Magical Midlife Meeting (Leveling Up 5)

“I heard everything that was said just now,” Austin said. “He spoke to me on the way here, too. I couldn’t answer, but I heard.”

“Yes. It’s quite a simple spell, really,” Elliot replied. “You just need the power to pull it off. Listen, Jessie, I built in some assurances. I let Edgar have some of my blood—I assume vampires can identify people by blood? It never even occurred to me to ask.” He shook his head. “Now I feel dumb. Hopefully that’s an assurance. I made a certain type of magical flowers for the basajaun using the potion I made for Edgar. I have them growing just…” He pointed to a bookshelf at the far side of the room. It was probably one of those secret doors. “I also told Ivy House everything. You can ask her when you get back. She knew who I was the whole time. She tends to think like I do—we don’t always take the nicest approach, but we try to do what’s right. You can also ask your shifter there. I should smell the same. I knew he’d identify me right away if I was ever in his vicinity, so I made sure I wasn’t until now. Also…I knew you’d try to kill me, so it was best for me to appear to you as that really uncomfortable hologram.”

I turned and looked at Austin while sending a message to Ivy House. “Did you—”

“Yep,” she answered before I could finish. She could definitely hear my conversations outside of Ivy House somehow. When I wasn’t busy being blindsided, I’d get to the bottom of that.

“You knew who he was, and you didn’t say anything?” I asked, outraged.

“Different cologne, but…” Austin wrapped his arm around my hip, his touch grounding. “I think he’s telling the truth, Jess.”

“You need to be pushed,” Ivy House told me. “You need to be prodded. I swear, you are the most timid wild child I’ve ever met. It’s like you lock all your good qualities up inside, and it takes a battle or taunting to bring them roaring out. He helped me even before I knew who he was. He helped you. Listen to him. If, when he’s done, you don’t like what you’ve heard, kill him. It’s pretty simple. You really shouldn’t hold grudges in the magical world. Things change too fast for that.”

I walked slowly to the little chair opposite Elliot and pulled it back a little farther. Austin pulled up another and we sat.

“So.” Elliot ran his hand down his face. “How about I start at the beginning?”

“Probably wise.”

“I had a twin sister. Both of us had great magical talent, but hers was as a Seer. It was…a burden to her. She had visions all the time. She knew what was going to happen tomorrow, or five years from now, or after her death. Good and bad things. Horrible things, sometimes. She knew our parents would die in a car accident. She knew our uncle would be physically abusive. Of course, we tried to prevent those things from coming to pass, to change the stars, but the end result was always the same. She finally realized that when she saw a vision, it represented the path of least resistance to an end result that would happen no matter what. It was best just to go with it.

“When we were in our late teens, the visions started coming faster and becoming more vivid. They were so encompassing that she started to lose track of reality. She wouldn’t know the difference between a vision, a waking dream, or something happening in the present. Her mind started to slip, unable to deal with it. Finally, she had a series of visions about you. How you came to accept the Ivy House magic. How you blossomed into the mage you are today. She guided me through the role I was to play in your rise to power, including the things I would need to construct, like the tunnels your basajaun destroyed—don’t worry, my people moved in the second you left your quarters so as to move your things—and the meadow flowers on the tunnel walls. I knew what the Ivy House crystals looked like before I’d ever set foot in that room. She also told me spells I would need to track down and figure out. Books I could find about Ivy House. Things like that. She told me my path, and begged I follow it, even though it would require a grave sacrifice.”

“And what sacrifice was that?” I asked.

“When I was forty, I walked away from an empire and became a hermit inside of a mountain. Or I might have ushered in my own death. That’s up to you.”

I squinted at his face.

He nodded. “I have an amazing potion for youthfulness.” He gave me a small smile but didn’t ask if I wanted the recipe, which I was thankful for. “I sent a pretty useless mage and his right-hand man to apprehend you when you first got to O’Briens. Remember him?”