Page 23 of Magical Midlife Rescue (Leveling Up #11)

THIRTEEN

Sebastian

The lights in their little bungalow went out, plunging Sebastian into darkness. He paused where he sat at the kitchen table, papers scattered around him. His mind, however, went in a million directions at once.

Light from the street glowed around the drawn blinds, indicating the neighborhood hadn’t lost power, just their house. Nessa was very good about paying the bills on time. It couldn’t be that. No storms. No wind. This event was isolated.

Though his heart sped up, he put his pen down slowly.

At just after midnight, the house lay quiet.

Nessa was in her room, sleeping. If the cameras facing their yard had captured movement, the chimes would’ve woken her.

That meant no random Dick or Jane was prowling around.

If someone were out there, it would have to be someone with an invisibility spell.

He rose at a measured pace. There could be another explanation for the lights going off besides an invasion.

At the kitchen, he flicked the light switch off, then on again. Nothing happened. The one in the hallway yielded the same result. The oven clock was out, as was the microwave. Definitely a house-wide power issue.

His footsteps were nearly silent—he’d learned a thing or two from the shifters.

At one time, he would’ve assumed a person with an invisibility spell could still be heard moving around.

Now, with Momar employing mages with a crapload of power, he couldn’t be so sure.

If Sebastian and Jessie could make a potion for both, then they could too.

And if they had that much power, they could disable his wards, no problem.

Controlling his breathing as his thoughts spun, he felt around for a flashlight. He wouldn’t use it unless he had to, as light would reveal his location. That procured, he walked through the darkness toward the back rooms. Nessa came first. Once she was safe, he could check the other areas.

At the beginning of the hallway, he peeked out a set of blinds. The streetlights illuminated patches of sidewalk in a buttery glow. Across the street, a porch light gave off a weak yellow beam. Next door to that, a small light at the side of the house was on.

Yes, this was definitely limited to his house.

Please have forgotten to pay the bill, Nessa, he thought. Please have been so stressed and sad and busy that you’ve forgotten to pay the bill.

He ignored the pang of guilt at why she would’ve forgotten as he trailed his fingers against the wall, feeling his way. A doorframe announced the bathroom, the first door on the right. The next was his room, the smaller of the two. Hers was on the left, at the end.

He backed up to her door, peering into the darkness of his bedroom. A spell revealed the room was empty. No one had come through his window, and if they had, they weren’t in there now.

Nessa’s door opened with no sound. He sent a spell in there as well while also listening. Her breathing was slow and even, evidence of deep sleep. It was testimony to how tired she was all the time now that his presence didn’t rouse her. Her window remained shut, the spell still intact.

His sigh of relief was barely audible as he retreated down the hall.

The front door was closed and locked. Spell intact.

The door to the garage was as well. Windows were secure.

Random peeks out of the blinds revealed no one wandering around.

Shooting a spell through a wall to search for bodies wasn’t ideal—the accuracy would be greatly reduced, and a good and ingenious magical worker would have invented a potion to mask themselves within such a spell.

Why hadn’t he created a spell to mask himself against revealing spells? Shortsighted.

The best option was to go outside and use the spell there.

Sadly, he was a coward, though not for his own safety.

Only a charging alpha shifter really got his blood pumping these days, or maybe an alpha gargoyle.

But if he went out and got himself caught or killed, they’d come for Nessa.

She’d have no protection. She didn’t have the Ivy House crew shielding her or promising retribution if someone should grab her.

She didn’t even have Edgar, who, somehow, through no logical explanation, always seemed to know where to be at the exact time he needed to be there.

Even thinking about it made Sebastian’s mind spin. He hadn’t had that vampire’s dose of odd logic in nearly three months.

He settled for using the spell through a window, hunched in the corner and trying not to be seen, just in case.

Nothing.

He tried through several others, working the angles. All of them came up empty.

Maybe it really was the energy bill.

He straightened up and felt his way over to the kitchen counter, where he’d left his laptop. Its glow made him squint. The Wi-Fi symbol wasn’t there.

