When she opened the back door to leave she was so distracted and in such a rush that she almost stepped on the dead squirrel laying on the doorstep. At the last second she saw the motionless lump of gray fur and managed to pull herself back, balancing precariously on the sill, and flailing to grab the door frame. In her desperation not to step on the animal her cell phone fell out of her pocket, hit the concrete step – thankfully not the squirrel – and bounced in two pieces to the asphalt.
With her heart in her throat she carefully stepped around the dead animal and picked up the pieces of her phone. To her relief it wasn’t broken; the back had come off and partially dislodged the battery. Jason had bought her the phone for emergencies and she didn’t want to tell him she’d broken it in less than a month because she was afraid of a dead squirrel. She’d never live that down. She quickly reassembled it and shoved it back into the pocket of her jeans. Turning back to the door she hesitated for a minute and then leaned over the animal to lock the door before pulling back to examine the situation.
The squirrel was an adult and seemed to be in good health. Allie couldn’t see any obvious blood or injury, but she wasn’t sure that meant much – she’d seen plenty of road kill that didn’t look too bad either. Come to that her back door wasn’t impossibly far from the road I wonder if he was hit and dragged himself this far before dying? she thought. Or maybe he was sick. Oh crap what if he had rabies? She winced looking around helplessly, unsure what to do. Finally she pulled out her phone to call animal control deciding they at least would be able to tell her how to handle a possibly rabid dead animal. But when she opened her phone nothing happened. She pushed the on button several times in rising panic, sure now that she had broken it after all, before it occurred to her that dropping the phone and popping off the case had broken the spell that kept the device running in the semi-magical environment of the Bordertown.
Gritting her teeth in annoyance she took the back of the phone off again and began tracing the necessary spell over the battery. Her eyes unfocused and she relaxed involuntarily as she directed the magic into the shape she needed it to take to protect the small but convenient bit of technology. Since touching the spell would disrupt it the cell phone protection was placed just above the battery where the back of the case would cover it and allow it to work without interference. Unless, of course, you dropped your phone and it popped apart. She felt the magic snap into place and the phone immediately hummed with power – magical and electrical – and she sighed. It was definitely not broken then.
She dialed information to get the number for animal control, eyeing the sad lump of fur. I have absolutely got to do a cleansing. A major cleansing, she thought This is getting ridiculous and I don’t know if I can take much more….
************************************
He stood in the shadows of an empty lot, safely hidden behind a row of bushes whose spring leaves and flowers provided the perfect cover. The scent of Forsythia filled the air and made his head ache but he ignored it; he couldn’t afford the distraction. His eyes remained trained on the house across the street watching patiently as the hours crawled by and the party went from small to wild. He watched carefully, trying to take in every movement and occasionally was rewarded with a glimpse of her. She was impossible to miss; in this crowd of bland, interchangeable nobodies she glowed like a star. She had a presence that the others didn’t, that betrayed her heritage to anyone who wasn’t an oblivious idiot. She was magical, and he felt a terrible longing and hatred every time he saw her.
Finally in the dark hours of the morning the party started to break up with people staggering off, alone and in groups. He stood still as cars drove away, headlights stabbing into the night, their drivers weaving all over the road, and he sneered. These stupid children, these sheep, had no idea they were wasting their lives, throwing it all away when there were important things to be done. Things like what he was doing, serving the greater good. If they only had the sense to wake up and throw off the chains of lies and misinformation that held them subservient. He shook his head. They would never do that of course. It was up to the few who had realized the truth to take action, to set things right. As more and more cars left he was starting to think that she was going to stay here all night, maybe she’s smart enough not to get into a car that was as likely to end in a ditch as a driveway, he thought feeling disappointed and relieved at once. And then, like a beacon, her unmistakable form was emerging from the front door, half turned to say good bye to her friends.
