“I know. I got a sense of your plan from your mind, and it’s clever.” He kissed her palm. “Like you.” He sighed. “I just don’t like the risk to the woman I love.”
She smiled and fought against tears. “I love you, too.” Meeting the man of her dreams and mating with him had turned her into a watering pot. “Come share a quick shower with me so we can get dressed and face the world.”
His eyes took on an amber glow. “I could lick you off afterward.” It sent a zing to her core, and she knew he could feel it, too. She loved knowing how much he wanted her.
She stood and held out her hand to him. “Why don’t we both do that for each other?”
15
Moira stood on the corner, waiting for her cue. She could feel Chance to her left, though he was concealed in the recessed doorway of Fantastic Faerie Frocks. She sent a pulse of love along their mate bond, which was apparently a palpable thing to every other shifter and magical creature they’d run across. She’d never been so congratulated in her life.
When the town council of Kotoyeesinay decided to do something, they went all in. Once again, they’d had to turn volunteers away for the little drama they were about to enact. Shiloh, in his native coyote form, but magically disguised to look like Pruhon’s big gray wolf, would chase her down the street and catch her right in front of the sheriff’s station, just as they were escorting Lawrence Witzer to his limousine. She’d pretend to stab Shiloh with her wicked-looking plastic knife, and he’d pretend to rip her throat out with his dying breath. Kotoyeesinay’s elf elders would take care of the rest with magic.
Shiloh yipped once. Moira took off.
“Help! Help!” she shouted. She turned and looked over her shoulder. Shiloh, with an overlay of huge, slavering wolf, was barreling toward her. So were nine other shifters of various species, each disguised to look like one of Pruhon’s wolf pack.
A shifter wearing the Richie illusion brought back memories of his murderous rage, spurring her to run faster.
She pretended not to see the sheriff’s station door opening and Witzer stepping out, with uniformed Chantal behind him.
Moira pretended to trip, then launched herself into the tumbling roll she’d learned from a bored stunt coordinator on the set of a movie she’d helped cater. The borrowed elbow pads, kneepads, and umpire’s vest took the brunt of the impact, but it still stunned her for a moment.
Stab me! projected Shiloh, as he slowed and approached her with convincing menace.
“Pruhon, no!” shouted Witzer. “She’s mine!”
Shiloh-as-Pruhon snarled defiantly at Witzer, giving Moira the perfect opportunity to stab at Shiloh’s side several times with her plastic knife. Shiloh howled theatrically in terrible pain, then leapt on her and licked her neck wetly.
She screamed, then at the next lick, cut off her scream and stabbed one more time, then let her legs and arms go limp. She lolled her head to the side.
Shiloh’s seventy pounds of furry weight dropped on her, nearly making her jackknife when his paw hit her bruised stomach and ribs. He sent her a wordless apology.
All around them, the rest of Pruhon’s supposed pack began attacking each other and dying in spectacular and gruesome ways. Chantal jumped in, too, pretending to protect Witzer and be knocked down and savaged by her younger brother, an adolescent bear with a wolf overlay. The real shifters were hamming it up, clearly having the time of their lives.
To Witzer, the street would look like a gory mess of blood, flesh, and dying wolves. He took the bait of seeing his limousine drive around the corner and made a dash for it, narrowly escaping the frenzied wolves that had gone insane at the death of their alpha. He waved his arms to get the driver to stop, then frantically launched himself into the passenger section. The limo tires screeched on the pavement as it peeled around a corner and made good its escape. Glade magic would help the limo find its way quickly out of town.
After several long moments, the street exploded with the laughter of eight naked men and women, including Shiloh. He fell off her and rolled into the side of an oversized jaguar that hadn’t shifted. The jaguar licked Shiloh’s face.
“Oh, goddess, did you see the look on his face?” wheezed Shiloh.
“No,” said Moira as she sat up. “Somebody put his furry snout right on top of my head, and I couldn’t move.”
Chance and several others began distributing clothes to the naked shifters.
“It was just like you said,” said Shiloh. “He thought he was the hero of the story, escaping with his life because destiny singled him out.”
Chance helped her up and into his embrace with a lingering kiss.
“Come on, Matteo,” Shiloh said to the big jaguar. “Shift naked and show everyone how smokin’-hot handsome my husband is. Make them all jealous.”
Matteo turned out to be dark and suavely handsome, but Moira was much more interested in admiring her own mate. Too bad he wasn’t naked, too. She kissed his chin. “Did the twins connect with their video crew?”
“Yes. We substituted the adjusted footage, gave them all memories to match about spending all night filming Witzer and editing the video, and sent them and their van toward Cheyenne, where there’s a TV station with a satellite uplink.”
“Good,” said Moira. “Witzer will be ruined, one way or the other. His sons will probably destroy the empire inside a year.”
A pair of older, plump women came out of the sheriff’s station. “Did we do good?” asked one. Their masking magic faded to reveal two pointy-eared, green-skinned dryads who wore leaves and flowers for clothing.
Chantal crossed to them. “Perfect, Adjaini. Thanks to Witzer ‘accidentally’ overhearing you as ‘Jane,’ he thinks all the psychics in Kotoyeesinay are scam artists with a bunch of stage tricks to fool the gullible.”
“It’s like I said when I first got here,” said Moira with a laugh. “Best tourist gimmick ever.”
Chance slipped his hand into hers. “Iolo Maxen’s back in town and wants to see us.”
Her eyes widened with dismay. “Oh no, did we leave a mess at the store?”
He smiled. “No, everything’s fine. He says he brought you something from Laramie.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Better not be another kitten. One Pandora is quite enough.”
