“—but I can’t hold a candle to Natasha’s technology prowess.”
“Same as that. What about the essences or energy or yer cosmic connection or whatever la-la ye’re always on about?”
His eyes took on a distant look. “I can’t properly get in tune with that if I don’t have contact. Everything is echoes. Sometimes, I can connect through dreams if the other party reaches halfway. She isn’t reaching, though. She doesn’t know how—or even of the possibility, probably. I have more books to send her, but I can’t find her to send them. I’m reaching from my side, and the dreams…” One of his hands balled into a fist. “They’re dark. Full of turmoil. It feels like she’s hurting worse than ever. They’re both hurting. Emotionally, I mean. Internally.” He shook his head. “But honestly…I can’t tell if that’s her, or if it’s my anxiety about her well-being. The emotions feel too…enormous, somehow. I can’t get an accurate reading. I need contact with her to sort it all out.”
“Jaysus.Forget the doilies—ye need to be givin’ out crystals and salt lamps.”
“I tried that. People seemed too happy about it. I had to stack them all in weird designs in the graveyard to freak them out again.”
She huffed out a laugh. “No wonder ye’ve taken such an interest in those doilies. Ye’re following that vampire around the bend. Ye’ve gone pure fruit loops.”
“Yeah. Edgar stole all my marbles.”
“Janey Mack,” she breathed, grinning. Niamh could get under most people’s skin, and she’d made a lifelong art of manipulation, but this gargoyle-monster seemed impervious to her “charms.” He purposely muddled the banter so that she couldn’t get a toehold to control it. He definitely needed to be at Jessie’s side. Jessie was much too gullible. She needed people who couldn’t be manipulated to help steer her.
“But seriously, I don’t know how she’s doing,” Tristan said. “How either of them are. I catch traces of acts they might have done, or rumors of where they might be, but nothing comes of it. I thought I was good with technology, but she’s far better. And smarter.”
Niamh resumed her rocking, feeling the breeze ruffle her hair. Letting her mind drift as it had been. “Aye. She is both of those things.” Not even that computer clown they’d hired downtown could keep up with her. Niamh needed someone better.
“The deeds they’ve claimed—the deaths and whatever—have gotten the right people nervous, did you see that?” he asked. “She’s good at working the underbelly, and Sebastian is good at knowing the right pressure points to push at any given time. They’re a damn good team.”
Niamh didn’t slow in rocking. Didn’t focus her vision.Didshake her head.
“She is great, I’ll give her that. But he’s a child in that role. He hasn’t been at that job—or even on this earth—long enough toproperlyunderstand motivations. He understands the human condition to a point, but only as it concerns mages. He’s blind to most of the magical world and all of the Dick world. Ye can’t get a clear picture unless ye’re looking at the whole landscape. He’s barely fit to be an apprentice; don’t even talk to me about being a master. And subtlety? He hasn’t a hope of understanding that one! Subtlety is nothing but a tool in the toolbox. Ye need to know when to use it, o’course ye do.” She held up a finger. “More importantly, ye need to know whennotto.”
His head swung around, and his eyes glowed brightly. He surveyed her for a long moment before pushing forward up the stairs, and then he sat in the seldom-used second chair. He didn’t speak, perhaps having realized he should listen.
“He’s implicated us in another one,” she said. “Another murder.”
Finding out they’d been framed for that first murder had been somewhat of a shock, Niamh had to admit. They’d all known Nessa and Sebastian were trying to play the puppet masters in the mage community, and that they’d do some off-color deeds, but dragging in the convocation like that? Without their knowledge or consent? Jessie had reacted as though slapped. Austin Steele had vibrated with anger. But the bonds of friendship were strong. The services Nessa and Sebastian had rendered the convocation in Kingsley’s territory were too great to lose faith in the mages so quickly. It had been left to Niamh to analyze the situation and find a reason the mages might’ve set them up.
And analyze she had.
The cobwebs from many decades of inactivity were well and truly dusted away. Shedidunderstand motivations and excelled in viewing the whole landscape before drilling down to eachminute detail. She enjoyed finding the one precise straw that would crack the camel’s back and made an art of throwing it on. A body couldn’t deal in the sort of shady behavior a puca usually got up to without extreme knowledge and appreciation for manipulation, and she was one of the very best. It was why she was still alive after all this time. Most of her family had been caught during one underhanded affair or other and killed in short order.
Nessa and Sebastian were playing a game, and they didn’t trust Jessie and Austin Steele’s team to be adequate participants. The mages were trying to maneuver on Ivy House’s behalf.
Well. That would never do, especially since they weren’t doing it right.
“Still no clue why they’re framing us?” Tristan asked.
“Don’t be daft. I know exactly why they’re trying to frame us. Two semi-powerful mages, in prominent roles in the Guild, who were instrumental in planning the attack on Kingsley’s?”
She dropped the rock she held into the basket and took out another. Information flashed through her mind.Thank you, Ivy House, for once again making me sharp between the ears.Memory was a blessed thing.
She’d thought she’d waved goodbye to memory at about two hundred years old. Well, three hundred had rolled around, and she’d found herself in the kitchen, no idea why, wondering if she’d brushed her teeth earlier. Four hundred? Feck off. If she didn’t write a thought down, it was gone for good. She’d had a million things put away in “safe places” with no idea where those places were. But with Ivy House’s magic, she was back to her prime—thinking-wise, at least. All systems were firing.
“They’re showing off our power to the Guild while simultaneously saying we hold a grudge against Momar,” said Niamh. “We didn’t just thwart Momar and that was that. No, no. We’re hunting those who wronged us. It has some peoplenervous—those we wouldn’t want to ally with Jessie anyway—and therightpeople curious. There’s a great many powerful people in the Guild that weren’t asked to play on Momar’s team. They’re on the outside. That used to put them on the losing team, but now, with Jessie, they have a chance to be on the winning team. That’s a powerful motivator. Sebastian and Nessa are making it so the left-out mages will want to connect with us.”
Tristan rocked slowly. “Which is good news. It sets us up nicely, even if they did make us look like messy animals.”
Niamh chuckled softly. “Don’t like that, do ya? Looking like a messy animal?”
His jaw clenched slightly. He was too distracted by the mages’ activities to hide the tell. Whoopsie. He’d just given her a button to push.
She filed that away.
“It’s good they did,” she went on. “Perfect, in fact. That is Austin Steele’s play: look like what they expect.Actlike what they expect. Keep the mages in the dark about what we really are. It’ll give us an edge for a while. The problem is, Sebastian and Nessa extracted the information like a powerful mage would. Like Elliot Graves and the Captain.”