He felt a surge of fear and excitement, which doubled when he realized she was alone. Maybe tonight would be the night, maybe this time after all the days and nights of watching and waiting, would be his chance…his heart beat faster, knowing that he was running out of time. Tonight or tomorrow, but he couldn’t wait much longer. Tonight would be perfect. He moved carefully along the hedgerow on a course that would let him intersect with her path as she walked unsteadily towards one of the cars still parked on his side of the street. His mouth was too dry to swallow but his hands were sweaty; he wiped them absentmindedly on his jeans. She dropped her keys in the road and stopped, struggling to pick them up and his mind raced. He hadn’t planned for this, but the opportunity was too perfect to turn down. Would she scream? Would she fight back? Shelby had, she’d even managed to almost get away, but he hadn’t been prepared for any resistance then, he’d thought it would be easy. This time he knew it wouldn’t be. Maybe she’s try to run like Shelby had. The thought turned him on and he found himself grinning savagely into the darkness even as his stomach twisted in anticipation.
She crossed to the sidewalk, moving over to the driver’s side door of her car and in a rush he pushed through the bushes bursting out next to her. She turned towards him her big green eyes wide and confused. He wanted to laugh but tried to keep his expression casual. “Hi, Jenny.”
“Do I know you?” she asked, her voice soft and slurry and clearly very drunk.
Her words made him angry, because she damn well should know him after all the time he’d spent getting to know her. “Maybe not” he felt his mouth pulling into a wide smile, “but you will.” And he lunged forward, grabbing her and covering her mouth with his hand. He wrapped his other arm around her body, holding her tightly against him and waiting for her to start fighting back. But she didn’t. She went limp in his arms and started crying behind the hand clamped on her face. She didn’t even try to bite him. He felt a moment of terrible disappointment, almost disgust, at her immediate surrender before his own resolve kicked in. It didn’t matter, and anyway he reminded himself as he started dragging her back towards his car, it’d be easier this way….
**************************************
In a small tavern in Fairy, in a part of Queen Naesseryia’s realm that was not nearly as secure as she thought it was, a small group had gathered. They sat in a quiet corner and ignored the other customers. For their part the motley assortment of lesser Fey who frequented the Tipsy Pixie avoided the cluster of elves simply because they were elves and no one wanted trouble with the higher ranking Fey.
Ferinyth leaned forward, keeping his voice low, “The failure was not mine. I had everything well in hand-“
His father, Savelian, waved a dismissive hand cutting off the younger elf’s words. “You and your brother failed. There is no excusing it. You were sent to retrieve the book and you allowed it to slip through your fingers, and worse to be destroyed.”
“All is not lost, still. The book is gone, it is true but the woman who read the book and used some of its magic lives,” a third elf, cousin to Savelian and the leader of the group by force of arms, spoke.
“Woman! Barely a girl and a mixed blood at that,” Savelian sneered dismissively. “And she too my foolish sons let slip through their fingers.”
“Father,” Ferinyth hissed, “Do not blame me for Daeriun’s failure to defeat the Elven Guard mage.”
“He paid well for his own failure by dying,” Savelian
said coldly. “While you nearly lost us everything by trying to kill the girl who is the only one that can tell us about the spell we need.”
“I knew she would not die,” Ferinyth bluffed. It was dangerously close to a lie, but he had been fairly certain when he had stabbed her that the Guard would be able to heal her and he been sure her injuries would slow them down, weak soft hearted fools that they were. Since she had lived after all he had been proved right on both counts.
“Enough,” the third elf, Varessial, spoke again. “It does not matter. The girl lived, and hope remains for us to succeed. Better if she is young, she will be easier to handle, and this time Ferinyth you will be certain to do her no harm.”
