by K. F. Breene
“Are you going to drop me off with Niamh?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I am going to have a drink with you. I can’t wait to tell Niamh that she failed.”
“She didn’t fail—she picked a really good guy that I would’ve hit it off with if it hadn’t been for the Doobie Brothers busting up the party.”
“The…who?”
“Never mind.” I sighed. “Back to the drawing board. At least this one leaves hope that there are decent guys on the online dating sites. I just need Niamh to find them for me.”
“It doesn’t matter who is on those sites. They’ll never work for you, miss. All of your Dick dates are going to end like that.” We’d reached the road crossing, but Mr. Tom held his arm out in front of my chest, like I was a child, waiting for a car to pass. Once the way was safe, he swept his hand wide and waited until I stepped off the curb to follow. He was in rare form this evening. “That isn’t your world anymore, miss. You have to accept that. Neither will you get the privacy of your old life. You are the chosen and heiress of Ivy House. With that comes expectation and privilege. You will always be accompanied now. Our job is to protect you, and my kind”—he palmed his chest—“do that better than most. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
“I haven’t gotten used to you…”
“Lovely, it seems Niamh is rubbing off on you,” he said dryly. “What joy is mine.”
The bar was slow for a Saturday night, but the casual atmosphere and the faces I was starting to recognize cheered me up after the botched encounter with Ron. I found Niamh where she always sat, three-quarters of the way down by the support beam, hunched over her cider. The seat to her right was empty, and the one beyond that was taken by my dear friend Sasquatch.
Austin glanced up from a drink he was pouring, noticed Mr. Tom with me, and a series of expressions crossed his face so quickly that I nearly didn’t catch them—regret, relief, surprise, apprehension. He dipped his face back down without nodding hello.
Paul smiled and met us near Niamh. “Hi, Jacinta. Wow, you look really pretty. That dress is nice.”
“Well, lads,” Niamh said, half turning. She looked at Sasquatch. “Wipe off that seat when you leave. It probably has a grease stain now.”
“Yes, a bath once in a while would really work wonders on your mood, I think,” Mr. Tom said, looking Sasquatch over. “I’ve always thought so.”
Sasquatch frowned back at Mr. Tom and then glowered at me. “What do you want?”
“Now, Sasquatch, you hairy bastard, you know how this always goes,” Niamh said. “You make a holy show of yerself, then Austin Steele knocks you on yer arse and chases you out in disgrace. Best get up and move that fat arse down a ways so we aren’t tickled by yer presence anymore.”
“I’ll give you a tickle,” Sasquatch muttered sourly.
“Grand. As soon as you can find yer wee willy, you go right ahead and give me a tickle, that’d be fine. Now give us a little peace, and move.”
“He was there first,” Paul said softly, his expression like he’d just eaten a bug. He did not like standing up to Niamh, but he apparently thought he had no choice.
“Nah.” Sasquatch batted his hand through the air. “Last thing I want to do is listen to a bunch of chickens clucking.”
“I beg your pardon,” Mr. Tom said, puffing up in indignation.
“You heard me,” Sasquatch groused, pushing off the stool and leaving the bar.
“You’ve really ruined his drinking habit since you came to town.” Niamh turned back to her cider.
“What’s up with you?” I asked Niamh as Mr. Tom pulled out my stool. “I’m fine, Mr. Tom, I can—”
“You’re in a tight dress, miss, one it took us all day to find and a grisly fight for me to pay for. I do not wish for you to rip it trying to get onto this stool like some sort of cowboy straddling a horse. Now.” He patted the seat.
No, I was never going to win a battle of wills with Mr. Tom. It would just never be worth the effort.
Once seated, which, to be fair, required some gymnastics on the part of Mr. Tom, Niamh answered me.
