Magical Midlife Dating: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Leveling Up Book 2)

by K. F. Breene

  A crease worked in his brow and his body tensed. “When they need to be,” he said, his voice deep and rough.

  “She means soft, not gentle,” Niamh said. “When does your shift end? We need to talk before she can’t function anymore.”

  “Good Lord, my tolerance isn’t that low,” I grumbled as Austin pushed the glass of wine my way and affixed the cork.

  “Ye still do, yes,” Niamh said. “As soon as ye grow into that power of yours, it won’t wear you out so. I have faith ye’ll be able to hang on a little longer.”

  “I’ve got help on the way,” Austin said, pointing at someone further back in the crowd to get their order. “And no, they aren’t soft to the touch. I’ve never… That’s not something…”

  “My hands aren’t either.” Niamh analyzed her palms.

  “Shut up, yes they are. So is your face, I can tell.” I slid my fingers across her palms.

  She yanked her hands away. “Janey Mack, do you wash yer hands with sandpaper or something?”

  I huffed out a laugh. “Clearly I need to invest in some magical skin cream. Damarion’s hands are really super soft.”

  “That’ll feel nice when you finally take off that chastity belt.” She winked at me.

  “I just have no idea how he does it. Mine keep getting rougher and rougher as I work with the weapons. I hope he doesn’t care…”

  “If yer hands are in the right place, he won’t even notice.” Niamh chuckled.

  As I took a sip from my glass, I finally noticed Sasquatch to my right, hunched over his beer and half turned away from the bar, showing me a little of his back.

  “A glutton for punishment, huh?” I asked Niamh, ignoring him.

  “He’s making a statement, the eejit. He’s putting his faith in Austin to protect him—meaning he’s declaring Austin as the stronger alpha. He doesn’t realize that we don’t need to resort to violence to make him regret waking up this morning.”

  “He’s been through plenty tonight. We’ll leave him alone.”

  “Sure, say that now when yer on the sober side of that bottle. Once yer a fan of the el’ gargles, your tune will change.”

  Donna, the cute twenty-something who worked in a wine-tasting room on the main strip and who turned into a rather gross rat, practically danced down the inside of the bar, a big smile on her pretty face. “Hiya, Jessie.” She waved as she hustled by. “Quite a night, huh?”

  From right behind me I heard, “Hey.”

  I jumped, spun, and blasted out a pulse of magic. The room at large groaned, someone shrieked, and the chatter died away. Everyone doubled over, as though a bomb had gone off and they were dropping for cover.

  Everyone except for Austin. He didn’t flinch, but every muscle on his very impressive body was clenched, including his jaw.

  “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. I lifted my voice. “Sorry! Austin startled me. My bad.”

  After a silent beat, movement and chatter picked back up again, and Austin rolled his shoulders. “Ouch.”

  “Why would anyone in their right mind want to attack her?” someone said into the din, everyone straightening up.

  A little glow infused my middle. That was a nice thing to say—it meant I was getting better.

  “I didn’t even feel it.” Niamh took a sip. “It’s good to be on the inside, Austin Steele. You should try it. Then she’ll protect you instead of battering you around. She’s getting stronger. That el’ gargoyle is doing his job.”

  “Sorry,” I repeated, trying to scoot over to make some room and bumping into Sasquatch. He scowled but didn’t budge.

  “It’s fine, I’ll stand.” Austin pushed in a little closer.

  “Hey, listen, sorry about what happened earlier,” I said, wanting to clear the air. “I didn’t realize about you and Damarion. You know, the whole alpha thing. I didn’t know he’d cause a problem.”

  “It’s not your fault. Thanks for giving me a good reason not to destroy my bar.”

  “What reason was that?”

  “No one would begrudge me for granting a beautiful woman her request, now would they?” He smiled at me, and his hard exterior thawed. “I can’t have him coming in here anymore, though. If we have Ivy House or town issues to discuss and you need your whole team there, we’ll have to do it on Ivy House soil.”

  “Sure, yeah. No problem.”

