Enchanted No More

Jenni’s laughter mocked. She’d been over every instant of the ambush, the fight, the frantic effort to save her family and everyone at the gathering from wildly unbalanced magic. She no longer thought the “mission” had been important. “All occurred just because two of the kings and queens had reached the height of their power and wanted to move into a dimension richer with magic than poor Earth.” She laughed again and it was dissonant.

Once more his jaw tightened, released. “The decision to open a portal to another dimension was the Eight’s, not yours or your family’s. Your family equalized all four elements so the gate could be made and stay for the time it took for two of the four couples to leave.”

“We were so flattered as halflings to be asked to help.” She shook her head. “Pleased that we could invite guests to such an important ritual and gathering.” Sarcasm. Aric had been her guest. “All the family was close to the portal, the target of the Darkfolk, and died.”

“Not you, or your brother,” Aric said.

“Has my brother’s crippled magic and arm been restored?”

Aric was silent.

Jenni hissed out a steamy breath of anger. She wanted to turn back, to hole up and hide again in her house, but she needed to know about Rothly.

She swept her senses around her, glanced over her shoulder toward the entrance to Mystic Circle. In the entire cul-de-sac and all its houses, earth was equal to fire to air to water. Her doing by just living there. The natural magic within her made it so, a comforting thought. All the strongest magic and spells worked better when all elements were equally balanced.

Aric followed her stare, his glance lingered. “Wonderful place,” he said. His gaze slid over her, then he looked forward again and began walking. “The old Kings and Queens of Air and Fire left, and new couples ascended to their rank, and change began,” Aric said smoothly, as if he was telling a tale. He hadn’t been much of one to tell stories before, preferred to listen.

He continued, “The new Kings and Queens of Air and Fire are progressive. More, human technology is catching up with our magical energies enough that we might be able to merge the two. Lightfolk could live easier with mortals, and mortals could stop harming Earth for their fuels.” He glanced at her. “As you know, you use a little of that in your work to develop that game you write.”

“Fairies and Dragons.” Jenni’s mouth twisted. He knew more about her than she’d thought. “Neither of which exist anymore. I just finished working on a leprechaun story line. They are gone, too.”

“And shadleeches have become.” The tone of his voice was grim and laced with hurt.

Jenni didn’t know much about shadleeches, they were a relatively recent phenomenon, appearing in the time since she’d turned her back on the Lightfolk. She knew they gnawed on magic.

They reached the coffeehouse, the Sensitive New Age Bean, and Jenni pulled the door open. Human noise and luscious scents emerged, along with warmth. Her mouth watered. She wanted to taste something hot and fiery and jolting down her throat. Espresso and cinnamon.

There was a line at the long wooden counter and she stopped at the end. The icy cold had the humans bundled up in puffy coats, scarves and hats. Jenni was wearing her red leather trench and Aric a brown one—unbuttoned and open. She hadn’t felt so inhuman in years, especially in a place she loved, and it unnerved her.

They waited in silence. Her body felt starved for the ineffable essence of standing near Aric, a purely magical being who carried elven blood, and she despaired of herself.

He wasn’t manipulating her through active control, he couldn’t do that, not as one with Treefolk blood, but he was tempting her with what she shouldn’t want and now discovered that she did—news of her brother. That would remind her of all that she’d been and lost.

But she longed for news of Rothly.

Aric leaned on the counter, absently stroking the smooth finish with his fingers, and charmed the women. He ordered hot chocolate with whipped cream and made it sound manly. Of course a male who topped six-four and was built on muscular lines would automatically make whatever he did “manly.”

When the logo-etched glass mugs were slid toward them, he casually paid and had Jenni staring. He appeared as if he knew mortal money and was accustomed to using it. Before she could comment, he lifted a glass in a half toast and she followed his gaze to the top of the bookshelves in the other room. “You kept the brownies.”

The brownie couple was there though they had been home when she’d left. They were dressed in their best colorful patchwork made from Jenni’s fabric scraps and old clothing. Small round upright hats glittering with tiny mirrors sat on their heads between their huge ears. They both had little leather slippers of bright red that Jenni thought were made from one of her old and shabby purses.

