by K. F. Breene
“He’s a treat, I know,” I whispered to Ulric, then jerked my head back at Mr. Tom.
“No,” Cedric said. For a man of few words, he occasionally knew how to pick them.
The lights of Austin’s bar glowed a welcome, and I felt the coiled tension around my chest ease slightly.
“Why do you want to be part of the twelve?” I asked Ulric as we neared, slowing as we passed the same light post where I’d seen that creeper in the hat a while back. He’d looked at me, but had it been for longer than a normal glance?
How long had people been watching me?
“What do you mean?” Ulric asked, the door to the bar closed for some reason. Part of me missed seeing my favorite friend outside smoking. At least that would have been expected. Of course, Sasquatch was probably in there on my normal seat, braving Niamh’s irritation just so he could annoy me.
“You left your life behind so you could try to be one of the twelve people who protects me. One of my team. Why?”
He stared at me in confusion. “Because you’re the Ivy House heir…” He shook his head as I reached for the door. “I don’t think I understand the question.”
“Female gargoyles really are incredibly scarce, miss,” Mr. Tom said, reaching around me and slapping my hand away. “Remember what I told you? They are called to you. They would do anything to serve you, and mate you.”
“Especially the mating. I would absolutely be in for that. Or even just—”
I held up my hand to Ulric. “I got it, thanks. Never mind.”
“I would mate you, too, if we’re putting our hats into the circle,” Cedric said. “Or just pleasure you if—”
“Nope. No more. It’s fine. Let it go.” I stepped to the side so Mr. Tom could open the door.
“She’s something of a prude,” Mr. Tom said as he pulled the door wide and stepped aside with a flourish.
“Nah, she’s just a Jane. They have different rules,” Ulric said, and I wanted to throttle them both.
Instead, I stared dumbly at Niamh’s seat for a moment, finding it empty. The person behind the bar was neither Paul nor Austin, but some woman I’d never seen before. Only three people filled the stools, and Sasquatch wasn’t one of them. Neither was Niamh.
“Quiet, huh?” Ulric asked, staying by my side even though I’d slowed.
A groan sounded from the left, through the entryway to the pool area. From my vantage point, I could see part of a man who lay on the floor, his body as stiff as a board. His bulging eyes and straining neck made it look as if he were bound and trying to break free, but I didn’t see any rope. Behind him, a glimpse of a woman’s legs—her bare ankles pressed together and one shoe off.
My mind caught up to the situation at the exact moment Ulric grabbed me around the waist and threw me toward the door.
The door slammed shut before I got there. I rammed into it and bounced off, onto the floor. Ulric tore off his clothes. Mr. Tom didn’t wait and ran forward, straight for the closest woman jumping up from her stool.
Cedric tried to step in front of me as a shield, but was torn to the side by invisible hands and flung.
A woman at the other end of the bar had bounced up, too, her arms out, her fingers aiming at me, and her face pinched with determination. A jet of color was the last thing I saw.
22
“So, hidin’ out here, lickin’ yer wounds, are ye?” Niamh picked up the sack she’d carried around the neck of her puca form, taking out some black sweats she’d had to buy herself because Earl couldn’t be persuaded to veer from white. Her phone chimed, Jessie wondering if she was at the bar. She wanted to share a funny story.
That would be Niamh’s next stop, right after she tried to talk some sense into this big dope.
Austin sat in a lone chair on the beach, looking out over the lake, his small, lonely cabin behind him. A fresh kill, a skinned deer, hung from a nearby tree. Even if it was bear season, no bear in its right mind would come calling at this camp. They’d know a bigger, badder predator awaited them.
He didn’t look so big and bad now, though, hunched in that chair, staring out at nothing.
She slipped into the sweats and took a seat behind him, marveling at the ease with which she could lower and get back up again. That blast of youth from Ivy House had been a blessing. One day she’d try to do a cartwheel again.
She let the silence sit between them for a while. A guy like Austin Steele didn’t let you bully him. He responded best to logic and reason, especially when he was drowning in feelings that had nothing to do with either.
