Page 42 of Magical Midlife Conclave

Nice. They were on the same page.

She stopped with a deep sigh, put her hands on her hips, and then popped out one hip. She didn’t turn to face him. “So what if I am? You’re busy, right? You need to entertain guests. So go be busy. Spend all night with her. I’ve got plans now.”

“Natasha,” he growled, “I just flew her around, that’s all. What you’re about to do⁠—”

“I told you,” she called back, starting to walk again. The night swallowed her. “It’s over!”

She heard his feet scrape the ground, and then a curse. It sounded like he’d fallen, a good reason to stay on the street and not run after her. Turning back, she saw Edgar still standing on the other side of the street, pushed back from the corner. He gave her a thumbs-up, followed by a stop gesture. She shouldn’t return.

Tristan called her name, tortured and angry and desperate. Shivers crawled up her spine and, strangely, heat blazed through her core.

Her connection to Jessie lit up with more emotions. Commands of some kind, pushing and pulling. She had no idea what any of it meant.

Across the street, Edgar motioned her away. Keep walking.

She glanced back at the nearest corner, longing filling her, not wanting to leave Tristan like that. It was acting, make-believe—she was supposed to have been wronged—but still she wanted to return to him. To help him up and bask in his show of desperate possessiveness. She wanted it to be real. She wanted the green light to slice up anyone who dared touch her man, like she’d done in the cairn.

But it was all just acting. Now, and in the cairn—believable acting. In the end, she was still isolating herself. She didn’t know how to cross the bridge. She didn’t know how to emotionally reach for happiness.

She took a deep breath, trusted in her team, and turned away. They had it handled.

9

Jessie

I reached for my wine, only a sip left in it.

“Movement,” Fred murmured into her coffee mug. “They’re abandoning their efforts. Headed north. I’m locked in and tracking. Let’s see where our little rat hides.”

I sent that info into the connection. For a while nothing else happened, and then a connection lit up faintly. And another. The gargoyle and shifter that were reporting didn’t seem sure, though. If I hadn’t kept them on the lookout, they probably wouldn’t have reported anything at all. Whoever this was, they seemed to know what areas of town to slip through to raise the least amount of awareness.

That wasn’t good.

“Thoughts?” Austin asked, now outside the soundproof bubble. We could hear him, but he couldn’t hear us.

He’d been keeping up conversation with Aljoe and his sisters, looking normal, while I leaned against him and did a terrible job doing two things at once. Thankfully, Niamh, still within the bubble so I could speak to Fred privately, had been doing her best to keep up pretenses.

“Hmm?” I turned and blinked up at him while monitoring the connections of Ulric and Jasper “helping” Tristan away from the street. Nessa was nearly to Ivy House, Edgar having met back up with her to walk her there. Two more shifters waited to secure the empty street.

Sebastian pulled down the soundproofing. He coughed into his fist.

“Clear,” he whispered to Austin.

“We were thinking about getting some dessert at Ivy House before Aljoe and his sisters turned in,” Austin said.

“What kind?” Fred turned away from her computer. Numbers and text scrolled across a little window at the bottom. Nothing else was pulled up. If someone was passing by, they’d have to be just as skilled as she to know what she was doing. Probably. Like I knew anything about computers.

“Chocolate?” Austin said hesitantly. He shrugged. “Whatever Mr. Tom made. He usually makes at least one chocolate thing for Jess.”

“I’m in.” Fred snapped down the laptop. “I love chocolate.”

“Oh.” Austin showed surprise. “O-kay.”

I chuckled. Anyone at the bar would assume she’d just invited herself. Which…she had, but he wasn’t actually surprised by that fact. We needed a place to talk in private.

“What, are we all leavin’ so soon?” Niamh looked around the bar. “Where is Phil, anyway?”

“He’s up with Dave on Dave’s mountain.” I slid off my seat and got out of the way for Austin to put cash on the bar. “They’re preparing for the extended family. An elder from up north is going to arrive in a couple months, same as Gerard and Evan and a couple of the cairns they assured us want to be a part of the convocation.”