Chapter 16 #2
He pushes the door open, and they’re finally standing on the front steps. It’s only slightly quieter, and Grayson can finally hear Jay. “Are they detaining him?”
“No. That was just an adolescent admirer.” Nix crowds him into the side of the school, letting one of the hedges shield them a little. “But Kirwan? She wanted to.”
Jay’s growl through the phone makes the hair stand up on Grayson’s arms. “We’re coming. Listen to me. Do not leave the Guild. Not the building. Not the wards. Nowhere.”
It’s probably wise that Nix doesn’t tell him they’re already on the front steps.
“I wasn’t planning to,” Nix replies. “Hurry. I have a bad feeling that this is just the beginning.”
He disconnects and slips the phone into his pocket. He’s still broadcasting back-off scent, so the loitering kids give them a wide berth. “They’re coming now.”
Grayson folds him into his arms, turning so that he’s between him and the onlookers. He feels better knowing the kids can’t see his mate…which is weird, since he’d not minded at all inside the building.
It hits him then that it’s not the kids’ gaze he minds. Someone or something is watching, and it’s not a bunch of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds on their mid-morning break.
“Nix—”
“Yeah. Since we stepped outside. I can’t see them, though. Can you?” Nix is scanning the crowd, a small line deepening between his brows.
Inside the Guild, the wards would protect the children the same way as they should inside the gates. Whoever has eyes on them is magical, and inside the wards.
A quarter hour crawls by, anyway. Grayson keeps one part of his attention on the courtyard, watching the other students take advantage of the warm summer day during their break, like this is any other day.
“They’re here. Come on.” Nix is out from behind Grayson as if he’d only been humoring him, dragging him toward the gate. They slide through the final ward just as Leo pulls the Lexus in front of the fountain.
Jay looks like he might get out and check them over for himself, but Nix has the back door open and is urging Grayson across the seat before they’ve even come to a full stop.
“What’s going on?” Leo asks. He’s got the car in motion in the next minute.
“I fucked up.” Grayson lets the words pour out. He pulls on his hair, letting the tiny stings ground him. “Bixby was at Nix about being in the Water room, and you know how I said I was done holding The Plain down?”
“Yeah. Nix, tell me you didn’t…” Jay asks, turning in his seat so he can gauge Nix and his expressions for himself.
“I was as good as gold, Jamie. Even though in the beginning he’d been very rude.”
Jay is relieved, and Grayson hates to ruin it.
“Yeah, well, Nix wasn’t the problem. Bixby was going on about what a dud I was, and suddenly I was holding an ice staff.”
He’d called it GrimWinter.
Grayson couldn’t tell you how he knows that this was his chosen weapon during some past life; it’s every molecule known only to The Plain and to him.
The car swerves as Leo’s eyes meet his in the mirror. “A what now?”
“Six feet of ice. Frost steaming in the room, and Bixby’s jaw on the floor.” Nix smirks at the memory. “I feel like that wasn’t the first time you’ve made that.”
It wasn’t. Not even the hundredth, in another lifetime. But by the look on Jay’s horrified expression, now wasn’t the time for a waltz down alternate-life-lane.
“That girl wasn’t wrong: it was super hot…or cool,” Nix giggles at his own joke.
“Then Percival showed up with Kirwan in tow, and it all went to shit.” Grayson groans at the memory. “Did it feel like she was egging him on to you, Angel? Like she wanted the worst-case scenario?”
“Dead ass,” Nix agrees.
“Not you, too,” Jay groans at Nix’s slang.
Nix has been learning all kinds of internet slang from Rowan lately, and Grayson knows he’s not alone in thinking it’s cute, annoying, and confusing all at the same time.
“Well, seriously, then. She has it in for Gray. But Bixby has your back, surprisingly, and Knox, too. And I don’t even think that the headmaster dislikes you as much as he doesn’t like Weres. He’s just a bigoted, misogynistic asshole.”
“Hey,” Leo says quietly, eyes flicking to the mirror, “sorry to interrupt, but I think we’re being followed.” He signals and makes a clean right, angling them away from home.
The black SUV behind them blends into traffic at first glance. Nothing remarkable except for the windows, dark enough to swallow the light. But when Grayson lets his awareness slip toward The Plain, the illusion peels back just enough.
