no one had a comment for that. I don’t think I would have been able to stop myself from zapping someone who agreed with my grim statement.

“She needs to be trained,” Baba Yaga stated the obvious. “If Zelda can’t control the dark, it will control her.”

“And who exactly is going to train her?” Mac asked, not liking the direction of the conversation any more than I did.

“Has to be someone who has dark magic,” Fabio said.

“I have dark magic,” Sassy announced with a shudder. “However, I’d like to go on record now saying I have no fucking idea how to use it either. And in solidarity—pretty sure that’s a German word—with my best friend Zelda, I’m not going to use magic either. If she gave Roger five… wait, what did we decide to call them?”

“We didn’t,” Jeeves told her.

“Okay then I’m just going to randomly pick a name. Cool?”

When no one answered she took that as a yes.

“If Zelda aka Houston gave Roger five badoinkadoinks, I’m liable to saddle someone with ten to twenty. That would be a total shit show and pants would be a real problem. I don’t even know if pants would be a possibility and since winter is coming… well, you all get my drift. Right?”

“Unfortunately we do,” Baba Yaga said, shaking her head. “I think it’s best if you don’t say anything else for at least thirty minutes, Sassy.”

“Is that an order or suggestion?” Sassy asked.

“Order,” everyone in the room said in unison.

“There’s really only one option,” Marge said as her lovely face turned pink with embarrassment.

“And that is?” Mac asked.

“We bring Bermangoggleshitz to Assjacket,” Marge announced.

“My dad?” Sassy asked, clearly forgetting she wasn’t supposed to speak. “Here? In Assjacket?”

Baba Yaga nodded her head and watched her sister with interest. “Yes. I agree. He’s working on redeeming himself. This might be just the thing for him to prove he’s serious about becoming a better warlock.”

“I don’t like it one bit,” Mac said through gritted teeth.

“Neither do I,” Fabio said. “But I have to agree with Marge and Carol on this one. He’s the only one to train the girls to use the dark sorcery without hurting themselves or anyone else.”

“And you think he’ll do it?” Mac growled. “He’ll play by the rules?”

“He wants something here,” Baba Yaga said, still staring at her sister. “So yes, I believe he will abide by any conditions we set. And if he doesn’t, I will end him.”

“You can do that? You can kill him?” I asked taken by surprise.

“I’m the Baba fucking Yaga,” she said with a wide grin. “I can do whatever I want. Plus there are many things far worse than death, my child.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, leaning on Mac for support. “Five badoinkadoinks is one of those things.”

“Trust me,” Baba Yaga said. “Roger is a bit… how can I put this politely… pervy. He’ll be more disappointed when he’s back to one than he is devastated that he has five.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said, closing my eyes and breathing in the delicious scent of my mate. Mac’s presence alone gave me strength.

All I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and pretend today hadn’t happened. I wanted to play with my babies and then act out a pornographic fairy tale with Mac when the kids went to bed…

But all that would have to wait. I had penance to pay. And pay it I would.

Shitshitshitshit.