Chapter 9
Nessa
“Don’t put yourself out too much,” Austin said as Nessa grabbed a smaller bag from the back of the Jeep and headed toward the house.
She grinned, then started chuckling. When the scary alpha let himself relax, he was a funny and great pal.
She’d told him that Jessie was lucky to have found him, and that was incredibly true, but he was just as lucky to have found her.
They brought out the best in each other, and their crew polished it to a high shine.
“Yeah, you know, hard day ’n all,” she shot back over her shoulder. “Sitting on the sidelines with a beer while you fought nearly to the death was taxing. I need a break.”
She heard him laughing as she climbed the three steps onto the porch and grasped the doorknob. The door opened quietly, and she stepped inside. She’d barely crossed the threshold when a large shape rushed toward her.
She squeaked in alarm and jumped, flinging up her hands to ward off an attack.
“Whoops.” Tristan bent and grabbed the shopping bag before it could hit the floor. “Did I scare you, little monster?” He straightened with a smug grin. “I thought we were beyond that?”
She let out a slow, shaky breath. Glaring at him, she snatched the bag back and stalked into the house with her nose in the air. Tristan’s dark chuckle followed her into the kitchen.
“Hey.” Jessie looked up from the high table, a make-shift island. “Any news?”
Nessa set the bag down on the counter before opening the little broom closet near the hall and pulling out a fold-up wagon. She’d found it earlier when she’d cased the place. “No—“
“Let me.” Sebastian hurried to help her with the wagon. “What are we doing with this?”
“We have a lot of groceries.”
“Oh.” He hefted it and headed toward the front door. Austin stepped inside, carrying three bags in his huge arms.
“Hey!” Fred came from down the hall, the sound of a toilet flushing behind her.
Her green and pink hair was spiked with gel, standing up at all angles.
She wore a green and pink pant suit, the fashion choices somewhat matching Ulric’s usual blue and pink.
She flashed a toothy grin. “Good to see you! I have—“
She stopped at the door and turned, standing in the way of Tristan coming in with three bags of groceries.
“Oh. Hello. What’ve you got there?” She stood on her tiptoes to peer into the bags. “Chores? I’ll help!”
She shouldered past him and hurried down the steps.
Tristan’s brow furrowed in confused humor. “That woman couldn’t fit in better if she tried,” he said, pausing inside. “And I really hope she doesn’t try.”
Nessa laughed as she passed him, reaching out to run her fingers along the underside of his suede-soft wings. He tensed before shivering, his eyes sparking lust.
“Are those wings sensitive, Mr. Monster?” she taunted.
Most gargoyles didn’t feel anything particularly exciting when their wings were touched, whether in human form or gargoyle. The wings were somewhat smooth to the feel, like leather, but apparently affected them no differently than if someone ran fingertips over their ankle.
Not so with Tristan. His mysterious heritage had affected his wings differently. Touching them gave him an almost arousing sensation, a pleasure not as strong as his genitals, but certainly lust inducing.
He turned to watch her, his eyes bright with desire. She was playing with fire, she knew that, but sometimes it was fun to dance in the flames.
“There are steps here,” Sebastian said as he and Fred finished loading grocery bags into the wagon. “And we have a lot more people than just the two of us. It probably would’ve been easier to let everyone help.”
“We are letting everyone help.” Nessa grabbed the wagon’s handle, and Fred grabbed two more bags from the back of the Jeep. “Austin can grab the last three bags, and you can help me lift the wagon onto the porch.”
“Here, I can take that,” Austin said, pulling the wagon toward the porch.
Tristan met him there, lifting the wagon by himself. He carried the whole thing into the house, turning sideways to get it through the door.
Austin met her at the back of the Jeep and grabbed the three remaining bags.
“In the end,” he said, “you ended up doing almost nothing. Great work.”
“I supervised.” She brushed her hands as though to rid them of loose dirt. “Work smarter, not harder.”
He chuckled and she checked the Jeep to make sure they’d gotten everything.
