Enchanted Again

Amber stared, thought of the sunroom that had appeared nearly overnight on the back of Jenni’s house. “Where’s Jenni? She’s been gone a month.”

Jenni’s brownies appeared unhappy, even with rings of chocolate around their mouths and on their lips. “Jindesfarne is on a dangerous mission,” Pred said.

Hartha looked toward the south, where the street of the cul-de-sac led to other human byways. “Change is coming, for sure.” Her thin shoulders shivered. She stared at Tiro. “And sometimes it isn’t good. Mystic Circle is a special place. And great evil Dark ones know of it.” She frowned at Tiro. “Now we have this brownieman here, and someday he will bring Cumulustre. That is not something to anticipate, either.”

“What’s a Dark one?” asked Amber.

“Pure evil with power you can’t imagine. Only four remain,” Tiro said. “Of course this place would draw them. We’ll run if we need to.”

Amber didn’t think he meant her. Sounded like she might be sacrificed one way or the other.

Chapter 7

RAFE AWOKE WHEN the light changed, the last yellow slant of the sun angling from the windows. Sitting up, he groaned. Damn, he felt like an old man, stiff and sore. But the short sleep had cleared his mind. He knew what he needed to do. He was going back to the business district near Mystic Circle and find that dead crow. Maybe then he’d get a clue about what was going on.

Ignoring his aches and pains, Rafe headed into the diminishing day. Once he was in the car, the purring motor and the sweet vibration soothed him. It was a short drive to the place where he fell. He had a good geographic sense and was sure he could find one bird corpse.

The street had many more cars parked along it than before. He found a spot near where he had fallen and began checking the street and curb. Absolutely no feathers. An odd porous-looking hollow stick of grayish-white caught his eye. Hunkering down, he picked it up. It was light and felt…slimy. There hadn’t been snow in Denver for days, and nothing else was damp.

He looked closer at his prize and the back of his throat coated as a nasty scent rose from it. Definitely a bone. But clean. Like something had eaten whatever the bone belonged to. Standing, his gaze ran along the gutter and bumped at another gray bone. This looked roundish…with, maybe, a tooth?

Again he squatted. This time he didn’t touch the thing, didn’t even want to nudge it with his foot. God knows what crap it would leave on his shoe. He found a stick and stirred at the mess of old leaves and gravel and a shoddy leather patch.

For an instant he thought he saw a skull. And not a regular bird skull. Something out of his childhood playtime when he had dinosaur action figures. He shook his head. No, of course not. He looked closer. He’d been wrong. Now it looked birdlike. He poked it with a stick and the whole damn thing fell into dust. Must have been there a long time. Not just today.

Then there was a last shaft of light through purple velvet clouds and he glanced up to see a bloody sun. He dropped the stick.

The whole day had unsettled him. His head ached. He must have banged it harder than he’d thought.

He damn well wanted a drink, and O’Hearn’s would be the place to get it.

Green paper shamrocks decorated the pub’s windows, reminding Rafe that St. Pat’s holiday was soon. Walking through the canvas-and-plastic outdoor porch toward the door, he opened it to the smell of good pub food and excellent beer.

The long room was floored in dark wood, with cushy-sided booths all along the walls. Since it was a little early for the office-job slaves, he had a pick of tables and seated himself in the corner. He ordered chips and salsa and the best imported beer they had and desultorily watched the TV over the bar, where silent talking heads were imposed in front of a basketball game.

Damn Conrad for getting him into this. God-awful strange stuff had been happening to him all damn day.

A tall man with gleaming silver hair, wearing a long, caped-shoulder trench coat that swirled around him, strode up to Rafe and slipped into the opposite seat. Rafe eyed him but wasn’t inclined to protest. There was something about that man…

The dude was…well, not pretty, ’cuz he was masculine enough… Aw, too handsome. But he carried the same brand of beer Rafe was drinking. Stretching out long legs covered with smooth, dark brown leather, the man looked toward the door, didn’t meet Rafe’s eyes. It seemed more like he was being courteous than cowardly. Rafe guessed it was the way he moved—like a guy who could take care of himself and wipe the floor with you.

