Page 19 of Magical Midlife Rescue (Leveling Up #11)

ELEVEN

Jessie

“What did you think of training, Jessie?” Hollace, the thunderbird, asked as Ulric and Jasper dropped from the sky. A plethora of gargoyles were still running their flight patterns, but my portion of the training session was over.

Tristan had me on beginner status, and a few of the house crew with me. The crew understood the larger picture and also how to improvise with me. Tristan thought they’d help me learn the ropes and acclimate to the army’s strategies.

The army .

I had a gargoyle army. Me, Jacinta Evans, the shy and quiet Jane. The thought made me want to cackle.

If someone had told me a year ago that this was possible, I would’ve shrugged it off.

Laughed, as I wanted to do now. I’d never, in my wildest dreams, thought this would— could —exist in modern times.

But here we were, led by the infallibly confident Tristan, who had to pull double duty managing me and the guardians at the same time.

After a few short days’ work, he’d begun to anticipate my moves more often, and frankly, I thought he’d grown leaps and bounds—all because he’d stepped in about my schedule.

How had Niamh known?

“Jessie?” Hollace said.

I blinked rapidly at him, trying to corral my mind into the moment.

“Oh. Um…it’s complicated,” I replied as Cyra streaked fire through the sky, heading toward the corner of the property.

She hadn’t gotten to set fire to the gnome nest there yet.

The crazy thing was, burning the gnomes out didn’t seem to be working.

They were tenacious little suckers. “It’s a lot to remember. ”

“Yeah.” Hollace slipped on a purple muumuu. “Especially when flying is new to you, huh? Once you acclimate to organized flying, though, you’ll pick it up quickly.”

I headed toward the house in my own purple muumuu, checking a bare wrist for a watch that wasn’t there.

After I dressed, I planned to head to Austin’s bar to meet Aurora and Broken Sue for training of a different sort.

The two had agreed to communicate with each other in words and exaggerated body language, and my goal was to decipher their conversation.

Yeah, right. I already knew it would be a hopeless effort. Their version of exaggerated wasn’t much more than a twitch and a grunt to express a novel’s worth of information. Aurora thought I was intuitive, but I greatly suspected that she was giving me far too much credit. I was about to prove it.

“This is all hopeless,” I said to no one in particular.

“Seriously, Jessie, you’re a fast learner?—”

“Not flight,” I told Hollace. “That, at least, I think I’ll pick up eventually. I’ve got another session of shifter practice ahead, and honestly, flight feels more natural than noticing a squint and realizing it’s meant to be raucous laughter.”

“Ah.” He nodded as Ulric and Jasper caught up. “Yeah, I’m not great at any of that. It’s an entirely different language. Why would they assume you, or any of us, could pick it up in a couple months?”

“Right?” Ulric said as we threaded our way through the flowers. “I tried to learn French a while back. Two months in, and I could say my name and ask for the time. No one could understand me, though. And I couldn’t spell the words…”

“Tristan picked up body language really quickly,” Jasper pointed out.

“He’s unnatural,” Ulric replied. “We’re just going to blame it on that.”

“I could get behind that…” Hollace’s voice trailed off, and everyone slowed.

I’d been looking at the ground, still conscious of my connections in the sky. Now I glanced up to see what everyone was reacting to.

Fred stood a few paces away from the back door.

She wore a pink-and-black checkered suit jacket, buttoned at the waist, with no shirt underneath and brown pants.

The hand at her left side had apparently just held the closed laptop lying beside her foot, while her right hand had dropped a half-eaten sandwich.

Bread stuck out of her lips, and some meat had slid down her chin.

She stared at us with wide eyes, her entire bearing tensed.

“ Surprise, ” Jasper said with confidence. “She’s showing surprise. I’m far enough along in body language to deduce that much.”

“And disbelief,” Ulric added. “Surprise and disbelief. See? The lessons are paying off.”

“ Hey , Fred,” I said, using the soothing voice that had been deployed on me the first time I saw a person turn into a rat. I’d spiraled pretty quickly. “How much did you see?”

“I thought she mostly believed us the other day,” Jasper murmured.

“Clearly, you still can’t tell when someone is lying to you,” Hollace replied.

“Or maybe she was lying to herself,” Ulric whispered. “She watched us shift, for criminy’s sakes.”