No power, no Wi-Fi, he thought in annoyance, glancing around for his phone. Normal people would’ve had it in their hand or pocket, ready to call the cops.

Of course, it wasn’t like the cops could help him against his enemies. They didn’t even know magical enemies existed. But besides them, there was no one to call. His circle had been reduced to the walls of their house. After his sister had died, it had been enough. Now…

Why did his and Nessa’s life always seem to land them in the stink? They must’ve been cursed.

He didn’t bother with the flashlight. The house was tiny, the smallest they’d inhabited since splitting from Ivy House. Actually, it was the smallest they’d been in since he could remember, but they hadn’t had many options with such short notice.

His phone waited on the kitchen counter next to his plate with toast crumbs. Whoops. He’d meant to wash that.

Thankfully, he still had cell service.

He worked his way back to the table, sat, and unlocked the home screen. He was about to tap the browser app when a face took over the screen.

Adrenaline coursed through him. His finger froze, hovering above the image.

She had jade-green eyes—the result of contacts, surely—and spiky green hair with black roots.

Her lips parted, and he knew this was somehow live, or perhaps filmed and now playing.

This wasn’t some random social media short he’d accidentally swiped into, if that were even possible.

He wasn’t like Nessa when it came to technology.

“The computer is a window into your soul.” The person’s voice was gruff, but the face was soft, mostly free of lines except for around the eyes.

He or she smiled—he couldn’t tell sex, and he certainly couldn’t tell magical type, not with so little to go off.

“Just kidding.” The smile smoothed out into a serious expression.

“But the computer is a window into your life. Look at me! I’m like a Peeping Tom over here. ”

“This…this is my phone,” he stammered.

The face leaned closer until one eye took up the whole screen, like a T. Rex in Jurassic Park .

“It’s a handheld computer, you elitist,” the voice said.

The face came back into full view. “Get those cameras off the cloud! From now on, you keep a hardwired system or none at all. Back up to a tape like it’s 1990, you get me?

Bet you didn’t know they got cameras inside that bish.

They do. I’ve been watching you wander around the house.

Invasion of privacy, much? You need to do a sweep before you settle down, bro.

Cameras are small now. You’ve got to be detail-oriented these days.

At least they aren’t in your bedrooms. I call that an almost win. ”

“Who…” He didn’t know what to say, but he rose slowly, knowing he had to get Nessa.

“Ah-ah-aah.” The one eye took up the screen again.

“Stay where you are. The Captain will get her own surprise in…like…” She glanced to the side.

He caught sight of a smallish ear with a skull-and-crossbones earring.

“When I’m damn good and ready, that’s when.

” The face came back, smiling. “You had a few tagalongs in your setup. Someone has been spying, my dude. Besides me, obviously . Don’t worry about them—I gave them the boot a week or so ago.

They’re good, but they’re not me good. To keep up with me, you gotta be me, know what I mean? ” She grinned.

He did not know what she meant. Not even a little bit. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, and he was too shocked to do anything but stare mutely. This had to be a mage. No one else would call Nessa “the Captain.”

A mage this obviously odd, this far on the outskirts of what was considered normal, would be of a level of eccentricity on par with Jessie’s crew.

It meant an incredibly powerful magic wielder.

A confident one. One who had crawled in through Nessa’s defenses—hell, not even her defenses.

They’d slid into Sebastian’s cell phone, with all its security settings.

Into the energy provider’s mainframe, or however the power situation worked.

This was a level of hacking that Sebastian hadn’t seen in the mage world.

This type of thing existed in the land of Dicks and Janes, where people broke into the government and went to federal prison for a lifetime.

His brow turned clammy.

The person winked. “I’d start jogging, if I were you.

Whoever was tagging along on your systems will know where you are.

They can’t spy with their fingers, but they can surely spy with their googlies, you get me?

” A finger came into the screen to point at her eye.

“Changing locations keeps ’em guessing.” He heard typing. “Byeee!”

The face vanished, showing his home screen again. The lights flared. Appliances beeped as they came back on, the power restored. An alarm or something sounded from down the hall before he heard a big crash.

“Nessa!” His phone clattered across the floor as he jumped up and raced toward her room. He put out his hands, ready to do magic.

