Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
EIGHT
After a five-hour nap from which Mr. Tom eventually roused him with a non-drugged cup of coffee, Sebastian waited just inside the front door of Ivy House. Mr. Tom was still upstairs, fussing with Jessie’s outfit. The rest of the gang who were headed to the bar waited somewhere out of sight for the star of the show.
The star of the show. For once, it wasn’t Sebastian. He wasn’t the one assembling an outfit and donning a stage persona. He wouldn’t be the one leading the crew or sitting in the limelight. The feeling was almost…surreal.
Most mages craved attention, but Sebastian loved his position in the wings. It was easier. He hated donning costumes and pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Most importantly, this just felt right. It felt like he’d finally found the role he’d been meant for all along: backup.
Soon, he’d have to earn his keep. The world of mages was restless. It wouldn’t be long before they came pounding on Jessie’s proverbial door. The question Sebastian had, though, was whether the shifters would be targeted, or whether it would only be Jessie under the knife. His sources didn’t have that answer for him, just that Jessie was on the radar and would be in grave danger soon. The kind of danger from which a mage didn’t return.
“You good, bud?” asked Hollace as he walked down the steps, his long, muscular arms swinging gracefully and his powerful thighs straining his snug trousers. The guy was so effortless in his confidence.
“Yeah. Fine.” Sebastian shrugged, and Hollace quirked a dark eyebrow. “Nervous,” he admitted, an emotion that would cover his wariness of shifters—something they would understand, coming from him—and also his growing concern for Jessie, something he hoped they didn’t notice just yet. He didn’t want questions about that, not until he had more information from his informants.
“Good nervous or bad nervous?”
Sebastian hesitated. “I didn’t know there were varieties of nervousness.”
Hollace paused as he reached the bottom of the stairs. The front door opened, and a baby-faced girl doll tottered in with mud on its cute little black boots and glistening red on its chubby fingers.
“Ma-ma,” it said in a high-pitched doll voice. It was a voice that would usually need to be released by a pull cord. Not in Ivy House, though. Magic was the pull cord.
Sebastian grinned as it tottered by, its little feet leaving small dirt clods as they thumped against the floor.
Hollace kicked out as it passed, catching it with his shoe and sending it skittering off into the next room.
Sebastian frowned. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“But it was very fun.”
“I don’t get why Jessie is so afraid of those things,” Sebastian said. “They can hold knives and form an army, sure, and they do love climbing trees and dropping down onto their unsuspecting prey, but we all have party tricks.”
It was Hollace’s turn to frown. “Have you gone screwy, bud?”
“I really think so. Or maybe I’m just fitting in. At this point, it’s hard to tell.”
“Fitting in is going screwy.”
“Well, then…here we are, I guess.”
“You’ll be grand.” Niamh crumpled a can in her fist as she exited the sitting room to the right. She unceremoniously tossed it over her shoulder and into the room behind her. Having disposed of it, she reached into the pocket of her black trousers, pulled out a crumpled handful of yarn, and tossed that back as well. When she caught Sebastian watching, she said, “That muppet Earl gets his bollocks in a twist when he sees litter. Watch and see. He goes ab-solutely mental.”
The yarn wad hit the floor and ballooned out, revealing itself as one of Edgar’s doilies. It was like all the others, lopsided and with gaping holes in places.
Edgar’s doily habit seemed to be escalating. He produced so many that he pawned them off on everyone. Sebastian had had to give a bunch to Cyra on the sly just to keep his room fire-hazard free.
“Those doilies have to be a joke he’s playing on us,” Sebastian mused aloud as Ulric jogged down the steps in a pink dress shirt and bright blue slacks.
“As does that getup,” Niamh said to Ulric. Jasper followed him in a much more subdued outfit of navy and white.
“The ladies love when I’m overly eccentric.” Ulric flashed her a smile.
“No, the ladies love your due diligence in facilitating their pleasure,” Hollace said eloquently as he moved to the side, making room for them. “They suffer through your eccentricity.” He turned his attention to Sebastian. “If the doilies are a joke, I don’t see the punch line.”
Sebastian lifted his hands while raising his eyebrows. “Don’t you? He’s spent half a century learning to make those doilies. Those. I mean…is he allergic to patterns? Even if patterns were cheating—something he doesn’t seem to worry about in the flower world—surely he could’ve come up with one that was at least round. Almost round, even—we’d settle for almost round. I mean, fifty years.