While the rest of the pack was at home wrapping presents and listening to Christmas music, probably sipping hot chocolate and eating fresh sugar cookies, Ben was driving me over to Francis Flamingo’s house so I could put the mage in her place. The entire way there, my hands were in fists as I seethed with anger. It wasn’t just that she had been so brazen as to try and attempt to mark my home as her territory, which is a huge threat against my pack and my forest, it was a disrespectful insult against my family, particularly my grandma, and I just wasn’t going to stand for it.
Ben pulled his truck to a stop outside of her house, which was the same shade of sickening pink that she had colored our house with. As I reached for the door handle, his hand came down on my arm. “Are you sure you want to do this, Harlow?”
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Ben didn’t say a word about the war I’d started with Francis Flamingo on the way home. Not that I’d struck the first blow, but I was sure he was thinking that what I’d done was unnecessary, and I should've left well enough alone. He might’ve been right. After all, she’d already shown she had no problem attacking my home. Who knew what might come next? If she was half as crazy as her daughter, it would be a problem. I hoped my threat of getting Fionna kicked out of the academy would be taken seriously, but with unstable people it is hard to know what they might be thinking.I answered a few questions about what I’d done when I got home, but most of the pack was preoccupied with present wrapping, so we concentrated on that. Melanie had the great idea of color-coding the gifts by family with different kinds of wrapping paper. Since we had enough varietie
“Who is that?” Melanie asked, obviously seeing my face and knowing there was something wrong. I clearly didn’t want to answer my ringing phone.I scowled and said, “It’s Mage Jaye.” Both Raven and Melanie made faces, their eyes popping out of their heads, as they backed toward the house. I didn’t blame them for not wanting to stick around and hear how this conversation was going to go.I answered the call, “Hello?” hoping I was wrong to be alarmed and the head of the council of mages was actually calling with some good news. Since I couldn’t even imagine what that might be, I didn’t hold my breath waiting for her to tell me everything was rosy.“Harlow,” she began, her tone wiping away even the faintest traces of hope I’d held out fo
“What do you mean Fionna’s not there?” I asked, sinking down onto the porch in disbelief. I couldn’t understand how what Mage Jaye was telling me could possibly be right. The thought of Fionna on her own, wandering around the streets of Paris, causing all sorts of chaos and mischief, made my stomach tighten into a knot. I visualized the evening news reports with videos or her lighting people on fire or picking people up with her electrical storms. This was not good, not at all.Mage Jaye replied, “We couldn’t keep her here, Harlow. She was too dangerous to herself and others, so we sent her to a place where she’d be safe and where she might be able to get some of the training that she needs, once she starts to settle down.”I began to breathe a little easier now that I knew that Mage Jaye hadn’t lost Fionna.
“What’s going on?” Melanie asked me as I put my phone in the pocket of my blue jeans. “That was Jaye?”“Is Fionna all right?” Raven asked before I could answer the first question.“Fionna has been sent away from the School for Mages,” I told them. Both of them just stared at me with their mouths hanging open for a long time. That’s exactly how I felt. “Her parents are about to get on a plane and fly to France to see her, and she’s not there.”“She’s not even in the country?” Melanie asked.I shook my head. “Nope. She’s in Portugal.”“Wow,” Raven said, her hands on her hips. “Man, that Mage Jaye h
It didn’t take long for Mr. Flamingo to turn around and see me. His face melted into a scowl. Obviously, he knew who I was. Not that there were probably too many people in town who would’ve rode into his yard on the back of a unicorn. I was down and walking toward him when he asked, “What the hell do you want now? Unless you’re here to fix our house….”Before he finished, I raised my hand and turned the house back into the bright pink color it had been before. Easy enough. He continued to glower at me, as if he hadn’t been expecting that at all. “Mr. Flamingo, I’ve been sent by Mage Jaye.” His expression didn’t change. I had to take that to mean he had no idea who Mage Jaye was. I cleared my throat. “Head of the Council of Mages.” He nodded, still glaring at me. “She wanted me to deliver a message to you and Mrs. Flamingo.
