Joyous fireworks danced among the swirls of magical color, and moved in waves between our King and Queen.
The sparks of mate magic swirled around Gerard and Axlam most of the time, and had recently begun flickering between Jaxson and Akeyla. In Las Vegas, I’d seen it move between Remy and his red-dressed nature-spirit mate, Portia Elizabeth. I’d always thought such magicks were wolf-centered.
Two hundred years in Alfheim and this was the first time I’d ever noticed mate magic moving between two elves—and two elves whose marriage had started as nothing other than a political alliance.
And never, in my two hundred years in Alfheim, had I seen Arne look at his wife with such concentration and reverence. I’d seen him use each separately—concentrating on her words or her movements, or with a reverent look of awe when he didn’t realize he was being watched—but never both at the same time, and never in such a public setting.
Somewhere out in Alfheim was a concealed woman who I was sure deserved the same concentration and reverence. Deep down inside my enchantment-cocooned heart, I knew she was worthy of all the reverence my adopted father now gave my adopted mother.
I knew.
I had to find her. I had to, even if it was the last thing I did.
Chapter 2
Akeyla ran out of the women’s restroom in the band shelter in full playwear—bright blue leggings, sneakers, and her prize “Alfheim Gossiping Squirrels” Sprout League t-shirt that Jax had given her after his team won regionals. She still had her hair and ears wrapped up in the scarf, but had removed most, though not all, of her decorative flowers.
“Uncle Frank! Mr. Bjorn!” She stopped a few feet from where we sat at one of the shelter’s tables, and pointed at the massive, noisy bouncy castle not too far from the chairs. “Are you going to bounce?”
Seemed Arne had gone in with a few of the kids. Arne Odinsson, the King of the Alfheim Elves, had gone full town-father and was now bouncing around in the castle in his dress shirt and suit pants with half the town’s school children.
Today was a day of wonders. “I think Bjorn and I are a bit big for bouncing,” I said.
She shrugged. “Grandma said she’ll bounce with me.”
Bjorn looked as surprised by the play of his monarchs as I was. “I’m beginning to wonder if they came back from Las Vegas enchanted.”
Akeyla looked over at the castle. “Where’s Jax?”
I was surprised he hadn’t been waiting while she changed. “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s probably changing, too.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m supposed to wait for Mommy.” She sat on the bench next to Bjorn. “Can we get a kitten, Uncle Frank?”
Bjorn chuckled.
“Not until Marcus Aurelius comes home. We’ll need his approval,” I said.
She frowned, but didn’t say anything else. Bjorn, either. They clammed up, which was very un-elf-like. But I had yet another gut feeling that the elves frowned and stopped asking questions when the topic got even peripherally close to my mystery woman. It made sense, with the concealment enchantments. I just wish I remembered well enough to fully recognize any day-to-day patterns.
Akeyla pointed off to the side of the bouncy castle. “Who’s that?” she asked.
I turned around. Some smooth-looking guy I didn’t recognize stood on the edge of the park, openly taking photos of the crowd with a big, obvious camera. “Did Arne and Dag hire a photographer?” I asked Bjorn.
He shook his head. “No. Only the video feed for the ceremony.”
“That’s an expensive camera he’s wielding.” I pointed. “That lens alone runs a good five grand.” I’d priced photography equipment lately. Why, I couldn’t remember, but I had a vague notion I’d been looking at buying a gift.
“Some of the most powerful witches use cameras as their seer stones. Some of them can read regular photos.” Bjorn stood up. “We’re not the only enclave with a ‘no photography’ policy unless the photographer is cleared by the elder elves.”
I stood up, too.
We weren’t the only ones to notice him. Ed, Gerard, and two other pack members had surrounded the guy before he could retreat to his car.
He raised his arms as if surrendering. Ed extended his hand. The guy handed over his camera.
“We’re in a public space,” I said. “I’m not sure anyone can stop him from taking photos.” At least not without a little magical intervention. After what happened with my vampire brother and Akeyla at Lara’s Café, I fully understood why none of the magicals in Alfheim wanted random mundanes photographing their lives.
