Magical Midlife Meeting (Leveling Up 5)

“Basajaunak, as a whole, are family-oriented creatures. We typically stick with our own. If something happens to one of us, vengeance can be claimed by all of us, and often is.”

I hoped I was keeping my frown of uncertainty off my face. The basajaun had strange rules I usually only half understood, and when you slighted him, he went crazy. I sincerely hoped this wasn’t his way of telling me that I’d unintentionally wronged him and his entire family was about to hunt me down. That would not be a good time.

“I love my family, of course,” he continued. I nodded. “But they can be stifling. I am what’s known as the black cow of the family.”

“Black sheep, I think you mean—”

“I wanted my independence and to see more of the world. I wanted to choose my own mountain and enforce my own rules. That is not usually done by one so young as me.”

I had gotten the impression that he was quite old. I wondered how old his family was.

“I think it was the stars that led me to my mountain,” he went on. “Every so often, the stars choose a basajaun and lead him, or more likely her—our females are usually more courageous—to a great future. A future the family can be proud of. I think the stars have chosen my path.”

“Hmm,” I said, having no idea where this was going.

“It is not for me to decipher the journey of others,” he said, “but it is an interesting thing that we should meet under the mountain, forge our friendship in battle, and that you should then find yourself facing down another battle under a mountain.”

I’d been really working on controlling my reactions, but I was pretty sure a brow furrow seeped through. “Mhm.”

“It is a clear sign if ever there was one,” he went on. “So…” His voice drifted away, as though he was waiting for something.

“It probably is a sign, yes,” I said vaguely.

“Yes.” He nodded as though that answered that. I still didn’t understand what I’d agreed to, which was probably a mistake. “The stars, as I thought. This is the right way.”

He took a step toward the back door of Ivy House, and I stepped with him.

“I thought we were supposed to dress up a little?” the basajaun asked, taking another step.

I ran a little to keep pace. “For what now?”

“For the ceremony. I thought we were supposed to dress up?”

“The ceremony…” I stopped and faced him again, my eyebrows climbing and my shock too great to be hidden. “Wai—”

“Yes, the ceremony. I thought you agreed? It is not easy to decipher the stars, but they didn’t even attempt subtlety this time. My job, when we first met, was to guard you under the mountain.”

“Your job wasn’t so much to guard me as it was to keep me from escaping—”

“We helped each other that day—you generously promised me flowers, and I allowed you to escape.”

Well, sort of. He’d feigned an injury so the mages who’d enlisted his help wouldn’t accuse him of dereliction of duty. The prison I’d been held in was in his mountain, which apparently meant it was his role to guard it.

“We have battled together often since then,” the basajaun continued. “You have assembled a fearsome collection of magical people, from an alpha who gives me pause to a mythical creature I could not fight.” He was talking about the phoenix. The night Cyra had showed up, he’d tried to help take her down, but the burns had incapacitated him. “My ancestors will not be disappointed to see me join such a crew, especially since I was led by the stars. I have debated the decision for months, of course. I do not like to be tied down, which is why I left my family in the beginning. I do love those redwoods, but I do not like being governed. So I have been watching you. The alpha is strict with his people, yes. The gargoyle is strict with his gargoyles in town, yes. But you are not so strict. You merely ask that we all respect one another. That we help fight and protect one another. That is how a family should work. The grievances of one can be claimed by all.”

“Right. Except…” This was blindsiding me. I would never in a million years have guessed he’d want to join the Ivy House crew. It had never even occurred to me, mostly because of all the things he’d said about moving away from his family and living alone on his mountain. “It’s just that you live really far away—”

“And then I heard your next battle is to be under a mountain.”

“It’s a different mountain, though—”

“My first introduction to you was guarding you under a mountain. The job that cements me to you will be guarding you under a mountain. That fits. The stars led me here—me and the alpha and the rest of your crew—and here we will bind together. A strange sort of magical family. I will be laughed at, yes. But I have always been laughed at, and when they see a female gargoyle and the phoenix and the thunderbird… The basajaunak will come around. It is as the stars will it.”