Page 39 of Magpies & Mayhem
He pushed off the edge and dropped the two stories to land heavily on the street next to me, before stalking toward the side of the building.I guess not everyone can land as neatly as a bird.But I was still impressed with the jump. “He was unhappy about being separated from you.” Jordan rounded the corner, and I followed him into the dark alleyway, stopping in front of a rusty, old dumpster.
I glared at him again. “Well, you shouldn’t have left without me. I would have come with you.”
Jordan just gave me a small shrug. “You needed your sleep. I figured I could take him off your hands for a few more hours and maybe he could help me find his siblings. It was just some preliminary scouting. It did seem like he found some familiar scents after a while, but then we lost the trail and Huck started getting rowdy, so I brought him back. Lucas stayed behind to search some more. This stuff is my job anyway, Sidney, not yours. It can be dangerous.”
I rolled my eyes. I was already parenting an incendiary dinosaur toddler. Job descriptions had lost all sense of logical meaning to me. “I’m a big girl, Jordan. You don’t get to make decisions for me. We’ve talked about this.” I was very capable of handling myself in most situations. “Why are we staring at a dumpster?”
“He’s underneath.”
“You couldn’t get him out? You’re probably strong enough to pick up the whole thing.”
I looked at him when he didn’t respond, finding his mouth turned down in a disapproving moue. “It’s dirty.”
I threw my hands in the air, feeling like that was probably a safer option than what I wanted to do with them.Ugh.“Huck!” No response. “Huck, come here.” Nothing.Heaven help me if I have to…I heaved a deep breath and gritted my teeth. “Humphrey Herbert Hucklebee, the Fierce!” Faint scuffling noises sounded from under the dumpster. “Get out here. What are you doing?”
“He was setting the alleyway on fire,” Jordan muttered beside me. It was hard to see it in the dark, but now that he mentioned it, there did seem to be some scorch marks here and there. Huck burst out from under the dumpster and scrambled up my leg, using his beating wings to push himself higher so that he could cling to my thigh as his tail whipped around behind him on the ground.
“Jeez dude, watch the claws! I’m here! Everything’s cool, okay?” I almost missed the look of relief that washed over Jordan’s face as I turned to head back to his office entrance. Or compound entrance.Whatever it was.I couldn’t miss my own relief, however, that sense of rightness that washed over me at being back with my boys. My skin didn’t feel too tight. Jordan’s weird vampire scent mixed with wood smoke was becoming almost comforting. It made me nervous. Both of them were temporary additions to my life. Ephemeral.
They wouldn’tstay.
But then Jordan asked, “What did you just call him?” and I wanted to throw him through a wall again.
“Nothing.” I gritted out.
His laugh was unabashedly relieved, and I fought down the bubbles of happiness the sound created inside me. “Those clothes look good on you,” he said as I turned and walked away, heading back toward the entrance with a clingier than usual dragon wrapped around my thigh like a little barnacle. He seemed even bigger than yesterday.
“You have this really bad habit of disappearing constantly,” I groused at Jordan, not bothering to raise my voice. “You know that, right?”
“And how can I make that up to you?” he asked in a mischievous tone, much closer behind me than I had expected. I hadn’t heard him follow me.
I paused as his words registered, and he passed me to open the front door for us, staring at me with his twinkling eyes as he leaned over to grab the handle. He pulled it open and continued to watch me as my mind whirled with possibilities. He was hinting at sex,obviously, but I could get that anyway. What could he give me that he probably wouldn’t want to? “Are you going to Elara’s wedding this weekend?” He’d better be going. I knew for a fact that she’d requested a night wedding specifically so he could be invited.
His mouth pulled down into a frown and the twinkle left his eyes. “Yes.”
I tried to imagine how he would look in a tux and it did funny things to my insides. Even without trying, he dressed neatly and always had his hair so irritatingly perfect. Picturing Jordan when hetriedto look nice? Yum. “Then you owe me a dance,” I said, hauling my flapping leg warmer past him to knock on the inner door. A spectral flickered in the air in front of us, and then the lock clicked over to let us in.
“I don’t dance.”
I pushed the inner door open and dragged Huck inside with me, turning to scowl at Jordan as he entered. He slowed to a stop just inside as the door closed behind him and I prowled back toward him, willfully ignoring the fact that I was walking like I had a peg leg—since it was hard to move with Huck clinging to my thigh and his tail dragging along behind us. With mere inches between us, I stopped and glowered at him, raising my chin defiantly.
This weekend I was going to be wearing the prettiest dress I’d ever worn to anything, ever. I was going to spendhourswith Elara getting our hair and makeup done. I was going to be primped and prepped within an inch of my life. I was going to feelprettyall dressed up, and I wanted to dance with Jordan while I did. “We’re going to dance.” I raised my lips for a brief kiss, and he narrowed his eyes at me—clearly not in agreement about my declaration—but he gently pressed his lips to mine.
Chapter 26
Wespentthenexttwo days in roughly the same way, with me heading into Seattle to work in the shop in the early evenings and then joining Jordan later to scout and help with Huck. He let me accompany him both nights to search for the missing dragons as long as I stayed in my bird form to avoid recognition. Just thinking about how long Huck’s siblings had been in Phantom hands made me incredibly anxious.
I didn’t leave during daylight hours because it was so difficult for Jordan to stay awake—being a young vampire—so I didn’t want to risk Huck being without any supervision in the compound. Augustus, his creepy old boss, was old enough to be able to wake up whenever he wanted and cheerfully offered to not only watch Huck if needed during the day, but to keep him for us during Elara’s wedding. I hadn’t taken him up on the daylight hours thing—he wasn’t fireproof like Jordan—but leaving Huck with him for Elara’s wedding couldn’t be avoided. It was either this or beg Allie to watch him again since my brothers were all attending the wedding, and after he blew her eyebrows off when he escaped the first night, I didn’t think she’d be down for that.
I held up the baby carrier in Jordan’s room on Friday night. “Do you think we could convince Augustus to wear Huck in the carrier? Tell me that wouldn’t be hilarious.”
Jordan paused while unpacking a bag of takeout he’d brought back for me. “Sidney, I know you live for messing with people, but Augustus is off limits.”
I narrowed my eyes at Jordan. ‘Off-limits’ wasn’t generally part of my vocabulary. “Why?”
He lowered his voice to a barely audible level as he handed me the dumplings he’d picked out for me at a local food cart. “Not only is he my boss and my mentor, but he’s a twelve-hundred-year-old elvish vampire with mixed-sylvan ancestry who can‘un-alive’anyone he has a visual lock on by making fungus explode from their body cavities. Please don’t irritate him.”
“Gross.” But point to Augustus. “Noted.” I took a quick bite of a dumpling, trying not to scald myself on the soup inside. “I’m glad we’re on the same team.”
