by K. F. Breene
“Many of my colleagues studied the ancient texts about this house and the chosen, and they were naïve enough to take them literally. It didn’t occur to them that history evolves over time, and lore and myth often get confused for fact. A magical house with battle defenses does make for a good story. Not quite a believable story, but a good one. Now…” He opened the front door, peered out, sent a pulse of magic, and then walked out the rest of the way, pulling me behind him in my floating prison. “What I found helpful was the information about the chosen. She is the heir to a wealth of magic, yes, we know, but she doesn’t have access to it all at once. She has to learn it, little by little, until she’s experienced enough to handle the large dumps of magic she is given. You are awarded the magic you can handle. The other night was enough to convince me you can’t handle much, hmm? And thus, here you are.”
“You have got to be, and I don’t mean this kindly, the biggest know-it-all I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a few. You are never invited to parties, are you? All the droning on and on. Is that why you weren’t working with that other group? Do you have to skulk around alone because no one wants to listen to you?”
He sniffed, walking fast now, heading for the trees. I could feel a ripple of magic flowing behind us, magically covering our tracks. Austin had said that a mediocre mage could do that for fifty yards or so. The woods here were much bigger than that, except Austin wasn’t awake to find us. It would be a long walk back if the gargoyles couldn’t figure it out, and given the mess they’d made of things the last time, they might not.
Thinking of Austin made me throb with worry. I closed my eyes, breathing deeply for a moment, seeking out Ivy House.
“Can I heal him? “I asked. “I know I am supposed to find my own way, but in this… Can I heal him? Please help me.”
“You already are. You do not have to touch to heal. It began when you tried to reach out to him. You can use your magical connection to give him energy. Love strengthens the bond and quickens the pace.”
I ripped away the privacy blocks from my connections to Austin and Edgar, annoyed that I hadn’t thought about that myself. Edgar’s strength came through immediately, the blast he’d gotten clearly not as severe. I focused on Austin, thinking about my desperation to help him, to heal him—trying to touch him this way as I’d tried to physically touch him through my magical prison.
“Ah, here we go.” The man walked us into the woods, the trees reaching over us, concealing us from anyone flying overhead. “Gargoyles battle, they don’t search for prey. The big alpha hasn’t been coming to the house much—I didn’t think he’d be here. Lucky stroke for me how it ended up, huh?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Well, if you must know, to the holding cell where the contract holder will collect you. He put a high price on your head.”
Whoever was behind this had sent out multiple teams of people, not just one group, and he’d clearly set it up like some sort of bounty-hunter situation. That wasn’t ideal.
“Where’s this holding cell? You people have magical prisons?”
“Ah. If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.” He chuckled to himself even though his joke didn’t quite fit the situation.
“Mhm.” I nodded, seeing that I obviously had to switch gears or he’d likely clam up with more off jokes. “Aaaand you never commented about your lack of teammates. You were picked on in magical school, weren’t you? Always the odd man out. I hear this tale a lot. Do you hold a grudge? Is going out on your own, sticking your nose up at the other team, your way of saying nah-nah-nah-nah?”
He looked back at me, annoyed. “A Jane becoming magical. What a strange turn of events. I doubt they’ll mention that in the history books.”
“I doubt they’ll mention you, either.”
He puffed up. “If I bring you in, I will earn a coveted place on one of the most elite magical teams in the nation. I will earn a highly desired spot at a master’s table. The money I earn from bringing you in will allow me to hire a bard, if I want, or marry from within the magical elite.”
I didn’t know what the most elite magical team was, but someone surely would. This guy was just shedding hints, likely because he didn’t think I’d be able to escape.
“Whoever you buy for a wife won’t want to sleep with you. That’s got to be dick shriveling, huh? Remember what I said about being a dickhead…”
His shoulders tightened. Anger crackled in his gaze when he turned around. I was walking a fine line—if I pushed him much further, he’d do something to knock me out. I hadn’t made it this long in life without seeing the signs of a man on the verge of violence.
