Rocked by Love (Gargoyles, #4)(54)
“Three.” Wynn grinned. “I’ve found out I’m pretty good in the buttocks-booting department.”
Kylie laughed. “I’ll take your word for it. But me? I’m really more of a central-command, support-staff, civilian-noncombatant sort of a girl. I’ll just bring the popcorn.”
*
While Dag took Knox to check the outside perimeter of the house (Knox already being familiar with it from his earlier flyby of the bedroom window. Thank goodness they’d been at the back of the house where no one could see his gargoyle ass flapping away), Kylie and Wynn took care of putting away the huge quantity of leftovers.
Although, come to think of it, the two enormous Guardians ate even more than she would have suspected. Stagnant like rock their metabolisms clearly weren’t.
Kylie was sorting through a drawer full of reusable takeout containers looking for matching lids and bottoms when Wynn threw the first punch.
“So, did you and Dag get the whole mate thing worked out?”
Seriously, it hit like a fist to the solar plexus, one Kylie had not seen coming. She felt positively winded. “What?” she managed to choke out.
“When you guys went upstairs before dinner.” The witch scraped rice into a plastic tub and had the chutzpah to smile at her. “It sounded like you could use some time to talk things out.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. You think an hour is enough time to deal with the idea of everyone in the world assuming I’m now the destined life partner of a hunk of limestone with an attitude? Az a yor ahf mir. I should be so lucky, but my mind isn’t quite that flexible, hon.”
“What does it have to flex around? And don’t exaggerate. Me and Knox—okay, and Fil, Spar, Ella, and Kees—are not the whole world. We’re six people.”
“No, you’re three people and three mythological creatures who should not exist in my version of reality. Four, when you add in Dag. You don’t think this is the kind of news that takes getting used to?”
Wynn gave Kylie the same look her grandmother used to use when Kylie told her the half-dozen missing cookies had been too burnt to serve to guests. “You’ve had a week to get used to the fact that Guardians exist and Demons are plotting to enslave humanity. If you weren’t capable of grasping it, I’d be visiting you in a psych ward by now, so don’t give me that excuse. The new facts of life are not what’s giving you trouble here.”
Kylie pouted as she piled leftovers into the fridge. “Why should I not have a little trouble with all this? You had a big ol’ head start when it happened to you.”
“On the subject of Wardens, Guardians, and the Order? Yeah, I did. But when it came to mating a great big hunk of winged badass, I did not, and I’ll thank you to remember that.”
Groaning, Kylie climbed onto a stool and buried her face in her arms. “Wynneleh, it’s just too much,” she mumbled into her own forearms. “I don’t know what to do with all this.”
“Really? Because judging by the crack in the plaster behind the headboard in your guest room, I’d say you knew exactly what to do this afternoon.”
“There are knives hanging right over there.” Kylie glared. “Don’t make me stab you.”
Wynn laughed. “What? I’m not allowed to know you had sex? Or I’m not allowed to know it was good enough to crack your plaster?”
“Neither. Either. Both. Yes. No.”
“Maybe?” Her friend’s amusement rang clear, but at least she didn’t laugh again. “Look, I’m not going to tell you that I took to this whole mating thing like a duck to water, either. I don’t think any of us did, and it’s natural to have doubts. It’s weird, it’s fast, and it came out of frickin’ nowhere, am I right?”
“Oy vey, are you right!”
“Right. But this wasn’t really nowhere. I know you’re not really religious, and I’m all witchy-witchy-woo-woo, which you don’t really get, but I do honestly believe that the Goddess, or God, or Fate or whatever you want to call it, has a hand in all of this.”
“Is the hand attached to a mouth that can’t stop laughing?”
Wynn snickered. “Maybe. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong about all this. There’s a reason why we—you and me and Felicity and Ella—why we’ve been able to wake up the Guardians, and why we’ve been able to do it now, when clearly the danger from the Order is building. There’s a reason why the old Wardens have gone missing, and why what’s happening now bears so many similarities to the legend of the first Guardians and the females of power.” She paused. “Please tell me that Dag at least told you that whole story after what happened this afternoon. I mean, after we talked in here earlier.”
Kylie nodded.
“Okay, so you know that when the old ways stopped working, that was when the women woke the Guardians and helped defeat the Seven. The Guardians couldn’t do it alone; they needed the special bond they had with their mates. They drew strength from it and that strength was necessary to their victory. So maybe the same thing is true now. Maybe we’re necessary to help Dag and Knox and the others keep the Order from winning.”
Kylie heard her words and understood what she was saying. She even maybe believed some of it, but she still felt as though there were some kind of trap closing around her. Or maybe an Acme brand anvil dangling by a rope above her head. “You mean, I should just lie back and think of England,” she said, sighing.