Magical Midlife Love (Leveling Up #4) - K.F. Breene Page 0,108

stern as his gaze zipped around the edges of the parking lot.

Figures stood near the trees, still as statues, silent as the grave. I couldn’t see their faces within the shadow.

“Vampires,” Austin murmured, escorting me to the top of the red carpet and stopping. Kingsley’s eyes darted over. His very slight movements communicated something. Austin made no movements to answer that I saw or felt. “Younger ones, by the smell of it. Cheap labor. Not as dangerous.”

The limos transporting my team stopped in front of the walkway, one at a time. The driver of the first opened the door, and Cyra climbed out, stumbling a little. The driver held out his hand, but she waved him away. She stepped to the side, sucked in a breath, and then sneezed, throwing her hands wide as she did so. Fire blew out of her mouth and nose. A shock wave of heat shed from her skin, not bothering her dress.

“Cover your mouth,” Hollace said, standing beside and a little behind her, clasping his hands in front of him like the shifters were doing.

“I don’t spread germs.”

“Fire snot is still gross.”

Niamh took her place beside and a little behind Hollace, forming the beginnings of a diagonal line. She was uncharacteristically quiet, staring straight ahead with her hands at her sides. She didn’t have a quip for her neighbors or even seem to notice the lurkers around the area. I’d given the revealing potions to everyone, so she’d see them all, but she didn’t appear to notice or care.

“What’s wrong with Niamh?” I asked, feeling anticipation through the link.

My vision wobbled and hazed over, the potion taking effect, and a few more figures popped into the area, one out near the limos, a couple milling around in the open spaces between the building and the trees, and a few waiting off to the left, on the other side of the walkway from the shifters, giving Austin and me a wide berth. Only one invisible mage waited near the line of shifters, near the front corner of the building. He shifted and fidgeted often, and I wondered if he’d managed to deaden his noise and smell as well as his visual footprint. If not, he was not even close to invisible to that line of lethal shifters. Nor could he run fast enough if they decided to attack.

“Niamh’s playing a role, like all of us.” Austin continued to wait patiently, no longer looking around the area. “Well…” He looked down at me, smiling. “Maybe not like you.”

“You’re going to allow yourself to smile?” I whispered.

“To you? Yes. To this visiting party? Only if I am silently promising to kill them.”

Edgar was the last out of the second limo, and upon seeing the vampires waiting around the restaurant at the tree line, he puffed into a swarm of insects and zipped to his position behind them.

“Even Edgar has a role to play, and he just showed that he is the most lethal vampire on these grounds,” Austin murmured, his voice so low that I barely made out the words. “Hopefully he remembers not to speak and ruin the illusion.”

Only powerful vampires could change into a swarm of insects. In his prime, Edgar had been an extremely powerful vampire, but vampires could get too old, just like everyone else. Although old age wouldn’t kill them, it did steal some of their facilities—their minds went fuzzy, they became weaker, and they lost the ability to stalk prey as effectively. Ivy House had restored Edgar’s abilities, if not his mind. Which was why we’d told him to remain the silent menace and, for the love of God, stand up straight and try not to run. He looked ridiculous when he ran.

Movement caught my eye to the left.

“Don’t look,” Austin murmured.

In a moment, I saw why.

Sebastian wandered out of the trees. Austin must’ve smelled him. He was completely at ease, his poise more confident than I could remember, shoulders back and spine straight. It struck me that he always cowered around the shifters, showing his submission to their more dominant personas, but now, around other mages and on the offensive (even if invisible to them), he was clearly in his element.

He strolled through the space seemingly without a care in the world, like he could wipe the floor with every person he saw, vampires included. He walked right past them, lingering briefly, sometimes so close that he could lean over and blow into their faces. If they’d reached out, they