“Sure.” I glanced up at Luc. “You’d better drive though, I think.”
“There’s no ‘think’ about it—I want to get back to my motorbike in one piece, thanks.”
“How did you get here if not on the motorbike?”
“Cab earlier this afternoon. They’re too aware of the motorbike now, so she’s parked in a secure lot, out of the way.”
He placed me down next to the passenger door, then took the keys from my hand and opened the SUV up. As Jess climbed into the rear, he placed me into the passenger seat, dug a first aid kit out of the small backpack he was carrying, and quickly but efficiently tended to my gunshot wound. Then he ran around to the driver’s side and started up the vehicle.
We wound our way out of the peninsula park then headed onto the main highway that ran around Ainslyn’s more modern city center and on to the old walled town. By the time we neared the Petergate Gatehouse, my left arm was aching and I was barely keeping my eyes open.
“You can drop me off here somewhere,” Jess said. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Luc immediately pulled over. Jess jumped out, then leaned back in and added, “Tell Mo to give me a call if she needs any more of them red bastards shot. Hell, more than happy to shoot any of the other kind, too.”
“I will,” I said, amused.
“Catch you later then.” She slammed the door shut and disappeared into the shadows of a covered laneway between two old houses.
Luc drove off. “Where on earth does Mo find these characters?”
“She likes oddbods. Always has.”
His smile reached his eyes, crinkling the corners. “Another thing that runs in the family.”
“I’m definitely her child more than I ever was Mom’s.” A statement that provided an ideal lead-in to the whole mage thing, but reluctance remained stronger than the need for honesty. He’d have to know, and sooner rather than later, but I really wanted to give him the time and space to accept me being the heir to the Witch King’s crown before I hit him with another monumental piece of information that would affect our life together. Mages had very, very long lifespans. Humans had a relatively set time span. If we did ever marry, we’d both have to accept the fact that I would watch him grow old and die.
Not something I was ready to even think about right now. Especially when we hadn’t even gotten around to doing anything serious.
I glanced out the window and watched the world go by as we wound our way through old Ainslyn and then across the river to The Red Lion. It was an L-shaped old coaching inn that had been considerably altered over the years. What had once been a large manure heap now contained a lovely beer garden that ran down to the riverbank, and the old stables had been converted into rather quaint en-suite accommodation. Ginny’s sixteenth birthday party—a bigger milestone in her family than the eighteenth—had been held in the beautiful medieval dining hall upstairs, rather than her family’s large home, simply because between the inn and the nearby hotels, there’d been enough accommodation to house her extended family in the one vicinity. But it wasn’t a pub we visited often, which was exactly why Mo had booked a room here. That, and the fact it was owned by a friend of a friend who’d agreed not to ask questions and who’d accept both cash and a false name.
The parking area only contained one other car, which wasn’t really surprising given it was the middle of the off-season, tourist wise. I shivered into Mo’s sweater and shoved on my shoes. “I’ll go check in, then we can both have a shower before we get something to eat.”
He nodded. I grabbed my purse out of the glove compartment, then climbed out of the SUV and headed across to the office. The proprietor—a good-looking man in his mid-fifties—was obviously disappointed I wasn’t Mo, but cheered up considerably when I said she’d be here later. A past lover, perhaps? She certainly had plenty of them, and he did fit the type.
After collecting the key, I headed down to our room. Luc met me at the door, his pack over one shoulder and my wet clothes in the other hand. “I take it Elysian and the crown are in the trunk?”
“Yes, but they’re spelled invisible and should be safe enough there for the moment.”
He nodded. “Would you like first shower?”
I hesitated, then shook my head. “I need a cup of tea, and I also need to call Mo.”
“If she’s in the midst of flying here, she won’t be able to answer.”
“No, but she’ll feel the phone vibrating.”
He blinked. “Seriously?”
“The magic that takes care of whatever possessions and clothing we’re carrying doesn’t actually alter their form. It just … miniaturizes and conceals, I guess.” To be honest, I’d never really questioned the physics of it. It just was.
“Huh.” He continued on to the bathroom, my wet clothes in hand.
I found the kettle and followed him into the bathroom to fill it up while he hung my clothes on the heated towel railing. “You’re going to make a fabulous husband one day.”
“Hmmm” was all he said, though anticipation and desire burned briefly through our link despite the fact we weren’t touching.
And that suggested it was expanding. Which was both good and bad, given any possibility of deepening our relationship lay in a distant and very uncertain future.
Once I’d flicked on the kettle and found a cup and the tea bags, I grabbed my phone and made the call. It rang on and on, and I was just about to give up when she said, a little breathlessly, “Sorry, had a minor glitch with the second red demon. The bastard just wouldn’t die.”
“You okay?”
“A few scratches, but nothing serious.” She paused, and in the background, I heard a familiar voice. Mia. She not only sounded okay, but also rather annoyed.
“Mia wants you to know,” Mo added, voice droll, “that if she’s ever captured again and in need of rescuing, she’s not to be treated as a useless bit of baggage that has to be secreted away. She wants in on the payback.”
“Tell said bit of baggage that if she does get captured again, I’ll make sure she’s securely locked up until all the fighting is over.”
Mo relayed the message and then added, “Hang on while I put you on speaker to make things easier.”
“Ha!” Mia said in response. “That’s been tried before, and we all know how it went.”
I grinned. Said triers had been her parents when she’d fallen in lust with a boy they considered unsuitable. “There’s plenty of time to get in on the action, Mia. Trust me on that.”
“Good, because the bastards destroyed my best set of bo staffs.” She paused. “Though I guess that isn’t really surprising, given I cracked open the heads of two of them and broke the leg of a third before they took me down.”
I frowned. “Why didn’t you use magic?”
She was, after all, a Lancaster. Personal magic of all kinds was their gift, and that included all manner of protection and repelling spells.
“I didn’t have the time. They were on me before I knew what was happening. It was just lucky I was carrying the staffs.”
“Maybe you need to start carrying them all the time.”