Well. He’d known better than to expect help from anyone but himself. Now he just had to figure out how the hell to work magic and save his partner.
“Incoming,” Granny sang out, and she and Sue both took several steps away from the statue.
Alejandro looked around, ready to draw his gun, but he didn’t see anything. “What are you talking about?”
Sue pointed to the area just to the left of Mac, where an oval shimmer of light was starting to form.
“I thought you warded this garden against magical entry,” Rose’s grandmother accused.
Sue nodded, rolling up her sleeves. “I did. Watch out.”
Alejandro looked at the oval again and grinned. He held up a hand before Sue could try to blast it.
“It’s okay. It’s the cavalry.”
Lord Justice of Atlantis, half-brother to the king, stepped through first. His long braid of swirling blue and black hair still reached his waist, and his very deadly sword still stuck up from its scabbard on his back. His sharp gaze swept the area before returning to Alejandro, and he bowed.
“You called us, and we came,” he said, and Alejandro knew it was just as likely that the “us” referred to the dual natures of Justice’s personality as it did to actual other people. But Ven stepped through the portal, and then Alaric, and Alejandro blew out a sigh of relief.
Now things would definitely work out. The King’s Vengeance, also King Conlan’s brother, and Alaric, High Priest of Atlantis, were each as deadly and magically powerful on their own as Lord Justice. The trio? Unstoppable.
“Thank you,” Alejandro said when the portal winked out of existence, so he knew nobody else was coming through. “I have a big problem.”
“Oh, honey, you are a cutie patootie,” Granny told Alaric, sidling up to him.
Alejandro’s head nearly exploded at the sight of the expression on the face of the five-hundred-year-old high priest—the most powerful Atlantean of all time, or so he’d heard—as Rose’s grandmother leered at him.
Alaric’s green gaze was ice. Grown men would run screaming for their mothers at the sight of that gaze. “I beg your pardon, Sorceress?”
Granny grinned and reached up and pinched Alaric’s cheek.
Ven howled with laughter. Howled. There was no other word for it. He doubled over and slapped his knee and still kept laughing.
“We prefer witch, Wizard,” Sue said, still unhappy with the intrusion into her territory, Alejandro guessed from the look on her face.
He hastened to make introductions. “Senora Cardinal, Abuelita Cardinal, please allow me to present Lord Alaric, High Priest of Atlantis, and Lord Ven and Lord Justice, brothers to the king.”
Sue nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” Sue said, sounding anything but.
“Welcome to the home of the Cardinal witches, boys,” Granny said, chuckling. “We don’t get royalty around here much, if you don’t count the new Burger Emperor place downtown. I hope you don’t expect me to curtsy. Bad knees since the 1980s.”
Alejandro suppressed the urge to clutch his head, but Ven just started laughing again.
“Oh, I love you, ma’am,” Ven told Granny. “Please, call me Ven. I think we’re going to be great friends.”
“I don’t need friends. I find them burdensome,” Alaric said, nodding briefly to the two witches and then walking over to the statue. “Basilisk? You tried the usual potions?”
Sue stepped up next to him, professional interest apparently winning out over annoyance, and the two of them started talking remedies.
Justice drew his sword. “We will do a perimeter sweep,” he announced, before striding off.
“Still warm and fuzzy as ever, as you see,” Ven told Alejandro, who had to smile.
“I don’t understand ‘fuzzy,’ but I think I get your meaning.”
“So, we’re glad to help, but aren’t they a little old for you?” Ven jerked his head a little toward the witches. “We need to find you a woman your own age.”
Alejandro’s spine tingled with the awareness of being watched, and he slowly turned around to see Rose staring at him. The imprint of that wild, sexy kiss she’d given him burned on his lips and every fiber of his being screamed want. Need.
“Oh, hello, Gorgeous. I begin to understand a lot more,” Ven said, bowing deeply toward Rose.
Possessiveness like nothing he’d ever known roared through Alejandro. “Stay away from her, Your Majesty, or I will kick your royal ass for you,” he growled.
Ven turned amused eyes to him. “So, it’s like that, is it? You’re toast, buddy. Be sure to invite us to the wedding.”
Rose, who hopefully hadn’t heard any of that, clenched her hands into fists at her sides and marched into the garden right toward them. “Who are you, and what the hell is going on?”