“Jess, do you mind?” Austin grabbed the back of my stool and the base before pausing to look at me, his face inches from mine.
“What?” I leaned away, against the bar.
“I’m just going to turn you to make more room.”
“Oh sure, yeah. Have at it.” I meant to get up, but he’d already pulled the stool up off the ground with me on it, his muscles barely flexing with the weight. He set me down so my back was to Sasquatch, my side to the bar.
“I should’ve just done this in the beginning,” I said. “My peripheral vision is much nicer this way.”
“Without that dirty bugger by your side, you mean?” Niamh looked around me. “Yes, I did mean you.”
Austin resumed his place at my side, now allowing Ulric into the circle. “Beer?” he asked the smaller man.
“Bud, thanks. Now, miss—”
“You can call me Jessie,” I said.
“Mr. Tom was pretty clear about what you should be called.” Ulric grinned at me. “The fact that it annoys you is just a bonus.” Niamh huffed out a laugh. “I’m sure someone has told you natural female gargoyles are immensely rare, and have been throughout history. They can be created magically by a powerful mage sacrificing a male gargoyle and…whatever spell they use to transfer his magic to a female mage or Jane, but the transformation of species doesn’t enhance the power. In fact, it shrinks the wings and hinders the ability to fly.”
“And they did this why?” I asked, but the answer came to me in a flash of intuition. “To try to breed more natural female gargoyles.”
“Based on the records, that was the reasoning behind creating the female version—they hoped a male and a female gargoyle would have a better chance of producing a natural female specimen than waiting for the genetic lottery. Maybe if the mages engaging in this practice had been female, they would’ve gotten things right and the female gargoyles they created would’ve been able to reproduce. But they didn’t understand the complexity of female anatomy, so they were left with sterilized versions of male gargoyles who couldn’t fly half as well.”
“Who do gargoyles typically mate with that might create a female version? Humans, mages…?” Austin asked.
“Who we mate with doesn’t seem to matter with the outcome of our kind. A male child will typically turn out to be a gargoyle, and the female will inherit their genes from their mothers, except every once in a great while.” Ulric waited for Niamh to hand his beer across the counter. He took a sip. “It’s very rare, as I said, but the females are everything those mages were hoping to create. They do have smaller wings, but it’s a tiny grievance considering the power at their disposal. Every single female gargoyle in history has been mighty. They are more powerful than mages, hardier than shifters, more cunning than gremlins, and better leaders than all the famous battle commanders throughout time. Or so it is said.”
“But I’m not natural.” I palmed my chest. “I was magically created.”
“Tamara Ivy was a natural female gargoyle,” Ulric said, his voice taking on a storyteller’s cadence and rhythm. “Her power was legendary, drawing the most powerful magical workers in the world to call on her. She wanted for nothing, ever. Eventually a handsome young mage caught her eye, one powerful and great in his own right, but his ambitions got the better of him. Or maybe it was his jealousy.
“While he was great, Tamara was exceptional and truly rare. She was sought after above him, had more power, more prestige. After a while, it began to chafe. He wanted the prestige. He wanted to be the most powerful in the land.”
“Swap this for beauty and you have Snow White,” I mumbled. Niamh nodded.
“He reckoned that if he could harness the power of her magic, combining it with his own, he would be unstoppable. She fell into his snare because she trusted him, but he had underestimated Tamara’s might. As he drained the life from her, intent on stealing her magic, she used the last of her strength to pour her power, everything that made her great, into the foundation of the house she loved. The house she’d built. She gave it a piece of her soul too, and it’s that piece that chooses the heirs of Ivy House—each of them a woman sound of heart and logic, filled with fire and strength of character.” He bowed at me. “A person just like you.”
“Right, okay, but why did she transfer the magic to the house instead of using it to kill him?” I asked. “It seems like a missed opportunity.”
Ulric paused in sipping his beer. “I don’t know? Maybe she didn’t realize what her beau was doing until it was too late, and by then he’d siphoned enough energy or power to render her incapable of getting herself out of it? Love sometimes makes us do stupid things. Maybe she couldn’t bring herself to kill him even to save herself.”
“And so maybe the house was waiting for a jaded spinster who just wanted to get laid once in a while,” Niamh said. “That solves that. No history repeating itself there.”
