“What are you doing?” Sassy asked watching me with great interest.

“Laundry,” I mumbled, wondering how much soap I was supposed to add. Living without magic was almost more of a shit show than living with it. I was a freakin’ disaster in the home department. I’d used too much soap in the dishwasher this morning and gave the kitchen a bubble bath by accident.

Henry and Audrey had been delighted. Me? Not so much. Thankfully Fabio had been here and was able to magically erase my bubbly booboo.

“Those have some nasty stains,” Sassy pointed out, referring to the onesies my babies had worn on the outing with their dad.

They had shifted into wolf puppies and I’d missed it due to the horrifying fact I’d been busy giving Roger multiple badoinkadoinks. I was heartbroken that I’d been absent for their first shift, but they’d been shifting constantly at home now. It was all kinds of unreal and they were just as cute as tiny wolves as they were babies.

“Yep,” I agreed, staring helplessly at the grass stains on the knees of the adorable little outfits. “I think I saw on Pinterest that you’re supposed to soak grass stained clothes to get them clean.”

“In what? Vodka?”

“Not sure… maybe toothpaste,” I said. “Or lemon juice and hydrogen peroxide with some fertilizer.”

“Do you have all that stuff?” Sassy asked.

“No.”

“Should I go get your dad? He’s downstairs with Henry and Audrey teaching them how to play blackjack.”

“Like my dad knows how to do laundry?” I snapped with an enormous eye roll.

“Point.”

“Exactly. He’s doing enough damage teaching my kids to play poker.”

Sassy paused and I could see the wheels of her pea brain turning. It was all kinds of unsettling.

“Then I say we just throw them out and get new shit.”

That gave me pause. She had a fine point, but that was the weenie way out. I wasn’t a weenie… Nope. I just created weenies. Lots of them. Shitballs. I needed to remove all penis references from my vocabulary. It was too depressing to constantly relive my massive fuck up.

Thankfully Baba Yaga was correct. Roger was delighted with his enhancement. He’d sent flowers and cookies. However, I was still so mortified at the mess I’d made I couldn’t even eat one cookie. And I freakin’ loved cookies.

“We’re not throwing them out. Just because we have no skills doesn’t mean we can’t learn them. Can you pull up Pinterest on your phone?”

“Don’t have a phone.”

“Why not?”

“You blew it up,” Sassy reminded me.

Motherhumpin’ crapballs. She was correct. And the Goddess only knew where my phone was. If my head wasn’t attached to my body I would have lost that too.

“Okay. Fine. This is not a problem,” I said, sounding far more confident than I felt. “I’m just gonna fill up the utility sink and put some dryer sheets in there and seven caps of detergent.”

“Should I get some vodka?” Sassy inquired.

“No, the kids are underage. I don’t want them to smell like a bar. But go get the toothpaste from my bathroom. I want to smear it all over the stains before we soak them.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sassy said, skipping out of the laundry room.

“Probably a bad plan,” I muttered to no one since I was alone now.

Feeling worthless, I sat down on the mountainous pile of dirty towels and let my head drop to my hands. I was a disaster as a witch and clearly a disaster as a human. I didn’t know how to do anything without magic. Not to mention, if Roger’s new additions were any indication, I didn’t know what to do with magic either…

And now Bermangoggleshitz was coming to train me. Life kept getting suckier.

Well, I could still love Mac and my babies. I didn’t need magic for that. Audrey and Henry didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t using enchantment to float their stuffed animals around the room or make the pictures in their storybooks pop off the page and play with them. They were simply happy to be with me.

But they were babies. They didn’t know I was a magical megaflop.

“The toothpaste has arrived!” Sassy announced with an armload of bathroom products.

Biting back my grin, I heaved myself up to see what other potions she’d grabbed. “Have you researched any of this?” I asked, taking a few bath bombs and a bottle of shampoo out of her hands.

“No, but it stands to reason that they should work. If this shit can clean teeth, hair and bodies, it should be able to get rid of pesky grass stains—that was Greek,” she explained as she dumped the contents into the utility sink.

“What was Greek?” I asked, adding the dryer sheets and seven caps of detergent to the brew.

“Pesky. Comes from the word Peskodopolis, meaning jackhole.”

It was difficult to render me speechless. Hard, but doable. Sassy was a pro at it.

Together we stared at the goopy mess in the sink. It didn’t look quite right to me, but what did I know? Apparently nothing. At least I was trying. Mac was proud of me and that made me feel ten feet tall.

“Do we just leave it?” Sassy asked.

“I think we need to add water,” I said, wildly unsure. “At least it smells good.”

“Hot or cold?” she asked, hands on the knobs.

“I’m gonna go with both,” I replied and then froze.

They yelp from the Great Room didn’t sound good. Thankfully it wasn’t Henry or Audrey. It sounded more like Fat Bastard, but I wasn’t sure. Without a backward glance, I sprinted out of the laundry room like a demon was on my heels. No, I couldn’t use magic, but I would protect my children with everything I had left. Always.