I tried to pump energy through the connection with Austin, hoping it was happening, and hoping whatever I’d done subconsciously was having an effect. But I didn’t want the mage to get me much closer to the border of the property. Time to act.
Magic built within me, feeding on my anger at being trapped. I pulled a magical blanket of darkness over us, shadow crawling across the crisp blue sky. The ground rumbled, rocks shivering around us, and leaves waved without a breeze.
The man looked at the sky first, and then his head dipped as he watched a rock slowly roll across his path.
There was so much I could do, but I didn’t get the chance. Ivy House, impatient, took over.
Fog rolled in as though driven by cowboys on horses, tumbling through the trees, so thick it was swampy. It pushed in around us, making the man startle. Menacing laughter echoed around us, up high in the tree branches, down low in the bushes. A foot-high body ran out in front of the man, a lovely little doll face looking up with a smile, a knife in its animated hand.
“Oh God, oh no.” I balled up. “What the hell, Ivy House? You’re doing this on purpose to mess with me!”
“What is that?” The man peered down at it like a moron.
“You got your myths wrong, Mr. Know-It-All. Ivy House is very much a threat, and you will not make it off this property alive. You brought this on yourself!”
A little plastic body dropped from the sky. It fell on him, its hands out, holding two needles.
“Oh, gross.” I pushed back against the web, this assault not intended for me but terrifying nonetheless.
“Gah!” He reached up to grab the doll as it swung its chubby little arms down. The needles dug into his face, and I rolled over, my stomach swimming.
“There are other ways to crack a nut, Ivy House,” I said, seeing a little creature running up behind me, one of the Halloween dolls that had given me nightmares. It passed under my thankfully suspended cage. “There are other ways to crack a nut. Use the other ways!”
The man screamed, flinging the doll off his head. The magic around me faltered.
“No, no, keep me in here until they’re gone,” I said, not trusting Ivy House to give me control of those dolls. I didn’t want to wander around in the mist with an unseen army of dolls. Talk about my worst nightmare. “How’d they even get here so fast?”
A barking cough sounded out of the dense white to our right. Another to our left. Needles sprayed, silver glimmering in the dim light. They dug into the mage’s clothes and embedded in his skin.
He sprayed out jets of magic, one zipping past me, and another coming head-on.
I screamed and magically pushed outward at my cage, bowing then breaking it, falling to the ground. But I didn’t escape quickly enough to dodge the spell. I threw up my hands—the spell-blocking equivalent of flapping my arms to fly.
A skeleton jumped in the way just in time, the magic hitting it and exploding the bones outward. I stared for a solid moment, unable to understand what had just happened.
Dirt moved in the trees to my right, hard to see through the rolling, tumbling mist, but I thought I saw something jutting up out of the ground. Then I was sure of it when a torso interrupted my field of vision.
“Oh my God,” I breathed out as a lumbering stack of bones approached from the left, teetering toward the mage. Th
e other skeleton rose from its unmarked grave, stepped up onto the dirt, and headed toward the man.
“Of all the options at your disposal…” I said as the first skeleton bent over the flailing man and dug bony fingers into his eyes. His screaming wilted me in place. “All the options, like spears and darts and gas… All that, and you chose to unleash the biggest nightmares you have? This is a joke on me, isn’t it? You think my fears are stupid. Well, your humor is terrible, Ivy House.”
The jubilant feeling soaking into me was the house’s mirth, rubbing it in.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when I set you on fire,” I grumbled, hopping to my feet.
Through our now-open connection, I felt Austin rouse and then his sudden gush of terror. Incredible pain bled through as he struggled to stand. He knew I’d been taken, and he intended to come to me even though he was hurt.
“Keep him there, Ivy House—we don’t need him making himself worse,” I said.