  His gaze flicked to my lips and then he looked away, his jaw clenching. “You still have some lipstick…” He pointed to his upper lip. “In case you want to fix it.”

  “Of course I want to—” I grabbed another bar napkin. “Really, Niamh? You couldn’t let a friend know that she looked like a clown?”

  “Oh sorry, I wasn’t payin’ attention.” She put an empty bottle at the edge of the bar. Donna swept it up as she passed by, then dropped it in the recycling bin, delivered a drink, and grabbed an order—all with quick economy.

  “Hire that woman full time,” Niamh said. “Fire that donkey that works on Wednesdays and hire her.”

  “Listen, Jess…” Austin moved in a little closer still, his side bumping my shoulder, heat shivering through my body. The gravity of his voice set me on edge. “I’m one hundred percent positive those mages yesterday were trying to capture you. They wanted to get rid of your team and make the grab when Ivy House couldn’t protect you. The mage I caught was shocked as hell I was there, meaning they didn’t expect any ground interference, and I’m sure they didn’t expect the gargoyles to show up—”

  “Speaking of gargoyles showing up…” I recognized Ulric’s chipper voice. “We’re directly behind you, alpha. Thought you should know. We’re here to watch the miss.”

  “The miss?” I asked, trying to look around Austin to see Ulric’s face. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

  “That clown Earl put that nonsense into their heads,” Niamh grumbled.

  “I know you’re there and why,” Austin said, “but this town doesn’t use the title of alpha for me. They call me Austin Steele.”

  “All due respect, you’re not the sort of guy that can hide his status, but if that’s what we’re doing…”

  “I’ll be with you in a moment,” Austin said, and my small hairs stood on end at his rough tone.

  “Yes, sir.” I could just see Ulric shifting behind Austin, his hands clasped in front of him.

  I wasn’t used to seeing this side of Austin, the one ready to subdue anyone who created turbulence. His gruffness sparked a strange excitement deep within me, an unexpected thrill, primal and unguarded. It invigorated the hidden part of me that wanted to fight for dominance—and also to let go and feel the rush of being dominated.

  “You okay?” Niamh asked me. “You look a little flushed.”

  I cleared my throat and dabbed at my face. “Just hot. Forgot to control my body temperature with my magic.”

  “They had a good plan yesterday, and a poor execution,” Austin said, reaching between Niamh and me to grab a beer Paul was offering. His scent, clean cotton and something spicy, grabbed me.

  Freaking Damarion had gotten me all hot and bothered, and now I was noticing heat and smells and things I’d rather ignore.

  “Oops, ye seem to have turned the dial the wrong way again.” Niamh’s look was shrewd. “Yer face is practically on fire. Is the thermostat broken? Yer too young for menopause…”

  I rolled my eyes at her as Austin frowned at us.

  “I’ll say they had a poor execution…” I put my drink down, my mind coming back online. “Their magical net broke in midair. If not for Mr. Tom and Damarion, I would’ve died on the rocks. Some plan.”

  “If I may…” Ulric stepped closer to Niamh’s back. “They might’ve assumed she would be flying. Or at least floundering. Gargoyles are born with wings, and because they’re present at all times, at least for us men, we have a certain affinity for them. As soon as we shift into gargoyle form, our wings are mostly ready to go. Flapping them is natural—you don’t have to learn that. Controll
ing them isn’t easy, at first, but it would be reasonable to assume a new gargoyle could at least slow down enough to prevent herself from dying on the rocks.”

  “So it’s harder for me because I’m not a true gargoyle?” I asked.

  “Jess, do you mind?” Austin grabbed the back of my stool and the base before pausing to look at me, his face inches from mine.

  “What?” I leaned away, against the bar.

  “I’m just going to turn you to make more room.”

  “Oh sure, yeah. Have at it.” I meant to get up, but he’d already pulled the stool up off the ground with me on it, his muscles barely flexing with the weight. He set me down so my back was to Sasquatch, my side to the bar.

  “I should’ve just done this in the beginning,” I said. “My peripheral vision is much nicer this way.”

  “Without that dirty bugger by your side, you mean?” Niamh looked around me. “Yes, I did mean you.”