“I don’t like him,” Akeyla said.
I looked down at my little niece. She stared at the guy with the camera, her face stern, and her hands balled into fists. Fire magic swirled around her in sheets of red and blue flames. Magic that was building into something strong enough it might manifest in a way noticeable by the mundanes.
“Can you tell us why, honey?” I asked.
Bjorn suddenly looked down at Akeyla. “It’s okay,” he said. “Sherriff Ed has it under control.”
“No,” she said.
I looked at Bjorn, who looked at me with just as much shock as I was sure I was showing. “Maura!” I called toward the shelter. Then to Bjorn, “Go. They need elf magic.”
He jogged toward Ed and the wolves.
Ed opened the camera and took out the memory card. One of the other wolves ran toward Bjorn, nodded, and ran toward the bouncy castle, presumably to get Arne.
“He’s a bad man, Uncle Frank,” Akeyla said.
Axlam, Maura, and Dag exited the woman’s restroom of the shelter. Dag immediately followed Bjorn toward the unknown man. Maura moved toward Akeyla and me. But Axlam stopped three feet from the door and stood unmoving as if she’d been frozen in ice.
Maura squatted and touched Akeyla’s face. “Honey, what’s wrong?” she said. She, too, had changed into something more bouncy-castle-worthy, as had Dag and Axlam.
Akeyla continued to stare at the bad man.
“Her magic’s flaring,” I said. “What’s wrong with Axlam?”
Maura stood up. Gerard pushed the man, who threw up his hands again, and stepped back. Maura looked back at Axlam.
“Frank,” she said, “what are you seeing?”
I see magic. The elves can’t, nor can the wolves, and they long ago learned to trust my senses. “Akeyla’s upset.” I peered at the group of arguing men. “Bjorn and your mother are both in full protective mode.” Sigils and spellwork geared and shifted around both of them. “Bjorn’s put up a wall between the man and Ed, and Dag’s clockwork magic looks like it’s about to slam down on his head.”
Maura pulled Akeyla close. “The wolves,” she said.
Gerard’s wolf magic flared as much as the elves’. It flowed off him, to his pack members, and back as if synchronizing the three men. “Nothing unusual,” I said.
I looked at Axlam. She still stood three feet from the woman’s restroom door. Her soft silk blouse and long skirt flowed around her body.
Her magic erupted as a wolf mirage that extended a good twelve feet in the air. Magic shot out from her, toward Gerard and her pack, and circled back, but unlike them, her wolf was just as present as her human form.
It sniffed and growled.
Gerard spun around and looked at his wife.
“The wolves sense something,” I said. Something bad.
Ed handed the camera to Dag, now sans memory card. She rolled it around in her hands as if looking at it the way any mundane would, except she was wrapping it in some sort of spell, one that I suspected would keep it from working properly from now on.
The man’s posture shifted to belligerent, then back to submissive as if he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to do.
He took the camera, and held up his hands again, then pulled his wallet out of his pocket. What had to be business cards appeared, and he handed the wad to Ed, who picked them gingerly from his fingers as if they were p
oison ivy.
Dag pointed at the parking lot, and the man backed toward a nondescript sedan. When he looked over his shoulder, she dropped a tracer enchantment onto his back.
It slid off.
“Maura, your mother’s tracer just slipped off his back.”
“What?” she muttered. “That’s not possible.”
Ed read the name on the card. I couldn’t hear, but his lips formed some long-winded phrase.
Gerard responded to Axlam’s magic. He lunged at the now-running man, and would have caught him if his pack hadn’t held him back.
Dag tossed a second tracer enchantment at the sedan. It, too, slid off.
Jax and Arne pushed their way through the crowd. Jax immediately ran toward Akeyla, but stopped and looked between his proto-mate and his mother.
Maura tugged on Akeyla’s hand. “Let’s go see if Axlam and Jax are okay,” she said.
Akeyla blinked. She nodded, then ran toward Jax.