“I am knackered.” She drooped a little more. “That training today was more tiring than usual, but then dealing with Tom and Jerry throwing their weight around after you left and already trying to establish a pecking order in which they are on top…”
“They weren’t trying to—”
Niamh silenced Mr. Tom with a raised hand. “No. No more. I cannot handle any more nonsense from gargoyles today. The lot of you are as thick!” She shook her head. “Stubborn bastards if ever there were any. They’ll be staying in that house with you now, Jessie. Ye invited them in, and now they get a room each until you kick their big, dumb butts out. They won’t make the cut, mark my words. That Cedric fella is going to get me foot in his hole, too, if he keeps on with how things should be. Well, I’ll tell him how things are, and that will be that.”
“What happened after I left?” I asked as Paul placed a bottle of cider next to Niamh’s glass.
“Jessie? What can I get you?” Paul asked, smiling.
“The usual. Pinot Noir, whichever one is somewhat fresh.”
“And for you, Earl?”
Mr. Tom leaned forward, his hand on the bar. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you, being that I am not a lush like some people who often grace this establishment…”
“Keep it up, see how it goes,” Niamh mumbled. “I’m not in any sorta mood tonight.”
“My name is Tom now.” Mr. Tom patted the bar, and Paul’s brows pinched. “Mr. Tom.” He smiled expectantly.
“O-kay.” If Paul was looking at Niamh and me for help, he wouldn’t get it. I shrugged, and she ignored the situation completely. “Uh…Tom—”
“Mr. Tom.”
“Right. Mr. Tom, what can I get you?”
“A sherry would be nice, thank you.”
“Hey.” Austin sauntered over to us, wiping his hands on a white bar towel and giving me a tentative grimace. “So, how’d it go?”
“Well, tonight I was the Gary.” I recounted the situation, noticing Mr. Tom’s wings flutter, just slightly. The feeling of someone watching me tickled between my shoulder blades. A glance back and I saw why.
I groaned. “I told them to go home.”
Cedric and Alek lingered to either side of the door, leaning against the wall, staring at me. The other patrons in the bar noticed, glancing furtively between the gargoyles and Austin, clearly wondering if these new guys were a problem.
“But you did not tell them to stay there, miss.” Mr. Tom put his finger in the air. “As I said, their job is to protect you. Which they are doing.”
“Their job is probably to help me fly.” I took a sip of the wine. “That’s what I was thinking of before the summons. I didn’t expressly ask for help, but…” I shrugged. “That’s my guess.”
“And when are you going to attempt that?” Austin asked, dropping the towel onto the back of the bar. If he was annoyed by their presence, he didn’t show it.
I heaved out a sigh. Something in me said flight was the cornerstone of my magic. Learning to fly would usher in the rest of my abilities and cement my role as the heir of Ivy House. It would prepare me for this new life.
Except I was starting to wonder if it would ever happen.
“Sooner the better, I guess.” I shifted my gaze to Niamh. “That guy tonight was perfect—”
“She was way out of his league,” Mr. Tom interrupted.
I gave him a flat stare. “He would’ve been great, if it weren’t for this circus following me around. But they did help me realize it doesn’t make sense for me to date non-magical guys. It was my way of holding on to the past, but it’s probably time for me to own my situation and ease further into the magical world.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Austin asked, his gaze intense.
“I have no idea,” I mumbled, and took another sip. “I have absolutely no idea.”
9
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I really wanted to say today’s situation was déjà vu of the last time I had tried to fly. I really did, but this situation was infinitely worse.
“Starting a new thing on a Monday is a terrible idea, everyone knows that,” I told Edgar. The frigid wind whipped the words out of my mouth.
“This isn’t a new thing,” Edgar replied, raising his voice over the howling wind. He adjusted his bicycle helmet. “You tried a week ago, remember? Right before your first failed attempt at dating a Dick.”
“Is the reason you’re wearing that helmet, because you know I’m going to throw you off this cliff?”
“Thrown, jumped—what’s the difference? At least you have wings. I’ll have to get caught and carried. Or dropped and killed.”
“The new thing I was originally talking about was jumping off an enormous cliff on the side of a mountain, high above a bunch of bone-crunching rocks. Now, however, I think the new thing is having you as my moral support to go through with it.”
