Page 39 of Magical Midlife Rescue (Leveling Up #11)

TWENTY-THREE

Sebastian

Nessa was probably asleep.

Sebastian sat on the couch in the living room in near darkness, watching a muted cooking show Nessa had left on.

The hour hand on the wall clock had slowly worked its way past two.

A critter scurried in the bushes outside the window, stopping in its foraging.

After a moment, it slowly worked its way down the wall, not unlike the movement of that hour hand.

There were a lot of critters this near the woods.

When they first settled here, it had put him on edge.

He’d constantly checked the windows, trying to figure out what was lurking out there.

He’d sent spells out the door looking for prowlers.

He’d always come up empty, only finding animals, and so his anxiety had mostly subsided.

You’ve got a tagalong.

A spy. Someone hanging around without Nessa being aware. That meant a level of personnel the Guild had never employed. It meant a new, harder sort of game. One Nessa was barely fit for.

Being off-grid was hard, but it was safer.

Another critter scurried on the other side of the house, this one larger. Too large?

He looked that way, but what would he see?

There was only a sliver of a moon tonight, and it was mostly obscured by clouds.

The streetlamp on this run-down corner of nowhere was fifty yards away and sported one of those incredibly ineffective LED lights.

It glowed, but the light barely reached the ground.

He waited for a moment, rewarded with more scurrying. Large, but following the sound patterns of a normal critter. Nothing to worry about.

He tapped his fingers against his knee. Nessa was definitely asleep. She’d gone to bed nearly two hours ago. These days, she didn’t tend to stay asleep, but she could usually conk out pretty quickly.

The minute hand clicked a few more notches.

He finally stood and quietly walked into the kitchen.

Among the papers in the corner was the pushed aside but not-at-all-forgotten encrypted phone.

They had to stay off the grid to avoid detection, and so they couldn’t use it.

Besides, Niamh had changed the message style, now delivering incoming texts to their social media accounts or other message centers. Jessie had mostly gone quiet.

For reasons he couldn’t explain, the breath caught in his chest. His hands shook so badly, he had to stop reaching for the phone.

He squeezed his eyes tightly and braced against the counter, struggling to control his breathing, to work his way out from under the sudden panic attack.

He hadn’t gotten one of these since his sister’s health had started failing.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he wondered if they were doing the right thing.

Times had changed, drastically. They had a new enemy now.

A much savvier, more intelligent, more controlled enemy.

Their old tricks weren’t working as well, and back then, they’d had guidance from his sister’s visions.

Now they didn’t have any cheat sheets, and he wondered if they were actually good enough to get to the goal line. He wasn’t so sure.

A tear slipped from his eye. He wiped it away, straightening up and regaining composure.

“Harden up, Sebastian,” he murmured. His sister had said that to him when she was slipping away. “Harden up. There’s always a rainbow if you look hard enough.”

He reached for the phone. He didn’t care if Jessie and her crew knew where he and Nessa were.

He didn’t care if Tristan sent Nessa those gorgeous purple flowers or books to help her learn.

He welcomed it, in fact. Her sassy little smile said she rather liked the game, as annoyed as it made her.

She liked being the object of the predator’s focus.

Sebastian liked being useful, liked coming up with that broach for Cyra or a new serum to help Edgar cheat in his flower shows. If only he had a magical way to help that vampire with his doily obsession…

“I wonder how his killer flowers are going,” Sebastian mused as he pushed the button on the archaic phone and waited for it to start up.

The screen flashed. The line inched across…and then it went dark.

“Dang,” he muttered. No battery.

He pulled open the nearest drawer. Notepads, pens, scissors—Nessa liked order. She didn’t seem to understand that a junk drawer was supposed to be messy.

The next drawer had wound-up, perfectly arranged electronics cords. He grabbed the one he needed as a snap outside caught his attention. The cord unfurled as he turned that way and listened. Nothing disturbed the silence. The critters had found something to eat…or they hadn’t and had taken off.

He plugged the cord into the socket and turned the phone around as a strange feeling caught in his chest. It felt like…a release, kind of. His panic attack finally subsiding?

He frowned as he pushed the connector into the phone and set it gently on the counter. The symbol for charging lit the screen. In a moment, he should be able to turn it on.

The feeling in his chest happened again, stronger this time.

It was then that the silence of the night snagged his attention.

Not the stillness—that often happened when the critters had all wandered away.

No, the silence . No owls calling to each other from opposite sides of the house.

No shrill cry of a coyote or the chirping or trilling of various kinds of frogs from the nearby creek.

His small hairs stood on end, and he straightened, absently pushing the button to start the phone while his mind went back in time. Did he remember silence in the middle of the night?

Near dawn, yes. There was a period where the night creatures went to bed and the day animals hadn’t yet roused. He often went to the porch with a cup of coffee to enjoy the first rays of the sun. In those times, it felt like he was the only one awake in the world.

The phone started to life, but his ears strained to hear the sounds outside. He looked at the nearest window, its blinds pulled. That feeling went off in his chest again.

