Page 18 of Magical Midlife Conclave

“I’ll meet you there, Jess.” I felt his hand rub down my back. “I want to check in.”

Despite not technically being the manager of the bar anymore, Austin always had a hand in its affairs. He was like that with all his businesses, trusting Mimi to handle it, but keeping an eye on things to ensure everything was running how he wanted them.

“Hey, Jessie.” Nessa straightened up, having been leaning over to talk to someone down the bar. She beamed at me. “How are you?” She stood and shoved the chair toward Niamh a little. “Here, take that one. I’ll scoot down.” She looked at the man sitting in the seat next to her. “Shoo!”

The man was usually one of the surlier patrons, and I waited for him to push back, but he blinked twice and almost robotically vacated his seat without a word.

“Too much.” Niamh shook her head. “Everyone will notice.”

“What?” I took a seat, knowing better than to argue.

“If it was anywhere else,” Niamh went on, talking to Nessa, “he’d cause a problem the moment he snapped out of it.”

Nessa took his seat and moved her drink down. “Right. If it were anywhere else. He’s not stupid—he won’t cause a problem in this bar, especially when the alphas are here.”

“And if he catches ye outside and suspects ye’re messing with him, like?” Niamh arched a brow. “Ye’re a mage. He might not know what ye did, but he’ll suspect it was somethin’.”

Nessa shrugged. “Then I’ll give him a kiss as I stick a knife in his gut. It wouldn’t be the first time someone thought I was easy pickings.”

“Okay”—I held up my hand—“wait a minute. What? Start from the beginning.”

Niamh shook her head. “That can wait. Where’s that lummox, Austin Steele? I need to chat to yis before that other lummox brings the third lummox into the bar.”

“You have now exhausted the number of times you can use the word lummox,” Phil said, his big hand wrapped around his bottle of beer.

“He’s checking in really quick,” I said. “He’ll be here in a minute. Who are the second and third lummoxes?”

“Tristan and Aljoe.” Nessa turned toward me a little and lowered her voice. “I haven’t told you the latest because I didn’t want to get your hopes up if I couldn’t deliver.”

“Oh!” I smiled at her, my heart warming. “You’re finally getting with Tristan?”

She sucked in a startled breath as her eyes widened. “I—” Nessa cleared her throat uncomfortably. “No—why, did he say something?”

Niamh snickered and Nessa’s cheeks turned red.

“Oh…just…” I didn’t want to get involved, while really wanting to get involved. “Just that he’s trusting other people for the first time, and he wants to put down roots. You know”—I shrugged noncommittally—“look toward the future and everything. I think he’s here for the long haul, that’s all. He’s not a flight risk anymore.”

She brushed her hair out of her face, turning away to grab her drink. “Oh.”

It seemed like she was trying to get her scattered thoughts in order. Niamh snickered again.

“Uhm…” Nessa turned back to me. “No, he hasn’t—it’s nothing like that.”

“He absolutely has.” Phil nodded sagely. “He definitely has. On multiple occasions. His balls must be so blue, they are ready to fall off.”

“Aye, he hasn’t even looked at anyone else since we’ve been back,” Niamh said. “Too busy pining in misery.”

“Much too busy pining, yes,” Phil agreed.

“O-kay, all right, let’s pull it back a little.” Nessa rolled her eyes, both Niamh and Phil snickering now. “Hilarious. Anyway.” She focused on me again. “You know that I have the kind of magic to manipulate energy, right? We’ve talked about that.”

“Yes. You’ve been learning from the books Tristan gave you,” I said, not-so-innocently.

She blushed again. “Right. And Ivy House had some really good, eye-opening ones. I have the ability to manipulate emotions and intentions. I can will people to do what I want, basically, but I can also trace the energy they use, finding motivations, paths they’ve physically followed, things like that. This is an incredibly simplistic explanation, but you get the idea.”

“Yes. Are you getting better at influencing the more stubborn people?”

“Much,” Niamh said. “She has a lot of gargoyles to practice on.”