“They’re here. Come on.” Nix is out from behind Grayson as if he’d only been humoring him, dragging him toward the gate. They slide through the final ward just as Leo pulls the Lexus in front of the fountain.
Jay looks like he might get out and check them over for himself, but Nix has the back door open and is urging Grayson across the seat before they’ve even come to a full stop.
“What’s going on?” Leo asks. He’s got the car in motion in the next minute.
“I fucked up.” Grayson lets the words pour out. He pulls on his hair, letting the tiny stings ground him. “Bixby was at Nix about being in the Water room, and you know how I said I was done holding The Plain down?”
“Yeah. Nix, tell me you didn’t…” Jay asks, turning in his seat so he can gauge Nix and his expressions for himself.
“I was as good as gold, Jamie. Even though in the beginning he’d been very rude.”
Jay is relieved, and Grayson hates to ruin it.
“Yeah, well, Nix wasn’t the problem. Bixby was going on about what a dud I was, and suddenly I was holding an ice staff.”
He’d called itGrimWinter.
Grayson couldn’t tell you how he knows that this was his chosen weapon during some past life; it’s every molecule known only to The Plain and to him.
The car swerves as Leo’s eyes meet his in the mirror. “A what now?”
“Six feet of ice. Frost steaming in the room, and Bixby’s jaw on the floor.” Nix smirks at the memory. “I feel like that wasn’t the first time you’ve made that.”
It wasn’t. Not even the hundredth, in another lifetime. But by the look on Jay’s horrified expression, now wasn’t the time for a waltz down alternate-life-lane.
“That girl wasn’t wrong: it was super hot…or cool,” Nix giggles at his own joke.
“Then Percival showed up with Kirwan in tow, and it all went to shit.” Grayson groans at the memory. “Did it feel like she wasegging him on to you, Angel? Like she wanted the worst-case scenario?”
“Dead ass,” Nix agrees.
“Not you, too,” Jay groans at Nix’s slang.
Nix has been learning all kinds of internet slang from Rowan lately, and Grayson knows he’s not alone in thinking it’s cute, annoying, and confusing all at the same time.
“Well,seriously, then. She has it in for Gray. But Bixby has your back, surprisingly, and Knox, too. And I don’t even think that the headmaster dislikesyouas much as he doesn’t like Weres. He’s just a bigoted, misogynistic asshole.”
“Hey,” Leo says quietly, eyes flicking to the mirror, “sorry to interrupt, but I think we’re being followed.” He signals and makes a clean right, angling them away from home.
The black SUV behind them blends into traffic at first glance. Nothing remarkable except for the windows, dark enough to swallow the light. But when Grayson lets his awareness slip toward The Plain, the illusion peels back just enough.
Two magical signatures glow inside it.
“Goddess-fucking-dammit.” Jay’s voice is low, dangerous. “We can’t go to the compound now. Head toward Ruckus. They’re closed, and there’s more room.”
No one asks what he means by that.
Leo’s knuckles creak on the steering wheel. He nods once and adjusts course without comment, taking a longer route that winds them through the industrial edge of downtown. The SUV stays with them, neither gaining nor falling back, sliding through traffic with the same unhurried precision, no matter what Leo does.
“There are at least two magic users,” Grayson says, eyes tracking the shimmer beneath the vehicle’s shell. “But I can’t tell how many others.”
Jay exhales through his teeth.
The vehicle presses in close. It takes Grayson a minute to notice that the lights are always green. They’re letting Leo set their direction, but there is no doubt that they aren’t being followed as much as they are being herded.
They’re two blocks from the restaurant’s large parking lot when Leo’s phone connects through the Bluetooth speaker.
“Tell me why you’re on your way to Ruckus, and Nix and Grayson aren’t sitting through some blowhard’s lecture on magical pottery 101.”