Their eyes were locked on Aric’s drink. Like every being in the Folk world, they loved chocolate. Jenni’s liquid cocoa had disappeared within hours of their arrival.

Jenni didn’t keep chocolate candy in her house. She couldn’t. The minute she touched solid chocolate, it melted, a tiny physical idiosyncrasy of her and her mother and sisters. Her lost family.

The espresso burned her throat but it wasn’t as hot or as bitter as the taste of tears she’d thought were all gone. Or the memories that Aric and the dwarf and the damn brownies stirred up.

Aric took his mug and two small paper sample cups of cocoa in his other hand. He crossed to a corner surrounded by bookcases, an alcove with a wooden table that was painted in colorful green and blue swirls. He sat sideways in the wooden-runged chair, his arm across the top, angled toward her. His perfectly “pressed” linen trousers couldn’t hide the long, thick lines of his thighs, the narrowness of his waist. His silk shirt emphasized the broadness of his shoulders, the proportional length of his arms. His expression was studious as he examined her, but a sad wistfulness was in his pretty eyes. Yes, he was beautiful. But not for her ever again.

His whisper—a sound more like the rustling of leaves than a voice—came to her. “We can talk here, no magical creatures can eavesdrop, and the brownies are loyal to you.”

Jenni stared. How could they be after only three weeks?

He gestured the “currently invisible to human eye” brownies down to the table, where they perched on two corners. Blocking the view of humans, he poured cocoa in the sample cups for the brownies. When they took the pleated paper cups, the vessels “vanished.”

“We like you, Jenni,” Hartha said after she’d taken a sip of her drink.

“Your basement and the house and the cul-de-sac are wonderful,” Pred said.

“We do not want to live anywhere else, such as in trees,” Hartha said, glancing at Aric.

“Or in a tall building with steel and fake rock, high above the ground in downtown Denver,” said Pred.

“Thank you, Hartha, Pred.” Jenni managed courtesy, but her yearning to hear about her brother slid like a fever under her skin. She stared at Aric. “What of Rothly?”

Though Aric didn’t change his casual pose, she felt tension radiating from him. He’d promised to tell her of Rothly and now had to deliver.

A dreadful anticipation seeping into her blood told her she was going to lose in this struggle with the Folk.

As she’d lost before.

Lost too much when her family had answered a previous summons. Aric was going to win.

She hunched over, curving her fingers around the heat of her glass mug, the same warmth as her hands. She looked at the dark espresso, not at Aric.

Skinny, long, four-jointed fingers were laid across her knee. Hartha had hopped from the table to stand beside Jenni, her big eyes sad. “Do not keep us if it makes you indebted to the Eight. The Treeman can arrange another place for us.”

Pred hissed and she snapped at him in words that thunked in Jenni’s ears, but she couldn’t understand.

“Rothly,” Aric breathed on a sigh. He shook his head, straightened in his chair, met her eyes. “The dwarf Drifmar made him the same offer he’d made to you. If Rothly did the mission for the Lightfolk, he’d become a Prince of the Lightfolk.”

Jenni stood. Her chair slammed on the floor. “No.” Silence for ten rapid heartbeats. “Tell me that’s not true. Rothly is crippled. Physically and magically. He can’t work any of his once natural elemental balancing magic without peril.”

“Crippled in mind and heart emotions, too,” Aric added, “not to be able to forgive.”

“Tell me that isn’t true about Drifmar.” Jenni’s strident voice overrode Aric. “Tell me you Lightfolk did not send my brother to his death.” Fury and terror dried her eyes so she experienced everything with an awful clarity—the human gazes focused on them, the trembling of the brownies, the small muscles of Aric’s hand flexing around his mug.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Is Rothly in danger?”

Aric looked away, his jaw clenched.

Jenni’s blood heated. Could she manage to save Rothly without the help of the Lightfolk? They’d said it was time sensitive. How long would she have? Especially since she hadn’t practiced any large magic, like stepping into the interdimension, for years.

She locked gazes with Aric, his eyes looked like chips of deep green emerald…but not even as soft as emerald. Again she was facing a man she didn’t know, who had changed in fifteen years.

He had his own agenda and he—and the Lightfolk—would keep up the pressure on her.

