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Enchanted No More
Praise for the novels of
ROBIN D. OWENS
“A multi-faceted, fast-paced gem of a book.”
—The Best Reviews on Guardian of Honor
“This book will enchant readers who enjoy strong heroines.”
—RT Book Reviews on Sorceress of Flight
“Fans of Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey will appreciate the novel’s honorable protagonists and their lively animal companions.”
—Publishers Weekly on Protector of the Flight
“Strong characterization combined with deadly danger make this story vibrate with emotional resonance. Stay tuned as events accelerate toward the final battle.”
—RT Book Reviews on Keepers of the Flame
“A glorious end to the series.”
Wild on Books Reviews on Echoes in the Dark
Enchanted No More
Robin D. Owens
To the Word Warriors and Lisa (Crash)
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1
A late January night, Denver
JENNI WEAVERS’S SKIN PRICKLED AS THE heaviness of ancient earth magic crossed her front boundary and marched up her sidewalk to her front porch.
A dwarf was at the door. The magical kind of dwarf, from the Lightfolk. He waited for her to acknowledge him. He could wait forever. She wasn’t budging from her second-floor office.
The doorbell rang, a fruity ripple of notes that she’d gotten used to since she’d bought the house, and had begun to actually like. She would not open the door. She’d been dodging phone calls from strange numbers for days. The doorbell sounded again. She stared out the window, nothing to see but dark, no moon tonight, and her neighbors’ windows weren’t lit. The doorbell rang a third time. And the clear phone on her desk lit up and trilled. And her cell in her bedroom warbled “The Ride of the Valkyries.” She was afraid if she answered the door the tune might become all too appropriate.
She set her teeth, turned up her computer speakers and continued typing. The final tweaks to the new little story line for the mass multiplayer online game were due tonight.
Her computer died an unnatural death.
A supernatural death.
A touch-of-fey death.
She stared at it openmouthed.
The ringing and ringing and ringing went on.
Stomping downstairs in her fuzzy slippers, she peered out the peephole and saw no one, not on the drafty covered porch or the stoop beyond. Definitely a full-blooded dwarf if she couldn’t see him.
Another bad sign.
She shouldn’t open the door, but didn’t think the dwarf would go away or her computer would come back on until she responded to all the noise.
Her cell tune changed to “Hall of the Mountain King.” She hadn’t programmed that in.
Hard raps against the door—of course he wouldn’t use the silver Hand of Fatima knocker.
Knowing she was making a mistake, she opened the door. Recognized and stared down at a dapperly dressed dwarf in a dark gray tux. Drifmar. “What part of ‘never darken my door again’ did you Lightfolk not understand?”
He smiled ingratiatingly, addressed her by her birth name. “Mistress Jindesfarne Mistweaver, we’ve found a pair of brownies who’d indenture themselves to you, despite your many cats. A token of our esteem.” He swept a hand toward two small beings—shorter and thinner than the four-foot solidly built dwarf—shivering in the late-January cold. The long tips of their furry ears folded in for warmth. Both male and female were dressed only in white shorts and sleeveless tops.
Jenni looked at the goodwill offering. They were scrawny and wrinkled. Their triangular faces and equally large and usually triangular ears and small vicious pointy teeth made them look as mean as wet cats. They wrapped their arms around themselves and leaned together.
“I don’t need household help,” she said. “I am a productive member of human society, I have a cleaning team every month.”
“You have a squirrel hole in your eaves above the door,” Drifmar, the dwarf, pointed out.
“I like the squirrel hole,” Jenni insisted. “I like the squirrels.”
The brownies perked up.
The dwarf bowed. “Mistress Jindesfarne, we have great problems.”
“Always great problems around. No.” She slammed the door.
He stuck his foot in it and the door splintered. He smiled with naturally red teeth. “Now you need the brownies.”
The brownies were looking hopeful, big brown eyes blinking at her, their thin lips turning black with cold.
Drifmar said, “You need the brownies and we need you. Let’s talk.”
“No.”
