Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 109329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
“Damn. She’ll probably come after me, too. I hate fighting her. She seems so sweet and clueless and then she tries to burn your eyes out.”
“Sebastian.”
I half stopped and grabbed his arm.
He nodded at me. “One of Armendale’s people.”
“It was bound to happen. And someone wants to challenge me, I presume.”
“Yes, but not a shifter.”
“What, a gargoyle wants to tango with me?”
“No.”
“Then who…” Cold ran through my body.
His expression was grim. “The Elder. You intrigued her. I guess, after you got the basajaunak active, she took a post by the bar door. They travel fast, as you know. No one tried to shoo her away. She heard a lot of what you were saying to Armendale.”
“And so she’s challenging me?”
“Yes. Dave said that’s a good thing.”
“I fail to see how.”
“Me either, but here we are. She has asked for the challenge to happen tomorrow when you’re free. And for it to take place in a specific clearing in the woods.”
“Anything else? How about I go blindfolded, too? Maybe with my hands tied, would that be to her liking?”
“You don’t have to accept.”
“Austin won’t want me to.”
“And you’ll do it anyway.”
I rubbed my face. “Obviously. Hopefully, I don’t get drop-kicked.”
He grimaced as we got to the far corner of the field. This had the most spectators. Clearly, it was the people high in power who needed more help being separated.
“Please tell me that’s all,” I said.
“And…a few for Austin, but only one today. It’s an important one. It’ll set the tone. He doesn’t need your help, though. Aljoe and Sue can handle it.”
“Here, Jessie. Over here.” Niamh waved at me from the edge of the sectioned off area. “Would ye move, ya lummox ya!” she yelled at someone.
A disgruntled shifter pushed back from the line.
“Now. Here.” Niamh put her hand on the back of a fold-out chair, one of only two I’d seen as I made my way to this corner of the field. She sat in the other one. A cooler rested between them.
“A mimosa wouldn’t go amiss,” I said.
Not professional, no, but who was I to judge what had worked for Niamh for four hundred and some-odd years?
“Ah sure, ye might as well.” She dug into her cooler.
Two wolves charged each other.
“Now.” Niamh produced a red plastic cup. “The lower-calorie option.”
“I don’t need…” It was straight champagne. “Ah.”
“Ye don’t need all that sugar.” She patted me as we settled in.
The wolves went until one was on the ground, bloodied and giving up, before two more rushed in to tear them apart. Two more fights went the same until it was Aljoe’s turn to step up.
“Jess.” Sue walked down the line of spectators before gesturing me up.
“I’ll be back.” I put the cup on the cooler.
“Be sure to act quick,” Niamh told me. “Ye’ll blink and someone will be dead.”
The crowd parted, revealing Aljoe dressed in a purple muumuu.
“Nice threads,” I told him, standing beside him, just inside the cones.
“I hear you’re pissed.”
“Just about. I’m easing out of disappointed.”
“At me?”
“You get a pass. You haven’t been here long.”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye as his five challengers stepped into the space, the largest that was sectioned off in the field. I had a feeling Aljoe’s challengers would need it. They’d be trying to get away from a charging lion. I’d seen him in action. It had freaked me out.
“I shouldn’t.” He stripped out of his muumuu, revealing his patchwork of scars acquired when growing up. “I failed in my duty to this convocation. To Austin. I made the wrong choices. You proved that when you barged in and set everything to rights. With quick economy, I might add. It was like watching a superhero. I walked out of that place greatly humbled.”
I half regretted saying anything now. I didn’t ever tend to stay mad very long.
“Downtown was locked down,” he said. “Gargoyles, who wouldn’t move an inch for that gargoyle-monster, were up in the air in a precise flying pattern—”
“I forced some of them with pain—”
“—shifters were afraid to show themselves with the legendary creatures flying around, and Cyra was taunting everyone who dared to try.”
I curled my lip. I hadn’t known that about Cyra. She’d probably gotten into the habit with the gnomes.
“The basajaunak covered for the shifter patrol who were all out of sync,” he went on, “and the garhettes immediately went on the offensive, organizing lunch dates and tea and I have no idea what else. They didn’t even need the magic. One started randomly clubbing an enforcer with a rolling pin. No idea why. No one knew what to do. Certainly, no one stopped it, least of all him. She then picked him off the ground, fixed his hair, and took him for coffee. In the space of an hour, a war zone turned into the hustle and bustle of a wary, confused, but calm town full of power no one dared use, let alone flaunt.”