Two magical signatures glow inside it.
“Goddess-fucking-dammit.” Jay’s voice is low, dangerous. “We can’t go to the compound now. Head toward Ruckus. They’re closed, and there’s more room.”
No one asks what he means by that.
Leo’s knuckles creak on the steering wheel.
He nods once and adjusts course without comment, taking a longer route that winds them through the industrial edge of downtown.
The SUV stays with them, neither gaining nor falling back, sliding through traffic with the same unhurried precision, no matter what Leo does.
“There are at least two magic users,” Grayson says, eyes tracking the shimmer beneath the vehicle’s shell. “But I can’t tell how many others.”
Jay exhales through his teeth.
The vehicle presses in close. It takes Grayson a minute to notice that the lights are always green. They’re letting Leo set their direction, but there is no doubt that they aren’t being followed as much as they are being herded.
They’re two blocks from the restaurant’s large parking lot when Leo’s phone connects through the Bluetooth speaker.
“Tell me why you’re on your way to Ruckus, and Nix and Grayson aren’t sitting through some blowhard’s lecture on magical pottery 101.”
“Professor Shaw is actually pretty cool,” Leo mutters. Often Grayson’s chaperone in those early days, Leo had enjoyed his Earth professor’s lemon shortbread cookies on more than one occasion.
“We’re being followed.”
There’s a kerfuffle on the other end of the line, then abrupt silence.
“Did it occur to you to head to Sentinel? Or the Guarda? Or any other place than an abandoned parking lot?” Gideon’s voice is a little bitter, no doubt pissed that for the second time this week, he’s going to be denied making someone bleed.
A muscle ticks in Jay’s jaw, and Grayson can tell it’s more than anger. Something deeper rolls through him, straightening his shoulders, like the part of him that knows he is Pack Alpha of a magnificent and growing pack. It seems to fill him. His chest expands on a breath.
“I am done letting them tell me how this is going to go, Gideon,” he declares.
Grayson feels it in his soul. They’re not cornered. They’re choosing to stand their ground.
“We’re in enough trouble as it is, and I just got awarded my new extended pack status. But, it’s time they learn Grayson isn’t alone in this.”
Gideon sighs on the other end of the phone. “I can’t even tell you you’re wrong. Dammit. Okay. We’re headed into the safe room in case they get any ideas about added leverage. I will wait exactly one hour, and then I will see you there.”
“Stay with the kids, Gid,” Grayson says. He can see the signage for Ruckus up ahead. They’re almost there. “We gotta go. Love you.”
Jay kills the connection.
“You said two magical signatures, and given the vehicle, no more than four more. Leo, when we stop, take my keys and get inside with Nix.”
Nix growls in protest. “Fuck that, James. I am immune to magic if you recall, and the last time someone came for my pack—” He stops abruptly, a grimace flashing over his face for a brief second.
The memory of Dill Pickle’s violent death—or Withers’s—isn’t a pleasant one for him. It isn’t something he wears like a trophy. It’s a scar, not a boast. When Nix says it, he’s not bragging about taking a life. He’s stating a boundary that the world has already tested too many times.
They all should remember, no one here is as fast or as deadly as Nix Rhodes when his pack is threatened. Not Jay. Not Grayson. And certainly not anyone in that SUV. Add four months of Sentinel training to instincts honed across lifetimes, and he is not posturing. He is prepared.
Especially if there’s a mind manipulation talent in that SUV—that will make Jay and Leo most vulnerable.
Leo rolls into the lot with the same controlled patience he’s used since the SUV appeared in their mirrors.
Ruckus fills the right side of the space in a blaze of color.
It’s hand-painted murals reflecting the urban street art that’s always inspired him.
The converted warehouse is all brick and glass.
It’s Grayson’s vision made real, but the lot itself is quiet, the new asphalt still dark, the brand new white lines almost too bright in the noon sun.
Driving past the building, he takes them to the back, where the lot runs parallel to the busy street but somehow feels cut off from it.
To their left sits the cistern Gideon uses to irrigate his ridiculous herb beds.
The rear of the sedan settles against the fence and shrubs, the engine ticking in the stillness.
This is as strategic a location as any.