“Well…” Nessa stood from the crates by the wall, glancing around. “That was probably the fastest, most effective worse-case scenario I’ve ever seen in my life. Sebastian has said it a million times, but wow, mages sure are terrified of shifting creatures. Half of them never got one shot off. Not one. The other half were totally ineffective. Did the bigwig at the back do any damage?”
“No. He was too busy trying to get through my spell at the back. The basajaunak showed up shortly after his rescue party, thankfully.”
“I didn’t get to do anything,” Cyra said with a pout, still wearing her disco-style wig. “Hollace shoved me out of the way, and then everyone got in before me.”
“Serves you right for trying to cut.” Hollace grinned at her. “I got this one.” He nudged a downed mage with his foot. “His spell singed my muumuu, though.” He pulled the front of the purple cloth wide, revealing the hole and his charred clothes beneath.
“Are you wearing a muumuu over jeans?” Ulric asked as he pulled on a muumuu that was ridiculously too big for him. Judging by the too-tight muumuu on another guardian, they’d swapped.
“Yeah.” Hollace dropped the fabric. “I can’t really shift in this setting, so I figured the muumuu was just for show.”
“Right, but…why not just wear that instead of doubling up on clothes?”
Hollace frowned at him. “It’s nippy. The muumuus are too airy.”
“I like them,” Cyra said, checking the mages on the ground and then picking up a gun. “This is—”
A blast of light shot out, as if it were a weapon from a Star Wars movie. It narrowly missed Dave and punched through the wall.
“Someone take that away from her,” Jasper shouted, giving her more space.
“Wise.” Cyra set it down slowly.
“What’s the plan?” Austin said, walking to the middle of the room as the gargoyles started clearing away mages.
“Nessa, you’re going to lead a team to…deal with all of this, right?” I asked as everyone regained human shape and muumuus.
“Jasper and Ulric have weapons detail,” Nessa said, stepping away from them. “Looks like they’re in decent shape. Momar’s people weren’t interested in those—they were interested in us.”
“So it was definitely his people?” Austin asked.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, yes, but let’s make super sure.” Nessa crossed the room to my knocked-out target and knelt down. She took up his watch, studying the face. “Yeah. A symbol next to the number four. He’s the leader of a field crew, obviously, but without a magnifying glass and a blacklight, I can’t make out the symbol or if there are any secret identifying factors. We can work all that out later. We’ll take him and the two others to the warehouse. Tristan’s with me, Sebastian will meet us there, and…Niamh and Edgar should come. Oh, Dave might be helpful.”
“What about me, what about me?” Cyra lifted her hand, practically hopping from foot to foot.
“Sure.” Nessa shrugged. “You’re unpredictable enough. Keep the wig.”
“Don’t make a big show of it,” I told her, having been assured the night before that I wouldn’t be needed for any interrogations. The most useful spell I had—the nightmare one—could be done more efficiently by Tristan. “Get the information you need and call it a day. Don’t let Cyra and Dave compete for who is better at doing terrible things.”
“She is seriously zero fun,” Cyra murmured to Hollace.
“Zero,” Dave said from across the room, not even pretending to whisper.
“The rest?” Gerard asked, his hair wild and his eyes shining. Gargoyles did love to get their hands dirty.
“We’ll handle that,” Nessa said with a pointed look at Niamh.
“Yeah sure,” Niamh said, finishing her beer. It looked like she hadn’t done much more than step into the space. “There’s plenty of land out there for unmarked graves. Or did ye think we should send parts o’them to Momar for a little howdy-do?”
Nessa’s brow rose. “I like the way you think—”
“I’m out.” I put up a peace sign and turned for the door. While I was fine with doing cringy things in the heat of battle, I wasn’t so eager for what came afterward. It was hard to eradicate some of my more Jane sensibilities. Besides, when I got carried away, I became worse than anyone else. It was best just to let the experts handle it.
“Home?” Austin asked as we headed for the door.
“Yeah…” I stalled outside, looking back. “Is no one else coming?”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I get the feeling they want to see this through. We’ve been training for a solid couple of weeks now, and people are wound up. These are all battle species, and they just confronted their enemy. Let them relish in their victory.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
He was quiet on the ride home, unnaturally so. I could sense the tension coiled within him.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
He didn’t answer for a long moment. “When you first got involved in magic, I had to play rescue party on more than one occasion. You were taken from me, and I worried I might not get you back.”
I felt my brow lifting. “That didn’t happen here.”
“No, it didn’t. We have a lot of assets at our disposal that those mages don’t know about. We’re also incredibly well prepared and have insider guidance from some of the best in the game. We of course always suspected Elliot Graves—and the Captain—knew their business, but we’re getting proof.” Another silent beat. “We’re fools to think that Momar won’t get wise to us, though. Meetings won’t always be this easy, especially when the control is all in the hands of the mages—at dinners or banquets, heavily organized meetings, what have you. The basajaunak won’t always have trees to blend into, and if given enough opportunity, the mages might develop magic to see gargoyles near buildings. Or they’ll learn they can just use a heat map.”
I furrowed my brow. “What are you getting at?”
“I can handle many things, Jacinta, but I cannot handle offering you as bait for something like this.
Not given the way we know they treat captives. It would destroy me if I lost you. If they took you.
This is not a setup I will allow in the future. I will handle any situations like this, or we won’t take the risk.”
I put my hand on his thigh, counting to ten before I responded. This was his fear talking. I needed to respect his emotional state. But man, I was still geared up for battle. That situation had almost ended before it started, not giving me a chance to release all my adrenaline.
I gave his leg a gentle squeeze. “I had to rescue you once, too, remember? I get how hard it is to be on the outside. But Austin, we’re at war, and the enemy plays dirty. There are always going to be risks. All we can do is prepare to the best of our ability. We had a swarm of fliers in the sky. We had basajaunak and gargoyles outside, waiting for something to go wrong. We had you out there. We were prepared. I guarantee there was zero actual threat in that room, and even if our revealing potions hadn’t worked, our people have trained to feel presences. One day, sure, we might be caught unprepared. But we do have insider intel from mages who excel at playing in the shadows, and they’re helping us keep as many secrets as we can. Until mages in general know more about us, we have an edge. Other than that, we need to be each other’s fail-safe. Asking me to step back from this