“We will make it worth your while.”
With just that sentence he ripped the scab she’d thought was a scar off the wound. Hot tears flooded her constricting throat. Her fingers trembled on the doorknob. “No. My family—my once happy, large family—talked with you fifteen years ago. Then we went on a mission to balance elemental energies while the royals opened a dimensional gate. My family died.” All except her older brother, who blamed her for the fiasco, but not more than she blamed herself.
“They saved the Kings and Queens of the Lightfolk.”
“I don’t care. The Lightfolk did not save them.” She didn’t control her magic, let her eyes go to djinn blue-flame. The brownies whipped behind the dwarf.
She got a grip on herself. It was Friday night and the sidewalks had people coming and going. Besides, losing her cool with a chief negotiator of the Lightfolk was not smart. “Most of my family is dead in the service of the Lightfolk. I have no responsibility to the Lightfolk at all.”
“Your parents taught you better.” There was a hint of a scold in his voice.
Since Jenni felt like shrieking again she kept her lips shut on words, breathed through her nose a few times, then managed to say, “Go away. Never come back.”
“You are the only one with the inherent magic to balance elements left.”
Her gut clenched. The dwarf didn’t have to remind her that her brother was crippled physically and magically. She remembered that every day and prayed for him.
She stared into Drifmar’s pale silver slit-pupil eyes. He could have no power over her, her own eyes were sheened with tears. “I am well aware of that. Go away. Never come back and if I say it three it will be.”
“Wait! We will make you a Princess of the Lightfolk, you will lack nothing for the rest of your life, your very long life. We need you for just a small job, and it’s time sensitive so the mission would be for a short time, only two months.”
Harsh laughter tore from her throat. “You can’t make a half blood a princess. Against all your rules. A small job for a great problem? I don’t believe you, and two months is eighty-four thousand, nine hundred and fifty-nine minutes more than I want to spend in Lightfolk company.” She looked down her nose. “That left you with one minute. Time’s up.”
“You’ll have power and status and money and love, whatever your heart desires.”
“I desire to be left alone by the Lightfolk.” She flicked her fingers. “Go away and that makes three!” She put her fury in it, hurled the magical geas at him, but drew on no magic around her. Not to use on such as he.
He vanished.
The brownies remained.
The male squealed, “What to do? What do we do now?”
Jenni stared at the pitiful couple. “You can come in for the night, I suppose, but just one.”
They stepped on the stone hearth, then clapped their fingers over their rolled ears and ran back to the far side of the porch. The woman looked at her reproachfully. “You have a nasty-sound scare-mouse machine.”
Jenni didn’t like the sound, either, but she’d been able to ignore it.
The man appeared interested. “You have mice. They said we would have to suffer many cats. Why do you have mice?”
Jenni sighed. “I have one old, fat, toothless calico cat.”
The brownie woman—browniefem—bustled back, stared up at Jenni with determination. “Go turn off the scare-mouse sound machine.”
Giving them a hard look, Jenni said, “You will guard this door and let no Lightfolk in.”
“We promise.” They bobbed their heads. “Please leave the door open for the warmth,” whined the man.
Jenni muttered a swear word under her breath—a human word—and tromped back to the kitchen. Sighing, she removed the sonic mouse repellers. In the summer she could live-trap the mice and relocate them, but in the winter and the bitter cold…no. If her cat, Chinook, had caught them and eaten them, that was different, that was natural. But she had too many advantages over mice to destroy them. Stupidity.
By the time she reached the entryway, the brownies were in and the door propped shut.
Chinook, always curious, descended the stairs two paws at a time. When she got three steps from the bottom she saw the brownies and her fur rose, her tail bottled and she hissed.
The male hopped into her face, bared his fangs and hissed back.
Jenni went to Chinook and picked her up. “She’s lived here for years, you’re overnight guests. As long as you’re here, you must treat Chinook with respect. She responds well to pampering.”
Before she’d petted Chinook twice the brownie couple had zoomed to the kitchen. Jenni followed.