“You all healed up?” she finally asked.
“Yeah. Jess took care of most of it. I don’t even know what that mage hit me with, but it was a good shot. I didn’t expect it until it was too late.”
“Yeah. That lad, whoever he was, had our setup mapped out. Couldn’t get a face off him—or I should say, the dolls cut the face off him, so we’re still not sure who he was.”
“The dolls…” He turned to look at her, disbelief and a little horror crossing his face. He shook his head and faced the lake again. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“Probably not. I took a picture, just in case we ever find out who his…the contract holder is.”
Another beat of silence passed.
She had to throw it out there. “Have ye ever been saved by a Jane before?”
“You know the answer to that. I have been saved by a woman, though. A little woman, protecting her daddy. My fierce little niece. Jess reminds me of her.” He paused, then added, “I see now why no one batted an eye when that gargoyle knocked Jess around. She’s fearless. She’s unstoppable. A mage took two of her friends down, right in front of her, and then tried to kidnap her, but she still had the presence of mind to get information from him. That’s…”
“She was chosen well, we know this.”
“Yes, she was.”
“You’re not licking yer wounds after havin’ been saved by a woman, fine. So why are you mopin’ about? I sure hope it isn’t to do with that fella the house took down. You don’t run a military state here, Austin Steele. This is a tourist town, for heaven’s sake. You can’t ID everyone that comes through, and that lad knew about you. He purposely avoided you.”
He sighed and slouched a little more. “I’m straddling a line, and it’s making me do a piss-poor job of helping Jess. If I were in charge of her defense of Ivy House, that mage wouldn’t have slipped through the cracks. That attack at the cliff would’ve ended before it had begun. Her people would be in line, and this whole town would be behind her. Everyone would be looking out, questioning, reporting back. I’m not in charge, though, which means I’m in the way. If I hadn’t been there, that gargoyle would’ve been near her, and maybe he would’ve seen something I didn’t. He’s in this completely. He deserves to be by her side.”
“Ah.” Niamh nodded and leaned forward to brace her elbows on her knees. “So there’s the reason for your pity party. Now I see.”
He shook his head. “This is me finally realizing it’s time to move on. That gargoyle was given the power to draw out her abilities, and that’s the thing that will protect her the best. It’s time for me to find a new territory and officially establish myself as alpha.”
“I’ve thought about this a lot, now. Ever since you started shoutin’ around the place yesterday. When you rebelled against Ivy House, Jessie took it to mean you didn’t want any part of the magic, including helping her work that magic. She doesn’t like asking for help, that one. Probably hasn’t had anyone to ask for help in the last handful of years, so she got out of the habit. She’s been a mother so long, looking after her family, that she stopped looking after herself. So when Earl fawns all over her, she relaxes, ye can see it. She appreciates it, which is great, because he’s a useless ol’ sod if he doesn’t have someone to fawn over.
“Now, she’s a fighter, and she’s determined, and she’s fierce, but she is in over her head, so she is. Ye know that. She’s
a Jane that is suddenly magical. She needs help in ways she doesn’t even know to ask about. She didn’t want to bother you, so what did she do? She called for help. Ivy House gave the magic to the best man willing, choosing that wanker because it couldn’t choose you. Ye didn’t give it a choice, Austin Steele.”
“Ivy House has been trying to manipulate me from day one. I don’t play that game.”
“Yes it has, ye gobshite. It isn’t competing with you, though. That house isn’t trying to beat you in some elaborate game of dominance, Austin Steele. It isn’t tryin’ to rule ye. It is trying to protect her, and it knows that there’s no one else on this planet that can do it better than you. That is why it is constantly at ye, messin’ with ye, pokin’ ye. Jessie won’t ask for help, no matter what she says to the contrary, but it has been askin’, on her behalf. You’ve just been too dumb and blind to see it.”
His head drooped a little more. “Doesn’t change the situation.”
