This thing with Elliot Graves couldn’t have come at a worse time.
“Excuse me,” he said to Jess, then looked at Kace. “Yes?”
“Sir, the Janes are getting all riled up. The Dicks they’re with clearly don’t want to get involved, but it could get…ugly.”
“Get the Janes out of here. The Dicks will surely follow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I did that,” Jess murmured, glancing down the bar. “I made them feel that way.”
Austin walked toward the door, sweeping her along with him. They exited the bar into the early evening, the light dwindling.
“Other way around, actually,” Austin said. “That Jane got you all riled up. On purpose, I believe. I didn’t use to know much about women, but I’ve learned a lot from an insightful and amazing woman I met last fall. A woman who shamed me into realizing I was a selfish jackass—”
“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what I was saying…”
“—but I’m no expert. Still, I doubt she would’ve been so vocal about her desire for me if you weren’t sitting right there.”
Jess stiffened and sucked in a breath. She squeezed her eyes closed, and her steps faltered. “Please don’t talk about other women desiring you. I am…not well.”
“What are you, in a Jane Austen movie? You are ‘not well’?”
Her smile was grim. “That’s the only way I can describe it without sounding like a jealous teen. Jealousy stems from a lack of trust, but I trust you implicitly. A beautiful woman could crawl into your lap, and I would trust that you—” She stopped, hands balled up in fists, teeth gritted. “I’d lose my ever-loving mind, is what I would do. ” She breathed deeply. “What’s worse, I’d enjoy it. I would enjoy ripping her off you and beating her to a senseless, bloody pulp. I wouldn’t even feel guilty. I’d feel vindicated.” She shrugged him off and started walking again, heading to the parking lot out back. “I hate that I feel that way. It’s not right. That sort of possessiveness is abusive behavior.”
“Everything you’ve learned in a lifetime as a Jane is warring with your primal knowledge of yourself as a female gargoyle. It’ll take time to get used to it.”
She shook her head but didn’t say anything, clearly at war with her emotions.
“I’m tired,” she finally said as they reached his dirty Jeep with mud sprayed up the side. “My guard is slipping.”
“Your guard against what?”
“Reality? I don’t know. Just let me say things and pretend they make sense.”
He laughed and opened the door for her. “Ten-four.”
“It would’ve been disastrous if I’d attacked that Jane,” she murmured as he got in and started the Jeep. “She wasn’t my equal, and she wouldn’t have healed like a magical person. It would have been like a man hitting a woman.”
“I would like to see what happened if a man hit you.”
“Yeah, right. You’d lose your mind.”
“Not if he hit you, no. Only if he pinched your bottom.” He grinned at her, feeling a rush of adrenaline. In the past, he would have shut it down forcefully, worrying where it might lead, but this time he didn’t.
Austin had always worried he’d lose himself to his beast. That he’d become like his abusive, no-good father. They had the same animal form, after all, and he’d feared he’d fail in the same ways. But giving in to his feelings for Jess had actually made him stronger. And now, watching her wrestle with her own fear and uncertainty, he felt closer to her than ever. Because he’d been there. And seeing her in the thick of the same struggle actually made him less judgmental of his own floundering.
They were meant for each other; he truly believed that. She made him a better man, and he was uniquely qualified to help her cope with the violence of her creature. He’d lived with that darkness all his life.
“What do you want for dinner?” he asked, driving up the narrow mountain road to his home overlooking the valley.
“Anything. I’m easy.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Who?” She frowned at him, then her expression cleared and she gave him a dopey grin. “Ha-ha.” She rolled her eyes, then shook her head. “I’m slow tonight.”
“You’re too wound up.”
“I know. I’m worried about Elliot Graves.”
He nodded, resting his elbow on the open window. Two gargoyles flew ahead of them, one pink and blue and one with an enormous wing span—Ulric and Nathanial—flying low, since this area was so remote. They’d check things out at the house before Jess arrived. “Niamh is working on it. She’s turned her barstool into a seat at the library, and she has the whole town looking into things and reporting back. She must’ve been a political animal back in the day—she makes pretty intricate connections very quickly.”
“Really? I haven’t heard much of anything. Any time I ask for news, she tells me to stick it up my hole, or some other colorful Irish saying.”
“Each of us needs to be an expert in our own right. Trust her to get all the information and deliver it when you need it.”
“In other words, mind my business.”
“Not mind your business so much as spend your energy focusing on your piece of the pie and don’t waste precious resources worrying about what you can’t immediately control.”
“Right, which is a very eloquent way of saying…mind my business.”
He chuckled. “If you say so.”
He slowed as he approached the house, giving the gargoyles another moment to look around. A supposedly great mage had put a ward on his house, but Austin’s brother had opened his eyes to the fear and hatred most mages felt toward shifters—information Niamh’s research had bolstered—and he no longer trusted the protections. With the right training, he knew Jess could fix it, but her magic lessons had been cut short by her tutor’s death.
“Hey, I was thinking.” He slowly pulled into his driveway. “You’re going to have access to a few good mages at Elliot’s thing. They won’t have as much power as you do—at least, that’s what Niamh thinks—but they’ll have a lot of experience. Maybe you can ask one of them to train you? You’d have to give them something, and I bet Niamh will have a bunch of suggestions about what to offer, most of them ending in you screwing them over when you get what you want, but it would be worth a try.”
“Yeah.” She sighed as he shut off the engine but didn’t make a move to get out of the Jeep. More gargoyles circled the house and grounds now, scouting.
These gargoyles had answered Jess’s original summons and hadn’t made the cut for the Ivy House crew—space was limited, and Jess had to be selective—but they’d hung around in the hopes they could be of some use. And they had. Nathanial, the gargoyle who’d answered Jess’s last summons, was an alpha in his own right, although not as dominant, and he’d led the host of gargoyles on various missions. They also frequently volunteered for night watch duty when Jess was away from Ivy House.
Five gargoyles landed in the front yard as Austin got out and walked around to open Jess’s door. The gargoyles nodded to her and then crouched down and shifted to stone. There they would stay until they were called to action.