Standing slowly, Aric said, “Your brother promised on the Mistweaver honor that the mission would be fulfilled.”

Jenni flinched, as she knew that wording had been just so. If she didn’t consider herself a Mistweaver, was really just Jenni Weavers and not Jindesfarne Mistweaver, she could walk away.

But Rothly had disavowed her, she hadn’t abandoned him.

She felt tears gush to the back of her eyes, her chin tremble. She firmed it, swallowed and watched Aric’s eyes. “You win.”

CHAPTER 3

“I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE WITH YOU,” JENNI said steadily, “or listen to you.” She didn’t sit. “But once again the Lightfolk have given me no choice, have they? They’ve endangered my brother.”

“Jenni—”

Without looking at him, she said, “Tell Drifmar and whoever else needs to know that I will take care of this ‘little mission’ with the ‘terrible problem’ for them.” Those had been Drifmar’s words. Without letting herself think, she said the words that might lead to her death. “I’ll finish what my brother tried to do. Uphold the family honor. You’ve done your job.” She’d never heard of a mission for the Lightfolk that wasn’t dangerous. “Now tell me of Rothly.”

Aric raised his brows. “You’ll commit to the whole mission? Not just try to rescue Rothly yourself?”

Jenni’s lip curled before she answered. “Would I be able to rescue Rothly myself? And would Lightfolk help me with that with no strings attached?”

Aric hesitated and she knew the answers were what she’d feared. No help at all from the Lightfolk without conditions.

“Don’t—”

“I won’t break my Word or Rothly’s Word on a contract with the Folk. I haven’t lived in the human world so long that I turned stupid.”

“You’re one of the smartest people I know,” Aric said.

“Tell me of Rothly.”

“Your brother is missing. From what we know of your family’s natural magical gift, you are not totally in this reality when you weave magic.”

Aric knew that, he’d been a friend of her brothers’ for years. How much had he told the Eight who ruled the Lightfolk? He was obviously loyal to them.

Jenni said nothing, but thought of the half step into a different reality, the gray misty place where the only colors were the elemental energies she could summon—the gold of earth, flaming red-orange of fire, frosty blue-violet of air and the rolling waves of green-blue water. Mystical as the northern lights.

Aric said, “We think Rothly is stuck in what your father called the interdimension….” He stopped as if he felt the flames of anger licking her insides, nearly causing her to lose control of her eye color. If she wasn’t careful they’d heat to the blue-white mortals found threatening.

Steam was just below her skin. She needed to cool down before it issued from her pores. A steaming woman was also a cause for concern in the human world. And why was it that a half hour with one of the Folk could make her forget all her years as a mortal?

“Then I will find him, damn you all,” she said.

“Let’s discuss this fully somewhere else,” Aric said. He gestured back toward the cul-de-sac and her house.

Jenni shot up her chin. “I’m not inviting you into my home.”

His skin darkened from light copper to dark. He stood and clamped a hand around her lower arm. “We know Rothly isn’t dead, just…caught. We can monitor him.”

She yanked her arm away and he let her go. “So you can monitor me, too? How reassuring. You go report to your people. But I get Rothly home first, before anything else.”

Aric’s fingers clenched. His gaze met hers, his eyes taking on that deep brown rim around his irises that appeared when he felt strongly. He was angry with her because she didn’t want him in her home. Well, she could care less what Aric Paramon felt for her. Keeping his gaze locked on hers, he reached into the pocket of his coat and held out a little greenish-white business card.

She stared at the human thing. He dropped his hand and it floated in midair, so she snatched it. This was her neighborhood and she wanted to continue living here. Automatically she glanced down on it. In forest-green ink it said Aric Paramon, Consultant, Eight Corp, with an address in the downtown Denver business district. In a high-rise of all places. Mind-boggling.

“I am your liaison on this matter, Jenni.” His voice lowered. “I volunteered for the mission. We go together. We live or die, together. Get used to the idea.”

Sounded like something he was repeating from TV, but the Folk didn’t watch television, didn’t move in the mortal world. Humans were sometimes good for sex, that was all. Like most full-blooded Folk he’d once had a great deal of scorn for the mortal and human. But fifteen years ago the Lightfolk hadn’t had a corporation or business cards. She had no clue what was going on.

