Fear kindled within me. Her focus on ignoring her pain was so acute that her eyes were closed. Air dried up in my lungs, no more coming through my closed-off throat.

No one was coming to help me.

With Austin across town, maybe no one could.

I released a hand from around her wrist and reached for my pocket, for my knife Cheryl, but claws raked across my side. I’d changed into my gargoyle form and completely forgotten about it. I had claws! Why wasn’t I using my claws?

Blackness clouded my vision, my head light. A rush of dark rage rose through me, fueling my resolve. I punched my claws into her stomach, piercing flesh. She groaned but didn’t relent. I ripped down, opening thick, messy gashes that spilled blood down on top of me. Still she held on. This woman was tenacious. I punched into her chest next, then her neck, ripping to one side. The sickly gash that opened up would’ve killed a human. She merely flinched, one hand losing strength and nearly reaching for her neck.

It was all the leeway I’d get.

I knocked her weak hand off my throat, pried the second one away, and then shoved her back. As I did, I hit her with another punch of magic that blasted her up and off.

Throat bruised, breathing ragged, I hopped onto my feet. Pulling up every ounce of power I possessed, I sent my own thin slice of magic, the nastiest spell in the Ivy House library. It cut through the air, straight for her. Her eyes widened and she poofed into her phoenix form and spread her mouth wide to catch the spell. She swallowed the spell, and I immediately sent another. This one was weaker—exhaustion was setting in—but hopefully still strong enough to beat her down.

But it didn’t have the chance. Before the next spell could reach her, she squeaked and then burst into flames, falling into a pile of smoldering ash.

The second, and now unnecessary, blast of magic continued past her, heading straight for the basajaun, who’d snuck in at some point, as if taking in a matinee movie. He was hunkered down in the tree behind the phoenix, a terrible location to watch the fight.

He dove out of the way before I could do more than holler, “Loork oww-t!”

My spell crashed into the large pine and blasted a hole into the trunk. Wood crackled and the tree shivered. I held my breath, wondering if it was going to come down. Silence descended on us, everyone else clearly wondering the same thing. Loud pops and crackles preceded the tree shaking, starting to lean, gaining speed.

“Get out of the way!” Hollace yelled, running for me.

Nathanial got there first, wrapping his arms around my middle. His powerful wings beat at the air, and we darted skyward, gravity ripping at us, the speed thrilling. The pine fell, but we were already up over the treetops, still gaining altitude.

“Phoe-nix kii-llerr,” Nathanial said in my ear, his speech within his gargoyle form amazing, his pride unmistakable.

I wanted to tell him that she’d nearly been the victor, to ask why they’d all sat watching while she nearly strangled me, but it would’ve been too arduous with my gargoyle mouth. I’d chastise everyone later. Instead, I relaxed in his grip, pointed at the open horizon, and said, “Fll-y.”

He altered his hold to be more comfortable and then shot out into the big blue horizon, the others joining us in no time.

I had enough power and perseverance to take down a phoenix.

Cyra didn’t fight dirty, though, and a lot of mages did. Elliot surely would. If I gave him the opportunity. Which was why I intended to hit him with my most powerful spell the second he was in my sights.

Three

“Another!” Niamh picked up her glass without looking up from her laptop and rattled the ice cubes within it. The evening was coming on, and she sensed Jessie was on her way to the bar to check in. Niamh had to finish up before she got there. The name of the game was to keep all nonessential information from her until she could handle bad news.

Lately, Jessie could barely handle good news.

“Hey.” Ulric stopped behind Jessie’s open seat, recently evacuated by some tall and thick yoke who slobbered a lot. One of Austin’s flunkies, no doubt. Some of the eejits who came to this town to join the pack were as useless as teats on a bull. “Any news?”

Niamh clicked a few keys on the laptop. “Like what, a call from Elliot with a detailed schedule, a map of his premises, and an explanation of his motives these last lock’a months?”

“In a good mood, then?”

“I’m always in a good mood until someone asks stupid questions.” She clicked through to another magical peon’s social media page. Nothing was really secret these days. It had been so much harder to find information when all a body had to go on were newspapers and rumors from unreliable sources. Now younger people posted their whole lives on social media, desperate to share each fart. Niamh was making incredible progress getting back up to speed on the goings-on in the magical world, but some information remained elusive. And most of it centered on Elliot Graves.

“Did Jessie say anything about officially bringing the new people onto the Ivy House crew?” Ulric asked.