“Oh yeah, I’m well known to be terrible in these situations, but I’m the only one without wings. I can fashion myself into a swarm of insects, as you might remember, but that’s more for hovering and moving quickly. I maintain a relationship with the ground. If there is no ground, I cannot sustain the form, have to change back, and go splat. This support role is the sole purpose I can serve when it comes to flying. I’m supposed to talk you out of running, but I don’t really have to, since it’s a long walk back to Ivy House. Fear-induced hide-and-seek is only a fun game for a little while, and then you’d have to come back and face the music. Though, I will say, it would take them forever to find you in the trees back there.”
He hooked his long thumb over his shoulder at the dense trees on the mountain side, the incline slight for about a hundred yards before climbing rapidly again toward the peak not terribly far above us.
Niamh had chosen this spot, about an hour away from town. Only the most advanced rock climbers attempted the cliff, and it was likely too cold for that. Hikers wouldn’t be able to see me through the thick canopy of trees below. Patches of glistening white snow clung to the rocks around us and dusted the leaves behind, not sticking to the ground way below us.
Way, way below us.
“It’s a long way to fall,” I said, my toes pushed up against the edge and shivers racking my body.
“Yes, it is. I don’t much like heights, did I ever tell you that?” Edgar watched Niamh fly by in her nightmare alicorn form, deep shadows swirling in her wake while the sinking sun slid across her oily black feathers. “This is a little torturous for me. You know what they say, though—what doesn’t kill you will haunt you for the rest of your life…”
“That’s not what they say! Of all the people in the world that could be standing next to me in a supportive role, you are the absolute worst.”
“Yes. Probably.”
“I should’ve begged Austin to come.”
“And have one of those young gargoyles fly him up here like a sack of potatoes? Hardly. He might’ve done it because he has a soft spot for you, but I doubt he would’ve been any better at this than me.”
“He would’ve, trust me. He would’ve been so much better.”
He shrugged as if to say fair point. “So, what’s the plan?”
The brawny, purplish Cedric flew close to the cliff, his giant wings beating lazily at the air as he sailed by. Thick slabs of muscle coated his large gargoyle form, his lower half clad in flowing pants. I sure wished he and Alek would fit Mr. Tom for some of those pants. He typically stayed nude when he shifted.
Speaking of Alek, he flew by a little further out, circling in the opposite direction. Though his human form was shorter than Cedric’s, their gargoyle forms were of comparable size. His body was deep brown, covered in chunky muscles, and his thick arms hung at his sides as his wings beat the air.
Mr. Tom, his form a darker brown than Alek’s, almost black to match his midnight eyes, sailed below on a lower plane, his wings slimmer in breadth and needing more beats per minute to compensate.
“Alek and Cedric are really great flyers,” I said, working on my courage. “Look how graceful they are in the sky. They were born for this.”
“Gargoyles are born to fly, yes. Except for you—you were made to fly—and the females of the species have smaller wings. They will need to aggressively protect you when you’re in the sky.”
“They might need to catch me first.” The canopy of trees beneath us butted up against a lovely garden of huge, jagged rocks that would break my fall should my wings not work. “They’re going to have to catch me. My wings aren’t going to work.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I don’t think I am ready for this life. I mean, I’m not even used to being single yet. I was living with the same people for half of my life, and suddenly I’m in a completely different situation in an unfamiliar, magical world. It’s all too much. That’s part of the reason that I wanted to date a Dick.”
“Except…everything would have been new to you anyway, right? You were in a cocoon for the last twenty years. Dating has changed since you were last single. So what does it matter if the person you’re dating is a Dick or someone magical? Either way, it’s going to feel unfamiliar. The magic part is just one more thing to learn about the person, plus it’ll be something you have in common. What do you do for a living? Oh, you are an international bounty hunter, fantastic. How’s business these days? What brings you to these parts—not me, I hope.” He chuckled. “See? I’ve even given you an icebreaker joke to start things off.”