Someone turned the TV volume up and sports stats spewed from it, drowning out all other sound. The man said clearly, “So, Rafael Barakiel Davail, how would you like to learn how to live past your thirty-third birthday?”

Rafe choked on his beer. Spewed. Oh, that was couth. Worse, his bottle fell from his limp fingers and hit the table and tipped over, chugging out beer. Liquid went on his hands and the table and his pants and dripped onto the floor. He stared at the gathering puddle, not wanting to look at the guy. Maybe he wasn’t really there. Maybe this was all a hallucination.

Despite himself, his gaze slid to the man’s long, elegant fingers. He moved his forefinger in an arc of no more than a half inch. The pungent scent of spilled beer vanished. So did the amber liquid Rafe had been looking at. So did the stickiness on his fingers, the dampness on his knee. The wooden table shone as if another layer of poly had just been added, and two full glasses of beer with light froth stood on the table.

“I prefer draught porter, don’t you?” the man asked.

Rafe just closed his eyes and thunked back into the corner.

“Rough day?” asked the guy.

“Somehow I think you know,” Rafe said. He cracked his eyelids and saw a concerned expression on the man’s face. And ears as pointed as a movie elf’s.

Damn. It. To. Hell.

Rafe looked away and when he glanced back there were no pointed ears. The man studied him quizzically.

“You said something about my birthday?”

A corner of the man’s mouth lifted, but his eyes grew hooded. “Cautious? Being so stubborn isn’t wise.” He shifted a trifle, as did his coat, and Rafe thought he saw a weapon strapped to the guy’s hip. Then the man lifted his drink and drank, and his expression grew pleased. When he looked back at Rafe, his smile faded. “What I could tell you is a long and convoluted story. Which I see that you would not believe. And not believing, it would fade from your mind within hours, particularly the details that are vital.”

He met Rafe’s gaze and Rafe was caught. The blue of the man’s eyes became all there was in the universe. Dimly, Rafe knew he was in trouble, tried to twitch, do anything to break the man’s mental hold, couldn’t. No fear came, only the wish to please this one.

Then the guy looked away and Rafe’s gut churned. He should get up, leave. Hell, he should kick the chair out from under the man and head out the back door. He didn’t think he’d get far.

Once again the dude kept his gaze aside and Rafe appreciated that.

“Rafael Barakiel Davail,” he said softly. So softly that Rafe shouldn’t have been able to hear him over the loud TV.

Rafe drank his beer. Unusual taste. He let it sit on his tongue while he considered if it actually came from this place. Helluva thing to think. “That’s my name,” Rafe said.

“Indeed. But the addition of the name of the angel of fortune will not keep you from death from the curse.”

Now the man’s voice was all too deadly.

Rafe took another swallow. “You here to kill me?”

“No. And I did not set the shadleeches on you.”

All the fine hair on Rafe’s body ruffled. Shadleeches. The image of the bird-not-bird skull came, the hollow gray bone.

“The sooner your life ends, the sooner some will rejoice.” The man cut his gaze to Rafe, then back. Rafe felt the power of him, knew he could have snagged him again.

“So there are things that you can hear. Such as discussion of your curse.”

Rafe kept his flinch inward, didn’t think doing that hid it from the man’s sight.

“Shadleeches,” the guy said.

“What are shadleeches?”

“Will you remember if I tell you?” the elf mused. “They are the evil things that attacked you, born from dark magic in the last half decade. Dark ones—greater magical beings whom we Lightfolk fight—use shadleeches to attack and weaken people with magic.” The elf paused two beats. “Like you.”

Rafe’s mind grappled with the notion. His mouth was dry and he drank more ale, swallowed. “What do they look like?”

“Rather like airborne stingrays but with defined heads.” Another few seconds of silence, then the guy repeated, “Shadleeches.”

Rafe shuddered.

“That’s a good sign. We may be able to save you.”

“We?”

“I. A friend. Yourself. You are not as blind as you might be, and your hearing is better than your sight. I advise you to listen to that around you.”

“My birthday,” Rafe persisted.

“That is the complicated story that you can’t hear yet. But you might hear and remember this—I can offer to ensure you are where you must be on your thirty-third birthday.”