Aric smiled a knife-edged smile. “Like I said, there have been changes in our world. Considerable changes. And I’m not the man you knew. You will be briefed by one of the royal Eight. Two p.m. Be there.”

He’d never been a man to give orders. He was half-dryad-Treefolk, half-elf. He’d been mellow as a Treeman descended from flighty dryads would be, and taken the generally optimistic nature of the elves.

Jenni shrugged all the strange things off. She wasn’t about to show ignorance—that led to manipulation. “I’ll be ready for our afternoon meeting, make sure you are, too, and that you and the royal will exactly and completely tell me the truth.” Her nostrils pinched. She didn’t trust any of the Lightfolk, especially the Eight. “Otherwise we’ll both die, and whatever terrible problem the Lightfolk have will be worse.” She glanced at Hartha. “Looks like you two will be staying to take care of the house while I’m gone.”

Hartha nodded. Pred made a small sound of glee. “We will have the whole house to ourselves!” His toes curled and he vanished in a small, excited spark of golden topaz.

“I’ll get your luggage from the basement,” Hartha said, her head tilted toward Aric, so Jenni figured he was telling her what Jenni would need for wherever she was going—besides the step into gray mist, which she would traverse alone since only she had the intrinsic magic to do so.

She turned on her heel and left him, striding out of the coffee shop into the frigid air. With gritted teeth she suppressed her emotions so steam didn’t trail her as she marched home.

As soon as she entered her house, she smelled espresso with cinnamon and Hartha was there, holding Jenni’s drink from the coffee house out to her in one of her own cups.

“You will need this,” Hartha said.

Jenni knew she would need a lot more, and not just caffeine or clothes.

She’d need all her courage, all her skill.

What she didn’t need was Aric Paramon going with her. Not a man who reminded her of her own failure. But he was her “liaison.” A disgusted sound escaped her.

She inhaled the scent of the coffee, then handed the mug back to Hartha, looked the small brownie in her big brown eyes, which were tinted with gold flecks. The tips of her ears were curled inward, defensively. “I’ll set my hand to paper giving you and Pred house-rights to stay here while I’m gone.” Jenni sucked in a breath and added, “Currently the house goes to my brother if I die. If we both perish you might as well have it. Those who live here in Mystic Circle will make it so. My next-door neighbor, Amber Sarga, will file the right papers with the human world, and the halfling Harmony Windrose will keep a sworn document for the Lightfolk.”

Hartha tipped her head back and stared at Jenni. “We might have this wonderful house in the cul-de-sac where all four elements are present and balanced!” The mug floated as she squeaked and fell to the ground to roll around in excitement, clapping her hands.

Pred joined her. “We can extend the basement tunnel and make a common room for the whole cul-de-sac!” They tumbled in brownie-joy-dance together.

A tingle along Jenni’s spine told her that the brownies had already done stuff to the basement. Not that she—or anyone in Mystic Circle—would or could have stopped them.

She kept her eyes on the blurred brownies. How much would they know of the problems and changes in the Lightfolk world? Changes so extreme to break with the many traditions that they actually were following mortal rules—the Eight had a mortal corporation. Changes that pure-blooded Folk would make a half blood like Jenni a Lightfolk Princess?

Hartha wouldn’t be in the confidence of the highest circles of the Eight, which, apparently, Aric was. A flash of anger-heat slipped through Jenni.

No reason to interrogate the brownies, not with all that must be done right now.

She had to verify Aric’s statements, look for her brother in the interdimension, a half step away from true reality. She prayed that she would be able to sense him there. Taking off her coat, she hung it on a hook by the door.

The brownies had stopped and stood before her, curtsying and bowing. “We thank you, we thank you, we thank you.”

They flicked their fingers at her and she felt herself coated with dust that sunk through her skin. Hartha said, “We bless you on your journeys and may you return safely. You gave us sanctuary and did not indenture us. We like taking care of you and this house. We are loyal.”

Pred added, “Blessings and return safely. It is not good to inherit from nonrelatives who are cut down in the midst of life and meet an untimely death.”

