Chapter 4
Jessie
The bar was alive with movement and laughter and people having fun.
Garhettes, gargoyles, shifters, and the occasional basajaunak filled the space to nearly bursting, the happy hour only a tiny window but incredibly popular.
There weren’t many Dicks and Janes left in the area, most of them cashing in on the high house prices, happy to escape the strange people all “randomly” flocking to the area.
The influx of gargoyles and garhettes had certainly been extreme.
A lot of them had had to find houses to buy or rent in the nearby towns.
Our territory now spanned four towns and counting, each of them spreading out.
Eventually it would be one big area with little hubs in each community.
A lot of shifters had crowded in as well, hearing about opportunities, curious about Austin’s leadership, or having had a run-in with mages and wanting to do something about it.
Niamh sat in her usual spot, a place picked long before I’d shown up in the area, and always vacated when she walked in.
No one wanted to mess with the puca, and sitting in her seat was the best way to get noticed.
Next to her sat Phil, his spot reserved for very similar reasons. Nessa was next to them.
People nodded at me or smiled, moving out of my way as I walked through. Then they took a few more steps after noticing Austin coming in behind me.
“I’ll meet you there, Jess.” I felt his hand rub down my back. “I want to check in.”
Despite not technically being the manager of the bar anymore, Austin always had a hand in its affairs. He was like that with all his businesses, trusting Mimi to handle it, but keeping an eye on things to ensure everything was running how he wanted them.
“Hey, Jessie.” Nessa straightened up, having been leaning over to talk to someone down the bar. She beamed at me. “How are you?” She stood and shoved the chair toward Niamh a little. “Here, take that one. I’ll scoot down.” She looked at the man sitting in the seat next to her. “Shoo!”
The man was usually one of the surlier patrons, and I waited for him to push back, but he blinked twice and almost robotically vacated his seat without a word.
“Too much.” Niamh shook her head. “Everyone will notice.”
“What?” I took a seat, knowing better than to argue.
“If it was anywhere else,” Niamh went on, talking to Nessa, “he’d cause a problem the moment he snapped out of it.”
Nessa took his seat and moved her drink down. “Right. If it were anywhere else. He’s not stupid—he won’t cause a problem in this bar, especially when the alphas are here.”
“And if he catches ye outside and suspects ye’re messing with him, like?” Niamh arched a brow. “Ye’re a mage. He might not know what ye did, but he’ll suspect it was somethin’.”
Nessa shrugged. “Then I’ll give him a kiss as I stick a knife in his gut. It wouldn’t be the first time someone thought I was easy pickings.”
“Okay”—I held up my hand—“wait a minute. What? Start from the beginning.”
Niamh shook her head. “That can wait. Where’s that lummox, Austin Steele? I need to chat to yis before that other lummox brings the third lummox into the bar.”
“You have now exhausted the number of times you can use the word lummox,” Phil said, his big hand wrapped around his bottle of beer.
“He’s checking in really quick,” I said. “He’ll be here in a minute. Who are the second and third lummoxes?”
“Tristan and Aljoe.” Nessa turned toward me a little and lowered her voice. “I haven’t told you the latest because I didn’t want to get your hopes up if I couldn’t deliver.”
“Oh!” I smiled at her, my heart warming. “You’re finally getting with Tristan?”
She sucked in a startled breath as her eyes widened. “I—” Nessa cleared her throat uncomfortably. “No—why, did he say something?”
Niamh snickered and Nessa’s cheeks turned red.
“Oh…just…” I didn’t want to get involved, while really wanting to get involved.
“Just that he’s trusting other people for the first time, and he wants to put down roots.
You know”—I shrugged noncommittally—“look toward the future and everything. I think he’s here for the long haul, that’s all. He’s not a flight risk anymore.”
She brushed her hair out of her face, turning away to grab her drink. “Oh.”
It seemed like she was trying to get her scattered thoughts in order. Niamh snickered again.
“Uhm…” Nessa turned back to me. “No, he hasn’t—it’s nothing like that.”
“He absolutely has.” Phil nodded sagely. “He definitely has. On multiple occasions. His balls must be so blue, they are ready to fall off.”
“Aye, he hasn’t even looked at anyone else since we’ve been back,” Niamh said. “Too busy pining in misery.”
“Much too busy pining, yes,” Phil agreed.
“O-kay, all right, let’s pull it back a little.” Nessa rolled her eyes, both Niamh and Phil snickering now. “Hilarious. Anyway.” She focused on me again. “You know that I have the kind of magic to manipulate energy, right? We’ve talked about that.”
