Magical Midlife Dating (Leveling Up 2)

I hesitated. “Is it too late to turn back?”

“Yes,” Austin answered, “and unfortunately, this sort of weird isn’t something I can protect you from.”19“What a treat. Sorry I didn’t clean up a little more.” Edgar led the way into a cheery though incredibly cluttered living room just off the entryway, with bright yellow walls, sky-blue curtains, and large white barrels lining the walls behind the furniture. Little canisters of all kinds topped the barrels, as well as squirt bottles with the labels either peeled off or mostly disintegrated.

He waited by the door for Austin to pass, Austin’s sweats in a balled fist at his side and his body tense as he sussed the place out.

“How embarrassing. You caught me after a light meal.” Edgar lifted the owner of the leg—a youngish guy in a flannel shirt and loose jeans—and stashed him further behind the couch by the front windows. “He won’t wake up for an hour or so. We have plenty of time. Worst case, I can just bite him again, right? It takes a lot more than two bites for someone to sustain brain damage from the magical coma. He’ll be fine. He did want to come back to my place, after all. Mistake number one. Stranger danger.”

He closed the door and followed Austin, stopping at the threshold to the living room.

“I feel like we are walking a morality line right now,” I mumbled, edging toward a couch choked with doilies. They were everywhere—lining armrests, spread across cushions, stacked on the windowsills… Where Niamh’s house was over-decorated with them, Edgar’s house was drowning.

“Where did you find him?” Austin asked, stopping beside me as I looked down at the doily-covered couch cushions. They looked like haphazardly knitted spider webs, all slightly oblong, with their interior webs far from symmetrical. I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to sit on them, or carefully stack them up and shove them to the side, so I remained standing until I could get a further clue.

“Oh, he was just on the road outside of town, walking along the edge of our property. I stopped to say hello and one thing led to another. Back he came for a sandwich and to rest up before he went on his hike. I jumped him before that, of course. He looked strong and capable, I didn’t think it necessary to give him a meal to sustain him.”

“Still treading that line,” I murmured. “Thank God I didn’t get vampire magic.”

“You weren’t watching Jess train?” Austin asked, and the growl was back in his voice.

“He was there for training, but he doesn’t stay for the flying,” I said, touching Austin’s arm with the back of my hand, hoping a physical connection would keep him from losing it again. Poor Edgar wouldn’t be able to handle Austin in a temper.

“Correct, Jessie, yes. The flying scares me. I’d rather not watch. I’m always afraid she’ll fall.” Edgar nodded gravely, and because I didn’t want the conversation going any further along that track, I veered back to this issue with the hiker. Magical morality aside, it was still a weird situation.

“So…this guy you randomly picked up in the woods…” I shook my head, needing a moment to process this insanity. “He planned to go hiking…but he was out for a stroll in the cold before that?”

Edgar sank into the old-fashioned chair facing us, doilies now trapped between his butt and the seat. Cue received.

“I think that is what he said,” Edgar replied. “I wasn’t really paying attention. It’s so rare I see people so easy for the grabbing this time of year. I’ve been getting lucky lately, what with the two people trespassing through the woods the other day, and now this guy, just on the outskirts of the property. No witnesses, no fuss, and in the end, they wake up none the wiser. I always just tell them they’ve fainted.”

“Riiight.” I slowly lowered onto the mess of doilies.

Austin hesitated and held up his sweats. “These have blood on them. I’m not sure if they are still wet.”

“Oh. How silly of me. Stay right there.” Edgar pushed out of his seat and left the room, back a moment later with a new pair of sweatpants. “There you go. I’d let you sit directly on the doilies, but the yarn is a little rough and I wouldn’t want it to chafe.” He smiled and lowered back down, bending an ankle jauntily over his knee.

“Good looking out,” Austin mumbled, taking the new pair and holding them up to his body. At least two sizes too small. He struggled into them, although they squeezed his body like a sausage casing and ended well above his ankles. His look clearly blamed me for this whole situation.

I stifled a laugh.

“You collect doilies, then, or…” I motioned around the space, trying to get a look at those large barrels or even the canisters on top, both curious about what they were and wary of finding out.