“What do you mean Mr. and Mrs. Flamingo coming to Paris anyway?”I considered setting the phone down as Mage Jaye went off on a tirade. She was clearly upset that I had not accomplished the task she’d assigned to me. She went on and on for about five minutes, shouting at me about how this was outrageous, that the Flamingos simply had to stay home, that she wasn’t about to let them visit Fionna in her current setting, and enough other things that I couldn’t have responded to even if she would’ve given me a few seconds to interject that it was doing me no good to hold the phone anyway. As it was, I had it away from my ear. She was so loud when she was angry. I had a feeling she might burst my eardrum.Eventually, she paused, and at first, I thought she expected me to reply, but when she started up again, I realized she&rs
We did our best to concentrate on Christmas. It was hard when I had no idea what was going on with the Flamingos or with Mage Jaye and the School for Mages, but I was able to put all of that behind me and enjoy the holiday with my friends and my family.Sharing Christmas Eve with my parents, my sister, and both of our boyfriends was different. As we sat around the Christmas tree in their new, small apartment, I thought back to the year before, how I’d had no idea that that would be the last Christmas I spent in the home we’d lived in for so many years. If I had known that I wouldn’t be back there this year, maybe I would’ve savored the moments a little bit more. Maybe I would have paid a little bit more attention to the subtleties of our family, the way we interact with one another. The way Max brushes my mom’s hair over her shoulder and smiles at her. The way Gray’s eye
“Wake up, Harlow! It’s Christmas!”Brice’s voice sounded like a little kid as he shouted at me, right before a pillow knocked me in the head. I winced and opened my eyes. It didn’t hurt, but it was more than a little annoying. I couldn’t believe someone our age could be so excited about Christmas, but then I also remembered he said he’d never really had much of a Christmas before.I groaned and sat up. “Hit me again, and you’re gonna spend Christmas inside of the chimney,” I told him, but I was smiling. He was standing there in the matching Christmas pajamas we’d all gotten, red pants and a green top with little white candy canes all over them, with his hair all messed up like he’d actually been asleep for once, basically bouncing up and down with excitement. The room was barely even
There’s a comfy chair right next to the fireplace in the main living area of Brookstone. It has become my favorite place to sit. I can sit there for hours and do absolutely nothing but stare out the window at the beautiful forest and sparkling lake. It’s amazing to me to think how far I’ve come in just a year and a few months. I don’t just sit around and do nothing, though. I haven’t had to use my magic to fight off any other mages or shifters since we destroyed Grimly Grouse and his evil minions, but I do use my magic sometimes for other things, like producing presents for my friends or making mythical creatures to entertain us. Brookstone is as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside. Part of that is the fact that we modernized it and redecorated a lot of the rooms. We wanted all of the modern conveniences we were used to, but we didn’t ruin the amb
My plan had been pretty simple. I’d bust into Brookstone, make the other mages and any shifters that were there think that the house was on fire, and I’d run them out to where my pack mates were waiting to take them down.I had no idea one of my pack members had her own idea of what should happen then. I guess I should have. It isn’t as if she hasn’t shocked me enough times in the past for me to expect Fionna to do something… unexpected.The mages in Grimley’s pack came streaming out of the house. Most of them went out the front door because I’d started the alleged fire in the kitchen, which was in the back of the house, on the east side. Fionna, being the tricky mage that she is, had opened a portal right on the other side of the front door so that every single one of the mages who ran out that exit sprinted right int
I didn’t bother to get a ride back to Brookstone the next day. It was clear that no one wanted to drive out there anyway, and it wasn’t as if it was a necessity. We had other ways of getting there, after all.I volunteered to change my wolves into birds so they could fly with us, but all of them passed on that. They said they weren’t used to flying and were afraid they’d fall out of the sky or something. Like I’d let that happen. I’d rolled my eyes, but since most of the area around where we’d stayed the night before was woodsy and rural, we decided it would be okay for them to walk out into the woods and shift there. The rest of us would fly over.My wolves weren’t going to be entering the property until after I knew the situation in the house. Once I knew whether we were on the defensive or the offensive, I woul
