Page 4 of Magical Midlife Rescue (Leveling Up #11)

Finding out they’d been framed for that first murder had been somewhat of a shock, Niamh had to admit.

They’d all known Nessa and Sebastian were trying to play the puppet masters in the mage community, and that they’d do some off-color deeds, but dragging in the convocation like that?

Without their knowledge or consent? Jessie had reacted as though slapped.

Austin Steele had vibrated with anger. But the bonds of friendship were strong.

The services Nessa and Sebastian had rendered the convocation in Kingsley’s territory were too great to lose faith in the mages so quickly.

It had been left to Niamh to analyze the situation and find a reason the mages might’ve set them up.

And analyze she had.

The cobwebs from many decades of inactivity were well and truly dusted away.

She did understand motivations and excelled in viewing the whole landscape before drilling down to each minute detail.

She enjoyed finding the one precise straw that would crack the camel’s back and made an art of throwing it on.

A body couldn’t deal in the sort of shady behavior a puca usually got up to without extreme knowledge and appreciation for manipulation, and she was one of the very best. It was why she was still alive after all this time.

Most of her family had been caught during one underhanded affair or other and killed in short order.

Nessa and Sebastian were playing a game, and they didn’t trust Jessie and Austin Steele’s team to be adequate participants. The mages were trying to maneuver on Ivy House’s behalf.

Well. That would never do, especially since they weren’t doing it right.

“Still no clue why they’re framing us?” Tristan asked.

“Don’t be daft. I know exactly why they’re trying to frame us. Two semi-powerful mages, in prominent roles in the Guild, who were instrumental in planning the attack on Kingsley’s?”

She dropped the rock she held into the basket and took out another. Information flashed through her mind. Thank you, Ivy House, for once again making me sharp between the ears. Memory was a blessed thing.

She’d thought she’d waved goodbye to memory at about two hundred years old.

Well, three hundred had rolled around, and she’d found herself in the kitchen, no idea why, wondering if she’d brushed her teeth earlier.

Four hundred? Feck off. If she didn’t write a thought down, it was gone for good.

She’d had a million things put away in “safe places” with no idea where those places were.

But with Ivy House’s magic, she was back to her prime—thinking-wise, at least. All systems were firing.

“They’re showing off our power to the Guild while simultaneously saying we hold a grudge against Momar,” said Niamh.

“We didn’t just thwart Momar and that was that.

No, no. We’re hunting those who wronged us.

It has some people nervous—those we wouldn’t want to ally with Jessie anyway—and the right people curious.

There’s a great many powerful people in the Guild that weren’t asked to play on Momar’s team.

They’re on the outside. That used to put them on the losing team, but now, with Jessie, they have a chance to be on the winning team.

That’s a powerful motivator. Sebastian and Nessa are making it so the left-out mages will want to connect with us. ”

Tristan rocked slowly. “Which is good news. It sets us up nicely, even if they did make us look like messy animals.”

Niamh chuckled softly. “Don’t like that, do ya? Looking like a messy animal?”

His jaw clenched slightly. He was too distracted by the mages’ activities to hide the tell. Whoopsie. He’d just given her a button to push.

She filed that away.

“It’s good they did,” she went on. “Perfect, in fact. That is Austin Steele’s play: look like what they expect.

Act like what they expect. Keep the mages in the dark about what we really are.

It’ll give us an edge for a while. The problem is, Sebastian and Nessa extracted the information like a powerful mage would. Like Elliot Graves and the Captain.”

Tristan’s head whipped around.

“Did ye see the pictures?” she asked.

His eyes glowed as he thought back. He grunted in acknowledgment.

She nodded. “Claw marks around the house, things knocked over…and a meticulous murder scene. Are ye jokin ’?”

“The Guild hasn’t mentioned that in any of the reports, unless it’s in the files we couldn’t access.”

“It probably isn’t. They don’t seem overly bright, the Guild.