Ferinyth shifted uncomfortably not entirely sure what his father’s cousin was referring to. He couldn’t possibly mean that the girl wasn’t to be harmed at all. “I certainly won’t do her any permanent harm or risk killing her. But a little sport won’t ruin her-“
“Nothing permanent or damaging. We need her hale and able to speak clearly, not broken and gibbering. And these children, these humans and mixed bloods, they break so very easily. It is a great risk to all of us to seek the girl out again and even more to take her with the Guard already alerted to our presence,” Varessial paused holding Ferinyth’s eyes until the younger elf looked down. “I would not risk sending you again at all after your previous failure if you did not already know the area and the girl well. You will go with Salarius” he gestured at his own son, sitting back in the corner, “and the two of you will not return without her. We will continue doing what we can to see that the Bright Court Guard is distracted with other matters. But be certain Ferinyth, if you fail again it would be a mercy for the Bright Court Guard to kill you.”
Ferinyth bowed his head in acknowledgement, his eyes glinting. He did not intend to fail again.
Chapter 2 - Saturday
“Wow, that stuff reeks,” Jason made a face, waving his hand in front of his face.
Allie stopped walking, the burning bundle of sage leaves held out in front of her. She glanced around her store, the ordered rows of bookshelves now obscured by a haze of smoke. “I like the way it smells.”
Jason wrinkled his nose, then looked up towards the ceiling, “You did remember to turn off the smoke detectors before lighting that thing up, right? Because I’m going to be really embarrassed if the alarm goes off and -”
“And all your firefighting buddies roll up and see you playing witch,” Allie interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Fine Takada, go open the front door and let some fresh air in.”
“More like let some smoke out. I hope no one thinks the building’s on fire,” Jason laughed, already jogging up to open the door. Allie mimed a kick in his direction, forgetting her bad ankle which screamed in protest at taking all her weight. She staggered, pain shooting up her leg, and bit her lip feeling foolish, but Jason hadn’t seen anything. She turned quickly and went back to smudging the store, limping more than usual now as she walked around trying to get the smoke into every crevice. Jason had always been prone to worrying about everything but Allie was pretty sure he was just teasing this time.
“I’m not sure that helped very much,” Jason moaned as Allie moved between the shelves in the back of the store.
“Well, then go open the back door and get some circulation going. Maybe that’ll help.”
“Do you really think burning some plants will get rid of funky energy?” Jason asked, hesitating.
“Yup. I know it does. My grandmother swore by burning sage,” Allie said, blowing on the smoldering bundle to keep the embers going.
“I dunno. Seems kinda weird, even for magic. I mean I get channeling energy, and chanting spells, and drawing out patterns to set a spell, but burning an herb and expecting it to cleanse the air seems, I dunno, just counterproductive.”
“You sound like such a firefighter, arguing against burning things,” Allie laughed.
Jason laughed with her, “I guess, but really how do you know it works?”
“Because I can feel the energy changing. Don’t they use herbs for cleansing in Japan?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jason shifted slightly starting to move towards the back as Allie emerged from the bookshelves. “Not my thing and remember my mom and I came over to the US when I was little.”
“Yeah, I always forget you aren’t into your dad’s heritage side of things.”
“Why should I be?” Jason looked uncomfortable. “Who needs an emperor and seppuku anyway? You’re talking about a culture that hasn’t changed hardly at all since the black ships arrived in 1853.”
“You’re being ridiculous, and please you’re talking to me here, you think traditional Japanese culture is rigid try Elvish culture. You offend someone by using the wrong pronoun and you get challenged to a duel,” Allie waved the sage bundle in the air for emphasis and ash drifted down onto the wooden floor.
“I’m being ridiculous? You’re trusting burning plants to clean your energy,” Jason said sticking his tongue out at her.
“Hey, who’s the empath here? I think I can judge what works for getting rid of bad energy.”
He rolled his eyes dramatically, “Whatever, I’m going to open the back door and I’ll get some lunch started, if you have anything worth eating back there and I can see through the haze to find it.”
“You are such a dork. I think there’s some leftover pizza in the fridge if you want to heat it up and you can get some tea started. There’s a bunch of kinds in the cabinet over the sink,” Allie shook her head slightly as Jason disappeared into the back area of the building where her small kitchenette and storage rooms were, heading towards the back door. She felt a moment of unease at the idea of the back door being opened and left open with no one watching it, but she shoved the feeling away. Nothing was going to happen and she wasn’t alone. She was safe. Shrugging she turned and kept smudging lost in thought.