“Well, maybe you’re not far off,” Ulric said, and before I could poke him, he continued. “A spinster was a weaver back in the day. A woman, since sewing and whatnot was considered a woman’s job. A spinster could make enough money to set herself up without a man. Everyone gives spinsters a bad name, but they were smart, if you ask me. They were career women who didn’t need to marry to have all the things they wanted, including their own money and free license to spend it as they wished.”
Niamh turned around to get a look at Ulric. “Well, aren’t you a fountain of knowledge.”
He shrugged. “I can be.”
“Even if those mages thought I’d be able to flounder in the air, that net still wouldn’t have held me,” I said. “I fell into it. There was nothing keeping me from flying out of it—assuming my arms worked for wings.”
“It was a magical net. They clearly misread the situation,” Niamh said.
Austin and Ulric nodded.
“I heard you caught another one?” Ulric asked Austin.
He nodded, finishing his beer. “He’d holed up in Greenville.” Seeing Ulric’s blank stare, he added, “The town to the east. He didn’t have a computer on him and his phone wouldn’t unlock with his face. His magic level was mediocre, but I got the sense he was working for someone high level. Whenever he tried to say his boss’s name, he choked on the words. I’ve seen that kind of thing before. Whoever he is working for is watching Ivy House, and they want an easy grab. Their goal is Jess, not that house.”
“We missed that mediocre mage,” Ulric said, his expression troubled. “I looked all around. A few of us did. We don’t have a shifter’s sense of smell, but we found everyone else, even after they scattered.”
“I picked up the trail about fifty yards from the attack site. He’d only managed to eliminate his scent for that distance, which was how I knew what level of magic he was working with. And he also came at me when I barged into his hotel room.”
“Ah.” Ulric nodded. “Your experience wins.”
Austin shook his head, turning so he could look past the people and to the far end of the bar. “Without knowing who exactly the boss is, we—”
“So, there’s this thing I didn’t tell anyone…” I clasped my hands. “Maybe it is nothing, but…”
I told them about seeing the mysterious man in the black suit, with the dark goatee and slicked-back hair. Most importantly, I told them that he’d just up and vanished.
“That might’ve been helpful to know,” Niamh said, and sipped her drink.
“He said he looked forward to meeting you again soon?” Austin asked, an inferno glimmering in his cobalt eyes.
“Yeah. He was all the way across the street, but I still heard him as though he were whispering into my ear.”
“Ye had this hanging over you, and ye decided it would be a grand time to start dating and meet a bunch of strangers, did ye?” Niamh lifted her eyebrows at me. “If you needed to get laid, I could’ve just grabbed someone off the sites that would’ve worked for you and Edgar both. Run them through you, and when you were done with them, toss them at Edgar. There’s a lot of weird people in the world, I’m sure I would’ve been able to find someone easy-like for that sort of setup.”
“Good Lord,” I groaned. “That’s one of the reasons I thought dating a Dick might be a good idea.”
“If that’s all you need…” Ulric grabbed fake lapels and waggled his eyebrows. “How about a massage with a happy ending?”
“Enough.” Austin held up his hand. A crack of power had all of us clicking our teeth shut. Niamh and I grimaced. “What happened yesterday was not headed up by Elliot, I’m sure we can all agree on that. Even on his worst day, he wouldn’t have created such poor spell work. However, the mediocre mage who got away had plenty of time to make a call. If his boss is Elliot, we can now assume that Elliot knows Jess can’t fly. He’ll also know she has backup, so he’ll send better mages next time. There will be a next time, we can be sure of that, and if Elliot takes part directly, we’ll all need to fight him together.” He turned to face me. “I know you are independent and you don’t like to be governed, but I also know you’d rather not be kidnapped. You’ll need protection outside of Ivy House property, and all of those gargoyles should be in the air whenever you are. Do I make myself clear? We have to be prepared. If we aren’t…”
His voice drifted away and a growl laced his words, drifting up my middle.
If we weren’t, I’d be taken, and he’d be pissed. That was about the sum of it. I’d rather be the one left behind in anger, but given that I didn’t have a choice, it looked like I was about to lose what was left of my privacy.
17
The screams cut through every fiber of his being. They quickened his heart and doused him in fear. He ran with everything he had, sprinting through the light snow, cutting through trees and felling anything in his way.