“That’s not a problem we need to worry about,” I responded, my magic throbbing, my confidence at an all-time high. Again, I had no idea why. This just felt so natural for reasons I couldn’t explain.
Austin watched me for a long beat before minutely nodding. He’d be waiting outside. Someone would need to rescue me if they got grabby and managed to capture me.
“I got her, brother.” Gerard put his hand on Austin’s shoulder. “We’ll watch out for her.”
He’d be leading his guardians and Tristan would be leading ours—a bit overkill, since each would only have three gargoyles to look after, but whatever.
Austin didn’t respond, not hiding his frustrated emotions from our bonds. He hated this whole situation. He didn’t think the risks were worthwhile and hated the danger I was about to face. But these mages would be more powerful than the others we’d encountered. They might know something valuable.
Basajaunak lingered in the trees, also hidden from revealing potions. Only Dave would go inside, and only then if something went wrong.
Nessa tucked her laptop under her arm. She’d use that to make the money exchange, presuming her contacts actually brought the guns. It was nowhere near as cool as a bag full of money.
“Be tough,” she coached as we walked toward the front door. “Don’t shy away from being weird.
Mages get really cagey when someone is being too weird.”
“I’m wearing a purple muumuu and so are all the gargoyles. If my crew enters, Edgar has on a bicycle helmet and Cyra is wearing a sparkly fake wig that she got from a kid’s birthday party she wasn’t invited to. Niamh is drinking a beer from a can in a koozie that says ‘tits’ on it.”
“Yes. All that is certainly a good start.”
We paused outside the front door. I didn’t hear a sound from inside. This place should be a big room, apparently the interior walls having been mostly knocked down for whatever reason. The details had been listed with the meetup location. There was probably just as much danger of the place falling down around us as being destroyed in a magical shootout. Filtered light bled through the cracks in the wall like lanterns. This place wouldn’t have electricity.
“I’ve never done something like this without Sebastian,” she murmured, chewing on her lip as she checked her simple, plain-faced watch with an equally simple brown leather strap. “He always knows what to do if a magical fight kicks off. I’m more of the background girl.”
“And they can probably hear us through the door.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I might not be as experienced as him, but I am one hundred times more aggressive. We’re going to be okay.”
“Why are you so confident about this?”
“I have no idea.” I reached for the door as the gargoyles organized themselves around me, Tristan
behind me and to my left and Gerard to my right. Nessa stood more or less beside me, shaking herself out as if to dislodge her nervousness.
To hell with it, let’s get this done, I thought.
“That’s my girl, ” Ivy House responded.
Wings fluttered as I opened the door, and soft light flickered in the strangely shaped room. A half wall existed to my far right, with another ahead and a third to the left. That one had random boards sticking up out of it and debris at the base. The floor had been swept in the center, where a long, shiny banquet table held an array of guns, with more in crates in the far right corner.
At least they’d brought the weapons.
A man in a pristinely tailored black suit stood behind the table, with one sleeve a tiny bit shorter than the other so as to display the gold and silver watch on his wrist. There was no magical interruption of his image, meaning he hadn’t taken any sort of potion. Eight people with similar suits and watches were pushed to the sides of the room, making room for the six invisible guys with distorted bodies and fuzzy faces, their invisibility potions so powerful that the revealing potion Sebastian and I had cooked up barely unmasked them.
That was not great news. It meant they had some serious power in their organization. Either one person had more power than I did, and almost as much as Sebastian and I put together, or they were fluent in working together, something Sebastian had always said was rare with mages.
A ways behind the mages—all guys—and past stubs of walls, another guy waited at the back door, also using the invisibility potion. I couldn’t make out his face, but he held himself with arrogant importance and his watch was a lot shinier than the suit guy’s. He had to be the highest-powered mage in this outfit, but he was clearly too cowardly to be the front man.