I reached for Maura’s hand. “What just happened?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Did you see any magic around that man that would interfere with the tracers?”
“No,” I said. “But from over here, the elf and wolf magic may have masked it.”
She squeezed my hand. “Go tell Mom and Dad that whatever dark magic is at work, it’s not obvious to you.” Then she jogged toward the kids, who were now both hugging Axlam.
Arne waved me over. I nodded, then looked back at Axlam. She stood tall with the same strong, stoic poise in which she always carried herself. The same poise every strong woman who had ever been, or continued to be, hounded by evil carried. Axlam Geroux, Alpha of the Alfheim Pack, was not a stranger to harm.
She held the kids against her sides, but reached for Maura’s hand.
Something sinister had just walked into Alfheim. Something that, unlike my brother, didn’t feel the need to slither around in the shadows. This sinister showed up at the reaffirmation of vows and destroyed the goodwill of the community just as effectively as popping the bouncy castle.
I walked toward the elves and wolves. Time to stand up, once again, for my King and Queen—and Alfheim.
Chapter 3
Gerard jogged by as I walked toward the knot of wolves and elves on the edge of the parking lot.
“What—” I started to ask, until he held up his hand.
His honey-colored eyes shimmered. His wolf was closer to the surface than it should be with all the mundanes around. “Ask Arne,” he said, and continued toward his wife and son.
Bjorn was tapping at his phone when I walked up, and only nodded. Ed stood apart from the other men, his hands on his hips and his eyes narrow, as he stared in the direction in which the photographer had driven away. The pack dispersed—mostly, I suspected, to inform and to rally.
Arne pinched the memory card between his thumb and forefinger and held it pointing downward as if the little bit of plastic and circuitry was some sort of magical tome. Dag, who stood at a forty-five degree angle to her husband, cupped her hand under the card, but did not physically touch it.
Magic coiled off Arne’s arm and around the card just as a matching magic coiled upward from Dag.
“I feel no magic here,” Arne said.
“Nor do I,” Dag answered.
Dag’s hand fell away. Arne motioned to me. He dropped the card onto my palm. “Do you see anything?”
I rolled it around in my hand, then pinched it the same way Arne had, and peered closely at its surface. “I saw your tracers slide off both him and his car, by the way.” I glanced out at the parking lot. “Don’t see them now.”
Dag swept her hand through the air and both tracers materialized over her palm. She rolled over her arms and flicked them back into place just above her wrists. “I sensed no counter-spell.”
Arne and Dag’s elf magic clung to the plastic and the metal connectors of the memory card. I squinted and flipped it over and peered at it edge-on.
“There’s a shadow.” Something clung to the card, or had at one time. “I can’t tell if it’s a remnant of removed magic or if there’s something else here.”
Arne frowned. “He obviously wasn’t as mundane as we thought.” He held out the man’s business card.
Tom Wilson Photography, it said. Weddings, engagements, and scenic photos, and an address.
“Why is a Bemidji photographer in Alfheim?” I asked. Especially one so slick magic didn’t cling to him.
“He said that he’d been hired by a corporation to document Northern Minnesota,” Bjorn said. “Said the images were for brochures. He’s been ‘documenting’ now for over a year.”
“How strange,” I said.
Bjorn held up his hand. “Found his benefactor.” He held up his phone. “Natural Living Incorporated.” He looked up from his screen.
Ed stared at the crowd, and specifically at the kids—his included—who chased each other around the bouncy castle. “He was lying.” He nodded toward the oak trees. “And excited like a kid making one of those stupid Internet prank videos.”
Arne frowned as if he didn’t understand Ed’s reference.
Ed shrugged. “My oldest watched a couple of pranksters for a while until he got bored. Said all the lying and flashy stupidity made the boys doing the pranks look desperate for attention.” He nodded toward the road. “The photographer seemed desperate like that.”
The last thing we needed was a team of dumb kids thinking they could make a small town look stupid by strapping a rocket to a shopping cart and sending it down Main Street. Or worse, by groping the locals.
