“Yes, he’s coming with me. We’re going to eat dinner first and then head over.”

What wasn’t a good thing was how well my grandfather knew me, especially when the next question he asked was “Are you nervous?”

I totally knew snorting was the worst physical reaction I could have, but I did it anyway. Because we both knew I was… not necessarily nervous, but maybe something close to it. Very close to it.

He slid me a look that was way too knowing. “You know you don’t have anything to worry about, demon child. It’s past time you went, and you know it.”

I did know it, but that didn’t make it any easier to collect my things and kid, and head over to pick up Jonah.

*

Jonah had only been in the passenger seat for maybe five minutes when I asked, “Are you sure you don’t mind coming?”

“Yeh. I’m sure,” he agreed, fingertips bouncing on his thigh. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you in action.”

In action. With the little kids. At the club I had spent so much of my life at.

Before I’d told them bye and never gone back.

There were very few things I regretted, but how I’d handled leaving was one of them.

“About that—” I started to say before I forced my mouth closed. The smell came out of fucking nowhere, stealing the words out of my mouth.

Pungent. Rabid. Fucking disgusting.

What the fuck?

I coughed and looked to my right at the man who hadn’t moved an inch and was still looking out the window with a tight jaw. Even the veins along his forearms were popping more than usual, but I let that thought go in one ear and right back out the other. I had more pressing matters. “Jonah, please tell me you pooted.”

He was still looking out the windshield when he answered. “Are you asking if I passed gas?”

I took another tentative sniff and coughed, shooting his profile a horrified face at the fucking awful smell. What was wrong with him? What the hell had he eaten for dinner? “Yes,” I gasped. Good God, I rolled down the window and leaned over to the side like that would make the smell any better.

It didn’t.

“Is there something dying in you?” I wheezed, trying to hold my breath in as much as possible and failing. “I don’t care if you do, but roll down the window if there’s some Agent Orange type shit coming out of you. Whoa. God. I can taste it.”

That had him glancing over at me, a remote expression on his face that I might have sucked up in any other circumstances. His forehead furrowed, his mouth a line as his nostrils flared. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything,” he defended himself. “I can’t smell a thing.”

How could he not smell that?

I coughed and sucked in the exhaust smell from the surrounding cars instead of the goddamn bomb that had gone off in the car. “It wasn’t me.”

Jonah clearly tried to take a whiff, but all he did was shake his head. “No, Lenny, I don’t smell anything.”

I slid him another horrified glance, but that damn smell didn’t go anywhere.

And then it hit me.

Like a cold finger along my spine, the knowledge—and the heavy feeling of dread—ran down me.

Fuck.

I glanced in the rearview mirror as I got to a stoplight and looked at the car seat holding a quiet little body I couldn’t see.

“Oh no,” I whispered more to myself than Jonah, my mind already racing with what needed to be done.

“What’s happened?” he asked, finally sounding worried. “Was it you?”

“No.” I eyed the car seat warily. “Mo just shit herself.”

He took another sniff, and I could see him shake his head. “I don’t smell anything.”

I sucked in another little breath through the opened window and rushed out, “Your septum’s deviated then because she shit herself.” Which meant I needed to pull over because there was no way I was going to survive the thirty-minute drive, and neither was my kid if she had a loaded diaper.

Because her diapers were one thing when she pooped herself, but I knew that damn smell when it got that bad. I guess my brain had just blocked it out in a sense of self-preservation from the last time she’d done the same thing. How the hell could I ever forget retching as I cleaned her butt from how awful it had smelled?

Worse: I knew exactly what color was going to be in her diaper.

What the fuck had Grandpa fed her? Fucking fuck.

I accidentally sucked in a breath and gagged.

How the hell did something so small smell so goddamn awful?

I retched and heard Jonah laugh like an asshole. “I can’t smell a thing.”

I held my breath as I turned the wheel into the first parking lot on the right-hand side, pulling into a small strip mall with a pharmacy and gas station. I barely managed to throw the door open, leaving the car running when I sucked in another big breath through my mouth. Where the hell was a respirator when I needed one?

“Are you all right?” my girl’s dad asked a moment before a hand landed on my upper back and he slapped me lightly three times, sounding totally back to himself, thankfully, even though I wasn’t worried about that anymore.

“Mm-hmm,” I groaned, shaking my head and trying to clear my nostrils.

What had to be his hand stroked up and down the center of my back slowly. “All right, take a breath. I’ll see what’s going on, yeah?”

Did he expect me to plead with him not to?

And what the fuck was going on with his nose that he couldn’t smell death in the air?

When he opened the door, I took a step away and watched as he gave me a brave little smile before ducking inside the back seat.

I held my breath as I watched through the window as he unbuckled Mo from her seat, whispering who the hell knew what to her—probably how smart she was and how she was never going to need a man other than her daddy—and still Jonah didn’t flinch or slow down as those big fingers worked at her straps. Those big hands then went under her armpits, and he was talking away at her, making happy faces like that wasn’t radiation in the air as he lifted her up.

And I sucked in another breath, planning on holding it and letting this boss handle Poopy Pants since he had no olfactory senses. How many times exactly had he had his nose broken? Fuck.

I watched as Jonah took a step back and began to straighten, bringing a wide-eyed squirming and babbling Mo to that wide chest. “I don’t know what you—”

His mouth shut. Those lips of his pressed down into a firm line that made the corners of it go white. He shot up to a complete standing position, and I watched his own honey-colored eyes go wide.

His lips parted, and then they parted some more until they were open half an inch.

Mostly, there was no way to miss the way he gulped and asked very, very cautiously, “Lenny?”

“Yeah?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as his arms began to extend outward, moving Mo slowly away from him as he asked in the most hesitant voice he’d yet to use with me, “What is that?”

I knew it! “I told you she smelled!”

He shook his head quickly, blinking rapidly all of a sudden. “No.” Those big feet moved so that his whole body did too in a counterclockwise motion, stopping only when Mo’s back was facing me.

My eyes went wide and my own mouth parted before I managed to whisper, “Oh fuck.”

His voice was just slightly higher than normal. “Oh fuck what?”

One of my feet slid back on the concrete. “Oh dear God.”

Mo’s body went two inches higher, two inches farther away from her dad; his voice even sharper than a second ago as he asked, “Oh dear God what?”

I blew out my cheeks, slapped my hand over my mouth, and gagged. It was honestly a fucking miracle I didn’t throw up, and I knew it. I could handle feet on my face. I could handle touching them. Sweaty armpits on my cheek or forehead were nothing. Blood? No big deal. Pee? Whatever.

But….

Jonah held her even higher up and asked in a voice that was definitely fucking higher, “What is on her back?”

I gagged again.

“What is on her back?” he demanded in that Jonah with a capital J voice.

I pinched my nose, closed my eyes, and shook my head, hoping, fucking willing myself not to actually fucking throw up... and not totally sure I could pull it off when my stomach did a damn somersault.

“Lenny, what is on her back?” he asked breathlessly, holding his daughter—our daughter—about as far away from his body as he could get. “Why is her back wet? What is all over my fingers?”

The only thing I could do was press my eyes closed, shake my head, and dry heave with a balled-up hand over my mouth.

“Why is her back so warm?” Jonah gasped. “What am I touching?”

Shit.

Literally.

“Lenny.”

My hand was still over my mouth when I whispered one word and one word only.

“Diarrhea.”

The breath he let out was a whisper. “Tell me it doesn’t go all the way up to her neck.”

I couldn’t lie.

So I didn’t say a word.

It went all the way up to her neck.

And into her hair.