Page 10 of Magical Midlife Rescue (Leveling Up #11)

SIX

Jessie

I stopped at Mimi’s desk at the back of the house. Only blood-related family were allowed to call Naomi the nickname. I was given a special privilege. Noticing my presence, she glanced up from a paper she’d been studying.

“We got a gift from a cairn,” I told her. “It’s a lovely blown-glass bowl. I left it in the front sitting room, but I’d like to put it on display somewhere. It’s really pretty.”

She studied me for a brief moment before nodding and turning back to her work. She wasn’t one for chitchat.

“Have you been able to find them?” I asked Tristan as we grabbed muumuus, changed into them, and headed out the back door.

He didn’t need me to elaborate. “No. Nessa is better at the tech side of things than we are. More experienced. She’s way ahead of us.”

“Even with that computer guy in town?”

“Yes. He was plenty good for the gargoyles, but he’s not even remotely good enough for the more powerful mages. He doesn’t hold a candle to Momar’s setup.”

I blew out a breath as we walked through the flowers. Edgar was there tending them. When he saw us, he sank into a crouch, lowering his head, as though that would render him invisible when the flowers only reached his shins.

I pretended not to see him. I’d make sure to meet with him sometime today. Other than that…I just wasn’t able to cope with his oddity.

The fire in the woods continued to spread.

You do have a handle on that, yes? I asked Ivy House.

Mind your business, and I will mind mine. That mage needs to help you with magic. Keep your focus where it will do the most good.

Gracious, she was surly today.

You’re barely staying alive through all your skirmishes, she went on, probably having heard my thought.

Sometimes, I broadcast them. You can read spells out of a book, but Sebastian could make them better.

He could find the best ones to focus on.

He’s a genius with magic. You need him. Find him, kidnap him, and chain him in the crystal room.

If he won’t help you of his own free will, he will need other motivations, like starvation.

“Good Lord,” I muttered.

“What?” Tristan asked.

“Ivy House. She’s…cutthroat.”

One of us has to be, she told me.

I changed the subject, knowing I wasn’t going to win that argument. She’d just call me a watery Jane with no spine, and it would be a whole thing.

“That other hacker guy,” I said to Tristan. “The one who was in Mimi’s pile?”

“Yes?”

“Did you look at his résumé and rap sheet?”

“Yes…”

“Someone put that sheet together, but no one has approached me about it. You seemed interested in it, so it isn’t you recommending that person, and it wasn’t Austin. That leaves Niamh or one of the mages.”

“One of the mages?” He frowned at me, genuinely shocked that I should make that connection.

That meant it was Niamh, then.

“I didn’t know if they might have…sent the recommendation to help us out,” I said.

I’d hoped they had, and that they were still on our team, however distantly.

I didn’t like hearing that Sebastian and Nessa were trying to set us up or frame us, pushing us toward danger without an explanation.

We needed a conversation. I needed to be in on this leg of the journey…

or I needed to pull away. I couldn’t live in the dark, not knowing if they planned to betray us—if they thought that betrayal was necessary, like at that mage dinner in L.A.

Like with those deaths.

I hated even thinking about it.

“Anyway…” I brushed the thought aside, my heart hurting. “That guy is obviously good, but not so good that he didn’t get caught.”

“It looked like he got caught when he was younger. Went to juvenile hall. He’s thirty-six now and hasn’t stopped stealing, but he hasn’t gotten caught since.”

I paused to face him. “There’s a warrant out for his arrest.”

He grabbed my arm and tugged to keep me moving. “Exactly. Which proves he’s evaded the law.”

“But, like…he’s wanted by the cops. He steals. We can’t hire a person like that!”

Tristan didn’t reply for a moment. “How’d you know it was me who disappeared people for Nelson? Did Alpha Steele figure it out, or do you believe the rumors Nelson is spreading about me?”

“Austin told me. I haven’t heard any rumors—that’s Patty’s department, and she hasn’t said anything.”

“You never mentioned knowing.”

I shrugged. “Why would I?”

“Because I killed people and buried them in an unmarked grave. That’s alarming behavior.”