“None of you read magic on him?” I asked.
Dag shook her head. “The pack reacted. Gerard and the others didn’t sense anything specific, but they’re sure they sensed a darkness.”
And her tracers had slid off. “Then the shadow around the card probably is some sort of concealment enchantment,” I said.
A mundane prank, this was not.
Arne stared off in the distance in much the same way as Ed. “He may have no idea he carries the magic.”
Dag nodded. “Like Maura’s ex’s island magic, it might be something creepily persistent.”
The elves looked at each other in turn, all three of them with strained, unhappy faces.
I was unaccustomed to the elven paralysis. Any magic, no matter how shadowy or creepily persistent, was to be rooted out and disposed of posthaste. Yet here stood our King and Queen on the edge between the park’s green grass and the lot’s black tar, both with their hackles up, but neither knowing where to punch.
Perhaps this “shadow” caused the same response as the concealments around my mystery woman.
“Lennart says he’ll check the card.” Bjorn held out his phone again. “By the way, Frank, your satchel is ready.”
That meant Lennart had finished the stasis pouch I’d commissioned to hold Rose’s notebook. The elder elf who had made Remy’s pouches for his sketchbooks was long dead, and both Arne and Dag were busy. I figured Lennart would enjoy the challenge, and the opportunity to engage in some precise magic.
“Great.” I said. “I’ll head over.”
Arne handed the card to Bjorn. “Tell Lennart thank you, and that we missed him today.”
Bjorn’s lips pinched. “I told him that there were plenty of elves here who would sit with him. He said he didn’t want to be a distraction.”
Lennart was one of Alfheim’s most magically powerful—and magically overwhelmed—elves. Any elf who took their own name so young, as Lennart had in his early twenties, only did so because his magic demanded it of him. And Lennart’s magic was prominent, powerful, and as bombastic as his namesake.
Where Bjorn walked the world more as the “elf of the common man” part of his namesake’s magic, Lennart was all storms, all the time.
He didn’t get out much, mostly because even with all his power, he had a difficult time holding a glamour. Sadly, he spent most of his time hiding in the back of Raven’s Gaze B
rewery with Mr. Mole Rat and Bjorn’s other cats.
Arne sighed. They’d been through this with Lennart many, many times. They all seemed as continually surprised by his polite lack of confidence as I was, considering his Thor-like magic. But then again, I knew nothing of his past, or why he’d come to Alfheim in the first place. Like so many of us, he was another stray taken in by Arne and Dag.
“We will investigate when things wind down here,” Arne said.
Ed returned to staring at the lot’s exit. He wasn’t any better at disguising his body language than our guest had been. Ed’s hackles were up even more so than the elves’. He scratched his cheek. “I don’t want any problems with the pack,” he said. “The last thing Alfheim needs is close to thirty angry, wild-with-Samhain werewolves going into a full moon.”
I looked back at the band shelter. Gerard stood protectively between his family and the lot. Axlam continued to hold Jax against her side. Akeyla had moved to Maura, but held tight to Jax’s hand.
“We need to figure this out,” I said. Now, before the wolves whipped themselves into a frenzy.
Dag squeezed my arm again, then took Arne’s hand. They walked toward Gerard.
Bjorn tucked his phone into his pocket. “I told Lennart I’d be home in an hour or two.” Then he, too, walked back toward the festivities.
Ed returned to staring at the road. “Do me a favor,” he said.
“Anything,” I answered.
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t flinch or fidget. But his shoulders visibly tightened under his jacket. He slowly exhaled. “Remind Arne that I brought my family here because he told me his town and its magic would keep my kids safe.”
Arne had yet to grant Ed access to The Great Hall. Most of the time when a threat came around, Arne sent the Martinez family to the Alfheim Pack for protection. One of Ed’s deputies was pack—two now, with Mark Ellis joining the force—so I suspected Arne thought Ed would be more comfortable in Gerard and Axlam’s warded and spell-protected home with his mundane-trained law enforcement.
Wolf Hunted Page 2
