Earl flying overhead, and I sent a wave of magic so they’d know where to find me, just in case Ivy House had kept my location a secret in order to continue tormenting me. A snap of great wings said Damarion hadn’t been left behind.
I felt Austin before I saw him, a great lumbering beast through the rolling, swirling mists. When he neared, he dropped and slid to me on his stomach, clearly wanting me to hop on.
“Run away,” I said, pointing behind him. “They got him. That guy is dying a gruesome death. Go the other way!”
I climbed on and sank into his fur.
Thankfully, he listened. He turned around and started lumbering back to the house, his pain unmistakable but his determination pushing him on.
That could have been a close call, but the mage had made the fatal mistake of attacking me on Ivy House soil. And he hadn’t felt the need to knock me out—another mistake.
In short, I was lucky. Very lucky. If that mage hadn’t been a self-important idiot, things could’ve gone much differently for me.
I was two for two on lucky escapes. There was a price on my head, though, and the person organizing this sounded like he had a lot of money, a lot of power, and probably a lot of prestige. He’d have mages of all types trying to cash in. Soon my luck would run out.
21
“Do you need anything, miss?” Mr. Tom stuck his head into my favorite sitting room, tucked away in the back corner of the house. Smaller and cozier than the other sitting rooms, it had lovely wooden carvings at the base of the ceiling that moved in pleasing ways. It was the room I used to decompress, Ivy House helping by changing the carvings as befitted my mood. She was currently attempting to make up for the horror show with the mage by showing me ocean waves and softly swaying trees and flowers.
I still hadn’t forgiven her.
“No, thanks, Mr. Tom, I’m okay.” I leaned back in the recliner, my feet up and my head turned so that I could look out the window at the side yard, alive with beautiful flowers from our award-winning (cheating) gardener. “How’s Edgar?”
Mr. Tom fully entered the room and took a seat by the door, not getting comfortable. He usually left me alone when I was in this room.
“He’s a bit down in the mouth,” Mr. Tom said, resting his hands on his knees. “He committed a grave error yesterday and jeopardized your life, not to mention we still don’t have any information about those hikers that he dined on before. It doesn’t matter that you’ve forgiven him—he’s gone against his duty to the house, which is to protect you. He thinks it is time for you to retire him.”
That kind of punishment felt much too heavy for an honest mistake. “Where would he even go?”
“Oh, they don’t go anywhere. Unless you’re talking about the ash from their burned bodies? That’s hard to collect, so usually the magical community just lets it float at will…”
“Do you mean retire like…kill him?”
“Kill him is always a bit confusing when it comes to vampires, isn’t it? He’s basically already dead, so you can’t really kill him again. You just retire him from being a vampire. Make him stop existing, like should have happened the first time he died.”
I rolled my eyes. “You knew what I meant, and no, we are not going to retire Edgar because he wrongly chose a food source. You guys have been idle in this place for years. The change is hard for all of us. That mage had been lingering in town for…days, at least. Probably much longer. Austin never noticed him. I saw him and didn’t know what he was—Edgar did me a favor by bringing him onto Ivy House property, where we have defenses. If that guy had grabbed me outside of Ivy House…” I shivered, that little sticking point a big reason for my downer mood. I might still have been able to best him, but I didn’t want to hang my future on a “might.”
“Have you spoken to Austin Steele?” Mr. Tom asked, standing again.
After returning to the house yesterday, Austin had waited with me in polar bear form. I hadn’t wanted to be alone, and he’d sensed it—or maybe he hadn’t wanted me to be alone either. The others had come back a while later with the news that they’d buried the mage’s body, reburied the skeletons,