Damned if the man’s voice didn’t lilt in an almost musical way, and the light caught the silver of his hair and his ears were back to being pointed…then round.

“M’father, all my forefathers…” Rafe lifted his hand in a helpless gesture. “One’a them must have listened to you.” That came out bitter. If they had listened, he wouldn’t be here listening to one strange dude.

“I couldn’t make this offer to your father, or any of your forebears. But in the last few months there have been developments.” He smiled and Rafe felt uncomfortably stunned. Like he was slowly being wrapped up in a silken spiderweb.

“I can see I disconcerted you.” The elf…no, the man stood. “We can talk later, after you give up trying to convince yourself that you have brain damage, are mad, or hallucinating. When you accept the truth.” He stood looking down on Rafe and every breath he took was hard, as if the air wouldn’t be sucked into his lungs. “I’m not sure it is a good thing that you are attracted to Amber Sarga. That’s bound to cause complications.” There was a shrug and the guy’s cape…coat…whatever…rippled. His nod was regal. “Don’t wait too long, Rafe Barakiel, or it will be too late.”

Then he was gone and Rafe’s nose twitched and he thought he smelled ozone after a hard rain.

He studied the beer, then decided to drink it anyway. As he reached for it, he saw a business card. It was pale green. One word was in script. Pavan. The rest read Eight Corp, and gave an address in downtown Denver.

He drank his beer and threw down a twenty, decided to leave the Jag and walk to Juno’s Inn. His steps took him to Mystic Circle and he stared. There was a For Sale sign in front of number two, the fanciful pink house. Fumbling in his pocket for his phone, he snapped a pic, texted his financial agent “buy now.”

Then he jogged to the inn, every step making his head ache, sloshing the beer in his belly. And he felt as if the shadow of a beast of prey fell over him.

Amber couldn’t help herself. After dinner she went up to her office and opened Conrad’s tube and took out the family tree charts.

Rafe’s chart felt odd and slick and yet had an undertone that she liked, that called to her.

More than just a curse needing to be broken called to her.

She leaned Rafe’s roll against a bookcase next to the window. Conrad’s she spread out on her worktable. Handling the paper had magic gathering in her hands, flowing through her body. Her own minor magic that let her experience moments of the past.

This magic she’d discovered by accident. The gypsy journal made no mention of it.

She placed her hands on the middle of the family tree. The connection wasn’t as good because the paper wasn’t hers, nor was the work. But her hands stuck, so there was something there. Many scenes, perhaps. And, maybe, far back in the past, the vital scene.

Amber drew in a long breath.

Pink-purple sparks rose from her fingers to circle her head. As she fell through the well of blue-black, her ears rang. Her magic adjusted first to any change of language. The fall was short, but the abrupt stop was hard.

Not far back, then, a few decades. Amber blinked the dark fog away to settle into the vision.

The colors of the world had faded as usual to black and white.

Two men were sitting on a park bench, they both had features in common with Conrad Tyne-Cymbler. Both were wearing sixties clothes, the older man, who was in his late thirties, had on a suit and tie. The younger lounged, arms crossed and legs stretched, in jeans and sneakers and a white sweatshirt, scowling as he drew short puffs on a cigarette he held between thumb and two fingers.

“Son, I’m sorry we didn’t meet before.”

“Yeah, right.” He blew out a stream of smoke.

Amber could hear the conversation clearly, but no other ambient noise.

The older man shook his head. “I was afraid.”

The younger laughed, cut off as he saw his father dab at his face with a handkerchief.

“Afraid I’d die. We have this bad family thing going on. Some say it’s a curse.”

“Come on, man....” The one in jeans glanced around, saw a bottle and dropped his cigarette precisely into it, glowing end first.

The bottle exploded.

Older Cymbler’s yell cut short as a fragment slashed his jugular, ripped it open. A terrible dark flow painted his throat, widened into a spurt. Younger Cymbler’s mouth opened in a scream that echoed through the years. He clapped his hand on his opposite arm, which had more glass poking out of it.

He stared and stared at his father’s body as it slumped off the bench and rolled to the grass.