Jenni winced, shrugged off renewed dread and addressed Hartha. “I must use the kitchen.” She’d barely stepped into it since the brownies had come. Hartha considered it her domain. But Jenni needed the herbs that would help her transition from the reality of Earth to the gray mist of the interdimension.

If she’d practiced her craft—entered the interdimension every day—she would’ve needed very little tea, but she hadn’t. She went to the small pantry area between the kitchen and the basement stairs and reached for the red tin on the highest of the built-in shelves. The shelves were spotless, of course, and the contents had been moved around, but the tin was still there.

Ignoring Hartha, Jenni lifted the top of the tin and inhaled deeply, let the scent waft and spiral through her. Potent. Good. Despite the fact that she’d rarely used her magical gift in the last fifteen years, she was dedicated to keeping the special mixture of herbal tea for her talent ready, as her mother had emphasized.

“Do you want me to make the tea?” Hartha stood next to her, twisting her hands in the frilly bright yellow skirt of her apron she now wore over work clothes of a brown blouse and skirt.

Jenni looked down at the brownie. Of course the woman had noticed the tea, probably discerned the ingredients and the quantities of the herbs. “No, thank you, family secret.” The brownie flinched, the tops of her ears rolled tight down to the cartilage near her head.

Jenni tried a smile, the corners of her lips curved, and that was enough. “I’m the last uninjured person with Mistweaver magic, so the secret will be archived with the Lightfolk if I die, but until then I prefer it to be secret.”

Hartha vanished.

With a sigh, Jenni spooned out a teaspoon of the special mixture: the finely ground black Ceylon tea, long, thin and twisted leaves of tringle and green shoono herbs, three minuscule rare moon-crescent blossoms. She dropped the spoonful into a pottery mug made with a special clay that enhanced the power of the herbs. Then she placed the tea tin back onto the top shelf, not shoving it deep this time. She’d need it in the future.

Why had she figured she could ignore or outwit the great Lightfolk, the Eight? If she’d been practicing her craft…if she’d been practicing, surely she’d have sensed Rothly caught in the interdimension? Maybe, maybe not…but if she’d been practicing and he was there she might have been able to pull him out…if she knew where he’d stepped into the mist.

Right now, even if he were here in Denver instead of Northumberland, England, she wouldn’t have the strength to get him out, would barely have the strength to enter and leave herself. She’d let her natural magic ability to step into the gray mist atrophy. The skills it took to call up the interdimension, go in, stay in for a time, leave—those were all rusty.

She’d have to use the tea, all the mind-body-emotion preparation rituals her family had developed to successfully enter the gray mist. And that was here—in her own home, in Mystic Circle that she’d balanced. She’d be lucky to last fifteen minutes, enough to orientate herself and find him. She should be able to find him…but hadn’t searched for him for fifteen years.

He had disowned her, cut ties to her. Yet he was her brother. She should still have at least one small bond to him. She hoped.

She didn’t dare attempt to save Rothly without more practice…at least three times in the mist, balancing elements—and she’d have to rest in between times. A day would be good.

But the pressure of inner dread made her think that she wouldn’t have a day to rest between attempts.

If she didn’t get it right, have the skill and strength to pull him from the mist, she’d kill them both.

Her stomach sank as she frowned at the tea. For a quest to save her brother in the interdimension and a mission after that, she should make a fresh mixture. She gritted her teeth. A process of two weeks that couldn’t be hurried or even started when the moon was waxing instead of waning.

Unless Rothly had made a fresh batch before going on his mission. Which meant returning to her family home in Northumberland to find out.

She poured water into the mug, then set her hands around it and let the heat of her turbulent emotions bring the water to a roiling boil, counting down the necessary seconds, then stopped. As she walked to her bedroom she kept track of the time needed for the infusion. Finally, she whispered a small spell and the leaves whisked up and disintegrated, leaving a tang on the air.

She could grab a ten-minute shower using the proper soap while the tea cooled. It was always better to go to the interdimension cleansed and with clear mind and intentions.

Usually Jenni would heat her skin as she showered in cool water, or heat tub water with her own magic before she bathed. But she must conserve her personal energy. She’d need all her power to enter the interdimension and search for Rothly. If she got stuck herself she would fade away, die.