Chapter 11
Jessie
The evening passed uneventfully, with a big cookout in the backyard and the taste test between the lasagnas. Sadly, for Austin and Nessa, both dishes were incredibly delicious, and people were so blinded by their tastebuds, they forgot which one they’d sampled in their hurry to get seconds.
I had to admit they were both incredible.
I had a long history with lasagna. It’s the thing I made when someone needed dinners during a trauma recovery of some kind.
It was a good potluck dish, or something that created a lot of leftovers and kept me from cooking for a few days.
My lasagna, however, was mediocre at best, something to stave off hunger.
I should’ve known Austin would create something exceptional.
He always did, and I now knew Nessa was talented in the kitchen, too.
It was obvious she loved cooking. If Austin were ever detained and Mr. Tom wasn’t around, I’d invite myself over to Nessa’s house for dinner.
I was finding all sorts of ways to keep from cooking.
Nessa had also made brownies, but they didn’t make it to the cookout. We each had one, and Tristan ate the rest. I had no idea how he kept his figure with the amount of chocolate he consumed. Jealousy might not become us, but it didn’t stop me from feeling it.
I stood in the kitchen as Mr. Tom tidied up after breakfast. He hadn’t waited to be invited over this morning. Instead, he’d stolen the front door key the night before and had let himself in before I’d gotten up. My pant suit had been pressed—by him—and my shoes shined. Also, by him.
I wasn’t wearing either.
Niamh had come over last night with a lot of rumors and speculation.
The townspeople were wary about the mages but appreciated the quiet peacefulness of the community.
They weren’t prone to raising a fuss. That is, until the mages randomly attacked visitors.
Vistors the townspeople quite liked—Niamh was on her best behavior.
Those rumors, though, told in whispers, were nothing compared to what Sebastian and Nessa knew about Tilda. That mage had some serious explaining to do, starting with why she was endangering a pack and ending with why Drex was letting her.
And so, I wore my muumuu. If Drex tried to stand in my way of mage business, there’d be a battle.
“Ready?” Austin entered the kitchen wearing rip away sports sweats, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. He was dressing down in anticipation of shifting, but it was still a meeting with another alpha, and he apparently drew the line at a muumuu.
Sebastian walked in wearing a suit, an extravagant, sparkly watch inlaid with way too many diamonds, his hair slicked back, and all the swagger of a rich, powerful mage at the top of the hierarchy.
In other words, he was going as the grim reaper, Elliot Graves himself.
He had his own statement to make, and he had not taken kindly to Tilda impassively watching him as he was dragged to and from the torture chamber all those years ago.
She hadn’t shown one hint of remorse or sadness or any emotion at all, and he held a grudge.
Nessa followed him, her heels clicking against the floor. She was wearing a cream silk romper, a chunky necklace of red beads, and her own flashy and extravagant watch. The Captain was on duty.
She pointed at her flowy and fashionable clothes. “She’ll know this means I want to show off the blood I extract from my victim. Her, in this case.”
Her bubbly attitude heavily contrasted with her words and, quite frankly, made them that much more terrifying.
I swallowed. “What happened to you not wanting to get your hands dirty?”
“This is a family matter. She wronged my brother, and that I can’t stand for. Besides”— she shrugged nonchalantly— “this is war, and mages are violent. So are shifters. And gargoyles. I think maybe I needed a little perspective.”
“You needed the freedom to choose,” Austin said, checking his phone. “We all get a choice, and then we go hard. We don’t do things by halves in this team. You’re no different. Let’s get going. Everyone is ready.”
Nessa gave me a glittering smile, squeezed my hand, and practically bounded after Austin as he headed for the door.
Her mannerisms seemed usual from all the time I’d known her, but somehow they also seemed wholly different.
She almost looked…lighter, somehow. Graceful and carefree.
Joyous. I couldn’t put my finger on why, or even if that was true, because maybe it was just me being better at reading body language, but regardless, I was happy she was happy, as cliche as that sounded.
Everyone loaded into the vehicles. Austin held my door for me before climbing into the driver’s side of the Jeep. This time, Tristan and Broken Sue sat behind us. We’d lead the procession.
“I anticipate an interesting meeting,” Tristan murmured as we got underway. Fred gave us a thumbs up from the porch of the house she was staying in. She’d remain behind in case things got dicey.
