Magical Midlife Dating (Leveling Up 2)

“Help,” I yelled. Electricity coursed through me. It blazed across my skin and curled within my hair. It felt like I’d grabbed a live wire, my body tensing up as the current flowed through me, infusing me with power. It pierced down to my core and then pulsed outward again, a peal of thunder commanding Mr. Tom or someone around me to come to my aid.

But just in case they hadn’t felt the magic… “Help!”

I looked around wildly, my body lazily turning in the air, my head pointed toward the ground while my feet faced the sky, the position only increasing my speed.

“No. Oh God. Help! Catch me!” I sent another pulse, stronger, direr, an SOS. “Why is no one catching me?”

A little surge of magic reached me from Ivy House, not obstructed by the distance or any of the many objects in the way.

“Those you summoned are already en route. They will protect you.”

She must’ve been talking about the second summons, because the guys from the first were around here somewhere not doing their job. Definitely not protecting me in my plummet toward the ground.

“I hope this next wave is better than the first,” I said through clenched teeth, still flapping my arms like an idiot, hoping for those wings to sprout. I could really use them. “And I hope they’ve been en route for a while, because I’m running out of time!”

“I have sent help.”

“I already have help! I have four helps. Why aren’t they doing anything?”

Ivy House was now hearing every swear word I’d ever learned.

Wings thrummed near me. “Oh thank God.” It felt like I had been falling forever.

I continued to rotate through the air and lost sight of the rocks rushing up for me. The jagged points that would break me into pieces.

A purplish body swooped down over me, arms reaching. I stretched to grab Cedric’s outstretched hand, but a streak of bright white light cut across my vision, slashing down his chest and blasting him away.

I screamed, looking around wildly, and the next moment my back struck something pliable, like an enormous spiderweb, only it wasn’t attached to anything I could see. The sticky material wrapped around me and jarred me to an almost complete halt, but then the bottom ripped across my back and dumped me out, feet and butt first. Gravity clutched at me greedily, pulling me down again.

Another slash of light zipped across my field of vision. This one slammed into Niamh’s side, the light swallowed by her inky black feathers. She flapped her wings furiously, fighting through the attack and continuing to head my way.

A blast shook me from my right and a shooting rainbow of color exploded into her this time, smashing her back.

“What’s happening?” I gasped out, ever falling, thankful now for the incredible height of that cliff. If we’d done this at Ivy House, I would’ve been smooshed on the grass long before now.

But if we’d done it at Ivy House, we probably wouldn’t have been attacked.

The rocks reached up for me, thirty feet and closing fast.

“Oh no. Oh God, oh no.”

Dark skin dove into sight, Mr. Tom with his hand held out. His wings beat frantically, and it was hopefully just my imagination, but it sounded like the echo hit the rocks below and bounced back up. Trees studded my peripheral vision.

“Edgar should’ve gone first. Wait, crap, I shouldn’t think that thought right now, right before it’s decided if I end up in heaven or hell…”

His hand just barely at my ankle, a searing light pierced his wing, cutting clean through. He wobbled in the air but didn’t relent, his bony fingers wrapping around my ankle.

I didn’t get a chance to say my thanks before he spun, whipping me around.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. My hair barely slapped the very edge of a jutting rock before I was catapulted upward at an angle, end over end.

“Wings,” I said, my stomach rolling, my bladder threatening release. “Wings!”

Electricity shocked through me, and I pushed it out, shock waves filling the sky. Ivy House answered.

“Almost there. I have you.”

“I need my wings!” I fisted my hands, shoving them out to the sides, and flexed my back—which was when I hit the peak of my arc and started falling again.

“Noooo!” I went back to flapping my arms.

A heavy throp-throp-throp caught my ear, almost like a helicopter, the rhythmic noise was so powerful. I couldn’t see where it was coming from.

A brown gargoyle—Alek—rolled away on my far right, moving through the air like a tumbleweed in the sky. A stream of light soared up through the trees, aimed at me. It would be too late, though. By the time it reached me, I’d be a smear of red pulp on the rocks.

“C’mon, wings,” I pleaded, seeing none of my people. Not able to properly look around, not able to look away from the mottled gray rock ten feet beneath me. Five.