Six

The world stopped spinning for a moment as I looked at Austin, a cold sweat drenching me, the very center of my being throbbing. He’d just said something, but I didn’t know what. I couldn’t properly focus. His heart beat a drum in my middle, and my power curled and twisted and danced around us.

His hands had stilled in making the dough.

I glanced down. The room shifted to the side, and I bumped into the island. My glass clinked against the side, and I nearly dropped it. The world shuddered to a start again, but my magic continued to drift around me, playful and joyous.

“You okay?” And I wasn’t sure if I was asking Austin or myself.

“I’m good. How about you? Do you want dinner, or do you want me to bend you over the kitchen table and pound into you until neither of us know up from down? I’m good with either.”

His words shocked into me, and something deep down inside of me growled. My eyes widened and I was frozen again, entranced by his cobalt eyes, then distracted by his popping muscles as he finished mixing the eggs and flour and was about to start kneading the dough.

“You’re really sexy, Austin,” I gushed, unable to help it. “Like really, really sexy.”

He studied me for a moment. “Dinner, then. Let’s work you higher before we get to the pounding, hm?”

Suddenly as meek as a lamb, I nodded mutely and sat down, my lady bits aching in a way that fuzzed out all of my thoughts. I sipped my wine with a shaking hand.

“So you liked guarding your claim, huh?” Austin kneaded the dough, his biceps popping rhythmically, the effect hypnotizing.

“Guarding my claim?”

“You said a moment ago that you liked having your episode. From a shifter perspective, you were guarding your claim. A Jane might call it protecting her interests. You were guarding what was yours.”

I smoothed my fingers down the stem of my wine glass. “You don’t mind being thought of as property?”

“It’s not a property thing. You claimed me, and I accepted that claim. I claimed you, and you accepted that claim. It’s the same thing Dicks and Janes do in a relationship when they agree to be exclusive. And when a Dick cheats, for example, the scorned Jane might torch his car and burn all his crap.”

“That’s a pretty extreme example…”

“Magic is even more extreme, which you know.”

“Yeah.” The word rode a sigh. “It felt good for some reason, but I don’t want to be that woman.”

“I hope you have no choice, because that woman turns me on something fierce.” He smirked and cut into the dough with a knife, checking for air bubbles before kneading for a bit longer.

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“I know. It’s got to be weird experiencing all of this without any real frame of reference.” He pulled out a bowl and dropped the dough into it before covering it with a dinner plate. “What’s the verdict? Shrimp?” He looked in the fridge. “Maybe a garlic butter shrimp pasta…” He reached in and moved some things around, the muscles on his back rippling and flexing. “Or maybe a creamy shrimp pasta…” He paused and looked back at me. Before I could answer, he turned back. “Garlic butter. You can’t do heavy exercise with a belly full of cream.” My stomach fluttered as he took out ingredients. “Or maybe a parmesan white wine sauce… That sounds good.”

“I can’t believe you do this stuff without recipes.” I watched him pull out a block of parmesan and grab a grater before setting them on the island.

“I can’t believe how in awe you are of my cooking. It makes me feel like a shifter god.” He chuckled as he gathered the rest of what he’d need, including a pasta machine.

I sipped my wine, continuing to watch him, but my mind wandered to the larger issues at hand. “We haven’t gotten any instructions from Elliot Graves yet. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Niamh says it isn’t. He won’t want anyone to try to sneak in, and the magical world is full of leaks. He’s trying to keep the repository out.”

“The what?”

He laughed. “Sorry, I meant the guild. Niamh calls it that so much it sticks.”

“Yeah, right, that thing. Looks like I caught a lucky break, not finding Kinsella. He ran like a coward and saved my skin.”

“For now. For all we know, he might turn up in Elliot Graves’s collection of cozy tunnels.”

“Too bad we can’t bring the basajaun—he’d do okay in the tunnels. He usually hangs out on top of his mountain, but he’s equally comfortable inside of one. The roots, he calls it.”

“He’s been hanging around a lot, that basajaun.” Austin set a skillet onto the stove and flicked on the heat.

“He likes the buffet. We’ve got plenty for him to eat now that I’ve figured out how to reverse-engineer that elixir Sebastian made for Edgar’s flowers.”

“And enhance it to create weaponized sunflowers that try to kill anyone who gets close,” he said with a small smile.

