Magical Midlife Meeting (Leveling Up #5)(72)

“You need to be pushed, ” Ivy House told me. “You need to be prodded. I swear, you are the most timid wild child I’ve ever met. It’s like you lock all your good qualities up inside, and it takes a battle or taunting to bring them roaring out. He helped me even before I knew who he was. He helped you . Listen to him. If, when he’s done, you don’t like what you’ve heard, kill him. It’s pretty simple. You really shouldn’t hold grudges in the magical world. Things change too fast for that. ”

I walked slowly to the little chair opposite Elliot and pulled it back a little farther. Austin pulled up another and we sat.

“So.” Elliot ran his hand down his face. “How about I start at the beginning?”

“Probably wise.”

“I had a twin sister. Both of us had great magical talent, but hers was as a Seer. It was…a burden to her. She had visions all the time. She knew what was going to happen tomorrow, or five years from now, or after her death. Good and bad things. Horrible things, sometimes. She knew our parents would die in a car accident. She knew our uncle would be physically abusive. Of course, we tried to prevent those things from coming to pass, to change the stars, but the end result was always the same.

She finally realized that when she saw a vision, it represented the path of least resistance to an end result that would happen no matter what. It was best just to go with it.

“When we were in our late teens, the visions started coming faster and becoming more vivid.

They were so encompassing that she started to lose track of reality. She wouldn’t know the difference between a vision, a waking dream, or something happening in the present. Her mind started to slip, unable to deal with it. Finally, she had a series of visions about you. How you came to accept the Ivy House magic. How you blossomed into the mage you are today. She guided me through the role I was to play in your rise to power, including the things I would need to construct, like the tunnels your basajaun destroyed—don’t worry, my people moved in the second you left your quarters so as to move your things—and the meadow flowers on the tunnel walls. I knew what the Ivy House crystals looked like before I’d ever set foot in that room. She also told me spells I would need to track down and figure out. Books I could find about Ivy House. Things like that. She told me my path, and begged I follow it, even though it would require a grave sacrifice.”

“And what sacrifice was that?” I asked.

“When I was forty, I walked away from an empire and became a hermit inside of a mountain. Or I might have ushered in my own death. That’s up to you.”

I squinted at his face.

He nodded. “I have an amazing potion for youthfulness.” He gave me a small smile but didn’t ask if I wanted the recipe, which I was thankful for. “I sent a pretty useless mage and his right-hand man to apprehend you when you first got to O’Briens. Remember him?”

Yes, I remembered him. A man in a poncy cape had tried to grab me, but Austin, Niamh, Mr. Tom, and Edgar had shown up and saved the day.

“You needed a push,” he said, as though reading my mind. “I was that push. Not just with the caped fool, of course. I sent people into Ivy House after you. I had them loiter on the property. You fulfilled your destiny and took the magic. You were always going to. I just helped you along.” He shrugged. “Next I put out a bid for someone to kidnap you and put you in that cave. I offered just enough to bring in some decent people. Some were cleverer than others, I must admit.” He paused for a moment. “I never intended to retrieve you. You were going to be in that cave as long as you needed to be in order to escape. That was the push. You needed to figure out how to fly. Turned out, it didn’t take you any time at all. That’s when I knew Ivy House had chosen well.”

He smiled again, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“No,” I said, remembering the pain I’d gone through, the pain Austin had gone through, trying to get out of that blasted cave.

“Moving along.” His lips tightened. “The issue with the competing forces—the one that came at you from the front of the house? Those sort of…barbarian people? What was up with them? I only got a glimpse as they traveled to your town, but hello, cosplay, am I right?” He rubbed his face. “They were ridiculous. That wasn’t in the cards, actually. I got wind of them heading out there to check you out, wanting to know your relationship to me. It was bound to happen. I had to scramble a little, but I figured it was time to get the basajaun active, and for you to start working on some of Ivy House’s key vulnerabilities. Also, you know, to meet an adversary who would give you a pause.” He rubbed his chin. “It took you a while to find that deer. That guy doesn’t even like flowers. Didn’t you stop to wonder why a man was eating flowers? Just because he changes into a deer, doesn’t mean he eats like a deer.”

Austin and I both tensed, and I exchanged a glance with him. Yes, we should’ve realized that. We hadn’t. Too much had been going on.

“What do you mean, get the basajaun active?” I said, adrenaline going through me. I knew Elliot had always been a step ahead, but not just how big that step really was.

“The basajaun was always meant to be part of your journey. Fun fact, my dear friend Burke, who has been sniffing around the tunnels for the past few days, had finally found the entrance to my residence. I’m not quite sure what he planned to do there. Hide under my bed and try to kill me in my sleep? Look for incriminating evidence? Check my browser history? We’ll never know. Unless he has hidden powers we don’t know about, he got squished in the fallout from the basajaun’s cave-in. I’m not sure if I should add him to my wall, though. Technically, he wasn’t my kill… Ah, sure, I might as well, as Niamh would say.”