“If she doesn’t find the heart, and no heirs come forward, no one will be interested in this town,” Austin Steele replied.
“There is always someone interested in this town, Austin Steele. You’ve sheltered a great many magical folk here, but what happens when ye get too old to keep them? What happens when the next alpha comes looking for a lost pack mate, or simply because he’d like to challenge the legendary Austin Steele? One day, that other alpha will be younger and stronger and more ruthless. He might take your precious townspeople for sport.”
His muscles popped along his powerful frame and his jaw clenched. “It is a long way from that day.”
Earl involuntarily gulped and thought about joining Edgar in the bushes. Niamh was the only person in this whole town who would even think of butting heads with Austin Steele. She’d always been one joker shy of a full deck, but every so often she went a step further and pulled on the devil’s teats. No one in their right mind wanted to be in Austin Steele’s way when he lost himself to his beast. The woman was mad. But at least Earl had gotten through to her.
“Not as long as you might think,” she said. “Not to magical folk, who live five times your lifespan. Regardless, that day will come. You are a patch on an old pair of jeans. A Band-Aid. Without someone else to take up your mantle—and we both know you are one of a kind in the magical world—this place will be claimed sooner or later. Maybe by the Red Cloaks, trying to”—she made bunny ears with her fingers—“purify the magical race in this derelict town you have set up. Everyone else will be banished or worse. Or the fae, seeking to cast out the human and uncooperative magical people, and capture the wine industry profits—”
“I got it, I got it,” he said through clenched teeth.
“You are not a long-term solution. You are a short-term solution—”
“I said I got it. What about you? You’ve told me that you like the slower life. Do you really want to take up the sword again to protect the chosen?”
She shrugged. “I do like retirement, that’s true. It’s probably easiest for me if someone takes out the girl. Then, in a few years, when you go down in fiery flames—”
“Redundant,” Edgar said from the bushes, and then the leaves trembled, as though he hadn’t meant to say it and didn’t welcome the attention it might bring.
“—I’ll be just fine. No one will bother an old Irish woman with one tit and a bad attitude. An illegal one, at that. There are many porches in the world. I can throw rocks at strangers from any one of them. But Edgar there won’t fare so well. At his age? He’ll be sold to an old rich man for a vampire hunting party. He’ll be the hunted, o’course. And Earl there will continue to be useless until he eventually goes insane running around the inside of those walls, spying on dust motes.”
“Firstly, I am anything but useless—” Earl said.
“Your old employer would beg to differ.”
“—and second, there are no dust motes in that house. I am very exacting in my duties.” He finished by mumbling, “And it’s Mr. Tom, now. As so dubbed by the future chosen. I always wanted to be called Tom. No last name, either. Just Tom.”
“See? He’s almost there,” Niamh said. “Nearly insane. Just needs a few more years of an empty nest.”
“You’re under the impression that allowing Jess to find the heart will solve all our problems?” Austin Steele asked, his biceps bulging.
“No,” Niamh retorted. “I’m saying she’s the only chance this town has of staying this town for the length of her reign.”
“She’s a Jane,” Austin Steele said. “The supernatural is all around her, begging to be noticed, and she hasn’t. She’ll get that power, not have a clue what to do with it, and be whisked away by the first prince who shows up offering her the world. She’ll be gone from this town in a heartbeat, leaving us to fend for ourselves.”
“She won’t leave that house,” Edgar said, rising slightly from the bushes. “She loves it. She’s always loved it. And now she has come back to it. She won’t leave.”
“She has come back out of convenience,” Austin Steele said.
“Austin Steele, if I may…” Earl put up his hands to block his view of the alpha’s eyes, which contained a vicious sparkle. The words nearly dried up in his throat. “Living with her parents was a matter of convenience. The same cannot be said of coming here, to a strange town, where she has no friends and no safety net. Especially considering the company she is forced to keep.”
“You better be talking about yerself,” Niamh drawled.
“She came back here because the house was calling her home,” he continued. “It was time. She is ready. Today she stood in the foyer, staring at the archway for two solid hours. Lost to it. The house is waking up, and she is bonding with it. Her connection to it is much deeper than what any of us feel, and none of us have left. Neither will she.”
“She won’t go for some egotistical prince, either,” Niamh said and huffed. “She’s much too jaded for that. You think she made it out of a battle that raged for half her life only to lose the war at the final stretch? My goodness, no. She isn’t looking for a man. If some clown wearing a feather in his tunic struts into town swinging his dangly bits, talking about love too soon and making a show of sweeping her off of her feet, she’ll laugh in his face and probably jab him in the eye like she did to that poor fool hiding in the bushes. Though Edgar did deserve it, I can’t say that he didn’t.”
Earl had to agree with her there, much as he hated the practice.
“No, she is perfect for this role,” Niamh said. “She’s got fire and wit and she’s a load of fun. Most importantly, she won’t be easily swayed from doing what she knows is right. No, I won’t walk away from her, and if she wants to stay in that house, then I’ll help her do it. She’s worth running back into battle for, even if I have to lose the other tit to do it.”
“Can you stop saying that word?” Earl asked, pained. “Breast or mammary gland or—”
“You think I’m going to walk around and call it a mammary gland, do you?” Niamh shot back, fire sparking in her eyes. “What am I, a doctor?”
“Better than tit, like some backwoods goblin with a stone for brains,” he replied, his voice rising. “Though, I guess, if the shoe fits—”
“Enough,” Austin Steele said, his focus acute, pinpointed on Niamh, thank God. “I have heard what you’ve said. I will think on it.”
“That’s all I can ask, Austin Steele,” she said, and bent her head, as close to a bow as she’d get without someone breaking her kneecaps. Or so the stories had said.
“In the meantime, how do we handle this?” Austin Steele looked down at Jessie’s face.
“We have about an hour before my bite wears thin,” Edgar said, still crouched in the bushes, holding his injured eye with a bony hand.
“Maybe it’s time we worked her into the supernatural life,” Niamh said.
“It’s forbidden,” Earl replied.
“It’s forbidden to disclose the secrets of the house,” Edgar said. “But most of the heirs in the past have come to the house knowing about the supernatural. Many of the candidates know what the house’s magic will do, just not how to access it. Filling Jessie in about the magical world isn’t against the rules. We are allowed to discuss magic with the non-magical when it affects their well-being, their life, or they are poised to become magical. She meets all three criteria.”
“Yes, yes, right, right,” Earl said, knowing Edgar was right.
“Someone paid attention in magical school.” Niamh grinned.
“I didn’t go to school,” Edgar said. “I was a field hand before I was turned. They wanted to keep us uneducated and illiterate so we couldn’t think for ourselves.”
“I didn’t mean… That’s not…” Niamh rubbed her eyes in annoyance. “We’ve all got problems, man.”
“I say we explain all this to her, and see what she says,” Earl said. All eyes turned to him, one less than before Jessie had jabbed Edgar. “We explain our way of life. We tell her what’s at stake. Then we let her decide.”
“She’s been a Jane for forty years. Do you honestly think she’ll believe us?” Niamh asked.
“Seeing is believing.” Austin Steele’s tone was resolute. “We’ll get her a potion for tonight so she doesn’t remember this attack. Tomorrow…I’ll see just how far she’s willing to let her reality stretch.”
“And what about Mr. Magician?” Niamh bent and picked up the white card. Her face paled and she swore under her breath. “His boss is Elliot Graves.”
Austin Steele’s eyes tightened. Earl suspected the alpha wouldn’t admit he was afraid, not even to himself. It didn’t matter who came to threaten this place (or Jessie?), Austin Steele would not back down from a challenge. Not ever.