“That wasn’t my fault! I told Edgar that he had to sing to it in order to teach it friend from foe.”

“I thought he did.” Austin dropped butter into the pan. It frothed and bubbled. Steam rose into the air and the hood fan clicked on and whisked it away.

“Yes, but his voice sounds like a dying frog. The plant probably thought he was trying to kill it.”

Austin laughed as he shook his head and dropped in the shrimp.

“The normal flowers are getting a little out of hand,” I said, then took a sip of wine. “The basajaun is keeping them manageable. But the gas.” I scrunched up my face. “I can’t even begin to figure out what part of that elixir is causing him such freaking gas. He sounds like a bullhorn. Mr. Tom is beside himself.”

Austin wilted, shaking with laughter. I chuckled a little, because it was funny, even if I was put out to be in the middle of it.

“Mr. Tom keeps yelling at the basajaun to have manners, and that the garden is no place for flatulence”—Austin laughed harder—“but the basajaun ignores him, lifts up a cheek, and then riiip. It’s crazy.”

Austin transferred the shrimp to a plate before mincing garlic, his knife descending on the cutting board a mile a minute. He added that to the pan with more butter. “That house is…one of a kind.”

“Yeah, it is. But if I had a choice, I’d take the basajaun to Elliot’s house, flatulence and all.”

“Ask him.”

“I mean…” I shrugged, my humor dying. “There’s a chance none of us will come back, Austin. He knows we’re going. If he wants to come, he’ll mention it. I don’t want to put him in a position where he feels like he can’t say no.”

“I think you’re projecting onto that creature.” Austin added wine, then lemon juice, the liquid sizzling in the heat. He sprinkled in some crushed red pepper. His pecs flared and the muscle along his side rippled. This was, literally, the best show in town, and it came with a happy ending. Two happy endings, if I counted being bent over the table afterward. “If he didn’t want to go, he wouldn’t sugarcoat it,” he continued. “He usually only works with his own kind.”

“Yet he moved really far away from most of his family.”

“I know what that’s like.”

Austin turned to the pasta machine, and I got up to help. An extra pair of hands to feed and catch the dough-turned-pasta wasn’t necessary, but it made things easier.

I lifted my eyebrows. “I just don’t think I can ask that of him. He’s a house friend, not a crew member, you know?”

Austin leaned down and kissed me on the temple. “You’re a pure soul. Let’s hope Elliot doesn’t tarnish that when you kill him.”

I couldn’t help thinking, Let’s hope I don’t balk when I get my chance to end it.

Seven

I held my belly as I headed to the deck with my glass of wine, the tangerine sun kissing the horizon. Fuchsia, violet, and deep purple streaked the sky. A shape lingered on the ground below, hunched over the dimming blue and butter yellow meadow flowers that Austin had planted in honor of our first date. The spritz of a spray bottle caught the dying light as the water misted onto the plants.

I laid my free hand on the deck banister, looking down at Edgar. “Hey.”

He snapped straight and spun, jamming the spray bottle behind his back. “Miss Jessie, hello. How was dinner? It smells divine.”

I grinned down at him as Austin came out behind me, his guitar in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. He didn’t seem fazed by seeing Edgar—he just set his things down so he could move the barbecue out of the way and pull the circular gas firepit from the side.

“It was so good.” I turned my face skyward. “Fresh pasta is a treat I’ll never get used to, and the sauce just melted in my mouth.”

“Oh, fantastic. How about dessert? Did you have that?”

Being a vampire, Edgar’s food source was a vein. He had no use or even memory of anything else. He knew I loved Austin’s cooking more than anything, though, and never passed up a chance to let me gush about it.

“He had some homemade chocolate chip cookies on hand.”

“With walnuts?”

“No walnuts. He made them for me the other night.”

“Oh, good, yes. You hate walnuts. It’s the fastest way to ruin a chocolate chip cookie, I remember you saying.”

Austin put wood into the firepit and lit it before sitting in his chair and lifting the guitar into his lap. He strummed the strings, the notes rising into the peaceful evening.

“What are you doing down there?” I asked Edgar, half wishing the rest of Ivy House had come with him. I loved Austin’s house, but the more time I spent here, the more I missed my crew, the strange antics of the house itself. Most importantly, I felt safe on Ivy House property in a way I couldn’t feel safe anywhere else in the world.