by K. F. Breene
“Is that what it would’ve done?” I asked, aghast.
“He’s had worse,” Niamh murmured as Ulric jogged back toward us, sweats in hand.
“I thought you all were showboating. I didn’t think she’d actually do it. But clearly this is how she’s been training, huh?” Sebastian shook his head, looking down at his feet. “This would never happen in my world. Mages and shifters working side by side. The intricacy of spells and potions mixed with brute strength and iron-clad courage. What an army that would be.”
“That’s not true, about shifters and mages never working together,” I mumbled, half my brain still thinking about where that spell might’ve gone wrong. “This house was attacked by a mage and some shifters.”
“Those shifters were brought to die,” Ulric said. “They weren’t working together. That mage was offering them for slaughter.”
“Yes, that sounds more likely,” Sebastian said, still studying his shoes. “That spell had the right qualities, but you used way, way too much power.” He put his head in his hands. “You have a deep well of power within you—very, very deep—but it’s mostly below the surface, like an iceberg. It wasn’t until you opened up with spell work that I glimpsed your raw strength. You aren’t using all of it yet, but I know you will be more powerful than me when you eventually do. I could feel the currents of it when it hit my spell.”
“Can you still teach me what you know?” I asked softly.
“Yes.” He scrubbed at his hair and sat up, looking away, his eyes distant. “Why hide your magical ability? A mage’s power level scares off potential attackers half the time. Only the worthy need apply.”
“For now, her biggest strength is in being undervalued,” Edgar said, sitting back on his haunches. “It’s best if people think she isn’t anyone of consequence. But that aspect of her magic is at her discretion. When she’s ready to show what she’s made of, she can.”
“How come you never told me that?” I asked.
Edgar shrugged. “It never came up.”
“That makes sense.” Sebastian’s eyes rested on me, and for the first time I could remember, they weren’t flat and affectless. They looked almost blue in the slice of sun that cut down his face, and they shone with intelligence and cunning. “You can release the alpha. You can release everyone but the vampire and his book, actually. I won’t need their help.”
I offered him a relieved smile, thankful he was sticking around. “Austin draws out my magic, so he has to stay.” I glanced at Ulric and Jasper. “I’ll call you when it’s time to fly.”
Before I could turn to Niamh, she said, “Nah. Don’t bother. I’m not going anywhere. I want to see how ye get on. Besides, if that mage turns into a nutter and tries to bring you down, I want to be on hand to watch Ivy House deal with him.”
“There is no way I am stepping out of line with the alpha on hand, I assure you,” Sebastian said, flicking a glance Austin’s way. “Seeing his polar bear form rattled me, and I don’t mind admitting it.” Sebastian rose, slouching as he walked toward me. “He doesn’t need to stand there. You shouldn’t practice on him anymore. He distracts you, and the worry of hurting him makes you hold back. I could see it in your body motions and positioning. Believe it or not, the positioning of your body matters when making a spell.”
Austin nodded and moved toward Ulric, putting out his hand for the sweats.
“You will cast toward my magical backdrop.” Sebastian stopped beside me. “First you’ll do a spell from the book that you know and have no trouble with—I certainly wish I’d had a book like that—and then you’ll create something similar from scratch. See how you measure up.”
“Measure up…meaning what?” Mr. Tom asked. “To what?”
“Training by committee. Interesting approach.” If Sebastian was put out, he didn’t show it. “You saw what happened when a spell with too much power hit my wall. Fire. The color of the smoke informed us of the nature of the spell—violence lives in purples and blues. More benign spells come in yellows and oranges, and so on. But talking only achieves so much in the realm of spell-making. It’ll be easier for me to teach you if I see you cast.” He put his hands behind his back and clasped his fingers. “So let’s see what we’ve got, okay?”
We had a lot of violence, that was what we had. I’d learned attack spells through the book and on the go. I also knew a lot of defensive spells, which were apparently in the red family. I didn’t have a lot of knowledge to go with either variety. Most of the things I tried I got wrong, but occasionally I got something right.