“No. Only you can change the situation.” She sat back, bored out of her skull looking at the calm lake and the unmoving mountains and trees around it. She was tired of beauty. It was time for a few battles.
“I don’t know that I can do that,” he said. “I’ve chosen this life for a reason.”
“Jaysus, lad, I’m not askin’ you to mate her. I’m not after a litter. Lord knows she wouldn’t be into that, anyway. I’m just askin’ ye to finally take on the challenge you were born fer. Things are just heating up. It will get worse. Much worse. Her type of power compels people to want it, by challenging, romancing, or stealing. We need someone that can bring us all together and create a cohesive army. That donkey of a gargoyle can’t even unite the house. Jessie could, o’course—they all respond to her—but she has no experience. She needs a battle leader. That is you, Austin Steele. That can only be you. You have the organization, experience, and brutality to make that work, not to mention a soft spot for Jessie. Yer the man for this job. Ivy House is showing us what it looks like for the wrong man to be in that position.
“I think ye were right about the training. We’ve gone about it all wrong. Sure, she can take it, and yes, she is getting better, but…what you said made more sense. I don’t think she trusts that wanker. She is certainly slow to bed him. Tonight must be another bust for him if she’s wanting to meet me.”
Niamh didn’t miss the vein popping out on Austin Steele’s clenched jaw, or the way he balled his fists when she mentioned the possibility of the gargoyle bedding Jessie. Jessie had somehow grasped the heart of this untouchable alpha. Oh, how the webs were tangling.
“I know she doesn’t trust him like she trusts you,” she went on, brushing it aside. He could ignore his growing admiration until the end of time, if he fancied being a stubborn fool, but Niamh couldn’t let him ignore how much he was desperately needed both in this town and in that house. He was trying to run, but she needed him to stay. They all did, Jessie most of all. “I wonder how much better she would get if she was working within a trusting, safe environment. I think she needs more support than we are giving her, and until she has it, those wings and the next phase of her magic will be held back. This is a hunch, now, I can’t say fer sure, and that clueless vampire can’t get through that book, but…”
“I’m not the kind of guy you let off the leash, Niamh.”
A growl rode his words, his past rising up to haunt him. Her senses all clicked on, feeling the predator in her midst. She ignored them.
“You can lose yourself to your animal around her, entirely lose yourself. She will stop you from going too far out of preservation for you. She is the only one in this world you would allow to magically cage you, like she did yesterday, without seeking retaliation as soon as you broke out. Do ye know why that is?”
“Because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“No. Because you trust her. Because ye know that she is not trying to control you, she is trying to help you.”
He didn’t comment, which meant he did know that. She was on the right track, quite amazing, since she usually had no idea what made people tick—nor did she care to know. This situation was dire, though. The episode in the kitchen had been weighing on her mind. Jessie had chosen a side yesterday, and she didn’t seem to feel any regret about not picking her current team leader. That spoke volumes.
It also spoke volumes that Austin Steele, on the brink of passing out, had sat beside Jessie until everyone else had returned from taking care of the intruder. He was in this, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
“Even if I did agree to join Jess’s council, the house gave the gargoyle the ability to grow her magic. He will not follow me until I make him, and he will not be at his best if I subdue him. He and I won’t work. It’s too late.”
“This is the problem with talking to men. The lot of you are so dense, I wonder how you get through without someone holdin’ yer hand.” She ran her hand down her face. “Ye already have a place in that house. He doesn’t. Ye already have the magic. He doesn’t. If you give in and sit in a council chair, there is no doubt in my mind that Ivy House will give you what you seek—what you should have been given in the first place.”
“Which is?”
“Have you not been present for this conversation? The ability to help her magic grow. Janey Mack, but I’m losing my patience.”
He shook his head slowly, the stubborn ox, and went back to looking at the water. Niamh checked her phone again. No new messages, but a strange feeling was bleeding through the magical link. Wariness and anticipation. Jessie was on the move, and Earl was with her. No telling who else. She was probably heading to the bar even though Niamh hadn’t responded. Time to go. She didn’t want Jessie to leave before she got there.