“Yes. You’ve been learning from the books Tristan gave you,” I said, not-so-innocently.
She blushed again. “Right. And Ivy House had some really good, eye-opening ones. I have the ability to manipulate emotions and intentions. I can will people to do what I want, basically, but I can also trace the energy they use, finding motivations, paths they’ve physically followed, things like that.
This is an incredibly simplistic explanation, but you get the idea. ”
“Yes. Are you getting better at influencing the more stubborn people?”
“Much,” Niamh said. “She has a lot of gargoyles to practice on.”
Nessa nodded. “What’s funny is, Niamh and I largely do the same thing in this respect, but she does it with words and I do it with energy.”
“It took me four hundred years to get where I’m at,” Niamh replied. “You’ve been at it less than a year. I’d say you got the better magic.”
“Except I don’t get to change into a nightmare alicorn and fly so…” Nessa toggled her hand back and forth.
“Well, I mean…” I shrugged. “Nessa, you did it with words and actions before this. You manipulated your fair share of mages.”
“True enough. Energy just makes it easier. But check this out.” She beamed at me again. “That isn’t all this magic can do.”
“When you’re powerful in it, at least,” Phil said.
“Right, if you have enough power, you can seriously flex with this magic if you learn how…” Her blush crept back in. She must’ve been thinking about Tristan in some capacity.
How freaking cute! I was swooning just watching it all unfold. I hoped she gave in to him. He’d really come a long way since we’d all first met him.
“Are you paying attention?” she asked me.
“Yes.” I entwined my fingers in my lap dutifully.
Austin came down on the other side of the bar. “Wine, Jess?”
“C’mere, Austin Steele. I need to talk to ya before the other two get here,” Niamh said.
“Text Tristan to stall. I’ll be right there.” Austin served me up some wine and then took two more orders.
Niamh grumbled but did as he said.
“Right, so you know that Ivy House is at a nexus in the ley lines, right?” Nessa went on.
I twitched up my eyebrows. “No? Ley lines like…the magical river…thing that Momar used at Kingsley’s?”
Nessa glanced at Niamh. “I thought you filled her in.”
“Sebastian said she didn’t need to know yet.”
“Oh.” Nessa rubbed her temple.
“For her own magic, like,” Niamh clarified. “He didn’t want to confuse her. Ye’re fine to tell her this.”
“Oh,” Nessa said in a much more upbeat way.
She was clearly excited about this new facet of her magic.
“Okay, well yeah, Ivy House is positioned within a large nexus of power. There are small and large ones, often existing at sites with ancient construction, dramatic geography, metaphysical locations, things like that. Then the ley lines travel in straight lines, connecting all those nexuses. If you look at a map of them all, there are grids and triangles and star patterns. Each of those patterns have a different relationship with energy.” Her eyes started to glitter.
“Some texts mention that the right magic teamed with the right connecting patterns, teamed with a solar event, can create portals. You could actually go from one nexus to another.”
My brow furrowed as I glanced at Niamh, then back to Nessa. “Are you serious? A portal, like…teleporting?”
“The hint is in the name,” Phil said dryly.
Nessa shrugged. “I’m researching it, but wouldn’t that be awesome?”
“But she wouldn’t get all her mountains of snacks when she traveled by plane,” Niamh drawled.
I ignored her. “Yes, it freaking would!”
Nessa’s smile stretched. “Right? Anyway, in answer to your question, Kingsley had a ley line passing close by. Momar was able to pull the power from the ley line into his mage-made infrastructure. That’s why it took so many people to bring it to life.
If it were on a nexus, it would’ve been ten times easier and faster to make that same thing happen. ”
Cold ran through me. “Do we have a map? We’ll want to see what packs are on a nexus.”
“I’m looking into it, don’t worry. We all have different jobs, Jessie. You don’t need to worry about this right now.”
I took a sip of my wine. She was right. We had too much going on to all do everything. We had to divide and conquer.
“Okay, so here’s what’s really cool about my magic—that could work with your magic, but we’re not allowed to talk about that yet.” She patted my arm. “I can work within the ley lines. Well…assuming I can fully manifest this magic. I was plateaued for a while, but I think I just had a breakthrough.”
My head was starting to buzz as I tried to process all of this.
“Anyway,” she went on exuberantly, “I can feel the ley lines and nexuses, which…whatever, right? That’s not that cool. Pull up a map, you know? One of my kind has already done all that.”
I couldn’t help but notice the note of pride in her voice when she mentioned one of “her” kind.