The browniefem looked around, nose in air. “You need us. I am called Hartha and this is Pred.”
Pred grinned. “Mousies!” He disappeared into the crack between the stove and the counter.
“The cleaning team comes Monday, only three days from now,” Jenni said. The house didn’t look too bad to her.
Hartha was suddenly wearing an apron made from two of Jenni’s dish towels. That had been in a drawer. “Go sit down and I’ll make you some nice tea. You’ve had a shock.” Another sniff. “We must have the house warmer, but we will do it with magic, lower your heating bill.”
Jenni hesitated.
“We need the positions.” The woman lit the gas oven without turning the knob. She met Jenni’s eyes and her own were not pitiful but shrewd. “Those new shadleeches have nested in our home. We had to leave or they would drain our magic dry.”
Brownies were mostly magic. But Jenni didn’t want to hear their long, sad story.
Music filled the house, her computer was back on. She hoped she hadn’t lost much work.
Chinook wriggled and Jenni set her down. The cat sat and stared at the brownie. The woman went straight to the dry food container and filled the cat’s bowl. Chinook hummed in greedy pleasure.
Magic filled the atmosphere along with the lavender scent of home spells that Jenni recalled her mother using. She didn’t want to think of her family or the brownies or the dwarf. She let Chinook crunch away and went back upstairs to work.
Soon she’d turned in the leprechaun story and was in the depths of email consultation with the game developers about its debut the second week of March, only six weeks away. The scent of sweet-herb tea wafted to her nose. More memories of her mother, her five siblings, whipped through her. The browniefem set the pretty patterned cup before Jenni, twisted her hands in her apron.
So Jenni picked up the tea and sipped.
It was perfect. Just sweet enough.
Naturally. Hartha would have sensed her preferences.
The brownieman, Pred, appeared in the doorway, grinning. “There is no more mouse problem.”
Jenni let the brownies have the back storage room, messy with piled boxes, computer parts, cables, extra clothes, mailing materials, old software and broken appliances. She had a feeling it wouldn’t be untidy in the morning.
Grief and ghosts and guilt haunted her dreams.
She should have known that the arrival of the dwarf and the brownies would stir up the old trauma, but had worked that night until her vision had been fuzzed with static from looking at the screen. Then she’d fallen into bed and slept, only to watch the fight around the dimensional gate with the Darkfolk, and be too late again.
Her family had died in that fight fifteen years before. Jenni had been late to help her family magically balance energies as a portal to another dimension was opened. She’d been more interested in her new lover and loving. Hadn’t been there when the surprise ambush had occurred. A fatal mistake she was unable to fix, so she had paid the price every day since.
She would never forgive herself for her mistake.
Neither would her elder brother, the only other survivor of her family.
She awoke weeping and curled into a ball, and knew from the soft and muffled quality of the air outside her windows that snow fell in huge, thick flakes. She felt the silent coming and going of the female brownie, Hartha, but kept her back to the woman until the smell of an omelette and hot chocolate made with milk and real liquid cocoa teased her nostrils. She rolled over to see her best china on a pretty tin tray along with a linen napkin and tableware.
As she ate, Chinook hopped onto the bed, onto her lap, and purred, accepting bits of ham and cheese from the omelette. The cat was her family now, old and scruffy as she was.
Only one old cat.
As she stared out the frosted window, she accepted that the Lightfolk would not leave her alone.
They’d send others to negotiate.
They’d send him.
Her ex-lover.
CHAPTER 2
DURING THE NEXT THREE WEEKS, KNOWING the Lightfolk wanted her to go on another “time-sensitive mission” for them niggled like a sliver deep in Jenni’s skin. A splinter she could sometimes ignore, but sometimes would jar and send pain shooting through her.
She didn’t want anything to disrupt her steady life, didn’t want to recall her past or actively use her magic. She did fine living in the mortal world.
Missions for the Lightfolk were deadly.
