Magical Midlife Love (Leveling Up 4)

Thirty-Two

Two days later, we all sat or stood around a circular white table in the backyard, the sun bright, the grass green, and the apology invitation open on the table, completely unbelievable.

Kinsella was sorry. He hadn’t meant to offend me. He wanted to make it up to me with dinner and dancing at the banquet hall in O’Briens. I could bring my “friends.”

He’d probably sneered as he wrote that word.

My rage was a hurricane inside of me.

“Why are we doing this outside?” Hollace asked, his glass of champagne almost empty.

“Because it’s a nice day.” Cyra’s champagne was boiling, steam rising from the glass. She could transfer heat to anything with a simple touch. She apparently didn’t much care for champagne.

“Yes.” Mr. Tom slid a plate of melon slices wrapped in prosciutto onto the table. “Easter was so nice, I thought we might do something similar. I did not hide any eggs, though. I didn’t want to offend God.”

“That’s not…” I shook my head, letting it go.

“This is a trap,” Austin said, in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair rumpled and a spot of blood on his neck. A grizzly bear shifter had challenged him earlier in the day. He was happy to have acquired the shifter for his pack, but the sight of his gashes and seeping wounds had not made me happy. In the future, I intended to be at hand for challenges like that. I didn’t give a crap how shifters did things—I would not allow someone to kill Austin.

“Traps are good. We get to flex our muscles,” Cyra said.

“It takes a lot of the risk out of it when you come back from the dead.” Ulric scanned the ground even though Mr. Tom had said he hadn’t hidden any eggs.

“Yes, but dying still hurts,” she replied. Little flames replaced the steam at the top of her glass. “Dying at the hand of the alpha was not pleasant.”

Sebastian stood a few feet away in the sun, watching the basajaun eat flowers near the tree line. He’d come to check on me. The mage had foolishly sent the vampires after the shifters following our dinner, something that hadn’t ended well for the vampires, and the basajaun had heard the fighting through the trees.

“I called the closest office of magical mercenaries,” Sebastian said. “They’re sold out. They had access to fifty contractors, but they wouldn’t tell me if the same person took them all.”

“There’s an office for that stuff?” I asked, leaning my elbows on the table.

“Of course,” he replied. “How else would you hire them?”

“That seems awfully civilized,” I murmured.

“Tell me about the banquet hall,” Kingsley said, sitting beside his brother.

Austin leaned back and rubbed his fingers through his hair. “It’s a large facility used for weddings or special events, able to house…three hundred, probably. The inside is mostly open—there are four rooms: a main room, an entrance area, and a kitchen and dining room grouped together. Very few places to hide. The grounds are geared toward pictures and parking, mostly. There’s a large lot with plenty of space for us to maneuver the limos. The trick is that the place is on a rolling hill leading up a mountain. Great views, but the only way in and out for a car is a narrow two-lane road with very few pullouts. Block that road, and you block road transportation.”

“What do we care about road transportation?” Kingsley asked.

“Why do we care about road transportation?” Ulric asked with a laugh. “That sounds like the perfect setup for fliers.”

“If you go in,” Kingsley told Austin, “you cannot leave until the battle is done. If you go running, it’ll undermine Ivy House and your territory. Mercenaries for hire can be strong contenders. They have advanced weapons and are capable of handling all manner of magical creatures. Fifty or so of those plus whomever he’s called in from home, plus the people we didn’t take out the other night…”

“Failing to show won’t look any better,” Austin said. “Though we could just refuse his—”

“We’re not going to fail to show, and we’re not going to go running,” I said. “I gave him an opportunity to leave. He chose to double down on being a dick. So now we’ll send a message.”

Sebastian nodded, still watching the basajaun. So was Edgar, quietly sitting at the table, his champagne untouched. Why anyone had poured him any, I had no clue.

“Kingsley, can I have a word?” Austin said before glancing back at me. “Jess?”

We walked a few paces away from the others, and I wrapped us in a soundproof bubble.

Austin’s voice was low despite the spell protection. “I’ve dealt with mercenaries around here before. They are unnecessarily vicious and they don’t fight fair. They aim to kill, and they can do it from a distance. They’ll go for the most powerful first.”