  Austin resumed his place at my side, now allowing Ulric into the circle. “Beer?” he asked the smaller man.

  “Bud, thanks. Now, miss—”

  “You can call me Jessie,” I said.

  “Mr. Tom was pretty clear about what you should be called.” Ulric grinned at me. “The fact that it annoys you is just a bonus.” Niamh huffed out a laugh. “I’m sure someone has told you natural female gargoyles are immensely rare, and have been throughout history. They can be created magically by a powerful mage sacrificing a male gargoyle and…whatever spell they use to transfer his magic to a female mage or Jane, but the transformation of species doesn’t enhance the power. In fact, it shrinks the wings and hinders the ability to fly.”

  “And they did this why?” I asked, but the answer came to me in a flash of intuition. “To try to breed more natural female gargoyles.”

  “Based on the records, that was the reasoning behind creating the female version—they hoped a male and a female gargoyle would have a better chance of producing a natural female specimen than waiting for the genetic lottery. Maybe if the mages engaging in this practice had been female, they would’ve gotten things right and the female gargoyles they created would’ve been able to reproduce. But they didn’t understand the complexity of female anatomy, so they were left with sterilized versions of male gargoyles who couldn’t fly half as well.”

  “Who do gargoyles typically mate with that might create a female version? Humans, mages…?” Austin asked.

  “Who we mate with doesn’t seem to matter with the outcome of our kind. A male child will typically turn out to be a gargoyle, and the female will inherit their genes from their mothers, except every once in a great while.” Ulric waited for Niamh to hand his beer across the counter. He took a sip. “It’s very rare, as I said, but the females are everything those mages were hoping to create. They do have smaller wings, but it’s a tiny grievance considering the power at their disposal. Every single female gargoyle in history has been mighty. They are more powerful than mages, hardier than shifters, more cunning than gremlins, and better leaders than all the famous battle commanders throughout time. Or so it is said.”

  “But I’m not natural.” I palmed my chest. “I was magically created.”

  “Tamara Ivy was a natural female gargoyle,” Ulric said, his voice taking on a storyteller’s cadence and rhythm. “Her power was legendary, drawing the most powerful magical workers in the world to call on her. She wanted for nothing, ever. Eventually a handsome young mage caught her eye, one powerful and great in his own right, but his ambitions got the better of him. Or maybe it was his jealousy.

  “While he was great, Tamara was exceptional and truly rare. She was sought after above him, had more power, more prestige. After a while, it began to chafe. He wanted the prestige. He wanted to be the most powerful in the land.”

  “Swap this for beauty and you have Snow White,” I mumbled. Niamh nodded.

  “He reckoned that if he could harness the power of her magic, combining it with his own, he would be unstoppable. She fell into his snare because she trusted him, but he had underestimated Tamara’s might. As he drained the life from her, intent on stealing her magic, she used the last of her strength to pour her power, everything that made her great, into the foundation of the house she loved. The house she’d built. She gave it a piece of her soul too, and it’s that piece that chooses the heirs of Ivy House—each of them a woman sound of heart and logic, filled with fire and strength of character.” He bowed at me. “A person just like you.”

  “Right, okay, but why did she transfer the magic to the house instead of using it to kill him?” I asked. “It seems like a missed opportunity.”

  Ulric paused in sipping his beer. “I don’t know? Maybe she didn’t realize what her beau was doing until it was too late, and by then he’d siphoned enough energy or power to render her incapable of getting herself out of it? Love sometimes makes us do stupid things. Maybe she couldn’t bring herself to kill him even to save herself.”

  “And so maybe the house was waiting for a jaded spinster who just wanted to get laid once in a while,” Niamh said. “That solves that. No history repeating itself there.”

  “Well, maybe you’re not far off,” Ulric said, and before I could poke him, he continued. “A spinster was a weaver back in the day. A woman, since sewing and whatnot was considered a woman’s job. A spinster could make enough money to set herself up without a man. Everyone gives spinsters a bad name, but they were smart, if you ask me. They were career women who didn’t need to marry to have all the things they wanted, including their own money and free license to spend it as they wished.”