Niamh jotted down a vague post about “the snake” inviting new friends into its lair. That had to be about Elliot. Which meant the peon’s boss might be another of the attendees.

“Yeah, she plans to make them official when Cyra regains her human form. In a couple days, probably.”

“She going to ask them all?”

“Yeah. They’ll all accept, too. It still leaves us with open slots, but Austin Steele can fill in the gaps for now. She’s got enough good people to be gettin’ on with. It’s her that we need to keep our eye on. She is still very new to this world.” Niamh dug through a few more posts before clicking onto the poster’s profile. None of the other posts proved useful, so she clicked through to one of the eejit’s other social media platforms, handily listed on his profile page.

“Yup.” She shook her head, turned to the beginning of her notebook, and made a checkmark. “Rufus Fernsby has definitely been invited, and it sounds like he’s accepted. That makes five mages I’m almost positive are going. Elliot Graves is making a party of it with some experienced, highly dangerous mages. He’s planning on re-entering the magical world, I think, and he’s working on his connections to do it.”

“How does Jessie fit into that plan? She’s powerful as hell, I think we can all agree on that, but even I can see she is…not where her power level says she should be.”

“She doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground, ye mean.” Niamh glanced down at the robust list of mages. Once they would’ve shat themselves to get an audience with Elliot Graves. Now…

“Something I didn’t expect…” Niamh said as she flipped through her notebook. “The Anal Repository, as a few people call the guild, is a full-fledged outfit now. Before I came here, they were nothing. Not even worthy of a name. It wasn’t until Sebastian mentioned them that I pulled me head out of me arse and realized they’ve blundered into some power.”

“The Mages’ Guild?” Ulric leaned over the chair and put up his hand for one of the bartenders to see him. Why they needed help noticing him, what with his crazy hair, Niamh did not know. She couldn’t help but be sidetracked by that bright shade of pink every time he walked into the room. “Yeah,” he said, “they’ve been corrupt for years. They heft their weight around to keep other operatives from getting off the ground. Austin Steele’s brother, Kingsley, talked about his efforts to try to get the shifters to come together nationally. It seemed like every time he was close to making something happen, the guild or that nutsack crime boss Momar stepped in and hamstrung him. When he was here, he was trying to keep his hard-faced alpha thing going, but I could tell he was frustrated.”

“Just as soon as Austin Steele is up and running, he’ll make it happen, just ye wait,” Niamh murmured, shutting down her laptop and stowing it. Jessie was nearly there, walking slowly, clearly trying to work through her bad mood. “Still, the Anal Repository has some clout, and they’re allowed to police their own.”

“Have been for a while.”

“Right. Which is something ye might’ve mentioned when Jessie was getting ready to battle—and potentially kill—that idiot mage a couple of weeks ago. Kinsella is firmly established in their crap network and she is not. If she’d killed him, she would’ve had that damn repository breathing down her neck.”

“They would’ve been up her ass, actually, and I figured you knew.”

Niamh glared at him, her patience quickly running out. “Ye must be the stupidest smart fella I know. The lot of us have been practically dormant in this small town for…years. Decades! We didn’t know when, or if, someone would show up to claim the Ivy House magic. We’d all but retired. Then Jessie came to us without any knowledge of magic, so our focus needed to be on training. We don’t—or didn’t—know bollocks about the current goings-on in the magical world. Hopelessly blind, so we were. How did ye not see that?”

He pulled his lips to the side and squinted one eye as if aiming. “I was scrambling to figure out how to be part of the team and clearly missed the mark.”

“Yes, ye certainly did,” she said, then picked up her glass and shook it aggressively, the ice cubes making a sound like shrill bells. Donna down the bar put up her finger in a just a moment gesture, waiting on a group of younger women with too much booze and too few clothes. “Well, it’s a good thing she didn’t slit his throat as she oughta’ve, because the repository would’ve held an inquiry. Austin Steele wouldn’t have let them punish her, and it would’ve led to war. A war the shifters aren’t ready to fight. It would’ve been a grand ol’ mess, sure enough.”

“Jessie has enough money to buy the guild.”

“Momar basically owns them, from what I’ve gleaned, and he would never allow it. He hates shifters something fierce. That poor wee lad Sebastian wasn’t telling fibs about that. No, it’s lucky for us that useless bugger Kinsella took off. The only problem is, he’ll resurface eventually, and then we’ll have a problem on our hands.”