I was panting and sweaty toward the end, something that had never happened to me before while practicing magic.
When Sebastian finally declared we were finished for the day, he was fresh-faced and with sparkling eyes. He wasn’t tired in the least, but he’d clearly had a good time. That was a relief.
“Now you fly?” he asked, reseating himself on the log.
“Yes. I have to learn better aerial maneuvering.” I hesitated in shedding my clothes. It was hard enough to disrobe around shifters, who were used to seeing others naked, but Sebastian’s fixation on his shoes earlier had shown how uncomfortable he was with Austin hanging around naked. I wasn’t in the mood for a peep show.
As if realizing it, Sebastian rose, stepped over the log, and sat with his back to me. “That has to be so weird, going from not even knowing magic exists to all of this.”
“Very weird, yes.” I hesitated for a moment, just to make sure he didn’t turn around.
Austin repositioned himself between us, cutting off Sebastian’s sight even if he did peek.
“I don’t much like an alpha at my back,” Sebastian murmured. “I can feel him there somewhere. The small hairs on my neck are standing up like I’m about to get attacked.”
“If you plan on staying peaceful, it’s not me you need to worry about. You’d do best to keep an eye on Niamh,” Austin said. He’d pulled on the sweatpants but hadn’t bothered with the shirt, his big, broad back corded with muscle.
“Don’t ruin the surprise,” Niamh said, removing her clothes.
Clothes off, I shifted to my gargoyle form. My face didn’t protrude quite so much as the male gargoyles’ did, my wings were smaller, and I put out a sort of swirling light show when I moved. Jasper and Ulric changed with me, the sound like boulders moving against hard-packed dirt.
“Can I turn back now?” Sebastian asked, and I took to the sky. When he saw me, I could just barely see his mouth go slack and his eyes widen. “That is every bit worth the price of admission,” he said, and then I was up through the trees, out of hearing range, soaring with my kind, wind against my wings, savoring a sort of freedom I couldn’t express in words.
If Austin called in his brother, my ground game would be covered, but I still needed more fliers. Up here, soaring through the air, I realized how important that was.
My blast of magic nearly knocked Jasper and Ulric from the sky.
Hurry up.
An answering blast nearly froze my blood. I was calling in the best, and they had answered. They were on their way.
I sure hoped Austin could handle them.
Twelve
Mr. Tom leaned over the young master, sleeping more soundly than Mr. Tom could recollect anyone sleeping, ever. If an attacker waltzed into this room, it would be open season. Luckily, Master Jimmy had the house and his mother to look after him. He’d be safe as long as those held up.
“Young master,” Mr. Tom said softly, something that usually roused the miss when she didn’t sense him lurking over her. Not so much as a twitch.
“Young master,” he repeated, a little louder this time. At least this boy approved of being called the proper title. Much less fussy than his mother or grandparents. He could get used to the boy staying in the house. It made Mr. Tom feel all kinds of useful.
Except when he wouldn’t wake up.
“Master Jimmy!” Mr. Tom kicked the bed.
“Hmm?” The young ma
ster slowly opened his eyes. “Hah!” He jutted out his hand in some sort of karate chop move he must’ve learned from his mother.
“We need to start training you in combat ASAP,” Mr. Tom said with a sniff. “No one connected to this house should go around cartoon-style karate-chopping at people. It’s embarrassing for all of us. Now.” Mr. Tom straightened up as the young master rubbed his eyes. “There is coffee on the night table for you and breakfast waiting downstairs. Best get moving. You’re off to see the basajaun today. Austin Steele will be going with you just in case the insufferable flea magnet decides it doesn’t like strangers and attacks. You never really know with them. This particular one has been downright tame compared to some others I’ve heard about, but I would still refrain from turning your back on it.”
The creature still hadn’t, after all this time, so much as told them its name. It was very odd. Good to have on one’s side, though.