“To say the least,” Austin said, following the directions to Drex’s house.
“Drex better have a damn good explanation for why he has those mages harbored here,” I said. “If he doesn’t, we don’t want his support for the convocation. We can’t bring on a guy who willingly hides and protects the deviants of the mage world, the same people we are trying to root out.”
“Agree,” Austin said as we turned into a wide street.
A large house flanked either side, leading to an even bigger house at the very end.
“The beta, the lead enforcer, and Drex,” I guessed. “These are large residences.”
“That’s usual,” Austin told me as he stopped in front of the house, parking in the middle of the street.
“Look at my brother’s pack. His house is massive.
You didn’t see it, but his beta’s house is, too.
A show of wealth is usual in a shifter pack.
If the leaders are prosperous, it means the town is prosperous.
The way we set things up, one can’t happen without the other. ”
“Except Broken Sue has a moderate house,” I argued, “and your house in the woods is gorgeous but not extravagant.”
“I wasn’t looking to establish a pack when I built that, and Brochan didn’t plan to join one. Now, it isn’t a pack at all.”
“Ivy House puts every rich alpha to absolute shame,” Broken Sue said as he pushed open his door. “No one can compete with it. We don’t need to be fancy, we simply have to point to Ivy House and call it a day, especially now that Naomi has remodeled the interior.”
Austin started out of the Jeep and paused, turning back to me, his features knotted in thought. His gaze delved into mine, as though trying to poke through into my brain and get insight into whatever had entered his head.
“What?” I asked.
He watched me a little longer and then glanced at the alpha’s residence again. In silence, he climbed from the Jeep, leaving me to wonder what he was thinking.
Sebastian and Nessa didn’t file in with the Ivy House crew, standing to one side instead, posh, poised, and sophisticatedly unimpressed. It was their call to arms, and they were ready for battle.
My stomach fluttered as I motioned my crew in line. I could feel the basajaunak hovering around the large house, probably blending into the trees and ready to sprint to our aid at a moment’s notice.
“They seem awfully keyed up this trip,” I said.
“Who?” Cyra asked, swinging her arms in boredom.
“The basajaunak. I get rushing into a fight, but they usually relax after they’ve accepted an all-clear.”
“They think the mountain is unsettled,” Niamh said, for once without a cooler or even a libation. “Nature or the trees or whatever is not happy. They get a bad feeling from this place.”
Right. We’d talked about that, and then all the other issues with this trip had taken precedence, including the discovery that mages were coming here to look for Tilda.
That needed to be addressed with Drex today.
We didn’t know when those mages might come through.
Their force wouldn’t be anything we couldn’t handle, but we had a full travel schedule—we wouldn’t always be here.
If those mages came in without us, Drex’s pack wouldn’t have a prayer.
We had some things to figure out, and the first was whether we’d help them at all.
Two lines of town shifters filed down the street in orderly rows. As they neared us, they spread out and formed a semi-circle, closing us in.
The door opened behind us, and I turned to find Drex’s shifters filing out of the house in loose garments. Dan came out and went right, and Vessa went left, heading up the crisp lines.
Drex exited last, as was usual for these types of meetings.
He took the focal point in the middle, the door open behind him, a purple muumuu covering his body.
This time it wasn’t to see my reaction. His stern face and flashing eyes said he was ready for battle, and that muumuu would be torn off at a moment’s notice.
“Alphas, we meet—“ Drex cut off.
More shifters entered the street now. Ours. Austin had prepared for hostility, and our people had been watching. They came in four lines before stopping in formation to block Drex’s shifters. Basajaunak stepped out of the trees, all around us. Gargoyles lowered in the sky.
Drex’s expression turned to granite. “Alphas, we meet again.”
“Under similar circumstances, it seems,” Austin replied.
“So it seems. Forgive my tardiness. And my extra personnel. You’ve created an unsafe environment for some of our residents, and so I had to fortify my defenses.”
My jaw went slack, and I struggled for words. We created an unsafe environment? We hadn’t staged an attack in the middle of town or created an ambush in the trees and then kept a bunch of secrets.
Austin laid his hand on my back, ready to take the lead. That was probably wise, given that my anger level had just shot sky-high.
“Which of your residents feels threatened?” Austin asked.