“Ivy House has been trying to manipulate me from day one. I don’t play that game.”

“Yes it has, ye gobshite. It isn’t competing with you, though. That house isn’t trying to beat you in some elaborate game of dominance, Austin Steele. It isn’t tryin’ to rule ye. It is trying to protect her, and it knows that there’s no one else on this planet that can do it better than you. That is why it is constantly at ye, messin’ with ye, pokin’ ye. Jessie won’t ask for help, no matter what she says to the contrary, but it has been askin’, on her behalf. You’ve just been too dumb and blind to see it.”

His head drooped a little more. “Doesn’t change the situation.”

“No. Only you can change the situation.” She sat back, bored out of her skull looking at the calm lake and the unmoving mountains and trees around it. She was tired of beauty. It was time for a few battles.

“I don’t know that I can do that,” he said. “I’ve chosen this life for a reason.”

“Jaysus, lad, I’m not askin’ you to mate her. I’m not after a litter. Lord knows she wouldn’t be into that, anyway. I’m just askin’ ye to finally take on the challenge you were born fer. Things are just heating up. It will get worse. Much worse. Her type of power compels people to want it, by challenging, romancing, or stealing. We need someone that can bring us all together and create a cohesive army. That donkey of a gargoyle can’t even unite the house. Jessie could, o’course—they all respond to her—but she has no experience. She needs a battle leader. That is you, Austin Steele. That can only be you. You have the organization, experience, and brutality to make that work, not to mention a soft spot for Jessie. Yer the man for this job. Ivy House is showing us what it looks like for the wrong man to be in that position.

“I think ye were right about the training. We’ve gone about it all wrong. Sure, she can take it, and yes, she is getting better, but…what you said made more sense. I don’t think she trusts that wanker. She is certainly slow to bed him. Tonight must be another bust for him if she’s wanting to meet me.”

Niamh didn’t miss the vein popping out on Austin Steele’s clenched jaw, or the way he balled his fists when she mentioned the possibility of the gargoyle bedding Jessie. Jessie had somehow grasped the heart of this untouchable alpha. Oh, how the webs were tangling.

“I know she doesn’t trust him like she trusts you,” she went on, brushing it aside. He could ignore his growing admiration until the end of time, if he fancied being a stubborn fool, but Niamh couldn’t let him ignore how much he was desperately needed both in this town and in that house. He was trying to run, but she needed him to stay. They all did, Jessie most of all. “I wonder how much better she would get if she was working within a trusting, safe environment. I think she needs more support than we are giving her, and until she has it, those wings and the next phase of her magic will be held back. This is a hunch, now, I can’t say fer sure, and that clueless vampire can’t get through that book, but…”

“I’m not the kind of guy you let off the leash, Niamh.”

A growl rode his words, his past rising up to haunt him. Her senses all clicked on, feeling the predator in her midst. She ignored them.

“You can lose yourself to your animal around her, entirely lose yourself. She will stop you from going too far out of preservation for you. She is the only one in this world you would allow to magically cage you, like she did yesterday, without seeking retaliation as soon as you broke out. Do ye know why that is?”

“Because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“No. Because you trust her. Because ye know that she is not trying to control you, she is trying to help you.”

He didn’t comment, which meant he did know that. She was on the right track, quite amazing, since she usually had no idea what made people tick—nor did she care to know. This situation was dire, though. The episode in the kitchen had been weighing on her mind. Jessie had chosen a side yesterday, and she didn’t seem to feel any regret about not picking her current team leader. That spoke volumes.

It also spoke volumes that Austin Steele, on the brink of passing out, had sat beside Jessie until everyone else had returned from taking care of the intruder. He was in this, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

“Even if I did agree to join Jess’s council, the house gave the gargoyle the ability to grow her magic. He will not follow me until I make him, and he will not be at his best if I subdue him. He and I won’t work. It’s too late.”

“This is the problem with talking to men. The lot of you are so dense, I wonder how you get through without someone holdin’ yer hand.” She ran her hand down her face. “Ye already have a place in that house. He doesn’t. Ye already have the magic. He doesn’t. If you give in and sit in a council chair, there is no doubt in my mind that Ivy House will give you what you seek—what you should have been given in the first place.”

“Which is?”

“Have you not been present for this conversation? The ability to help her magic grow. Janey Mack, but I’m losing my patience.”