She stood, about to tell Austin Steele to think on things, when she noticed his head tilted to the side and a crease between his eyebrows, as though he were listening for a soft sound.
The truth dawned on her. She smiled.
“Ye know…Jessie thinks that if she cuts out her ability to feel her team through the magic,” Niamh said, “the link is severed. When she plugs her ears to us, so to speak, she doesn’t realize we can still feel her unless we also block the link.”
Austin Steele glanced up at Niamh, guilt in his eyes, before looking out over the lake again.
That was all the proof she needed.
“I’ve never corrected Jessie’s thinking on this,” she continued, “because I didn’t want her learning to block the magical connection entirely. Eventually she’ll figure it out, but now, when things are so precarious, we need to be able to keep tabs on her in case she gets in trouble. Don’t you agree?”
He didn’t comment, or look over again.
“She hasn’t been keeping tabs on any of us, out of respect for our privacy. Your privacy, over everyone else.” Niamh stepped a little closer, facing the lake to keep things light. “How strange, then, that you would be monitoring her.”
“I’m not monitoring anything. It’s just since the trouble started. I’m…”
“Worried about her. What’s going to happen when you move away? You won’t be able to block her because of that worry, but what if something happens? How do you think you’ll react if you feel that connection severed and know she died because you walked away?”
Muscles popped out along his frame, the air alive with power. Niamh’s warning sensors turned up a notch. Her feeling of Jessie clicked off.
She frowned and looked back toward the direction Jessie had been, searching for that feeling. Was it because she’d been talking about it that—
Austin Steele pushed to standing, suddenly on alert.
“Do you feel that?” he asked, his deep voice rough with menace and terror. “Did you do something?”
“I feel a lack of something, yes. But it wasn’t me. My giving ye a what if was not supposed to turn into a premonition.” Her phone chimed.
A text from Earl. Are you alive? You and Austin Steele aren’t on bar premise
s. If you’re alive, they took her. Four mages. Five tried, but I killed one and used her as a shield. The rest took Jessie and got out before Ulric could turn from stone to gargoyle and before Cedric could get his thumb out of his keister. They were incredibly effluence.
“Effluence?” she said out loud. “Autocorrect for efficient, maybe?”
A phone chimed in the cabin, Austin Steele already running for it.
Niamh pushed her sweats down and then tapped Earl’s name to call him.
“It’s Earl,” Austin Steele called out, jogging out of the cabin and tossing his phone at Niamh. “They’ve got Jess. Mages—”
“I know, I know.”
“Hello?” Earl answered, out of breath.
“What’s the status? Where are you?”
“Running back to the house. I didn’t want to change until I could get ahold of you. Ulric is following them from the sky. He’ll report back when he can. If we’re lucky, they’ll stop for food or rest. I’ve called Damarion, but he didn’t answer. Jasper did, and he is going to knock on Damarion’s door. Fine time not to be in that bar, woman. Where is Austin Steele? Those mages had magically tied everyone up. They only killed one of the customers, and the witnesses said it was an accident. Sadly, it wasn’t that hairy creature that always gives Jessie a hard time.”
“Austin Steele is here.” She put the phone on speaker and bent to remove her sweats and stuff them in the bag. “He was at his cabin. I flew out to talk to him.”
“Well, get to Ivy House. I’ll get Damarion to call in all the gargoyles. We’ll be ready by the time you get here. Hopefully, then we’ll have word from Ulric. Blast it—I wish we had a way to magically track him. Jessie has got to pick some—”
Niamh clicked the red “end” button and tossed the phone into the bag. He was just babbling at this point anyway.
“Why didn’t they kill anyone at the bar?” Austin Steele asked, shedding his clothes with quick movements and handing them to Niamh.
“Probably as insurance in case you descended on them before they had Jessie. Mages must be watching this town awfully close for them to marshal in the one night ye didn’t show. We have’ta change that, somehow. We need a better system.”
