“Everything okay?” She held the plate with the half-eaten steak on it.
“Good. Really good. This situation with Momar sucks, but I’m glad it dragged me back home. I’m glad to be here.”
She leaned against him as Nessa skipped by, stopped short, then brought up her phone and snapped the picture.
“I’ve slacked with your social media, Jessie.” She held up the phone. “You look both happy in love and an absolute mess with crap all over your face. I’m not sure yet if I’m going to fix it in Photoshop. Oh, has Kingsley noticed the spies yet?” She jerked her face toward the trees.
“Don’t mention it,” Austin warned.
She mimed pulling a zipper over her lips. “See ya.”
She waved and bounded off again, leaving Austin to soak in the heat of his mate, feed her, and watch the people chat and dance and laugh. They looked so happy in the afternoon sun, mingling as easily as if they’d all grown up with multiple types of creatures around. The garhettes walked among them, dragging people every which way to introduce them to one another. They were essentially forcing everyone to blend, and they had such a way about them that no one seemed inclined—or able
—to say no.
After another hour or so, when the alcohol was flowing and the gnomes were gaining a bit more courage, dodging out to whack an ankle for seemingly no reason, Austin figured it was time to get Kingsley out of there.
“Ready to go?” he asked Jess, steering her by the small of her back. “I think Kingsley’s anxious for an exit. He never hangs out at these things for very long.”
After telling Kingsley they’d meet him at the garage, he and Jess walked back to the car. Jess slipped her hand into his.
“I’ve really enjoyed all this.” She shrugged. “The good parts, I mean. There was some bad stuff, but I’ve enjoyed working together with everyone. I’ve enjoyed spending time with your family, most of all.” In a small voice she finished, “I don’t want it to end.”
“I know, baby. It won’t. We have one more hurdle, and then we can get back to our life.”
It wouldn’t be a hurdle that showed up, though. It would be a tsunami.
THIRTY-THREE
Jessie
I AWOKE, sucking in a breath and sitting up in bed like some sort of mummy restored to life. The night lay still and quiet around me, but my connections were lighting up like a Christmas tree.
“Austin!” I yelled, flinging back the covers and throwing my feet off the side of the mattress.
“Let’s go, let’s go!”
“Jessie,” Sebastian yelled from down the hall. I heard his feet thumping before he barged into the room, wild-eyed. “My magical tripwires are going off all over the place. They’re here. It must be them.”
“I know—”
The loud hum of wings reached us, the gargoyle warning system.
“Let’s go,” I said to myself as I sent a peal of magic thundering across town. Attack!
“Remember our training,” Austin called, his voice relaxed and confident, jogging from the room.
It had been a week since the barbecue. A week of additional training. At the moment, I struggled to remember any of it.
Trying to breathe, I ran after him as Nessa emerged from her bedroom dressed in black with blades strapped to her sides and a gun slung over her back. She’d taken one for herself and proven to be all kinds of aces with it.
“I gotta get dressed!” Sebastian ran back to his room, his nightshirt billowing around his legs.
I didn’t bother with a muumuu. It wouldn’t last long.
Another peal of magical thunder sounded as I organized the connections in my mind’s eye. I’d been practicing, using what Ivy House had taught me to organize my people more smoothly.
Austin grabbed a vial of revealing potion from the counter—we’d kept it there for this very occasion—and guzzled it down. I took it next before grabbing the latest doses of various potions Sebastian and I had finished last night and jogging to get them stowed away in the car. Austin would drive them down to headquarters. The rest were already stored there.
“I’m coming!” Sebastian sprinted down the hall, caught his boot on the corner of a door, and spilled across the ground.
“Take a breath,” I told him, lifting him by the upper arm. “Take a breath. Think of Elliot Graves.”
He sucked in a breath. “I know. I know. Okay.”
Nessa stepped up to him, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck and pulling his forehead