Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
TEN
I checked my watch. The half-hour was nearly up.
My power throbbed, vibrating through the whole house. A flurry of nerves turned my stomach. Time to do my duty and deal with the intruder.
After a deep breath, I left my room and started descending the stairs. I stopped dead near the bottom.
“No.” I shook my head. “Just no.”
Mr. Tom paused in exiting the house. He wore something like a purple muumuu, but lopsided and with even less shape. It was like he’d gone to the fabric store, picked purple at random, and had Edgar sew it up for him. It puffed out at the middle before flowing around his ankles. He held a suitcase that I knew contained some of his various “disguises.”
“First, I realize muumuus are great for fast shifting,” I said, “but do you notice how I reserve them for training? I don’t wear them in a professional setting where I likely won’t be shifting. So…your outfit doesn’t really fit in right now, right? It looks…” I didn’t know how to politely say it looked ridiculous on him. “And the disguises? No. You can blend into stone. You don’t need disguises.”
“Miss, you need a lookout. I will provide that for you. In order to do that—”
“No.” I leveled a finger at him. “Seriously, no. No disguises. We’ll be a laughingstock. Go change.”
“No one would dare laugh at the Ivy House heir,” he said indignantly.
“Indirectly, yes, they would.” I finished descending and brushed by him.
Then I stopped on the porch.
My team waited on the sidewalk in a line whose order echoed their positions within the Ivy House circle. All of them wore the same long purple muumuu things. Edgar’s, at the end of the line, was much too big. The extra material pooled at his feet like he was a child playing dress-up. Austin waited at the other end, his hands clasped in front of him. I could feel his utter bewilderment. He hadn’t adorned the same piece of loose cloth, thank God, and was instead still wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“What…?” I was suddenly at a loss for words.
“Mr. Tom hid our sweats and told us this was the new uniform,” Ulric said with the utmost seriousness, but I could feel his delight through the bond. “I requested pink and was denied.”
Two headlights appeared at the other end of the street, then more, the shifters showing up to provide transportation.
“This cannot be happening,” I said as I spied Niamh holding a beer. A cooler waited behind her. “Of all the times you don’t push back, you chose this one?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “It actually isn’t so bad, like. It airs everything out. Much less hassle. And if everyone looks like a muppet, it’s probably easier to blend in.”
The first car, a five-year-old Honda Accord, pulled around. It was Sebastian and Nessa’s “blending in” vehicle.
The passenger door opened, and Sebastian got out. Even from this distance, I could see his gaze roaming those gathered in front of Ivy House. A crooked smile lit his face as he walked around Edgar and stopped.
“They’ll change real quick,” I told him. “I wasn’t aware they’d… I wasn’t aware this was happening.”
Cyra put out her arms and twirled a little, hitting both Austin and Hollace with her hands. Austin stepped away, looking down at her. Hollace settled for slapping her hand out of the air.
“I don’t mind it,” she said, smiling at me. “It’s very comfy. I didn’t wear underwear. Did anyone else wear underwear?”
“You never wear underwear,” Hollace told her.
“True. I don’t much understand the point,” she replied. “And now I definitely don’t. This is so nice and airy.”
“Let them keep this on,” Sebastian said as large SUVs and vans stopped behind the Accord. His crooked smile was still firmly in place. “If I’ve learned one thing as a mage, it’s that eccentricities make people nervous. The inexplicable, the joke no one is acknowledging, a team wearing purple muumuus while one of them carries luggage—it’s good. This is good.”
“It’s not eccentric, it is practical,” Mr. Tom told him, walking around me. He hadn’t put his suitcase away.
When he was halfway to the sidewalk, something zoomed out from the shadows at the front of the house. Tiny but incredibly fast, it darted across the grass and straight for Mr. Tom.
“Watch out, a rat!” I yelled, waiting for Ivy House to kill it on the spot. We didn’t usually have rodents here. They were afraid to stay.
But it wasn’t a rat.
A little garden gnome with a pointed red hat, an angry scowl, and a pair of garden shears cackled as it charged at Mr. Tom. It lowered the shears into “cut mode” as it closed the distance.
“What on God’s green earth…” I gasped.
Mr. Tom tsked, facing the thing. Then he apparently thought better of waiting for those shears to close over his ankles, because he danced backward and then ran for the sidewalk with high knees.