to host?” I shivered just thinking about it. “There were a lot of rules. Keeping up with the Joneses type of stuff. It got exhausting.”
“Your parents aren’t like that?”
I snorted. “Matt’s parents could barely tolerate my family. My mom would show up to one of their fancy cocktail parties wearing some sort of Mary Poppins carpet dress. You know, like the material Mary Poppins’s bag was made out of? That, but fashioned into a dress. My dad would wear jeans, cowboy boots, and one of those cowboy blazers with patches on the elbows. This in a room full of fancy cocktail dresses and high-powered Armani suits. They did not fit in.”
Austin chuckled as we reached the end of the street. “Your parents will fit in around here, at least.”
A wave of anxiety washed over me, the familiar urge to run home and clean everything almost overwhelming. I needed to get the beer they liked, the snacks they had to have—
“A TV!” I grabbed Austin’s arm and stopped at the corner. Confusion stole over his expression. “I need a TV! And cable! My father cannot live without his TV.”
A grin pulled at his lush lips, enhancing his attractiveness. My stomach flipped. The guy was a looker, there were no two ways about it. It got distracting at times.
“I have a TV you can use,” he said. “I’ll bring it by later.”
I started walking again. “I can just have Mr. Tom go out and buy one. He’ll bitch, but…”
“This way…” He pointed right, to a street before the main drag.
“Why are they visiting?” I mumbled. “I mean, I know why they are visiting—they have to get out of the house and they have no choice, but why me? Why not Chris?”
“Who’s Chris?” Austin asked.
“My brother.” I bit my lip. “They probably didn’t want to fly. Dang it, I should’ve chosen another house, much farther away.”
“Are they a nightmare, or…”
An older man and woman I’d seen around town walked toward us on the sidewalk, out for a stroll. Austin’s arm came around me and his hand touched down on the indent of my waist, right above the swell of my hip. His heat soaked through my shirt and into my skin. A zip of electricity coursed through my body, followed by a rush of adrenaline. I shivered as he applied pressure, directing me in front of him on the sidewalk to let the others pass.
The man and woman both nodded in hello. “Alpha,” they said, one after the other. “Jessie.” Their smiles were so wide that their eyes crinkled.
“I don’t remember meeting them,” I whispered as Austin’s hand drifted away, taking the heat with it. I shivered again at the sudden chill in its wake.
“Everyone around here knows who you are. The magical people, anyway. Magical people keep their eyes on dangerous things.”
My face heated and I wanted to come up with an offhanded remark to deflect being called dangerous, but the news about my parents had put me off my game.
“Have you had to fight anyone to retain your alpha title?” I asked as a distraction, coming up on a dentist’s office.
“No one I wouldn’t have had to subdue anyway. Outsiders with too much liquor trying to stir up trouble.”
“Well, yeah, that’s pretty standard fare for a bar.”
“Not my bar.” He motioned for me to cross the street, then directed me through a little alley between two businesses run out of converted houses. No dumpsters loitered along the way, and there was no trash blowing across the ground like urban tumbleweeds. This town, small and cute and clean, was nothing like the haunts I’d gotten used to in L.A. The change of pace was nice. I hoped my parents wouldn’t bitch that it was boring. You just never knew with them.
Halfway through the alley, the space opened up, showing the rear of a business situated on the main drag. I spied Jasper at the street corner. Gargoyles could blend into their environment, especially if the surfaces contained stone or rock, rendering themselves invisible, but I’d learned how to magically strip away their camouflage. So I could see Jasper’s deep gray gargoyle form, threaded through with tan and brown. He was one of three gargoyles who lived in Ivy House—a strong and silent type who’d proven excellent at guarding my back while keeping just enough distance to allow me my privacy.
It was more than I could say for the small collection of gargoyles who’d become long-term guests at a hotel in town. Around