Paranormal Family

I blinked as the early morning light filtered through the window. However, it wasn’t the light that had woken me up, but rather the sound of footsteps that I knew could only belong to one person.

“Do we seriously have to go to this stupid thing?” I groaned as I turned my head to see one of my older sons standing there. He was one of the identical twins so it took me a second to figure out that he was Nick and not Matt. His brown hair looked messy and the brown eyes he had seemed annoyed. I was about to answer when another voice floated through the open bedroom door.

“Of course you have to go, I can already sense the answer and I told you that they’d say you had to go.” Hayley said. I turned my head to look at them. Hayley’s light brown hair was swept up into an updo, something I attributed to Anna’s handy work.

“It never hurts to ask Hayley, people change their minds all the time.” Hayley just rolled her eyes and looked ready to retort when another figure entered the room. This one a lot smaller the others and a lot smarter too.

“People rarely change their minds unless given good reason. You not wanting to sit through a two hour ceremony is not a good reason.” Lizzie said as she came to stand next to where my hand was currently laying on the bed.

“Mom, can we have pancakes for breakfast?” Lizzie asked, her dark hair braided, again likely the handy work of my eldest daughter.

“Yes sweetie.” I said sitting up in bed, it was pointless to try and go back to bed now. Especially with three kids in my room and another starting to come in.

“Mom, tell Anna to leave my hair alone.” Taby said pointing an accusing finger at my eldest daughter who was standing in the doorway holding a hair brush and hair straightener.

“Come on, I only graduate once and I’d like you to look nice for my graduation!” Anna whined as I shot a glance at my angels. Even if I had aged they still hadn’t. Taylor was laughing, finding the whole situation amusing. Shade was arm wrestling with one of Lizzie’s angels, and Peter wasn’t going to interfere.

“They aren’t going to help mom, but they could baby sit us so we don’t have to go to her graduation.” Matt said. I didn’t remember seeing him come in, then again when I was trying to mediate so many different situations it was really hard to notice one kid from another. I could feel my patience thinning as all the kids started talking at once and immediately let out a high pitched whistle that made them all stop.

“All of you stop. Nick and Matt you have to go. Go put on the outfits I left out for you last night. Anna, go get dressed for your ceremony, and leave Taby’s hair alone. She’ll look fine, I’ll make sure of that. Hayley, take Lizzie and help her get dressed. Tabitha, go find Luke and make sure he’s up. All of you be ready to leave in a half hour and we’ll get breakfast before the ceremony. Then we’ll drop Anastasia off at the school, go pick up dad, go to the ceremony, then go to Aunt Renee’s house. Is that clear?” I asked. All of my kids nodded before scattering as I waved my hand.

I still couldn’t believe I had seven kids to contend with. Sure, God had sort of told me seven but I’d been planning on stopping after three. Somehow though three managed to get to seven, something I frequently blamed Ryan for. Why? For obvious reasons, in my mind though he keeps saying it takes two to tango. Whatever, he’s the guy and now there are seven kids. Seven kids I wouldn’t trade for the world.

Anastasia came first, my beautiful baby girl. She’s eighteen now, which is just crazy to me, especially when I can still remember the day I gave birth to her. She’s also graduating high school and moving on to her Dad’s Alma Mater to study elementary education, something I can see her doing well with. Anastasia is a little leader, and she’s great with kids. Though her power made it hard to focus in school when she was younger. Seeing spirits can get distracting when you’re five. That took some serious training to get her over that, but now she could focus despite them.

Then came Hayley, my shy one and my empath. It always amazed me when she could pick out my emotions immediately. She’s sixteen and driving, something that worries me to no end. Hayley tends to get a far off look in her eyes when she’s sensing people, a look that she frequently has when driving. Big places used to terrify her, but at least she can handle them now.

The true wrench in my plan for three came with the twins, Matt and Nick. Matt is our angels and demon boy while Nick just slays them. They are a team, that’s for sure. At fourteen it seems that they currently use their team work to pick up girls, something that annoys their sisters to no end. I swear, that attitude was the reason I sort of wanted all girls. But my boys are great, just like their father.