I grimaced this time. “I did those things, too. It was in self-defense, but still. You’re in a precarious position with your ancestry, Nelson is an ass, and you’re not worried about taking the moral high ground.

I figured you didn’t much care, and given Niamh would do worse…

” I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, fine. I see the absurdity in my argument about stealing. It’s just that…

the hacker’s a Dick. They have different rules.

Their society isn’t loose about stuff like that.

He knew it was wrong, and he stole from people anyway. ”

“Firstly, you’re back to thinking like a Jane.

In our world, his transgressions are so incredibly mild, they aren’t worth thinking about.

Stealing? Gargoyles steal all the time and destroy production cairns so they can get ahead.

We have a whole set of rules that make stealing and destroying okay.

Shifters are saints where that stuff is concerned, but then they’ll kill you if you flirt with their woman.

That’s extreme behavior in a different way. ”

We pushed through the trees as the fire raged on. I wasn’t sure if Ivy House was intentionally trying to make me sweat or if Cyra was having an effect on those gnome nests. I hoped it was the latter, even though currently, it was the former. My muumuu was uncomfortably damp.

“Second, he steals from large corporations with insurance, the kind of conglomerations that come by their money on the backs of their underpaid workers. And then he distributes more than half of those funds to charities and people in need. Sure, he’s getting rich as well, but he’s taking all the risk and only hurting organizations.

He isn’t hurting Mom and Pop trying to make a living.

Even in the Dick world, that doesn’t seem so bad. ”

No, it didn’t.

“It’s a big salary,” I said, my last holdout.

We stopped in a small clearing. We’d rise into the sky here and practice summoning everyone for training. They obviously knew it was time, but we needed to work on all facets of battle, not just flight.

“Five hundred grand a year is definitely a lot of money,” Tristan concurred.

“We’d also have to harbor a fugitive, though I’m assuming we can alter his identity and make him disappear.

Not like N-Nelson would,” he hastily added, “but the guy needs to disappear from the Dick and Jane world, you know. Just, like…change his records so the cops can’t trace him, I mean. ” He cleared his throat.

I’d never heard him stammer like that. Maybe he hadn’t been so morally ambiguous about some of the stuff he’d done, which made me hate Nelson even more.

“I want to rub Nelson’s face in it,” I said through my teeth as I pulled off the muumuu.

“Make an utter fool of him. I want him to regret how he treated me and how he’s currently treating you.

With the rumors, I mean. I want to shut him up.

If he’s good for that cairn and the people he rules, fine, but I want to knock him down several pegs and then…

taunt him. I don’t know. Give him a smug look or something . ”

Tristan huffed out a laugh. “I hear you. I’ll figure it out.

And about the salary… I mean, Jessie, you have a closet full of gold bars and an attic full of precious gems so big, they should probably be in a museum or something.

Assuming they weren’t stolen and…well, who knows with this house.

” He bent to be on my eye level, his gaze dulled and solemn.

“How much is too much when someone can help us save our friends from themselves?”

He was right. I’d pay anything to drag Nessa and Sebastian off the dark road they seemed to be traveling.

The two thought they were an island, but they weren’t—not anymore.

Sooner or later, Momar was going to figure out they were the ones helping me.

If he was good enough to plan that incredible attack on Kingsley, one we’d almost succumbed to, then he’d figure out my secret partner.

There could only be a handful of mages powerful enough, and Momar held most of them within his employ.

He could also check on those mages in the Guild.

If he was half as good as he seemed, he’d piece it together.

Maybe he already had and was looking for Nessa and Sebastian now.

I didn’t need to pull away from them, but rather to find them and force them to see reason.

Told you so, Ivy House said smugly, and the fire extinguished.

I said “see reason,” not chain them up and starve them until they help me.

I fail to see the difference…

I rolled my eyes and resumed my focus on Tristan. “Tell Niamh to invite her hacker in. I want a sit-down with him before I invite him into our world. If he’s safe, then we can create some bonus-based incentives to ensure we get the best work out of him. We need to bring our people home.”

I shifted and took to the sky, probably a little late but nearly on time. Probably.

Crap, I was starting to sound like Edgar.

Tristan