“Many hands make light work,” Fred said with one bag, now heading towards the house.
Sebastian took Nessa’s hand as they followed the others.
“I’m happy here,” he said. “We might be besieged with mages tomorrow after word gets out that I am here, but I still wouldn’t regret being here with them. I won’t leave them again, despite what might come.”
His words sapped her humor. It was her job to make sure that didn’t happen.
Jessie
Austin set the bags of groceries on the counter as Tristan unloaded the wagon.
“I feel like I should be helping,” I said wistfully. I’d tried, but Austin wouldn’t have it. “I sit around doing nothing while Mr. Tom runs the kitchen, but he’s not worth arguing with.”
“Neither are Austin and Natasha, trust me.” Tristan winked at me. “Do you guys need help squaring this away, or will I be in the way?”
“In the way,” Nessa quipped. “This kitchen is much too small for this many enormous guys.”
“There are two of us,” Austin replied.
“Exactly. Get out.” She started shoving at him. Tristan was already vacating. “I think better when my hands are busy. I’ll let you back in when everything is organized.”
“Idle hands are a devil’s playground,” Fred murmured from her seat beside me.
Tilting her head, she squinted. “I’m not sure if that’s the right saying.
” She shrugged. “Anyway, Nessa—am I to call you Nessa or Natasha? Natasha is a very pretty name, and it fits you very well when Tristan No-Last-Name says it, but not so much when I say it. It’s almost like hearing a balloon deflating. ”
Nessa laughed. “Nessa is fine. What are you, the name guru?”
Fred looked down at a pile of technical items she’d purchased from the shops downtown. The shop owners had tried to stop her from paying, and she’d literally thrown cash at their faces before running out the door.
“I don’t like owing people,” she’d said.
She grabbed an item from the pile and ripped into it.
“I changed my own name, but I can’t go around changing everyone else’s names to suit me, you know?
Not to their faces, anyway. Except you guys all agree with the practice of changing names to fit the person, mostly, and now it’s a fun little brain teaser.
Which name goes best? It’s something I never considered until now. ”
She set the item she’d unwrapped on the table and ripped into another one.
“What have you got there?” Nessa asked, barely stopping to look.
Austin and Tristan stood against the wall and Sebastian took the third of four chairs around the small table, leaning back to let Fred have all the surface area.
“Huh?” Fred looked up, her brows raised, then at the items around her.
“Oh, this is to build a satellite link. As far as I can tell, these people are trying to cut visitors off from the grid.” She shook her head adamantly before going back to unpacking.
“I might unplug one day but today is not that day. The thought gives me hives.”
Austin crossed his arms. “Just visitors?”
“Well, definitely visitors, at any rate,” she replied.
“There’s no Wi-fi or service up here, just TV dishes and satellite.
” She looked around at them. “They don’t always look like actual dishes.
” Back to her task. “That’s how the people here are getting internet so they can research and keep up with the magical world.
” She chuckled. “Who would’ve thought I would be working for and talking about a magical world.
A magical world!” She paused to give them a toothy grin. “Look ma, I’m in the magical world!”
“Focus, please,” Nessa said jovially.
Fred nodded and returned to her task. “They’ve cleared away all the trees and have a view of the sky.
These guest houses have TV dishes, but TV dishes only receive broadcasts.
I can’t rig them to work for internet. But look it-here, they have all I need—more than I need—in their shops.
They asked if I’d need help installing it and reached to make an appointment.
Which is odd, right? If they wanted guests to have internet, wouldn’t they make these houses internet ready? ”
“The townspeople are operating on a different wavelength than the governing body, I think,” Austin said. “Than maybe the mages.”
Fred bobbed her upper body, her version of an enthusiastic nod. “That makes sense. They’re very nice, most of the townspeople. Friendly and smiley and everything. But then you guys got attacked, so there’s something wrong there, obviously.”
“How long will it take you?” Nessa asked her.