“Hey.” I approached her slowly, my hands out.

You never knew what the brain’s reaction might be to something like this.

In her shoes, I might try to karate chop, and I had no idea what sort of fighting prowess she had.

“So…this is what we were talking about. With the magic. It’s jolting, I know.

I was non-magical until over a year ago. It’s a lot to take in.”

Fred hadn’t blinked. She stared at me, transfixed…well, at least until Hollace sauntered closer, stuck his hand in front of her face, and snapped.

Her eyes fluttered, and she turned slowly to look at him. “You were a…a…” she stammered.

“A thunderbird, yes,” Hollace replied patiently. “And those”—he gestured to the sky—“are gargoyles.”

“Remember the other day?” Jasper bent to pick up her laptop. “When we shifted forms?”

She swallowed heavily, and the bread previously caught in her lip fell away. She raised her gaze and flicked her eyes back and forth, clearly watching the fliers. In a moment, she’d re-sighted in on Hollace.

He nodded, as if that were good enough, and walked around her. “Jessie, I’m just going to go change, and I’ll go with you. I want to see if I’m any better at reading their body language than you are.”

“Do you want to go for a fly?” Ulric asked Fred gently. “I can take you…”

“That other night, I wondered if I’d been high or something,” Fred said in a wispy voice.

“Like, maybe I took an edible but forgot about it. Or, like, maybe you slipped me something, and I wasn’t in my right mind.

But I brought the sandwich and bottled water from the hotel this time.

I made that sandwich myself. I’m sober. I haven’t hit the vape, and I didn’t even take an edible to help me sleep the last couple nights.

This…” Her gaze went skyward again. “This is…”

“Okay.” I gave the guys a thumbs-up. “I’m going to leave this to you.

Niamh should be at her house and changed by now.

Mr. Tom…is still training for some reason.

Not sure why. Maybe you guys can root through the fridge and get Fred another sandwich before Mr. Tom comes down and yells at you for looking after yourselves. ”

“Yup, yup,” Ulric said. “It’ll be okay. She just needs to process, and she’ll be fine.”

I hoped so, because apparently Fred had given Niamh a tiny demonstration of her prowess yesterday in her hotel room, and it had blown Niamh’s mind.

Fred was a maestro with the computer, her skill set more art than technological expertise, or so Niamh had said.

Niamh was champing at the bit to get working.

I changed and found Hollace by the front door. Surprisingly, Ulric and Jasper met us there, still in their muumuus, with a pale-faced Fred in tow.

“She didn’t want another sandwich,” Jasper said. “She wants weed or alcohol or both, or something harder. Her words.”

“I need a minute, that’s all,” Fred said, her voice shaky and raspier than usual.

“I almost want to comb my hair flat right now. My mind is spinning !” We all started walking.

“I mean…I’d really wanted to believe the towns around here didn’t have any cameras and that you were your own law, but I assumed you just owned the police and politicians.

That’s what the movies always say, right?

” She shook her head and looked back over the house. “Oh, wait, the fliers are gone.”

“No, that’s just a spell Ivy House does to keep people from seeing her property,” I told her as we neared Niamh’s place.

Niamh gently rocked in a chair on her porch with her basket of stones on her lap. She slowed as we neared, then stopped altogether when she spied Fred. “What’s the craic ?” she asked in greeting. “How’s things?”

Fred pointed a shaky hand back the way we’d come. “You weren’t kidding.”

“O’course I wasn’t kidding, sure. What do ye think, I go around making stuff like that up? I haven’t got the imagination. Where are yis goin’?” Niamh put a lid on the basket. “Are yis goin’ for a pint?”

“Yeah, doctor’s orders,” Jasper said.

“Might as well, so.” Niamh put her basket on the porch before standing.

“I know we were going to meet up after I checked out the grounds, as you said, but—” Fred started.

“Not at all.” Niamh fell in step. “I see ye’ve got yer computer there. The pub is as good a place as any to get started. Soon as ye have a wee pint to settle yer nerves, that is.”

We walked for a moment in silence. Fred looked over her shoulder again at the house and sky above it.

“Just so that we’re all on the same page…” Ulric looped his arm through Fred’s. “When you twist and move too much in that jacket, you give us a peep show.”