Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) by Christiana Miller Page A

came crashing down around me.
    I heard a faint roaring in my ears.
    “My what ?!” I asked.
    “I meant, if I had had another child.”
    “That’s not what you said,” I glared at her. “What brother?”
    “You never did know when to shut up, Adele,” Aunt Tillie said.
    “ What brother?” I repeated.
    My mom sighed. “Before I met your father, I fell in love with a boy in my school. Things went a little too far. I was young and back then, babies didn’t raise babies.”
    I set out the bottles of wine while I mulled that over. From what I had gotten to know of my mother, I didn’t think she would have terminated the pregnancy. And if she did, she wouldn’t be talking about him in the present tense.
    “So, somewhere in the world, I have a brother?” I asked, trying to gauge the answer by their reactions.
    “And you’ll shut the h-e-double-toothpicks up about it,” Aunt Tillie snapped. “Unless you want him to go through the same hell you went through, with that she-devil ancestress of yours.”
    I looked around, to see if Lisette, the witch whose spirit had possessed my body and who had wreaked havoc on my life, had shown up.
    “Lisette’s not here,” my mom said. “She’s still being pursued by the Wild Hunt.”
    Aunt Tillie cackled. “Serves her right. Now, can we get off this entire topic? Before we draw unwanted attention to it?”
    “Please,” my mom begged, looking at me.
    “This isn’t the end of it,” I said. “We will be talking about this again. I have way too many questions to let this go.”
    I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Somewhere in the world, I might have a brother.
    “Fine. Later. Not Now.” Aunt Tillie said, shooting my mom a dirty look. Then she turned to me. “Did you talk to Gus?”
    I sighed. “He tied the seasonal ritual into the toad ritual. He can’t break the one without doing the other.”
    Aunt Tillie gasped, horrified. I could tell she was gearing up to go into full-out nag mode and give me an earful, so I tried to cut her off at the pass. “It’s not that big a deal. So he’ll wind up with a bone that controls horses. Who even has horses anymore? Besides, I think Gus is scared of them anyway. I doubt he’s going to turn into the next Monty Roberts.”
    Monty Roberts was the only real-life horse whisperer I had heard of. I wondered if he had a toad bone in his mojo bag.
    “There should be some kind of licensing or regulation of witches. Before you’re given your powers, you need to be intelligent enough to know when not to use them,” Aunt Tillie snapped. “I’ve never seen two people who deserve to be completely mortal more than the two of you.”
    My mom frowned. “What Gus is planning to do, is forbidden.”
    Aunt Tillie shook her head. “The fool is going to hand himself over to—”
    “Don’t say it,” my mom warned her.
    “And there’s nothing we can do about it,” Aunt Tillie finished.
    I felt like screaming. “Can we drop the melodrama? Come on. It’s Gus. He just wants to do the ritual, to prove that he can. To have a magickal remembrance of Grundleshanks. It’s not that big a deal. The bone will probably never leave his altar. And even if it does, it’s freaking horses, for cripe’s sake.”
    “It’s a very big deal,” my mom said. “Have him find another toad. He must release that one.”
    “There is no way he’s going to do that. Grundleshanks is the whole reason he wants to do the ritual. What’s the problem with Grundleshanks, anyway?!” I asked, exasperated. “You two are being impossible.”
    Aunt Tillie grabbed my arm and an image of Gus popped into my head, his flesh dripping off of him, until he was nothing but bones.
    A wave of sadness, regret and guilt punched me in the gut.
     
    Angry, I pulled away.
    “Why can’t you leave me alone?!” I yelled. “Stop putting things in my head. Gus will be fine. He’s a big boy.”
    Responding to my emotions, both Dobes softly growled in Aunt Tillie’s