* * *

“It ain’t no big deal, Sugar Boots,” Fat Bastard said with my son in baby wolf form attached to his big hairy butt. “We was wrestlin’ and baby Henry here got hisself a little excited.”

“Henry,” I said, ignoring my cat’s strange endearment while trying not to laugh at the bizarre picture of my child with his fangs embedded in my rotund familiar’s butt. “We don’t bite people or cats. Take your teeth out of Fat Bastard’s rear end and shift back to human. Now.”

With a little huff and a shrill giggle from his sister, Henry shifted and crawled over to me. My twins were ten months old. They were a fabulously joyful handful, but I refused to raise heathens who bit others in the ass.

Scooping him up and snuggling him close, I breathed him in. “That’s not what a good boy does,” I told him. “We do not bite people. Ever. Am I clear?”

Taking the big wet smackaroo to my cheek as a yes, I sat him down on the floor with Audrey. My other two familiars, Jango Fett and Boba Fett along with Lucky and Charm—my babies’ little kitten familiars—were busy checking out Fat Bastard’s ass.

“Doll Face,” Fat Bastard said with a wide and proud grin on his feline face. “Don’t youse be getting’ down on the boy. Weeze was teachin’ him how to defend hisself. Magic don’t always work. Sometimes youse gotta use manpower—or in his case—motherhumpin’ sharp, pointy, little fang power.”

“They’re babies,” I said, stressing the word so they would know I meant business. “They do not need to learn how to fight before they walk. And I don’t want them to think it’s okay to bite people.”

“What about bad guys?” Jango asked. “Youse gotta want ‘em to smack down on bad motherfuckers. Right?”

“Dooze not say fucker in front of the rugrats,” Fat Bastard hissed and walloped Jango in the back of the head.

“My bad,” Jango said, getting in a quick left kitty hook to The Bastard’s jiggly gut. “I meant mother farker… which is very different from motherfucker.”

“Clearly,” I said with an eye roll to beat all eye rolls.

“I was here the entire time,” Fabio chimed in as if that was supposed to reassure me…

My father patted Henry and Audrey on their heads full of curly red hair as they giggled happily.

“Yep, I also heard you were teaching them how to gamble,” I said, giving my dad the look.

Fabio had gotten in tremendous amounts of trouble gambling over his centuries on earth and was trying to change his ways…

“It’s good to learn early so you don’t get screwed over,” Fabio pointed out with a sheepish shrug. “Anyway, they got bored with cards so we played horsey.”

“Horsey?”

“Yep,” Jango bellowed and fell over in exhaustion. “Weeze was the horseys and the babies was the cowboys.”

Chuckling, I shook my head. Jango didn’t have far to fall as his enormous stomach almost touched the ground. My children’s upbringing was definitely odd, but it was also full of love—the exact opposite of mine. So if my cats wanted to be horseys and my dad wanted to play cards, I was okay with it.

“Let me see your butt,” I said to Fat Bastard, gently pushing all the cats out of the way and examining him. “I need to heal that.”

“Umm… you can’t,” Sassy reminded me with waggling eyebrows while miming male genitalia with her hands.

And yet another fail for me.

My eyes filled with tears and I stared at my feet. This was awful.

“It ain’t nothin’” Fat Bastard assured me. “A band-aid, some scotch and a good Cuban cigar will fix my ass up just fine.”

“Come with me to my office,” I said. “Maybe I can do a little something without magic to make you feel better.”

“And just so youse know, Sweet Cheeks, I’m fine with an extra pecker or three,” my cat said over his shoulder as he waddled his fat ass out the front door followed by his equally rotund cohorts.

“I’m never going to live this one down, am I?” I said.

“Nope,” Fabio confirmed with a grin on his handsome face. “You want me to watch the little ones?”

“Are you going to teach them anything illegal?” I countered.

“Umm… no?”

“Yes, I want you to watch them, and no, you will not teach them anything illegal. They need a nap soon anyway.”

“Do you have Windex?” Sassy asked, hopping up and down in excitement.

“What’s Windex?” I asked.

“She does,” Fabio said with a chuckle. “Under the sink. Why?”

“Didn’t any of you people see My Big Fat Greek Wedding?” Sassy demanded, trying to open the cabinet. “What in the Goddess’s name is wrong with your cabinet?”

“Child guards,” I said, flicking the latch so Sassy could find this Windex she was so fixated on.

“Those are awesome,” she said, ransacking the cleaning stuff I didn’t know I had under my sink. “I’m gonna have to get some for my house to lock up my vibrators. My kids think they’re back massagers. So did you see the movie?”

“No,” Fabio and I answered in unison and then a matching gag at Sassy’s overshare.

“Oh my Goddess,” she screeched so loud I was sure my eardrum was damaged. “You have to see it. Anyhoo, Windex is magic human liquid. Heals all kinds of shit.”

“Seriously?”

“Totally.”

Maybe today was looking up…

Or maybe not.