Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 128061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
“Our heroes?” Ulric asked as Patty tugged them along.
“Of course!” Patty looked behind her to make sure she was being followed. “Oh the basajaun, great! Dear, I have your seat all ready for you. I went ahead and swapped out the chair you had last night for a sturdier one. We wouldn’t want you to break it.”
“Thanks, Mama Patty,” the basajaun said, and Ulric turned back with a confused expression.
The crowd opened up for them, even the gargoyles getting out of the way.
“Everyone is talking,” Patty told them quietly. “The question of what a female gargoyle can do has been answered.” She beamed. “People are beside themselves. So fierce, so protective, so magical! The footage I got”—she lowered her voice a little more—“and edited is circling the gargoyle community. People are wowed. We’re getting a lot of interest on our cairn’s social media page.”
“We have a cairn now?” Ulric asked.
“We have a social media page?” Nessa asked as Patty stopped them behind Niamh, where three empty seats waited amid a bunch of people standing.
“The cairn is Austin’s pack name with ‘cairn’ tacked on the end, and yes. Well, it’s a website, actually, but there are links to all the relevant social media sites. I’ve started various accounts—with Miss Jessie’s approval, of course. We’re getting messages left and right! Now…” She pulled Ulric and Nessa a little closer and leaned in. “The word on the street is that Nelson is livid. Livid! He’s citing a lot of different grievances, asking for financial compensation.”
“How much is his ego worth?” Nessa asked as Ulric rolled his eyes.
“He won’t get a dime of it, obviously.” Patty patted Nessa’s forearm. “Just to be sure, I leaked the tape of him running through the house screaming. That’ll shut him up. I posted various clips of the battle on our website. There’s a lot of footage of Jessie, of course, but I also put up clips of the rest of the team. Hollace…phew! He’s getting a lot of interaction.”
“What’s that?” Hollace asked, stepping forward.
Patty smiled at him, but he was too far away for her frenzied whispers, so she went back to huddling with Nessa and Ulric.
“I’ve been hearing that the other big cairns don’t really know what to do. They are trying to stay as neutral as they can. I think that’s why they all want to get out of here. They want to see which way the wind blows.” She squinted one of her eyes, and Nessa figured that was probably her version of a wink. “This’ll work out in our favor, just you wait. At that dinner in a couple days, we’ll be smooth and gracious and neutral ourselves. We’ll say nothing of our demolishing Gimerel and will not rise to the bait Nelson tries to throw at us. That’ll give credence to her generosity with the party after the raid…”
She nodded and squinted again.
“Now, Ulric…” She yanked on his arm a little. “A lot of guardians are asking for details about the setup of the house crew.” She backed up and gave him a poignant look. “Now is the time to help the house. Be cool about it. Don’t showboat. Don’t let on that you know your salary is bigger than theirs. But talk up your position. Talk up how great the area is and how smoothly things run here. Talk about all the skirmishes with the mages and that big battle you have on the horizon. Mention all the women here. Get them talking amongst themselves so we can reel in some of these kookie-loo guardians, okay?”
“Lookie-loo, Mom—”
“Okay now.” She glanced behind them, pulling away. “Do Jessie proud. You know what to do.”
And away she went, immediately smiling and laughing and saying hi to someone as if they were her long-lost friend.
“That woman is a tornado,” Nessa told Ulric, dizzied but envious. “I love it.”
“She can get to be a little much.” He shook his head, spying a woman on the other side of the bar. “If you’ll excuse me…”
Hollace had nestled in next to Niamh with the basajaun on her other side. Jasper had disappeared into the crowd, and once again Nessa and Sebastian were standing outside of things, close but not a part of them.
“We’ve got a problem,” Sebastian said softly, moving his hands to wrap them into a cone of privacy.
She was about to say that she knew when he finished.
“They’ve gone dark.”
A flurry of adrenaline flooded Nessa, and she jerked her phone up to look at it. “What? Why wasn’t I directly messaged that? There has to be some mistake.”
He shook his head, looking over the bar worriedly. “One of the mercenaries got his wires crossed, I guess. He sent an email.”
“An email?” She checked into their database but didn’t find it. “I don’t—”
He showed her his phone with the email brought up.