He shook his head slowly, the stubborn ox, and went back to looking at the water. Niamh checked her phone again. No new messages, but a strange feeling was bleeding through the magical link. Wariness and anticipation. Jessie was on the move, and Earl was with her. No telling who else. She was probably heading to the bar even though Niamh hadn’t responded. Time to go. She didn’t want Jessie to leave before she got there.

She stood, about to tell Austin Steele to think on things, when she noticed his head tilted to the side and a crease between his eyebrows, as though he were listening for a soft sound.

The truth dawned on her. She smiled.

“Ye know…Jessie thinks that if she cuts out her ability to feel her team through the magic,” Niamh said, “the link is severed. When she plugs her ears to us, so to speak, she doesn’t realize we can still feel her unless we also block the link.”

Austin Steele glanced up at Niamh, guilt in his eyes, before looking out over the lake again.

That was all the proof she needed.

“I’ve never corrected Jessie’s thinking on this,” she continued, “because I didn’t want her learning to block the magical connection entirely. Eventually she’ll figure it out, but now, when things are so precarious, we need to be able to keep tabs on her in case she gets in trouble. Don’t you agree?”

He didn’t comment, or look over again.

“She hasn’t been keeping tabs on any of us, out of respect for our privacy. Your privacy, over everyone else.” Niamh stepped a little closer, facing the lake to keep things light. “How strange, then, that you would be monitoring her.”

“I’m not monitoring anything. It’s just since the trouble started. I’m…”

“Worried about her. What’s going to happen when you move away? You won’t be able to block her because of that worry, but what if something happens? How do you think you’ll react if you feel that connection severed and know she died because you walked away?”

Muscles popped out along his frame, the air alive with power. Niamh’s warning sensors turned up a notch. Her feeling of Jessie clicked off.

She frowned and looked back toward the direction Jessie had been, searching for that feeling. Was it because she’d been talking about it that—

Austin Steele pushed to standing, suddenly on alert.

“Do you feel that?” he asked, his deep voice rough with menace and terror. “Did you do something?”

“I feel a lack of something, yes. But it wasn’t me. My giving ye a what if was not supposed to turn into a premonition.” Her phone chimed.

A text from Earl. Are you alive? You and Austin Steele aren’t on bar premises. If you’re alive, they took her. Four mages. Five tried, but I killed one and used her as a shield. The rest took Jessie and got out before Ulric could turn from stone to gargoyle and before Cedric could get his thumb out of his keister. They were incredibly effluence.

“Effluence?” she said out loud. “Autocorrect for efficient, maybe?”

A phone chimed in the cabin, Austin Steele already running for it.

Niamh pushed her sweats down and then tapped Earl’s name to call him.

“It’s Earl,” Austin Steele called out, jogging out of the cabin and tossing his phone at Niamh. “They’ve got Jess. Mages—”

“I know, I know.”

“Hello?” Earl answered, out of breath.

“What’s the status? Where are you?”

“Running back to the house. I didn’t want to change until I could get ahold of you. Ulric is following them from the sky. He’ll report back when he can. If we’re lucky, they’ll stop for food or rest. I’ve called Damarion, but he didn’t answer. Jasper did, and he is going to knock on Damarion’s door. Fine time not to be in that bar, woman. Where is Austin Steele? Those mages had magically tied everyone up. They only killed one of the customers, and the witnesses said it was an accident. Sadly, it wasn’t that hairy creature that always gives Jessie a hard time.”

“Austin Steele is here.” She put the phone on speaker and bent to remove her sweats and stuff them in the bag. “He was at his cabin. I flew out to talk to him.”

“Well, get to Ivy House. I’ll get Damarion to call in all the gargoyles. We’ll be ready by the time you get here. Hopefully, then we’ll have word from Ulric. Blast it—I wish we had a way to magically track him. Jessie has got to pick some—”

Niamh clicked the red “end” button and tossed the phone into the bag. He was just babbling at this point anyway.

“Why didn’t they kill anyone at the bar?” Austin Steele asked, shedding his clothes with quick movements and handing them to Niamh.

“Probably as insurance in case you descended on them before they had Jessie. Mages must be watching this town awfully close for them to marshal in the one night ye didn’t show. We have’ta change that, somehow. We need a better system.”