Magical Midlife Meeting (Leveling Up #5)(21)

“Yes.” He nodded as though that answered that. I still didn’t understand what I’d agreed to, which was probably a mistake. “The stars, as I thought. This is the right way.”

He took a step toward the back door of Ivy House, and I stepped with him.

“I thought we were supposed to dress up a little?” the basajaun asked, taking another step.

I ran a little to keep pace. “For what now?”

“For the ceremony. I thought we were supposed to dress up?”

“The ceremony…” I stopped and faced him again, my eyebrows climbing and my shock too great to be hidden. “Wai—”

“Yes, the ceremony. I thought you agreed? It is not easy to decipher the stars, but they didn’t even attempt subtlety this time. My job, when we first met, was to guard you under the mountain.”

“Your job wasn’t so much to guard me as it was to keep me from escaping—”

“We helped each other that day—you generously promised me flowers, and I allowed you to escape.”

Well, sort of. He’d feigned an injury so the mages who’d enlisted his help wouldn’t accuse him of dereliction of duty. The prison I’d been held in was in his mountain, which apparently meant it was his role to guard it.

“We have battled together often since then,” the basajaun continued. “You have assembled a fearsome collection of magical people, from an alpha who gives me pause to a mythical creature I could not fight.” He was talking about the phoenix. The night Cyra had showed up, he’d tried to help take her down, but the burns had incapacitated him. “My ancestors will not be disappointed to see me join such a crew, especially since I was led by the stars. I have debated the decision for months, of course. I do not like to be tied down, which is why I left my family in the beginning. I do love those redwoods, but I do not like being governed. So I have been watching you. The alpha is strict with his people, yes. The gargoyle is strict with his gargoyles in town, yes. But you are not so strict. You merely ask that we all respect one another. That we help fight and protect one another. That is how a family should work. The grievances of one can be claimed by all.”

“Right. Except…” This was blindsiding me. I would never in a million years have guessed he’d want to join the Ivy House crew. It had never even occurred to me, mostly because of all the things he’d said about moving away from his family and living alone on his mountain. “It’s just that you live really far away—”

“And then I heard your next battle is to be under a mountain.”

“It’s a different mountain, though—”

“My first introduction to you was guarding you under a mountain. The job that cements me to you will be guarding you under a mountain. That fits. The stars led me here—me and the alpha and the rest of your crew—and here we will bind together. A strange sort of magical family. I will be laughed at, yes. But I have always been laughed at, and when they see a female gargoyle and the phoenix and the thunderbird… The basajaunak will come around. It is as the stars will it.”

I stared at him blankly, my mouth gaping open. This was all coming out of left field. I didn’t know if I was comfortable with having him on my team. Sure, he was an amazing asset in a battle, and he’d hung around often enough that I was comfortable with him personally, but he was picky about his rules. He traded for the simplest of things.

Which reminded me…

“Would I have to trade for your involvement on the team?” I asked.

“It would not be a trade, but a basajaunak partnership. Like family. If I am slighted, this small magical family will be entitled to claim vengeance, and vice versa. If your family is in trouble, like young Master Jimmy, it will be within my power to go to his aid. The same would be true if my family were in danger.”

“We doing okay?” Austin approached us from the house, glancing back and forth between us. He rested his hand lightly on the small of my back.

“The basajaun thinks the stars led us all here,” I said, “and it’s a sign that Elliot Graves’s stronghold is embedded in mountain tunnels. He wants to join the Ivy House crew.”

Austin’s expression didn’t change, and no surprise trickled through the link. He’d clearly been in hearing range, because otherwise I didn’t know how all that hadn’t blown his hair back.

“He says that if he joins the crew,” I went on, “then it basically joins our families. So if something were to happen to Jimmy, he’d…probably pop heads off and spike them like footballs, as he likes to do, and if something happens to his family…I guess we need to return the favor?”

“Yes. As is standard,” the basajaun said.

“As is apparently standard, sure…” I said.

“Can I speak to you for a moment, Jess?” Austin asked, oddly formal.

“Yes, sure.”

We took a few steps away, and I covered us in a soundproof spell.

“Is this not throwing you for a loop?” I asked Austin the second we were cut off from the basajaun’s hearing. “Everyone has always been surprised that the basajaun even fights with us. I got the impression basajaunak families are very tight-knit and don’t care for outsiders. I don’t want to piss them off. And…what if the basajaun wants to live in Ivy House? I don’t have a bed that big. Does he shed? Mr. Tom would pitch a fit if there are rolling balls of hair all the time.” I ran my hand over my face. “I know that I should be jumping for joy, since he is a very good creature to have in my corner, but this has really taken me by surprise. I wasn’t ready for it.”