I felt the door swing shut, something I probably could’ve done myself if I wasn’t so completely distracted by the little doll bodies competing with animated skeletons to swarm the enemy. Boy had he been wrong in his assessment of this house.
Frustration ran through Austin. A moment later, I felt something weird and wondered if the magical connection had gone haywire. But then I felt his huge body slam into the front door, bursting it to bits. He’d shifted into his polar bear form. So much for Ivy House keeping Austin put.
A doll ran by me, laughing like a mad thing.
I hadn’t known they could speak. That was disturbing news.
The doll took a running jump at the mage, who was fighting with the two skeletons, his magic slapping into them uselessly. The doll’s weapon lodged into the man’s back, and it hung there for a moment, dangling.
The mage’s scream cut right through me. I’d thought horror movies were my thing but this was taking it to a whole new level. The word shocking couldn’t fully describe it, especially when the doll grabbed another knife from a holster on its frilly dress. It pulled it out and stabbed it into the sinking man, trying to climb him like a mountaineer.
“Nope.” I popped up, adrenaline fueling me, about-faced, and ran like hell. Ivy House had this covered, clearly, and someone else could grab the mage’s body if they wanted it. This whole scene was a nightmare, and I didn’t want any part of it.
I could sense Niamh and Earl flying overhead, and I sent a wave of magic so they’d know where to find me, just in case Ivy House had kept my location a secret in order to continue tormenting me. A snap of great wings said Damarion hadn’t been left behind.
I felt Austin before I saw him, a great lumbering beast through the rolling, swirling mists. When he neared, he dropped and slid to me on his stomach, clearly wanting me to hop on.
“Run away,” I said, pointing behind him. “They got him. That guy is dying a gruesome death. Go the other way!”
I climbed on and sank into his fur.
Thankfully, he listened. He turned around and started lumbering back to the house, his pain unmistakable but his determination pushing him on.
That could have been a close call, but the mage had made the fatal mistake of attacking me on Ivy House soil. And he hadn’t felt the need to knock me out—another mistake.
In short, I was lucky. Very lucky. If that mage hadn’t been a self-important idiot, things could’ve gone much differently for me.
I was two for two on lucky escapes. There was a price on my head, though, and the person organizing this sounded like he had a lot of money, a lot of power, and probably a lot of prestige. He’d have mages of all types trying to cash in. Soon my luck would run out.
21
“Do you need anything, miss?” Mr. Tom stuck his head into my favorite sitting room, tucked away in the back corner of the house. Smaller and cozier than the other sitting rooms, it had lovely wooden carvings at the base of the ceiling that moved in pleasing ways. It was the room I used to decompress, Ivy House helping by changing the carvings as befitted my mood. She was currently attempting to make up for the horror show with the mage by showing me ocean waves and softly swaying trees and flowers.
I still hadn’t forgiven her.
“No, thanks, Mr. Tom, I’m okay.” I leaned back in the recliner, my feet up and my head turned so that I could look out the window at the side yard, alive with beautiful flowers from our award-winning (cheating) gardener. “How’s Edgar?”
Mr. Tom fully entered the room and took a seat by the door, not getting comfortable. He usually left me alone when I was in this room.
“He’s a bit down in the mouth,” Mr. Tom said, resting his hands on his knees. “He committed a grave error yesterday and jeopardized your life, not to mention we still don’t have any information about those hikers that he dined on before. It doesn’t matter that you’ve forgiven him—he’s gone against his duty to the house, which is to protect you. He thinks it is time for you to retire him.”
That kind of punishment felt much too heavy for an honest mistake. “Where would he even go?”
“Oh, they don’t go anywhere. Unless you’re talking about the ash from their burned bodies? That’s hard to collect, so usually the magical community just lets it float at will…”
“Do you mean retire like…kill him?”
“Kill him is always a bit confusing when it comes to vampires, isn’t it? He’s basically already dead, so you can’t really kill him again. You just retire him from being a vampire. Make him stop existing, like should have happened the first time he died.”