  Niamh turned around to get a look at Ulric. “Well, aren’t you a fountain of knowledge.”

  He shrugged. “I can be.”

  “Even if those mages thought I’d be able to flounder in the air, that net still wouldn’t have held me,” I said. “I fell into it. There was nothing keeping me from flying out of it—assuming my arms worked for wings.”

  “It was a magical net. They clearly misread the situation,” Niamh said.

  Austin and Ulric nodded.

  “I heard you caught another one?” Ulric asked Austin.

  He nodded, finishing his beer. “He’d holed up in Greenville.” Seeing Ulric’s blank stare, he added, “The town to the east. He didn’t have a computer on him and his phone wouldn’t unlock with his face. His magic level was mediocre, but I got the sense he was working for someone high level. Whenever he tried to say his boss’s name, he choked on the words. I’ve seen that kind of thing before. Whoever he is working for is watching Ivy House, and they want an easy grab. Their goal is Jess, not that house.”

  “We missed that mediocre mage,” Ulric said, his expression troubled. “I looked all around. A few of us did. We don’t have a shifter’s sense of smell, but we found everyone else, even after they scattered.”

  “I picked up the trail about fifty yards from the attack site. He’d only managed to eliminate his scent for that distance, which was how I knew what level of magic he was working with. And he also came at me when I barged into his hotel room.”

  “Ah.” Ulric nodded. “Your experience wins.”

  Austin shook his head, turning so he could look past the people and to the far end of the bar. “Without knowing who exactly the boss is, we—”

  “So, there’s this thing I didn’t tell anyone…” I clasped my hands. “Maybe it is nothing, but…”

  I told them about seeing the mysterious man in the black suit, with the dark goatee and slicked-back hair. Most importantly, I told them that he’d just up and vanished.

  “That might’ve been helpful to know,” Niamh said, and sipped her drink.

  “He said he looked forward to meeting you again soon?” Austin asked, an inferno glimmering in his cobalt eyes.

  “Yeah. He was all the way across the street, but I still heard him as though he were whispering into my ear.”

  “Ye had this hanging over you, and ye decided it would be a grand time to sta
rt dating and meet a bunch of strangers, did ye?” Niamh lifted her eyebrows at me. “If you needed to get laid, I could’ve just grabbed someone off the sites that would’ve worked for you and Edgar both. Run them through you, and when you were done with them, toss them at Edgar. There’s a lot of weird people in the world, I’m sure I would’ve been able to find someone easy-like for that sort of setup.”

  “Good Lord,” I groaned. “That’s one of the reasons I thought dating a Dick might be a good idea.”

  “If that’s all you need…” Ulric grabbed fake lapels and waggled his eyebrows. “How about a massage with a happy ending?”

  “Enough.” Austin held up his hand. A crack of power had all of us clicking our teeth shut. Niamh and I grimaced. “What happened yesterday was not headed up by Elliot, I’m sure we can all agree on that. Even on his worst day, he wouldn’t have created such poor spell work. However, the mediocre mage who got away had plenty of time to make a call. If his boss is Elliot, we can now assume that Elliot knows Jess can’t fly. He’ll also know she has backup, so he’ll send better mages next time. There will be a next time, we can be sure of that, and if Elliot takes part directly, we’ll all need to fight him together.” He turned to face me. “I know you are independent and you don’t like to be governed, but I also know you’d rather not be kidnapped. You’ll need protection outside of Ivy House property, and all of those gargoyles should be in the air whenever you are. Do I make myself clear? We have to be prepared. If we aren’t…”

  His voice drifted away and a growl laced his words, drifting up my middle.

  If we weren’t, I’d be taken, and he’d be pissed. That was about the sum of it. I’d rather be the one left behind in anger, but given that I didn’t have a choice, it looked like I was about to lose what was left of my privacy.

  17

  The screams cut through every fiber of his being. They quickened his heart and doused him in fear. He ran with everything he had, sprinting through the light snow, cutting through trees and felling anything in his way.