I ached with guilt for putting them in danger.
Austin’s footsteps touched down on the front walkway. His heart beat comfortingly in my chest. We’d slept in the same bed—whether his or mine—every night this past week, but I always missed him the second we parted. Even now, knowing he was coming around the house to me, I felt a pull toward him.
The basajaun kept coming as Austin started around the side of the house. Austin came into view first, wearing a dress shirt that molded to his perfect torso and a pair of fashionably faded jeans that showed off his powerful thighs. His hair was styled, short on the sides and messy on top, and his expensive watch flashed within the motion-sensor light that clicked on as he passed.
I glanced down at my stained and mud-splotched purple sweats, mostly shapeless on my body. I hadn’t changed since the practice session had ended a couple hours ago. I hadn’t even moved from this seat, choosing instead to sit here in partial misery, going over all the spells in my mind again and again.
“Hey.” Austin took the chair next to me, leaning back as I was doing and putting his feet up. “Just taking in the night?”
He knew I wasn’t. He’d be able to feel the worry dripping through me like acid, churning my stomach. I wasn’t hiding it from him as I was from the rest of the crew. I didn’t hide anything from him anymore. I never deadened the Ivy House link between us. There was no need. He never judged me or held my feelings against me. That wasn’t in his nature.
“The basajaun is nearly here,” I said, watching the tree line. “You look handsome, by the way.”
He reached over and squeezed my thigh. “Any idea what the basajaun wants?”
I shook my head as the basajaun slowed near the tree line, utterly invisible in the dwindling light even though he should’ve been in plain view. His ability to blend into his natural surroundings was incredible.
No, it was magic. Sometimes I forgot that magical creatures each had their own special blend of it.
“He wasn’t at training today. Maybe he wants to see what he missed.” I watched the spot, finally seeing him as he pushed out through the tree limbs. My eyebrows pinched together. “What in the heck?”
The hair all over his body lay flat and tamed, almost like it had been lightly spritzed with gel and then combed. His long, usually bushy beard had been re-braided, no part of it out of place. The hair on his head had been parted on the right and slicked over, and a bow tie adorned his hairy neck.
“That’s my cue.” Austin swung his feet off the chair and stood.
“What cue? What do you mean?”
“He wants to talk to you privately.”
“How do you know? Is it the bow tie?”
“Body language. I’ll be right over there, okay?” He pointed toward the back door. “In case you need anything.”
I frowned but nodded, and he bent down to kiss my forehead. The look he shot the basajaun as he walked toward the door was long and poignant, not so subtly making a statement that if the basajaun acted out of turn, there’d be hell to pay.
My stomach fluttered and a strange fizzy sensation bubbled through my blood, like I was being aerated or something. Odd.
The basajaun stopped in front of me. “Miss Jessie Ironheart.”
Bewildered or not, it felt like I should be standing for this, whatever this was.
“Hi.” I grimaced as I stretched, stiff from sitting still for so long. “What’s up?”
“Basajaunak, as a whole, are family-oriented creatures. We typically stick with our own. If something happens to one of us, vengeance can be claimed by all of us, and often is.”
I hoped I was keeping my frown of uncertainty off my face. The basajaun had strange rules I usually only half understood, and when you slighted him, he went crazy. I sincerely hoped this wasn’t his way of telling me that I’d unintentionally wronged him and his entire family was about to hunt me down. That would not be a good time.
“I love my family, of course,” he continued. I nodded. “But they can be stifling. I am what’s known as the black cow of the family.”
“Black sheep, I think you mean—”
“I wanted my independence and to see more of the world. I wanted to choose my own mountain and enforce my own rules. That is not usually done by one so young as me.”
I had gotten the impression that he was quite old. I wondered how old his family was.
“I think it was the stars that led me to my mountain,” he went on. “Every so often, the stars choose a basajaun and lead him, or more likely her—our females are usually more courageous—to a great future. A future the family can be proud of. I think the stars have chosen my path.”
“Hmm,” I said, having no idea where this was going.
“It is not for me to decipher the journey of others,” he said, “but it is an interesting thing that we should meet under the mountain, forge our friendship in battle, and that you should then find yourself facing down another battle under a mountain.”
I’d been really working on controlling my reactions, but I was pretty sure a brow furrow seeped through. “Mhm.”
“It is a clear sign if ever there was one,” he went on. “So…” His voice drifted away, as though he was waiting for something.
“It probably is a sign, yes,” I said vaguely.
“Yes.” He nodded as though that answered that. I still didn’t understand what I’d agreed to, which was probably a mistake. “The stars, as I thought. This is the right way.”
He took a step toward the back door of Ivy House, and I stepped with him.
“I thought we were supposed to dress up a little?” the basajaun asked, taking another step.
I ran a little to keep pace. “For what now?”
“For the ceremony. I thought we were supposed to dress up?”
“The ceremony…” I stopped and faced him again, my eyebrows climbing and my shock too great to be hidden. “Wai—”
“Yes, the ceremony. I thought you agreed? It is not easy to decipher the stars, but they didn’t even attempt subtlety this time. My job, when we first met, was to guard you under the mountain.”
“Your job wasn’t so much to guard me as it was to keep me from escaping—”
“We helped each other that day—you generously promised me flowers, and I allowed you to escape.”
Well, sort of. He’d feigned an injury so the mages who’d enlisted his help wouldn’t accuse him of dereliction of duty. The prison I’d been held in was in his mountain, which apparently meant it was his role to guard it.
“We have battled together often since then,” the basajaun continued. “You have assembled a fearsome collection of magical people, from an alpha who gives me pause to a mythical creature I could not fight.” He was talking about the phoenix. The night Cyra had showed up, he’d tried to help take her down, but the burns had incapacitated him. “My ancestors will not be disappointed to see me join such a crew, especially since I was led by the stars. I have debated the decision for months, of course. I do not like to be tied down, which is why I left my family in the beginning. I do love those redwoods, but I do not like being governed. So I have been watching you. The alpha is strict with his people, yes. The gargoyle is strict with his gargoyles in town, yes. But you are not so strict. You merely ask that we all respect one another. That we help fight and protect one another. That is how a family should work. The grievances of one can be claimed by all.”