I rolled my eyes. “You knew what I meant, and no, we are not going to retire Edgar because he wrongly chose a food source. You guys have been idle in this place for years. The change is hard for all of us. That mage had been lingering in town for…days, at least. Probably much longer. Austin never noticed him. I saw him and didn’t know what he was—Edgar did me a favor by bringing him onto Ivy House property, where we have defenses. If that guy had grabbed me outside of Ivy House…” I shivered, that little sticking point a big reason for my downer mood. I might still have been able to best him, but I didn’t want to hang my future on a “might.”
“Have you spoken to Austin Steele?” Mr. Tom asked, standing again.
After returning to the house yesterday, Austin had waited with me in polar bear form. I hadn’t wanted to be alone, and he’d sensed it—or maybe he hadn’t wanted me to be alone either. The others had come back a while later with the news that they’d buried the mage’s body, reburied the skeletons, and roused Edgar. The dolls had apparently seen themselves home, which I didn’t relish thinking about. Once everything was sorted out, Austin had lumbered back out of the house, and I hadn’t heard from him since. I said as much.
“He probably blames himself, as well. That mage was in his territory all this time without him knowing.”
“That mage knew just enough to purposely stay away from him.”
“That won’t matter to Austin Steele. He holds himself to unrealistic expectations. It won’t be easy for him to get over the fact that the mage got the better of him.”
I turned my head, back to looking out the window. “This is ridiculous. I can’t stay on this property forever—I will have to leave sometime. With a price on my head, I’m going to need a team around me to guard my back. Everyone blaming themselves and licking their wounds is not helpful. It’s not going to make things safer going forward.”
“Agreed, miss.”
“What do you think about bringing some of the gargoyles onto the team?”
He sat down again, as awkwardly as before, and said, “Honestly, I don’t think they have proven themselves yet. None of them have meshed with the established team. Right now, there are two teams, rather than just one.”
“Damarion’s team, and yours and Niamh’s team.”
He hesitated. “Basically, yes. The summoned gargoyle team, and the house team. Despite being the same species as the others, I am not viewed as part of the gargo
yle group.”
“But Damarion said that they didn’t even know each other before they came here.”
“I wager that is how the summons works. They collect along the way, finding each other, moving together, and establishing the pecking order before they arrive. Once they arrive, they are ready to assimilate.”
“Except they haven’t assimilated.”
“They have, just not with the house team. They have assimilated with one another, and with you.”
Frustrated, I pushed to standing. “That’s not going to work for me. Does Damarion need to be brought into the Council…seating thing in order for all of you to work together? Are the groups only separate because he’s not connected with the magic? Those gargoyles will follow me, sure, but my default setting isn’t as commander. When I need something, I take charge, but otherwise I don’t think of it. It’ll take time for me to grow into that role. In the meantime, I need someone to handle the day-to-day…”
A memory jogged for position. Austin speaking to me.
I have experience in leading. Obviously you don’t need my help with Niamh and the others, but if new people show up, you can count on me. I will put them in their place until you’re ready to step up and take over. You know my past—you know I won’t try to usurp power. Eventually, hopefully, I wouldn’t be able to.
My frustration bubbled a little higher.
“Damn Austin for not wanting to be involved in this. He’s the missing link. He’s the ace in the hole. And he doesn’t want the job. Not officially, anyway, and if he won’t officially take it, it’s a hard sell to outsiders.”
“Yes, the situation is certainly grievous.”
I huffed out a sardonic laugh. “Grievous…yes, it is. So what I’m looking for is a replacement for Austin. Right now, the only candidate is Damarion.”
“He certainly has the right materials. Strong, sure, loyal, born to lead…”
“He’s an elitist, though, who hasn’t made an effort to connect with the nut cases of this house.”
“True, he hasn’t taken to Edgar and Niamh very well…”