Jenni stayed inside, hermitlike, avoiding any world beyond her computer, until she yearned for fresh air. So one bitterly cold morning when the snow had melted and the sun was high and yellow in the crystal sky, she left the house. She walked briskly from the Mystic Circle cul-de-sac toward the local business district a few blocks away, circling around the green spaces dotted with skeletal aspens and lush evergreens.
It was good to hear the slap of her leather boot soles on the clean sidewalks, to see shafts of golden sunlight bounce off window glass. The trees and grass were shades of brown, but the sky was blue and gold with sunshine and white with frost crystal clouds and she inhaled deeply of the cold, fresh air.
She was out of her house, away from the brownies’ earthy energy. They had made her life so much easier, she’d let them stay. Life might just be okay.
She’d just left Mystic Circle when she heard the sharp crack of a branch breaking. Her shoulders tensed. That sound echoed from the past…when her ex-lover wanted her to know he’d arrived. Stopping in her tracks, she turned back and looked. Aric Paramon stepped out of a huge evergreen tree.
The sight of him jolted her down to her bones. She hadn’t seen him since the evening of the ambush, the failed mission. She’d left after her brother Rothly had thrown salt and silver at her, disowning her.
Aric was as gorgeous as ever. He was a tall man, like the California redwoods he lived in, about six feet four inches to her five-eleven. His skin was ruddy-copper. The sun accented the faintest tint of green in his long black hair. The deep green of his eyes would be ascribed to contact lenses by humans. Wide shoulders tapered to a muscular torso. His mother was a dryad and his father an elf.
He wore a raw silk shirt the same color as his eyes, brown slacks and a long, dark brown leather trench coat.
Jenni gulped, and her heart thumped heavily in her chest. She should have anticipated Aric would arrive that way—he was half Treefolk and could travel the world through any tree.
“I knew they would send you,” she said, and the heat of her emotions dried her throat, “the kings and queens of the elements, the Eight, to convince me to go on that mission. I don’t want to see you. Go away.”
Aric rolled his shoulders, the gleam of pleasure she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes vanished. His face went impassive, then he said, “I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time.” His voice lowered. “I hoped you would be done mourning.”
He didn’t add that it had been fifteen years. Aric was nearly immortal and she—half human and quarter djinn and quarter elf—was very long lived.
Fifteen years was like three years to a mortal. “Oh? How long do you think a person grieves for the loss of two brothers and two sisters and both parents?” She wanted the words to be sarcastic, but they also were laden with sorrow. She stiffened her spine and lengthened her stride. Aric wouldn’t accompany her to a busy human area.
He kept up with her, glanced down. “I wouldn’t know how long your grief lasts,” he said. “But I have had losses, too.” He looked away. “I am sad when I think of my lost friends. Your father, your brothers.”
She didn’t care. Sometimes she had moments when wild grief tore at her from the inside.
“You didn’t say goodbye,” Aric said.
The sentence was a blow that stopped her breath. She struggled for air. She understood, then, that though Aric might grieve as she did, he felt none of her guilt for making love instead of being with her family for their mission.
That was a wide gulf between them that she couldn’t cross, didn’t even want to think about. Didn’t want to think about that time at all, only could speak one sentence of her own to reply. “I thought Rothly throwing salt and silver at us, showing we were dead to him, was enough.” Again her voice rasped from her throat.
She turned away, ready to hurry back to her house, her home, her sanctuary. A place untouched by any magic save her own and the brownies’.
His wide, warm fingers curled around her wrist, touching her skin, and she experienced an unwelcome shock of attraction. While she was dealing with that, he said, “You could be a Lightfolk Princess, that’s what the Eight are offering you as payment for this mission.”
She snorted. “Unlikely.” Then she shrugged. “I don’t want to be a princess.” But she felt the vibration of yearning in his body, saw the ambition in his eyes. When had he become interested in Lightfolk status? He hadn’t been much before. He’d been as easygoing and laid-back as any Treefolk man she’d known. She wouldn’t ask. None of her business.
“There is nothing you can offer me that would make me help the Lightfolk. My parents—family—wanted to be accepted, like most half humans. They’re dead and I’ve made my home in the mortal world. Leave me be.” She tugged at her hand.