In the last month, since their friend Syndra had been killed and then Allie had been kidnapped and almost killed herself, she and Jason had been spending a lot more time together. Sometimes Allie wondered if Jason really liked being around her so much or if he was trying to protect her from the one person involved in hurting her who had gotten away, but mostly she tried not to think about it. He was the one uncomplicated thing in her life, the one person who didn’t seem to want anything from her, and she enjoyed being around him. He was also the only one she had been able to think of to help her out when she decided her store needed an energetic overhaul: her cousin Liz wouldn’t help with anything magical, her friend Bleidd was off visiting his elven relatives for the first time in more than a half century, and her boyfriend had been gone for several weeks, on an assignment in the adjoining Fairy realm.
She had tried to comfort herself a bit about Jessilaen being gone by reminding herself that it wouldn’t be any different if she had accepted his offer to go and live with him, but she knew in her heart that wasn’t true. If she were living with him at the elven Outpost or in Fairy she would have gotten updates from the other Elven Guard or his family. Elves lived in very tight knit communities of extended family units and if she had agreed to be part of that she wouldn’t be left totally on the outside with no one telling her anything about what was going on. Not even Jess’s brother Zarethyn had made any effort to keep in touch with Allie and she felt far too uncomfortable with the situation to call him herself.
Part of the problem was, she did know exactly where he was and what he was doing but she wasn’t supposed to. Jess had finished his assignment and was back at the Outpost now, but he hadn’t called her to tell her that yet. Allie assumed that meant he wasn’t free to see her, and since she shouldn’t know what was going on with him it put her in an awkward position. The only reason she did know was that when she had been kidnapped she had used a spell based in dark magic to try to save herself by creating a psychic bond between them using her innate empathy. In the immediate aftermath of the events Jess and the other elves in h
is unit of the Elven Guard had all felt that the spell’s effects would most likely fade over time – they hadn’t, nor had she managed to get any control over her empathic gift since opening herself up to it. Jess’s presence was a constant for Allie and she heard what he was hearing in the back of her mind like the perpetual murmur of background noise in her head. If she concentrated she could block it out to some degree, but if she wasn’t careful she projected herself fully into his mind and saw and experienced whatever he was doing in that moment. Sometimes all it took was thinking too much about missing him, or wondering what he was doing…and she didn’t dare let anyone know how little control she had over it. Or how much of his life she end up eavesdropping on, both because it felt like an invasion of privacy and because she worried that she might get him in trouble with the Guard if they knew that she knew so much. She felt like a giant magical disaster, but there wasn’t anyone she could go to for help. She shook her head slightly as she finished up the last section of the store. Jess knew, of course, that she was still in his head, but not how much she was there, and she had been making an effort to pull back as much as she could.
Sighing Allie limped over to the counter and dropped the last of the sage bundle into a waiting brass bowl to let it burn itself out. A moment later Jason emerged from the back hallway carrying two paper plates with pizza. Allie relaxed slightly at his cheerful expression and the surge of happy emotion that radiated out from him and into her as soon as he was within a few feet, drinking the feeling in until her own guilt took over. Knowing that it didn’t hurt him when she used his emotional energy to strengthen herself did nothing to make her feel any less convinced that it was a bad thing to do. She tried to get her shields back up to block him out and was not entirely surprised when it didn’t work; her ability to control the energetic barriers which were her only defense against other people’s emotions intruding into her perceptions – not to mention against other people’s magic – was still erratic. And for whatever reason she seemed almost entirely unable to block Jason out no matter how hard she tried, so despite her efforts she felt her tiredness and pain ebbing away as his emotional cheer flooded in.
Lost in Mist and Shadow: A Between the Worlds Novel Page 2
