Magical Midlife Love (Leveling Up 4)

He hadn’t turned the volume down on his side. At least, he didn’t all the time.

In this time of peace, did he still feel everything I felt even though I was giving him the privacy I thought he wanted?

My gut pinched in anger and I started forward again, Jasper shadowing me, back to silence. He hadn’t apologized, and why should he? He hadn’t known any better.

Austin did.

The man in front of Ivy House upended a bottle of yellow potion into his mouth before putting it away.

“Not enough power,” I murmured. The color was wrong for that potion, which meant the creation wasn’t powerful enough to mask him from Ivy House.

I quickly crossed the street onto the sidewalk, passing in front of Niamh’s house, Jasper following suit.

The mage stepped onto the walkway leading to my front door. One hesitant step, two… Picking up the pace now, four steps, five…

He reached the magical panel Edgar had installed in the sidewalk. I’d covered it with a simple masking spell, blending its look and characteristics with the landscape around it. A good mage should have been able to recognize the spell—fuzzy edges and a slight sheen gave it away.

The panel popped up with a loud snap.

The man didn’t have time to swear. The vial flew out of his hand. His body soared up into the air, the spelled and spring-loaded panel flinging him in an arch.

He windmilled his arms as he rotated. “Whoooooooaaaaaaa.”

He smacked down onto the pavement in the street, his arms splaying out and his satchel half under him.

Niamh cackled, leaning back in her rocking chair and holding her stomach with one hand.

“What the…” The man flailed like a turtle on its back. “Why…”

“Here ye go, a participation medal.” Niamh pushed to her feet and hurtled a rock at the man. It pelted his chest.

“Hey!” The man jerked, flailing harder now.

Niamh doubled over, guffawing. She loved that new ejection cord, as she called it. She also loved sending the failed candidates running.

She scooped up another rock and threw it, cracking him in the side of the head. “Have’ta be stronger than ye are. Now off ye get.” She threw another. “No time to waste.”

The man cried out, finally making it onto his feet. The satchel dragged at him as he stood, anger tightening his limbs. He faced Niamh down, his power surely building, probably readying a spell.

I hurried forward to intercept, but I needn’t have bothered.

“Oh, so ye want to play cops ’n’ dinguses, do ye?” Niamh stripped out of her clothes like a woman on speed, her movements that of someone half her age, her deftness and strength compliments of Ivy House. (The magic would have made us all young too, but I’d accepted only some of the perks. I’d earned my age, and I wasn’t ashamed of it.)

The man lifted his hands to fire off a spell, but she’d already changed into her nightmare alicorn form, with ink-black scales and a flaring golden mane, her golden hooves drumming against the ground as she charged at him. She lowered her head, pointing her crystalline horn at his chest.

“Holy—” He fired off the spell, the blast going wide, before scrambling out of the way. “A puca?” he choked out, panic riding his words.

Niamh ran past him, narrowly missing an impaling strike. The man would have no way of knowing she’d aimed badly on purpose. She wasn’t on Ivy House soil—she knew better than to kill someone, unprovoked, in Austin’s territory. She had a very, very short list of things she feared, and he was high on that list.

I ignored her antics, my mood souring further. Yet another mage had failed the tests, and I had to wonder if anyone appropriate would show up. I walked past the mock battle in the street and magically reaffixed the trap panel before pushing into Ivy House a moment later.

Mr. Tom was walking down the hall toward me, his tuxedo wrinkle-free in opposition to his lined face. His wings looked like a cape, brushing the backs of his legs. A sandwich waited atop a silver tray next to brown liquid in a crystal glass. Iced tea, no doubt.

“Good afternoon, miss,” he said, his voice stuffy. “Would you be taking lunch in…your room, perhaps? Maybe overlooking the gardens?”

That spot always calmed me. He knew that. Given what he could sense through the link, he knew I needed it.

I clenched and unclenched my fists. “Why didn’t you tell me it doesn’t do squat on your end when I block my magical link to you?”

Mr. Tom stooped in front of me, and his snobby butler’s facade slipped. “Ah. You clued in to the real nature of the link, I see.”

My anger burned brighter. “Yes, I did. You’ve all been keeping a very important piece of information from me.”

“It’s been a collective effort of sorts, yes, miss. We had sound reasoning to do it.”