Magical Midlife Battle （Leveling Up, #8）(80)

“He might be doing the Guild a favor, hoping for a return favor.” Sebastian tapped his phone to his lips in thought. “Or we might’ve stumbled upon a rift in the making.”

“I hope it’s the latter,” Nessa said, looking down at the body. “It would be amazing to have a little something to piss Momar off.”

“It would,” he replied as a car rolled into the parking lot filled with three older women with excited smiles.

“What’s this?” Austin asked as the car parked.

“Additions to your outfit, apparently,” Kingsley responded.

“What?” Austin asked as I said, “What?”

“What? ” Ulric gasped, walking toward the car. “Aunt Florence?”

“Did he just say Aunt Florence?” Nathanial asked, looking around.

“Bro, that guy’s family is so left field, I wouldn’t doubt it,” Jasper said with a smirk.

“What are you doing here?” Ulric asked as three tittering older ladies got out of the car, which was driven by a surly-faced shifter who clearly was not amused by his latest job detail.

“Olly!” The woman who must be Aunt Florence, wearing a flowered dress over her short, stout frame, smiled at him before kissing his cheek. “Is Patty here yet? We have a whole bunch of garhettes on the way.”

“What? Why?” Ulric asked, putting out his hands to stop the ladies from heading toward the rest of us. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, you know…” Florence said with a big smile.

“I don’t, though,” Ulric answered.

“Patty told me you guys were headed for a big battle and that I might never see you again. She said shifter women head into battle right alongside the men—”

“Where they should be,” said a willowy woman with tightly curled gray hair.

“—and that she was going to join the ranks in some way. ‘Patty,’ I says, ‘I am so tired of gargoyles thinking we’re breakable just because we can’t shift and fly. Don’t we have the same fighter genes they do?’”

“Yes we do,” the willowy woman said.

“And don’t we have the ability to heal quickly—”

“Yes,” both of the other women said together.

“And aren’t we fierce and tough, just like them?” Aunt Florence went on.

“Tougher, if you ask me,” said the third woman, short and round with a kind face and balled-up fists. “You don’t see me laid up for a week with a stuffy nose, do you? Or crying because I got stabbed. No you do not.”

The other women nodded.

“And you know what your mom said?” Aunt Florence asked Ulric. “She said that even non-magical Janes fight. They fight, shifters fight, mage women fight—why can’t we fight?”

I wrapped my hand around Austin’s forearm, needing a little grounding because I remembered having a conversation about this with Patty. She’d been bent out of shape that she’d never gotten to be a guardian, and I sympathized. That had been some time ago. I’d had no idea it would snowball into Ulric’s Aunt Florence randomly showing up in Kingsley’s territory ready to fight a big battle.

“Okay, but…” Ulric lifted his hands in confusion. “You can’t fight, though. All those other women were trained for it. You…weren’t. How do you think you can help us?”

“I can cook,” the willowy woman said. “I have great knife work. I can cut out someone’s gizzard, sure as I’m standing here.”

“I’m not afraid of nothing,” said the kind-faced, clearly very stubborn woman, fists still balled.

“Ask me how many guardians I fought off in my day during raids. Ask me.”

Nessa beamed at her. “How many—”

“No.” Ulric held up his hand to stop her. “Don’t encourage this. Aunt Florence, I get that you want to fight, but baby steps. Starting off in a battle like this is madness. What did Uncle Tom say when you left?”

“He said, ‘Woman, where is that sandwich you promised me?’ That’s what he said. Well, you know what I said?” She paused with raised eyebrows. “I said, ‘Same place as the last orgasm you gave me. Nonexistent!’”

The women all howled, bumping into each other and holding their stomachs.

“That’s such a gargoyle thing to say,” Nessa said with a wide smile. “Seriously, I love their culture.”

“Anyway, I mentioned all this to my book club,” Aunt Florence continued, and I noticed the rest of our people were coming up behind us, rejoining the group after being sent away by Kingsley. “And you know what? They agreed.”

“They didn’t just agree, though,” the willowy woman said, her hands on her hips. “They passed it on.”

“Yes, they did!” Aunt Florence nodded. “And lo and behold, a lot of young garhettes felt the same way in their bones. So you know what we said? We said, ‘Ladies, let’s go make a difference.’ And that is exactly what we’ve come to do, Olly. We’re going to make a difference. If we all go down with the ship, so what? At least we are finally living!”

Ulric stared at her, utterly at a loss, I was sure.

“Ladies.” Tristan walked around the crowd with a smirk and all sorts of swagger, holding out his hands as though greeting friends. “Ladies, hello.”