His wards! Someone was dismantling his wards in a way he’d never felt before. The magic didn’t alert him, but the person—or persons—wasn’t strong enough to completely hide the effects of deconstructing his spell. If he’d been asleep, he never would’ve noticed.

The phone’s screen flared to life. One new message popped up. He’d barely gotten a glimpse of the warning before he was spinning for the hallway.

One foot hit the ground, and then everything happened at once. Glass shattered in three of the windows in the living room, caught by the blinds and showering a small section of the floor. More glass broke at the back of the house—the bedrooms.

Nessa!

He put on a burst of speed. His socks slid against the polished wood floor as he tried to turn the corner. Ripping sounded behind him as his shoulder rammed into the hallway entrance corner. The blinds were coming down.

Magic flared all around him, shot from the windows.

It blackened the wall near his face and flew into the hallway by his side.

More glass shattered, and he realized people had surrounded the house.

They’d brought a hell of an arsenal. Momar really wanted Elliot Graves.

If Sebastian and Nessa were caught, they’d be mercilessly tortured for information.

Heart in his throat, knowing he had to somehow get them out of here, he turned to throw up a defense, and a shot hit his barrier.

Nessa screamed from behind her closed door.

His feet pounded the wood. A flare of light caught his notice out of the corner of his eye, and a shot of magic zipped behind him as he ran past the bathroom.

Nearly at his room, he constructed another magical barrier. A black boot stepped out from the shadows, followed by a big body and a face in a ski mask.

A club swung around before he could further raise his hands. The hard wood struck his head as Nessa screamed again.

Blackness rushed in.

Nessa

Terror squeezed her heart as a knee was braced on the center of her back.

Her hands were ripped behind her before she could reach her knife.

A zip tie secured her wrists, and rough hands grabbed her shoulders to pull her upper body off the ground.

A bag was yanked down over her head and a string pulled tight to keep it there.

Her breathing accelerated as adrenaline flooded her body. Shouting and thumps came from the hallway, the sounds of feet running and then someone hitting the floor.

Her bedroom door didn’t burst open as Sebastian came to save her. Instead, all she heard was boots scraping the ground. The thumps must have been Sebastian.

Panic froze her as two people jerked her to her feet, one on each arm. They walked her forward, stopping at the door to open it.

Someone in the hallway grunted. Something slid along the ground, and then everyone was moving. They’d picked Sebastian up. He was limp, knocked out. Not walking.

Oh, God.

She reached for her magic. Not the mage kind, which she couldn’t do without her hands, but the energy kind.

The kind Tristan had helped her realize and wanted her to learn.

It was coercion magic very few people possessed, a mood-altering talent that, unlike a spell, was mostly undetectable.

If she were powerful and experienced enough, she could bend people to her will.

It seeped into her, battling the adrenaline.

She’d never practiced in heightened circumstances.

It wasn’t a magic that could be turned on and off, fired at will.

It had to live inside the wielder, always there, used with finesse lest the enemy notice the foreign emotional sensation and rail against it.

She didn’t have much finesse now, and she sure didn’t have the presence of mind to work through her terror.

Her energy swirled around her, heating her in that way it did. Tingling through her body. Reaching for the people holding her arms. Feeling around the room for others.

Her heart sank. The room was full of them, one carrying Sebastian and the rest hurrying for the front door.

Even if her escorts released her, the others would grab her.

If they dropped her, still more were on hand.

Eventually, they would realize what she was doing, even if they didn’t know how, and they’d knock her out.

She pulled the robust part of her energy closer and only left fingers of magic floating. She’d at least keep tabs on the enemy.

Cold air gushed in from the front door, and Nessa shivered. All she wore was an oversized T-shirt and panties. She hadn’t dressed for the occasion because she’d put her faith in Sebastian’s wards and their style of living. Stupid.

The air grew colder until she could tell they were outside.

Her bare feet hit the frigid cement of the porch.

She felt her way down the steps but was too slow, and her captives dragged her forward.

Her toes and the tops of her feet scratched against the walkway, tearing her skin.

She tried to get her feet under her again, but the people holding her didn’t slow, nor did they lift her that little bit to help.

They were content to drag her like an animal carcass.

The frostbitten grass of the lawn was a welcome relief. They cut across, went right, and then crossed the street. Branches scraped across the top of her hood. The crunch of boots echoed through the wilderness in front of her. She was the last in line, and her handlers were the slowest.

Water gurgling through the rocks announced the creek. Freezing water doused her feet and licked her ankles, then calves, as they waded through. At least their boots would fill with the icy water. They could share in her misery.

Murmurs filtered back to her, but she couldn’t make out the words.

The groups split. Sebastian was carried left with most of the enemy, while she and her two captors went right.

Sebastian was the dangerous prize. Once he was properly secured, he could be plied for information, then reprogrammed and used.

She was merely a source of information. They’d torture it out of her and then discard her like trash.

At least he had time. They’d handle him with some care. If she could get out of this mess, she could call Ivy House and beg them to save him. They’d have the ability, assuming they could find the holding facilities.

If she could get out of this.

Tears leaking from her eyes, worried she’d never see Sebastian again, she reached for her magic.