Horror. Terror. Grief. The huge flash of feeling, of tearing emotions, slammed into Amber, plummeting her back to reality and the now. She always experienced this fall and the distortion of her senses to understand the past event, then the blow of emotions from those in the scene shocking her back to her own time and body.

This time she didn’t have to sort the emotions, replay the words to extrapolate what had happened.

It had been all too hideously clear. Almost as bad as battle scenes.

She’d slipped and lay on the floor. There was movement from the threshold and her heart stuttered. Who?

Tiro watched her.

Gingerly Amber sat up, holding her head. Her eyes focused slowly from the dimness and dreary colors of the past to the eye-hurting color of the backs of her reference books—maroon, hunter-green, navy. The reason she kept her walls a creamy beige in this room. Easy on her eyes when she transitioned from the then to the now.

Tiro clomped over, each footfall seeming like an ogre’s instead of a brownie’s. He stood looking down at her, shaking his head. Then he drew in a long, sniffing breath. “Ah. At least this magic doesn’t age you or your pups. Bad on your eyes and ears, though.” He narrowed his eyes. “Somewhere in your branch there is more than elf magic. Hard to determine. A touch of lesser water-naiad or naiader.” Again he snorted. “And Treefolk—maybe a different Treefolk-elf mix. Huh.” He turned and stomped away.

Head throbbing, she was too late to ask what on earth the Treefolk were and how her magic might be affected.

Moving muscle by muscle, she pushed from the thick carpet—this wasn’t the first time she’d landed on the floor—and back into her office chair. She stared at her own family tree on the wall. She’d become fascinated with genealogy when she’d wanted to trace back her gift to discover if there were any additional journals that would help her with the aging thing.

She’d lost her line in the fourteenth century when a small city had been wiped out by the Black Death. She certainly hadn’t made it back to an elf named Cumulustre.

Nor had she experienced any past moments that showed an elf. Mostly the visions of her own bloodline showed women aging and dying as they broke a curse.

All her life she’d yearned to understand her talent, to mitigate or circumvent the consequences of it, the aging, studying each word of the journal…experimenting with small curses, ill will cast by children with magic at each other.

The past few years she’d lived at Mystic Circle, she’d come to believe in magic and had even more hope that somehow she’d discover how to help people and not pay the high cost.

But today her mind scrabbled to understand this new world and find her way among concepts she didn’t understand, to glean what could work for her.

She took some aspirin from her drawer, tossed them down with cold coffee. Then she went to work on her computer. Sure enough, the freak accident had happened, Conrad’s grandfather had died—and Conrad’s father had an injured arm that had never quite healed. That curse wasn’t quite a death curse. Apparently if the men didn’t meet, the elder could live until old age and die of natural causes. Very strange.

Next she searched for more journals of her ancestress. It had been several years since she’d done that and online resources were so much better now. She sent some requests to antiquarian dealers.

Branches tapped on the window, the wind was rising. Rafe’s chart fell down. Steps slow, Amber went over to it, picked it up. As always she was hit with the slick evil of the curse, the tingle of magic—stuff she was sensing more and clearly all the time—and something about the man and the family tugged at her.

Drawing in a good breath, she rolled the chart out on the worktable, too.

She shouldn’t care what happened to the man. But like she’d done on the database, she traced the Davail line back and back and back, and the sense of the curse and the magic was all along the chain of lives. To the beginning of the chart, three hundred years before.

Too tired and sad to want to experience another vision, she went to her chair and swiveled in it, thinking about curse breaking. Nothing in the journal said that a major curse, one that would last generations because the curser knew what he or she was doing, had a release, too. Amber’s eyes went to the top notebook on her bookshelf. The black one detailing the curse that had cost her the most—five years and her old cat, Jasmine. Hurt and guilt still twisted inside her at that. She hadn’t realized until then that she paid the price for fixing curses. Probably why her mother and her aunt had cut all ties with her when she was a child.

Even then she’d felt when their love had dropped away from her, when they’d abandoned her to relatives who only valued the pay they got to raise her.