Tabitha, like the rest of my kids after the twins, was an accident. But she’s a lovely accident. She’s our healer, something that has extended into her personality. Most of the time Tabitha is a really calm child, and her soothing presence seems to extend into other people. However, when she got mad, she got really mad. Tabitha was also a bit of a tomboy, preferring to let her hair look however and just be happy. At thirteen that was fine with me, I didn’t want her dating anyway.

After Taby came Luke, the boy who can see the future. He’s my interesting one, just quiet with a mischievous sense of humor. Luke reminds me a lot of Shade in a way. Constantly having something up his sleeve, and when he can see the consequences of his actions, it becomes easy for him to know what he can and can’t do. Sometimes I swear that he’ll be the death of me.

And last but not least, was my little angel Elizabeth. She had been born premature and yet she was my little genius. Her IQ was well above average and while most kids her age were in the third grade Elizabeth was in the fifth grade with Luke and doing just fine. The only problem was in Luke’s annoyance that his baby sister was in his class. But it was hard to hate Elizabeth, she was a sweet girl even if she didn’t always make sense.

I pulled down my black dress to wear to the graduation, a black tie affair at the fancy prep school we sent our kids to. Not by choice, if I’d had the choice my kids would be in public school like I was. No, they went to the private school because the public school had so many spirits floating around that it wasn’t even funny. It especially wasn’t funny when one of them had tried to attack Anna on her first day. We’d immediately pulled them from there after that and sent them through the private school. Even if it was more expensive, it was also Catholic and not haunted something both Ryan and I wanted.

I slid the black dress on over my head as I moved to grab my ringing cell phone off the dresser. I figured it would be my editor, I’d recently submitted my newest book to be published and was still waiting for a call back on it. That’s how I made my living, through publishing books on the different hauntings we’d investigated through the years. We’d stopped investigating hauntings after Anastasia was born, but we had enough stories to write at least twenty books. Currently I was on my fourth one though.

I picked up the phone only to smile as my husbands name flashed across the screen. Knowing him, he was calling in between his classes. He taught journalism at the state college that was about a fifteen minutes from our house and twenty minutes from the kids school, a place he usually dropped them off at before his first class and picked them up from after his last class. I only ran them to school on Tuesdays, when Ryan’s first class was at 7:30 and the kids school started at 8:30.

“You want to know how many kids woke me up this morning?” I asked as I started to head towards the bathroom to brush my hair. Ryan chuckled on the other end.

“Hmm, three?” I scoffed as I picked up the hairbrush and started running it through my brown hair. Hair that I would probably need to start dying soon to keep the grey out. I really did hate turning 40.

“I wish, six.” I said causing Ryan to let out a whistle.

“Wow, six huh? And to think that we only have seven.” I smiled at myself in the mirror as I worked a tangle out of my hair.

“And who’s fault is that?” I asked as my brush finally came out from the tangle. Ryan laughed and I could practically see him smirking.

“You keep saying mine, but I don’t remember you resisting.” I rolled my eyes as I continued to run the brush through my hair.

“Whatever, still your fault.” I commented as I balanced the phone against my shoulder to start putting on my make up.

“You keep saying that. So, what’s the game plan?” I smacked my lips before answering.

“I’m going to take the kids to breakfast, then drop off Anna at the school. Then we’re going to come pick you up and go to the ceremony. Then it is off to Renee’s for the party. After that Anna is going to hang out with Jana, Hayley is staying with Renee. Matt and Nick are going to my Dad’s house, meaning only Luke, Taby, and Liz are coming back home.” I said as I worked on putting my mascara on.

“Sounds good, I’ll see you then. Love you,” I smiled as I put the tube back onto my mascara.

“Love you too.” I replied before hanging up the phone. Life had never seemed more perfect, but why was it that when life seemed perfect it was just getting ready to turn upside down?