When he barged in, Nessa was picking herself up off the floor, wiping her eyes. She looked at him in confusion as she staggered toward her desk. Her systems were aglow, and they started beeping madly.

“What the hell is going on?” she said in a sleepy voice.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. My phone’s alarm went off for some reason. I startled awake to turn it off and rolled off the bed. I didn’t realize I was so?—”

The light from the monitors bathed her horrified expression right before she swore.

Sebastian swung his gaze that way. A map showed the location of the video, which pictured the inside of a small living room. Three masses of human pulp hung from hooks. Crimson stained the cream carpet, splattered the walls, cut across the couches, and dripped from the bodies.

“It looks like they’ve been pulled inside out,” Nessa said in a dismayed hush.

Indeed, it did. The scene was grisly, surely the handiwork of a remorseless killer. The perpetrator had created a scene that was so graphic, hinting at pain so absolute and horrific, that it was a spectacle.

A white sign gracefully spun in midair, like magic. It must’ve been hung from the ceiling with fishing line, invisible to the camera, or else the video had been modified after the fact to erase it.

It read, We tried to spy on Elliot Graves and the Captain.

Nessa’s gaze traced every inch of the scene. The breath escaped her as she pulled out the chair to sit.

“Get the light,” she murmured.

He did as instructed. “Do you think that was the Ivy House crew?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes. They’re making our retribution more gruesome than we ever have. They’re making us look more sinister.”

He swallowed thickly. That was saying something. They’d never pulled any punches, or so he’d thought. Seeing that image, though…

“Do you think they hired someone?” he asked.

She issued a soft laugh, studying the map now.

“You’d need incredible strength and wickedness to pull that off, and you’d need someone with a certain flair for emotional manipulation.

That scene elicits a visceral reaction.” She shook her head, the barest hint of a smile touching her lips.

“Tristan and Niamh. They’re proving to me that there are bigger monsters in the world than I am, and they’re two of them. ”

Sebastian didn’t mistake the sheen of tears filming her eyes. The tension in her shoulders released slightly. This was apparently a message that she’d badly needed to hear.

He put his hand on her shoulder in support.

She’d always struggled with the things she had to do in this life.

She hadn’t had the morality tortured out of her like he had.

She didn’t have the same vendetta against the Guild—not as fervent of one, anyway.

She struggled with being a “bad” person, a damaged person.

A person she didn’t think was deserving of respect.

But she respected Niamh and, even though she wouldn’t admit it, Tristan, too.

She counted them as friends. For them to do something like this—to go to these extremes—when they didn’t have to clearly showed her that bad deeds didn’t matter an iota to them.

Getting their hands dirty was a job, one they had made into an art. Grisly, hard-to-look-at art.

“Edgar would do something like this, too,” Sebastian said, a strange mania making him smile.

It was almost surreal, all of this. The grimness, the extremeness of the blood spatter, the flamboyance of violence.

Yes, they’d made this scene into a piece of art.

An emotional punch you couldn’t look away from, horrified and awed at the same time, terrified that the monsters that did this might be on your doorstep.

It urged you to run. No one wanted to succumb to a death like that because that much blood meant they’d been alive to spill it. At first, anyway.

“Edgar would probably go a step further, actually,” he said. “He’d make it into a shrine.”

Her body shook as she chuckled silently and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Yeah, he would. People would think we were unhinged then, though, since the Ivy House crew are framing us again. They’re issuing a pretty clear warning on our behalf.”

“The mage world already thinks we’re unhinged.”

“No, they think we’re eccentric, powerful, and dangerous, not unhinged.

We have very clear motives and very obvious and strategic plans.

We systematically create violence, not randomly.

We’re not hotheaded in our violence.” She studied the map.

“I don’t know this location. Who do they assume is spying on us? And how?”

Sebastian moved so he could lean against the wall.

“I don’t know, but Ivy House has eyes on us.

They seem to have brought on a new crew member,” he said absently, before he shocked her with what that person could do.

There would be no hiding now, not unless they completely disentangled themselves from the grid.