Anyone with reasonable intelligence who wants an organization to work in has moved on to Momar.

Even before that, the Guild as a whole seemed mostly ineffective.

It’s no wonder Elliot Graves found it so easy to come out on top.

Momar, however…” Her thumb stroked the rock slowly, and her thoughts continued to drift.

“Momar is very intelligent,” she murmured. “Cunning, calculated, a great planner…”

“Do you think he’ll catch on?”

“I don’t know. I know next to nothing about him, his people, or his organization.

Their systems are shut down tight. Their lips are sealed.

They seem to have loyalty, and I don’t know if that’s induced by fear or something else.

I’d guess fear, but I don’t like guessing.

Guessing gets people dead. I need to get deeper into all this, and for that, I need tech. ”

“Your proposed applicant ended up in Naomi’s pile.”

“Of course it did, ya donkey. What do ye think, I’m going to go right out and ask Jessie to hire a criminal?

As a past Jane, she’ll have thoughts about doing that.

No, ye gotta massage the situation a bit.

Let her ask Mr. Tom about it. Let her ask Naomi.

Austin Steele. All people who won’t give a fiddler’s fart if this Dick got into a bit of Dick trouble.

Did he kill anyone? No. Did he torture someone for information?

No. Compared to the lot of us, he’s clean, like.

Jessie needs time to see that. I’ll go bug her in a day or so. ”

Tristan shook his head. “Don’t you find all this manipulation exhausting? You never strike me as a person with a lot of patience.”

“I don’t have patience for eejits . But massaging a situation just right to get what ye want?

Now, that’s a game. That’s fun.” She dropped her rock into the basket.

“Look up my magical breed, boyo. This is what we do. We’re good on the battlefield, oh, aye, but our true talent is the art of manipulation. ”

He nodded slowly as he rocked, taking that in.

He really had no idea. Back in the day, she could bribe a king’s royal staff, then travel from tavern to brothel, from bard to kitchen maid, collecting information.

Each little scrap was pieced into the whole until she had the complete picture—or near enough.

She could always follow the informational trail, albeit literally, as she went from place to place and physically heard things from mouths or read them in print.

Now? Ones and zeroes. Numbers and code. Cloud storage, firewalls, aliases, and anonymous message forums. It was a nightmare , like.

Even if she did go on the road to meet with people—and she did need to get Jessie invited to a whole lot of mage dinners to do just that—she didn’t know where to find the buggers, and equally didn’t know how or even where to send them a secret message to arrange it all.

Ivy House might’ve made her sharp between the ears, but this new technology made her feel every year of her age.

When in doubt, hire out.

In the meantime, she had enough to keep her busy and things swimming along.

“Sebastian has done right by us so far, even with his slips,” Niamh mused, jiggling her rocks around.

“The slips are a problem for him, but as far as our outfit is concerned, we’re in good shape.

They’re making a bollocks of their own situation, though.

Given their situation eventually needs to merge with ours, he’s making bags of things. ”

“How do you mean?” asked Tristan. “The message boards are all lit up with fear and speculation about where he might strike next. They think he’s climbing back to the top.”

She shook her head and picked up another rock.

Her mind went to the random threads waving at her to notice, needing her to connect them.

People, jobs, and those caught up in the middle of things, forced to bow to authorities they wanted no part of.

Some of those people would make great allies.

Some of those would have to be killed. Others would need to be exploited.

That was what he should be focusing on. She said as much.

“He’s being showy with deaths that no one really cares about,” she said.

“He’s playing in the shadow depths when Momar has brought dirty deeds into the mainstream.

He’s waging battle the way we need to be waging battle instead of the way a person with his clout and social standing should.

He’s stuck in yesteryear. And sure, maybe he’d eventually get somewhere.

He’s smart. But he’s moving too slowly.”

“What do you propose?”

She grinned and dropped her rock into the basket, then set the basket on the ground. “War. They framed us, and now we’ll frame them. Time for the two of us to do a little traveling.”