“Ohhhh-kay.”
Mr. Tom nodded, picked up the dirty clothes strewn around the floor, and headed downstairs. In the kitchen he found the miss, eyes puffy and head drooping, clearly tired from the night before. She’d gone to bed earlier than usual, but the automatic link dampener had stayed in place until very late. When she’d clicked back onto his radar, it had woken him up.
Her refusal to just use one of the gargoyles for sexual stress relief was such a mystery. Clearly she needed it, if she spent all that time at it alone. Janes were very odd about those things.
“Do you need another cup of coffee, miss?” he asked after seeing to the laundry.
“Yes, please.”
The RSVP from the mage lay off to the side. He had accepted their offer to host him, rather than the other way around, and would be coming in a month. Plenty of time to get things ready, assuming that insufferable Paddy next door was researching the mage’s character.
“I woke the young master. He’ll be down shortly.” He filled her mug. “You know, he is taking to this magical idea very quickly. One wonders if he might belong in the house permanently…”
She took a deep breath. “That would be nice, but he’s in college. He needs to be out on his own. Maybe he’ll come back for summer, though.”
Misery lined her face. She only had a couple more days with her son, and the prospect of saying goodbye clearly caused her pain.
She needed a distraction.
“Here.” Mr. Tom dropped the furniture catalog in front of her before taking two eggs out of the fridge. Some things could be cooked beforehand and kept warm, but eggs really needed to be fresh. He set them on the island and monitored Master Jimmy moving around his bedroom.
“What’s this?”
“I was thinking. Of course you don’t feel comfortable looking over the ledger in that office. The furniture in there is very old and out of date. In fact, most of the furniture in this house needs updating. Maybe if you freshened everything up—made it yours instead of just a magical house you moved into—it would make the desire to properly run it less tedious.”
The corners of her mouth turned downward and her eyebrows pinched together. She pressed her palm against the shiny cover featuring a lovely bedroom setup before sliding it out of the way.
“Good thinking. As soon as Jimmy leaves, I’ll…” She paused, her expression that of someone who’d eaten something unsavory. “I’ll go through this and pick some things out.”
“There are many stores to choose from. Just say the word and I’ll sign up for catalogs for others.”
“I can just use the computer,” she said, looking down at her coffee.
“Also, it seems next week Austin Steele will need you to sign some paperwork regarding the winery.”
Her cheeks colored, something that was happening a lot lately in discussions of or with the steadfast alpha. “Sounds good.”
Mr. Tom studied her face while focusing on the link. Her emotions seemed muted, but he could plainly see something was bothering her.
He wondered if that awful woman next door had given the miss a hint on how to control the link. The miss ultimately had the power to do whatever she wanted—turn the “volume” down, mute it, block it entirely, or turn it up full blast until an errant thought about poking someone in the eye would translate into a jolt of pain. There would be no eye damage, of course, unlike with a real finger, but it would still smart.
Master Jimmy walked in a moment later, the shadows lingering on the miss’s face scattering until pure joy took over. Mr. Tom’s heart warmed to see it. A mother with her child was such a beautiful thing to witness.
“Here we go.” He grabbed up the eggs. “How would we like our eggs cooked today, young master?”
A couple of hours later, Austin Steele stalked onto the property, his movements purposeful and his steps eating the distance to the door. Mr. Tom couldn’t see him physically, but he knew how the alpha walked into a scene.
“Master Jimmy, come out of there now,” Mr. Tom called to the boy, who’d been wandering the secret hallways for over an hour now. Ivy House had opened the doors to him, and he’d charged in with the delight of a little boy. “It’s time to go. Finally.”
Master Jimmy hurried out, a lopsided grin on his face. “That is wicked! This house is incredibly cool. How does it know where I am? It literally just led me to you with the lights.”
“It’s magical. Come now. Is that what you’re going to wear?”
The boy looked down at his jeans and T-shirt. “Yes. Should I put something else on?”