She shivered. She’d felt cold and wondered what her aunt and mother felt. She’d believed her mother and aunt had loved her. Had they? She’d always question that.

Swinging back and forth, she stared at the black notebook. She’d been twenty-three at the time and new to her business…and already passing for older than she was due to various small curses broken over the years. Roger Tremont’s daughter had had the curse, an ill-health thing that would shorten her life.

Amber hadn’t been able to resist—she never had, much—and had done the preparations as noted in the journal. She’d asked Roger and his daughter over for their last genealogical meeting and took the girl’s hand while Roger was reviewing his family tree. Amber pulled, drawing out a fine net of gray magic. It shattered as it hit the air, but had also drained Amber. She’d collapsed, fallen and seen her cat go into convulsions and die.

Roger had helped her up and she’d gotten him out of the house. Over the next minutes, she had aged and some of the obscure language in her ancestress’s journal that she’d never understood about consequences had become obvious. Later, she figured she’d lost five years. How many years she’d given Roger’s daughter, she didn’t know.

Another result of that action was that her perception of curses became more sensitive, and the images of what they were doing to their victims grew worse. And the need to break them and help became difficult to ignore.

Slowly she stood and took down the notebook. But as she recalled, the curse hadn’t been going on long. Roger had consulted her to discover if there were any genetic reason for his daughter’s sickness.

Putting the book on her desk, she didn’t open it. Not tonight. But if there was someplace to start looking for a curse that might have had an unbinding built in when it was cast, that was the case.

She turned and left the room, flicking off the lights and closing the door behind her.

Already too late for her, and her cat, they’d paid the price and that was still harsh and bitter in her blood.

She walked by a glowering Tiro, who lurked in the hall and drank a mug of hot cocoa.

Neither of them said anything.

The blue eyes followed Rafe into sleep. They stared, then the eyelids closed and Rafe saw that they were fringed with silver. Not white lashes, not gray. Silver. Like the elf’s hair.

In the dream he knew the man was not a man, but an elf.

In the dream he was not alone. There were men behind him, many of them. He could feel them, like many shadows at his back. Yes, the sun was before him, and the bright blue eyes had vanished into the bright blue sky. With clouds edged with silver from the sun.

Rafe shuddered. He knew this dream now. The one he’d had as a child. The yearning one.

The first yearning had been for a father, a man who would love him. Hell, a man who would spend a few minutes of time with him, even a damn weekend morning that some of his friends had with their fathers who’d been divorced from their mothers.

Next came the yearning for the dagger.

A couple of the shadows had been with him then.

During the hot, sexual dreams of puberty, he’d yearned for a girl. Some specific girl. He didn’t know her, but figured he’d know her if he saw her. Or touched her. Or plunged his body into hers.

And the dagger dreams had increased.

More shadows had been at his back, then.

He’d banished the dream after college. When he knew that he wouldn’t have a special woman. Not with his family history. No wife or son for him. He’d known then, too, that the blade was an unattainable magic he didn’t believe in.

And he knew that he’d become a gray shadow behind another boy and man.

Chapter 8

THE ELF HAD brought the dream back to Rafe.

No. In the way of dreams and his unconscious that formed them, he knew the crow-bat-evil-things had brought the dream back. That had started the countdown to his death.

He wouldn’t be able to outrun it, or speed away by cycle or car or boat.

And the dagger was back.

It floated before him horizontally, blue-steel and glittery as if there were an enamel coating on it with silver and gold sparkles embedded in it.

Or maybe those were stars.

His heart thumped hard. He wanted that blade. The shape of the weapon was more triangular than a regular sword blade and the length was less than a sword but more than a long dagger. The simple grip was a silver wire-wrapped handle.

He’d forgotten how the need for that blade…and maybe the girl…swallowed him, an ache that filled him, the dream, the universe.

As much as the longing to live, not for three more months, but until he passed away in his sleep from old age. After seeing his children, his sons—first and second and however many more—and daughters grown.

He wanted life with a passion that others couldn’t understand. He wanted the woman and he wanted the children.

But the elf’s eyes in the dream opened again and glittered like the blade and Rafe knew in his core that if he wanted to live and love, he must find the dagger.