he’d carried for the group, making it so Niamh didn’t have to wear it around her neck.
“Jessie, here.” He tossed my shapeless brown dress to me.
I shrugged it on as the others changed. Edgar was the only one who didn’t have to change, but I could tell he was grateful for the chance to take some deep breaths to calm down after being dangled above the ground by one of the gargoyles. He wasn’t very keen on heights.
“Where’s Austin?” Niamh asked, not at all worried that she was still partway through changing. I was the only one who seemed to care about the whole naked thing.
As if on cue, the enormous snow-white polar bear cut through the trees ahead, nearing the patch of flowers that had been munched on. For such a large creature, he was eerily silent, but he was venturing a little too close to the edge of the wood for my liking. I doubted my parents would be staring out the windows at the back of the house, and even if they were, the long shadows should mask Austin’s movements, but just in case…
I started forward to meet him, wanting to look at his wounds again anyway. We’d practiced the tripwire spell before heading out, and it hadn’t gone well—or rather it had gone too well. Austin had insisted he was fine before we left for the mountain, but I knew for a fact that the guy could handle a great deal of pain. I’d attempted to heal him from the air, but I’d sensed it wasn’t working properly from that height, especially with my level of fatigue. If he was still in pain, I wanted to do whatever I could to help.
“It bears repeating that the basajaun might not have been on his mountain because he’s been here, robbing the flowers,” Edgar mumbled.
“If he’s been here so recently, Austin will smell him,” Niamh replied, “and so ye can shut it.”
“Amen,” Cedric said. “I still don’t understand why you are so worried about those flowers. You have a million of them. Only a small portion are being eaten in a place they shouldn’t even be planted. Why not just forget about it?”
“Why don’t I just…” Edgar scoffed indignantly, and I tuned him out. If Cedric didn’t know not to question Edgar’s idiosyncrasies, there was no help for him.
The flare of light from Austin’s shift back into human made me squint, and the searing heat coated my front. It only lasted a moment, and then he stood facing me, his chest rising and falling with fatigue. I’d made everyone fly slowly, and thanks to Ivy House magic, he had the stamina of a twenty-year-old. He shouldn’t be this winded, which meant…
I tore down my block on our magical connection, allowing me to check in with his emotions and, most importantly, his pain level. A swell of agony made me stagger. The speed and distance had clearly made Austin exponentially worse than when we’d set out, but he hadn’t cried uncle or slowed down.
Jasper was by my side in an instant, his hand on my arm, steadying me.
“You good?” Jasper asked, crowding my side, peering down into my face.
“Was the flight too long?” Ulric hurried over.
“I’m fine. It isn’t me. It’s Austin.” I shrugged Jasper off, reaching Austin a moment later. “You idiot. What were you doing? I could’ve stopped and healed—”
The words died on my lips. My dad stood twenty paces away, a daisy in one hand and his other hanging limp at his side. He stared at Austin, frozen, his face slack and his eyes wide. He’d seen him shift. He’d seen a polar bear where no polar bear should be, then watched as it changed into a man.
“Dad?” I said, stepping forward quickly, almost positive the blood was draining from my face.
He blinked rapidly a few times as I marched through the rows of clustered flowers, wondering how the hell I was going to talk my way out of this one. Someone else followed me, and a glance confirmed it was Ulric, who was great at spinning a tale out of thin air.
“Hey, Dad, whatcha doin’?” I stopped in front of him.
He cocked his head before swinging his face to me slowly. He cleared his throat. “I was just checking out the gardens. Why do you let him plant so many flowers? I can barely breathe through the smell back here. Up near the house, though, he has some really good-looking rosebushes. I’d like to get