“Oh, not long. I’ve done this plenty. The hardest part is setting up the satellite.
” Without looking up, she touched a square package about the size of a standard piece of paper, flat, and only about five inches or so thick.
“Then I’ll use the picture you took of the mage, saunter my way into the ones and zeroes of the world, and find out who our mysterious friend is. ”
“It’s a race against Niamh’s version of fact-finding,” Tristan said, crossing his arms over his chest like Austin.
Fred held up a finger. “Au contraire, mon frère. She is getting the word-of-mouth contingent. The little anecdotes about this mage’s past. The items of note that might not be strictly factual, but photos taken with an ever-changing lens and stored as rumors.
I will get the hard data. Places of employment, fitness reports, moving dates or maybe disappearing dates, things like that.
Then I’ll do my own little social reconnaissance.
What her co-workers thought of her, her hobbies, friends, enemies, whatever.
Together we’ll construct an overall picture of this lady.
We’ll know her better than her friends probably do. Assuming she has any.”
“She didn’t point you out as the Captain.” Sebastian turned in his chair to look at Nessa. “That’s telling. She recognized me, even like this, but not you.”
“I thought of that, yeah.” Nessa folded a bag neatly and put it on a pile of others.
She started emptying the next, putting everything onto the counters in groups.
Once done, she did the next until there was no room, and then she started moving items into the fridge or various cupboards.
“We don’t have enough room for all of this. ”
“We can distribute what doesn’t fit into the other houses,” Austin replied.
She gave him a blank look, and then comically frowned. “Withholding information like that from your loyal subjects is not how you work smarter instead of harder, Mr. Alpha King.” She sighed and looked around the kitchen. “I have to start over.”
Austin smirked and Tristan started chuckling.
“Yeah, ha-ha.” Nessa pulled items out of the cupboards and put them back into groupings. “Let’s make Nessa do one job twice.”
“Well, really, it’s only one job done one-and-a-half times,” Tristan replied.
“Don’t bring semantics into this,” she groused.
“I bet she’s seen me before.” Sebastian’s eyes held a faraway expression.
“In person.” He drummed his fingers against the tabletop.
“I bet she has worked for the Guild in some capacity. They would have pictures up of me in all forms. They brought me in to torture. They’d have an image of me at my absolute worst.”
Fred looked up at him with wide eyes. “Does Niamh know that?”
Sebastian’s eyebrows furrowed. “Yes?”
“He didn’t mean that as a question,” Nessa said, emptying the fridge. “The question is only why are you asking?”
“Ah.” Fred bobbed her upper body with an affirmative.
“I was about to ask.” She went back to her task.
“Because Niamh is very good at getting revenge, and she goes about it in such a calculated way that it is neither scary nor horrifying. Eventually I’m sure reality will slap me in the face, but by then, maybe I won’t care. ”
I toggled my hand, a mere spectator in this conversation so far. I needed some caffeine or a snack or something to get back some energy.
“When you find out what these people are capable of,” I said, “you certainly won’t care as much as you might think. But I’m still not comfortable with half the things we’ve been doing lately.”
“You’re softer than me,” Fred said without preamble. “With more morals. I think that bodes well for my mental health, don’t you?”
How was I still the most squeamish one in this group when we had a Jane that hadn’t acclimated to a violent animal like mine? It defied logic.
“Okay.” Nessa got everyone’s attention. She studied the heaps of food on all available surfaces. “Let’s get this food distributed. Boys, you’ll be the runners. Here we go.”
Sebastian hadn’t looked away from Fred. “Niamh is going to help me get revenge, yes. So are you. So is Jessie and Austin. By tearing down that organization, and Momar’s with it, that is all the revenge I need.
Putting up a better organization in its place, one fair for all magical people, that’s how I heal. ”
“And also,” Nessa said, “everyone who laid a hand on him, and who ordered it done, are already very dead in the most painful way we could imagine.”
“Well, yeah, and that,” Sebastian murmured.