Mr. Tom held out the boy’s jacket. ”You’ll want this.”
“It’s a really nice day, though.”
“On the ground, yes. Up in the air where you’ll be, no. Come along.” Mr. Tom led the boy out of his room and down the hall.
“What’s with my mom and that alpha guy? She said they’re just friends, but they definitely don’t have a just-friends vibe.”
“Austin Steele is a solitary sort of man. He might have feelings for her, but he will not allow himself to act on them. He is very hardhearted in that way. Trust me, he’s been pursued by every woman in this town, young and old, resident and tourist. He very rarely goes on more than a couple of dates with any one person.”
“Has he taken my mom on a date?”
“Not romantically, no. They have a strictly platonic friendship.” Mr. Tom led the way down to the ground level as the front door swung open, not mentioning that the miss would need to play the field for a while. From what he’d always heard, female gargoyles typically treated men like hats for a long period of time. They picked them out, tried them on, put them back, changed them with outfits, borrowed them—what have you. Eventually she would find that perfect hat, and that was when the mating dance would begin.
Female gargoyles usually chose male gargoyles, from what Mr. Tom had understood. She chose the strongest alpha her kind could muster, someone to protect her better than she could protect herself, which was a tall order because of her power and magic. A shifter was just another hat, no matter how powerful Austin Steele was.
Then again, the Ivy House heirs in the past had chosen mages. Powerful mages who could certainly protect them, but who weren’t trustworthy. Those mages had eventually led to the heir’s demise, so clearly the heirs would’ve been better off sticking with their own species. The proof was in the pudding.
Austin Steele stood in his sweats, his power surging around him, raw and potent, filling up the front entryway and then some.
Usually he was better about keeping it contained, but now it pressed on Mr. Tom, a dominating force. Something had gotten his dander up. Probably the challenge in town that had made him late.
The breath went out of Master Jimmy, and he slowed, his eyes wide as he beheld Austin Steele.
“Yes, okay, you’ve made your point,” Mr. Tom said as the miss left her room upstairs. “You’re not in your territory anymore, though, Mr. Steele. It is time to rein it in.”
That ruthless blue gaze shocked into Mr. Tom, like a predator ze
roing in on his pray. Mr. Tom’s small hairs stood on end, and he had a sudden impulse to change shape and protect his territory. But the alpha’s focus shifted upward to where the miss was just reaching the landing.
She stopped dead, her hand on the railing, her gaze rooted to Austin Steele’s. The air heated up around them, catching Mr. Tom and Master Jimmy in the crossfire, magic swirling, pressure building. Within their gazes, within their connection, something urgent and needy pulsed and boiled. Her cheeks flamed. His body tensed. Arousal bled through the muted link.
Oh, good, maybe the miss would finally try on a hat and reduce some of that sexual tension while she looked for her mate. It would help her calm down a little, which would help everyone.
Thirteen
I opened my eyes to the familiar face of Mr. Tom, someone I didn’t really feel like seeing at the moment. My heart hurt. Today was Sunday, the last day before Jimmy had to leave for who knew how long. At least we’d spent some really great quality time together, more so than any other time since he’d approached teen-hood. We’d taken hikes and hung out around the town; we’d had picnics and wandered through the woods. He was not only getting used to the idea of magic, it clearly made me more interesting to a nineteen-year-old boy. Win-win.
The only part of my plan that hadn’t worked out was the trip to see the basajaun. It hadn’t mattered much—rather than hitch a ride to the mountain with one of the gargoyles, Jimmy had ridden Niamh’s nightmare alicorn like a pony. We’d wandered the mountain, touching trees and brushing leaves, hoping the basajaun would come out or that Austin might scent him. No such luck. At dusk we’d had no choice but to turn back. Jimmy and Niamh had apparently bonded, though, because that night he’d chosen to forgo video games in favor of sitting with her on her porch, throwing rocks at the mages who were flung away from Ivy House. (Yes, mages still trickled in, none of them with enough magic.)