“How would I meet an international bounty hunter in this small town?”
“They pass through, like everyone else. Get Austin to hook you up with someone. Or, I know-you’re familiar with shifters now, so maybe start there. Leave the bounty hunters for when you want a bigger thrill.”
He did make a lot of sense, I had to give him that. Thinking about the whole magic thing as a job made it a bit less daunting.
“Thanks, Edgar, that actually helped.”
“That’s great! Might’ve been nicer to have that pep talk without the crushing fear of falling to one’s death hanging over our heads, but beggars can’t be choosers, as they say. You still haven’t come around for tea. We’ll have to get you over to my cottage one of these days. If we survive the fall, of course.”
I sighed as Cedric sailed by again, looking straight ahead as though he had all the time in the world. He was not rushing me in any way, nor did he seem like he was wondering why I was taking so long. That took the pressure off a little.
“Okay, I gotta jump.” I rubbed my hands together. “I’ve stalled long enough.”
“Drat. I was rather hoping you’d refuse so we could play that game of hide-and-seek. I’m pretty good at it. Then maybe we’d just wander home on our own two feet.”
“That would take forever.”
“But at least we wouldn’t slip through the claws of these creatures and plummet to our deaths.”
“The absolute worst possible choice for support. The worst.”
“Yes, you do have a point.”
“Okay, wings…” I edged forward in a flurry of terror and adrenaline, breathing faster. “Here we go, wings…” I put my arms out to the sides for no reason—what was I going to do, flap them and play pretend? The wind whipped around me, yanking at my half shirt, the back open, and shoving at my loose sweats. “I can do it. Oh, hell, this is so high. This is so, so high.”
I looked down at the trees and rocks way below. Then back up at the limitless blue sky, crisp and cold. I was never going to fly if I didn’t take a chance. I had four people ready to catch me, three with actual arms. There was a long drop, so they’d have plenty of time to swoop in.
“They’re asking me to put a lot of faith in a couple of strangers. Guys I’ve only just met.” I wiggled my fingers. Cedric made smaller and smaller circles, glancing over at me now, still not trying to rush me, I knew, but prepa
ring.
Mr. Tom worked in closer, too, and Niamh went low, probably the last resort.
Four people. They’d catch me if my wings didn’t open. They would.
“Oh God!” Not bothering with any kind of count, I jumped out into the nothingness. My stomach rolled and another shot of adrenaline rocked through my body, tingly with fear. My exclamation turned into a scream I couldn’t help.
Gravity sucked at me, dragging me down. My heart clattered and my chest felt light, my brain knowing I was falling, and tacking a to death to that thought.
My reflexes kicked in, but only my body’s reflexes, not my magic. My spindly, featherless arms beat at the air, doing absolutely nothing to fix the situation. My feet kicked of their own volition, as though I were swimming against the current. My speed picked up, my body dropping like a sack of rocks. The ground—still far below, thank God—vibrated through my watery stare as my mouth cranked open to let out the sound of my fear.
“Help,” I yelled. Electricity coursed through me. It blazed across my skin and curled within my hair. It felt like I’d grabbed a live wire, my body tensing up as the current flowed through me, infusing me with power. It pierced down to my core and then pulsed outward again, a peal of thunder commanding Mr. Tom or someone around me to come to my aid.
But just in case they hadn’t felt the magic… “Help!”
I looked around wildly, my body lazily turning in the air, my head pointed toward the ground while my feet faced the sky, the position only increasing my speed.
“No. Oh God. Help! Catch me!” I sent another pulse, stronger, direr, an SOS. “Why is no one catching me?”
A little surge of magic reached me from Ivy House, not obstructed by the distance or any of the many objects in the way.
“Those you summoned are already en route. They will protect you.”
She must’ve been talking about the second summons, because the guys from the first were around here somewhere not doing their job. Definitely not protecting me in my plummet toward the ground.