“It’s not just the Eight, the Lightfolk rulers. The entire magical community needs you, fast. Just for a month and a half—through March.”
“I don’t need the magical community!”
His jaw flexed. “My family needs you.”
“My family needed you and you failed them.” Her anger poured out with the words, her hair charged with her temper, lifted and nearly sizzled in the cold air.
Aric dropped her wrist, stepped back.
Ugly emotions seethed between them. Jenni couldn’t take the words back. She swallowed and pressed on. May as well lance this festering boil. “When you and I ran to the ambush at the dimensional gate, I went to my family to try to help—to balance the energies—to save them from the Darkfolk warriors. You went to the royals and fought.” Another thing she didn’t think she could forgive him for.
He paled, and replied steadily, “I knew if the Eight fell, all would fall. The loss of the greatest elemental leaders would be such a blow, cause such an imbalance, that the Lightfolk wouldn’t recover for centuries. Easy for the Darkfolk to kill us, take us over.”
Her smile was cold. “And my brother and I struggled with all the elemental energies in the interdimension. A huge mass of energies that my whole family had called, stabilizing the magic, releasing it slowly so magic would not destroy everyone. Knowing if we stepped out of the gray mist we would be attacked and killed.” She found she was grinding her teeth.
A huge shudder shook Aric. “I didn’t know.”
He would have if he’d thought about it instead of springing to help the royals. Jenni trembled, too, then cut her hand through the air. “Past is past. But the disaster was such that I have no love of the magical community, no reason to help, no wish to help.”
His nostrils flared. He set his feet as if settling into a solid balance, braced to give or take a blow. “I have news of your brother.”
Jenni flinched, caught sight of birds circling in the blue sky and realized they were talking of matters in the open where wind could take words to Lightfolk—or Darkfolk. She was glad Aric hadn’t said Rothly’s name.
Her chest tightened but dreadful hope spurted through the constriction. She hadn’t bothered Rothly since he’d disowned her on his sickbed the night of the ambush. Jenni would have known if he’d forgiven her—a lightness would have infused her spirit. He’d have come to her, or sent a message asking that she return home.
Home. Home was not in Northumberland, England, anymore, would never be there again. If she walked in the hills the shadows would flicker and she’d think her parents were there. If she walked along the shore the tide pools would reflect the images of her lost family, the endless waves of the restless ocean would carry their voices. She couldn’t live there.
She stopped, could not take another step. Trapped.
By love, as Aric had trapped her before.
This time not for him, but for her beloved brother who now hated her. Rothly had been coldly, flayingly acid to Aric, too, but maybe he’d forgiven Aric. If he had, maybe there was a chance he’d forgive her, too.
“What news of my brother?”
“Must we speak of this on the street?” Aric asked.
“I don’t want you in my house.”
He winced and only a twinge deep in her heart regretted hurting him. She’d spoken the truth after all.
His breath soughed in and it seemed as if the trees on the street bent toward him in sympathy. He straightened to his full height and Jenni got a feeling of implacability. “There’s a commercial area a few blocks down, yes?”
She blinked. That didn’t sound like the Aric she’d known, ready to mingle with full humans. “Yes.” She smiled briefly. “There’s a coffee shop. It’s very busy. I agree, we must speak of matters.” She had to know about Rothly. Aric wouldn’t lie to her.
He angled his head then waited until she came parallel to him, though she kept a good two feet from him. “Calm your djinn nature,” he said. He swept a hand before them and the bare branches of the trees shivered as if in a wind. The needles of the evergreen trees whispered against each other.
Aric lowered his voice so that his words were covered by the sound, murmuring so only Jenni’s magical hearing had her understanding him.
“Listen. There’s been plenty of change since the old Air and Fire couples went through the gate and new ones took their place.” He paused, then said even lower, “The sacrifice you and your family made to stabilize the dimensional gate was not for nothing.” His gaze was set straight ahead, his expression impassive.