It was difficult to get rooms with enough beds for all of us, but my wolves decided they could always shift into their wolf forms and sleep on the floor, and since most of them didn’t sleep much anyway, we went with that. I was definitely going to be sleeping that night, though. I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open to discuss the plan for the next day. Fighting mages is hard work--apparently.“So what is our plan for tomorrow?” Kaylee asked. We were gathered in the room she and I were sharing, all of us sitting on the beds, the floor, and the small sitting area. “I take it we’re going right back there since you wanted to stay so close, Harlow.”“Yeah, we need to go right back over there and take care of things once and for all,” I said. “We just need a plan that will get rid of Grimly Grouse as s
With the ground shaking beneath our feet, the mages lifted themselves up into the air. I pulled up my wolves, too, but that didn’t help save my house. The thought of Grimly Grouse destroying my family home was enough to make me want to set his hair on fire.The ground was cracking beneath us now, some of them were at least a foot across. The idea of one of my people dropping inside of one of them was enough to make me want to fly everyone out of there and back to our rental right away.“Kaylee,” I shouted, wanting to try to fix the problem beneath us and keep my wolves out of danger. “Can you take over for me?”“You mean… float them?” she asked. “All of them?”“We can all help,” Liam said from the o
Looking around at my mages, I tried to determine who I needed to help and who was okay on their own. Liam was taking on a large male mage with a nose ring and the appearance of horns coming out of his bald head. I assumed those were placed there by magic, and he didn’t really have horns growing out of his head, but it was difficult to know for sure. “Give it up, Harlow!” I heard Grimly shout from far behind the line of advance. “I have more reserves. You cannot win.” It was difficult for me to keep my eye on this brute that was about to knock Liam out and respond to the maniac in the back. I decided to ignore Grouse and concentrate on Liam’s predicament. I was fairly far away from the fight, and there were other engagements going on between me and Liam, but I couldn’t let that stop me. The devil guy with the horn
The mages from Brookstone were slowly walking toward us, their long cloaks in a rainbow of colors not even moving from the wind they made, their steps were so even and slow. I stared at them for a long moment, trying to determine what the best thing to do was. A quick estimate told me that there were probably about thirty of them, which meant my team was outnumbered about five to one as mages went. The wolves would be able to help a little, but not much. They were mostly there to fight off any wolves that came our way, and Grimly Grouse had stopped using those, pulling out the big guns instead.We really only had two choices. We could stand there and fight and probably get annihilated because we were outnumbered so badly, or we could run away, regroup, and figure out when and how we should come back. I was really starting to lean toward Plan B, but when I looked at the faces of my packmates, I could tell t
I took advantage of the fearful flicker I’d seen in Grimley Grouse’s eyes and hit him with a bolt of power before he had much time to expect it. He got his hands up, but it wasn’t enough to completely deflect it. I ended up hitting him hard enough to knock him backward almost to the edge of the stream. The other mages around him took a few seconds to stare in shock before they remembered they had powers and could possibly do something to help him.They weren’t going to be able to help him, though. My mages were all ready, so before any of the red cloaked mages could hit me with their powers, mine had their hands up, shooting rays of light to counteract the ones directed at me. I watched the magic around me bend and shift, redirecting back the way it was coming. A few of the red mages were knocked off balance, but none of them went flying the way that Grouse did, probably because mos
I heard the first sounds of battle coming from my left, to the southwest of the house, but I couldn’t tell who it was that was caught up first by the wolves coming from Brookstone. I thought that Raven and Tony had been the furthest to the south, but I wasn’t certain. I decided I should fly over there and have a look. Of course, by the time I got over there, there was a good chance the rest of my wolves would be under attack as well since we’d seen the wolves shooting through the forest at an incredible rate spread out in a line. As I landed, I heard the sounds of battle echoing across the forest as Grimly Grouse’s wolves collided with mine. This wasn’t going to be pretty. I changed back into my mage form as soon as my feet touched the ground and immediately fired a