It took him two trips, the witches packed in the bed like sardines, but he delivered thirteen imposing women to the underground parking garage. Safe from aerial magical assaults, dressed in black tactical gear that made identifying them as the good guys easy, they unloaded their warding supplies.
The wards would cost us time to build, but the witchborn fae coven would waste more time unraveling them bit by bit.
“There you are.” Midas nudged a drooping fern frond out of his way. “Are you hiding?”
Leave it to Bishop to tattle on me for escaping the room for a breather.
The traitor.
“Why would you think that?” I straightened from my hunch. “Just because I’m standing in a dark corner behind a few tall plants?”
He saw too much, as usual, and I loved him for it. I got skilled at conning Boaz over the years, as all little sisters do, but it was different with Midas. He might as well have one of the coven’s X-ray frames. He saw me, saw through me, that clearly.
Softly, as if his concern might spook me, he murmured, “It’s okay to need a moment.”
“I can need a moment later.”
“There never seems to be a later with us.”
All the good intentions in the world meant nothing if we didn’t make time for one another.
The world could really do us a solid by not catching fire every time we tried for a date night.
“You’re right.” I linked my fingers at my navel. “I’m sorry I sprung the Ambrose thing on you.”
“You wanted to wait for the right moment to explain it to me.” He eased closer. “I get that.”
“I could have handled it better.”
Unraveling my tangled fingers, he took my hands. “Do you know why I proposed to you when I did?”
“Your mom threatened to beat you up if you didn’t make an honest woman out of me?”
“I wanted the timing to be perfect. I wanted everything just right. I wanted to sweep you off your feet.”
“Well, mission accomplished.” I flashed my ring at him. “I’m a very happy girl, if you can’t tell.”
“I can tell, and that helped me come to an important decision.”
“You can’t have the ring back.” I tucked my hand against my chest. “It’s mine. No refunds or exchanges.”
“The point I’m trying to make,” he soldiered on, “is we don’t have the luxury of perfection. We gave that up when we decided to be leaders. We sacrifice for our people, and that starts at home, with us. You and I will always pay the most for the choices we’ve made that brought us here.”
“You’re making me nervous, Stud.”
“We have to stop waiting,” he said patiently, one eye twitching at the nickname. “We have to be willing to live our lives, even if it’s in the eye of a hurricane.”
Leaning into him, I wrapped my arms around his waist. “I like that.”
Heavy bootsteps thumped in our direction, coming straight for us.
“Oh, hey.” Ford skidded to a halt as he spotted me. “Everyone’s looking for you.”
“Yeah.” I mashed my face into Midas’s shirt. “That’s why I’m here.”
Noticing our embrace, Ford took a step back. “I’m not interrupting something, am I?”
“No.” I forced myself to let go of Midas. “We’re done here.”
As tempting as it was to plunge my head into potting soil, I couldn’t go ostrich in front of witnesses.
“Oh, hey.” Lisbeth smacked into Ford’s back. “Everyone’s looking for you guys.”
Craning my neck, I cupped my ear. “Is there an echo in here?”
“You’re one to talk.” She poked me in the arm. “You and Midas finish each other’s sentences.”
“I have thoughts, I start to voice them, and then she finishes for me with her opinion,” Midas clarified. “It’s not finishing my sentences so much as tweaking them until I’m saying what she wants to hear.”
“Huh.” Lisbeth considered him. “You know what? You’re absolutely right.”
Ignoring them both, I turned to Ford, who had yet to insult me. “Who, exactly, is looking for us?”
“Bishop mostly,” he admitted, “but Linus is still on the phone with him.”
“Two of the witches are done with their rooms,” Lisbeth informed us. “They don’t look so hot, but Abbott says it’s a consequence of them burning through so much magic so fast.”
“They can crash at our place.” I checked with Midas, who was already nodding. “They’ll be safe there.”
“I’ll let them know.” Ford rubbed his stomach. “I’ve got some volunteers cooking meals for them.”
“Thanks.” I shut my eyes for a beat. “I should have thought of that.”
Instead, I had been focused on next steps, and hospitality for the coven hadn’t crossed my mind.
“You’re one woman.” Lisbeth bumped my hip with hers. “You can’t think of everything.”
“That’s why you’ve got us.” Ford slung an arm around her shoulders. “It’s a team effort.”
Given Linus’s endorsement, I’d pegged the witches for heavy hitters who would stroll in, set the wards, then bail. I hadn’t considered they might have earned his approval by scoring average in skill but above average in integrity. A rookie mistake, given how well I knew Linus and how he valued effort above talent.
Lisbeth’s report highlighted the witches were relying on strength in numbers to get the job done, spreading the load across their members, but it was still draining practitioners lower on the spectrum if they were burning out in ones and twos instead of all together.
A big heart did not a big gift make, and I should have remembered and respected the difference.
They were the ones doing me a favor, after all. I should have taken better care of them without prompting. I was learning, slowly, to trust my friends and my team to pick up the slack for me.
I wasn’t Superwoman, Wonder Woman, or any other superheroine.
I was just me, and I was doing my best.
It was all I requested from those around me, and it had to be enough for me too.
“Thanks, guys.”
Lisbeth guided me to Bishop, who had gone back to stalking the witchborn fae coven via drone. He could have delegated, but he didn’t share his toys well. As I entered the room, he piloted past a pinkish lightning bolt of power, his wild laughter enough to earn him wary stares from the enforcers positioned along the back wall.
Thumping his ear, I got his attention. “Did you need something, or did you just want an audience?”
“Kid, we got problems.”
“That ought to be the OPA’s slogan.” I heaved a sigh. “What now?”
“The witchborn fae are getting twitchy as the wards go up, which is a good thing. It means they’re scrambling to counter now that their magic spyglasses aren’t working. It gives us breathing room to figure a way out of this mess.”
Experience told me there was more, and worse, news he was building up to sharing. “Okay?”
“There are twice as many coven members on the rooftops as there were at dusk.”