Sailor chimed in. “Baron was doing a whole lot of experiments. Was it something to do with Damien’s death?”
Mads nodded.He figured out how to make omegas have more potential to shift. I was an experiment that failed, but there were many other successes.
“Like?” Rex glanced over, and Mads fidgeted with his paws anxiously.
It’s speculation, of course. I’m going off the omegas that Baron was following and hearsay. But he was invested in Leon, Warring, and you, Midnite.
“It’s just Nite. Marquis is the only one that calls me by the damn collar name.” Midnite—no, Nite, sighed. “And yeah, doesn’t surprise me. Baron’s photos did seem familiar, but I can’t really remember…”
I don’t think any of you would remember. Leon’s grandmother is dead. Warring is blind, and you had no idea about mages. I don’t remember much that would be helpful, and I was there for eighty years.Mads huffed, and the gesture made a little squeak from his nose.
“That seems about right,” Sailor sighed. “We may never know everything for sure.”
A jarring ding interrupted their discussion, and Nite wheeled around, his expression unreadable. He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked it. “They’re nearby. I gave them an address for South Wayland Street, not North, so they’ll be here in five minutes.”
“Good thinking, Midnite.” Marquis cradled Mads in his arms, and Nite huffed as he slunk off, the way he moved so catlike.
Mads didn’t like the way the mood had dropped, and he felt responsible for it, somehow.
Chapter Nine
Marquis
So, uh… You seeing anyone?Mads stared up at Marquis from his arms and showed his teeth in a menacing sort of cringe that he’d seen with young familiars before. An attempted smile.
Marquis took a deep breath and shook his head. “Mads. I think at this point, I’m seeingyou.”
Nice!He held his little arms up in the air, tiny black hands fisted in triumph. As if seeing them for the first time, he drew them back in, staring at the appendages as he opened and closed them. The cringe of a grin didn’t fade. His eyes scrunched up with the effort.
“Now, where are your clothes and wand?” Marquis glanced around as the whirr of the garage doors signaled him to glance over.
Over where you dropped me off.
“Then we go there.” Marquis marched off in the direction and deposited Mads by the front door to reclaim his clothes, dragging them and his new wand off behind the old register counter to change.
None of the kids bothered him, and the others seemed to have clothes that shifted with them most of the time. It was standard process of a morning for most familiars to make sure their clothing was enchanted into an item. He’d work with Mads on that later. For the moment, they were expecting guests.
Leon, Warring, and the children milled about as Meredith joined them, holding a little girl on her hip—Sheila. Meredith made it her personal mission to make the little girl over in her image and keep her in human guise more often. “Everyone stay in unless you’re called. Mads, do you mind staying here for a while? We can come get you if we need, but I needyou comfortable and calm until you have your shifting under control.”
Gotcha!
Marquis nodded succinctly and headed out while Mads seated himself toward the side of the room, his posture stiff but less guilty and terrified than he’d been.
When he reached the garage, Roan, Rex, and Sailor stood side by side as Midnite lounged nearby on the tailgate of Rex’s truck, licking his paw. The glistening tips of his prosthetics, contrasting in the low light, held a somber note to them.
A car rolled up to the garage door, a glistening dark-blue color with rental car plates on them. As they rolled in to the open gates, an older, very human woman, hair dyed a boxed black that couldn’t have been too far off of her natural hair color, before the gray settled in, peered about. Marquis had reached the age that most mages did when they received their first gray hairs, where they’d never age past until their magic ran out. And no mage knew when their time would come, only that one day it would wane and fade until they left the world. Roan hadn’t quite hit his biological peak yet, so when the woman slid from the car, her face artificially taut, she looked so much older than her former partner.
The car came to a jerky stop, and from within, three people emerged. A potbellied man in his late fifties with a walrus mustache and watery dark eyes exited the car and made no move to open the other car doors, letting his partner and another younger woman slide out on their own. He didn’t even extend a hand to help them stand, his entitled expression disappearing behind a pair of reflective sunglasses of some odd brand and design. The moment they slid over his dim face, it was as if he became a little more obstinate and visibly unintelligent.
“So, where’s Cade?” He sniffed to clear a nostril and turned his head to spit.Right in front of the fairer ones.
The two females with him appeared not to notice in the least, as if the behavior were common.
Midnite, for his part, gave Marquis a look that belied his disgust.
“Where is my son, Roan?” The shorter, older woman marched up and held a finger up to Roan with a grimace. Her narrow eyes narrowed further at him, her creaseless eyes holding an anger that could only be that of a mother scorned.
“Hello, Min. He’s nearby. I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to come in here grandstanding and trying to bring human morals where they don’t belong.” Roan stared her down.