Mr. Maxen let them in through the front door, then locked it behind them. His real visage was an ethereally handsome elf, an iron-and-silver-colored version of the blond elves from the movies, and the differently handsome golden elves of the town council. She could see how his illusion charm had made his features plainer and skin tone look human. The Edwardian-style jacket was totally him.
The mirrors winked at her as they threaded their way through the aisles toward the back, and she smiled. She loved the feel of the magical objects, and the net of power woven into the building itself. Chance smiled at her when she slowed to caress one of the little mirrors.
Mr. Maxen paused at the wide, doorway to the workshop. “Will you be comfortable, Ms. Graham?”
She smiled widely. “I’m seeing everything, sir, including the magic built into the hieroglyphics on the door. Feels like security.”
Since mating with Chance, she’d gained a measure of his super-sensitivity to the various flavors of magic. He’d said his own free magic felt more accessible, too.
The corners of his mouth lifted. “Very good, Ms. Graham.”
He led them to the back entrance, and pointed to a small box on the cart. “This is atonement for my bad behavior during the first two days of our acquaintance.”
“Your… I don’t follow.” She sent a puzzled glance to Chance, but he shrugged.
Mr. Maxen clasped his hands together in front of him. “I experimented with your magic without your consent. At first, I didn’t believe you didn’t know about it, that you were hiding it on purpose for some nefarious purpose. Imposters have asked for sanctuary before. Once I realized you truly had no idea what you had or how powerful it is, I tested your sco
pe and strengths. It was… unkind.” He looked abashed. “Mr. McKennie told me at lunch that my little experiments made you think you were dying of a brain tumor.”
She waved off his apology. “The flickering was driving me batty, I’ll admit, but it started almost the moment my car died in front of the diner.” She glanced at her redheaded mate. “Actually, from the moment I was lucky enough to meet Chance.” She smiled at him as she slipped her hand into his, then turned back to Mr. Maxen. “He calls it my ‘just-in-time’ magic.”
“A fair assessment, but we’ll get to that in a minute. I should have guessed your first visit to the workroom would be unpleasant, but I hadn’t understood the nature of your dual talents.”
She snorted. “I’m glad one of us understands it. Why did you experiment on me in the first place?”
Mr. Maxen gazed at his feet. “I am a scholar of magic and a tinkerer, Ms. Graham. You presented a unique opportunity to test my theory that disbelief can suppress or obfuscate inherent magic, but that magic always finds a way to work.”
Moira was intrigued, in spite of having been a test subject. “How do you separate coincidence from magic?”
“Usually, intention and repeatability,” said Mr. Maxen. “You have knowing magic, the ability to see the hidden truths, and hide them as well. But the fundamental power of your stronger magic, like Mr. McKennie’s, is influence. Colloquially, luck.” He raised an eyebrow. “Individually, you are each an influencer of unlikely occurrences. Together—congratulations on your mating, by the way—you are a nexus for significant change. Confluence magic is rare and can be very powerful.”
“Huh.” She didn’t know what to make of that. “So, that’s, er, good?”
Chance rumbled a little as he pulled her closer to him and sent a pulse of reassurance along their mate bond.
Mr. Maxen shrugged one shoulder. “Change begets both winners and losers.” He picked up the box and held it. “One more question. What do you know of your biological parents?”
“Nothing of my dad, except his name, and he was Canadian. You’d think a name like ‘Zephyr Atsingani’ would be an easy find on search engines, but knowing my mother, he was probably a child of a sixties commune and thinks technology is evil. My only legacy from him is dual citizenship in Canada. My mom was Cherry Graham. She died of a heroin overdose when I was twelve.” Actually, her mother had checked out of life a lot sooner than that. Moira had learned to cook, clean, and get herself to school by the time she was nine.
Chance stirred. “You told me you used your mother’s last name at the Ren fair. You must have kept using it, once you realized Witzer was after you.”
She nodded. “It was the only way I could think of to keep my foster parents out of the whole mess. They’re good people, and loved me, even when I was a sullen Goth girl with serious trust issues. Bad foster-care stories make the headlines, but there are a lot of success stories like mine.” She shook her head. “But I have to admit, they’re very practical, down-to-earth people, and never knew what to make of me.” She sent a thread of magic to flash a beam of light from a nearby mirror. “Now I know why.”
Chance squeezed her hand. “Show off.” She grinned.
Mr. Maxen handed her the box. “This is your paternal heritage.”
She opened the box’s hinged lid to reveal an antique, leather-bound book tied with a blue ribbon, an old tintype photograph, and underneath, a round, silver-framed mirror. The silver was black with tarnish, but the mirror was clear, though wavy, as if the glass was handmade. The old, white-haired man in the photograph had a thick, white mustache and wore a puffy-sleeved shirt and an ethnic vest covered with mirror embroidery.
“Your paternal grandfather,” said Mr. Maxen. “He was a noted sorcerer in his day. He’d be called Romani now, though they were known as Atsinganoi back when I was in the emperor’s court. Traveling fortune tellers and wizards. The mirror and the journal were his.”
“How did you find this?” She caressed the corner of the book with her thumb. “How did you even know where to look?”
“I’m over two thousand years old. I knew your great-great-great grandfather. His gift with mirrors was very like yours. He was a master of hiding the seen and uncovering the hidden, and of knowing the truth. He fell in love with a banshee, as I recall, because the curse couldn’t hide her beauty from him.” Mr. Maxen smiled sardonically. “He was also an inveterate gossip who had to make hasty exits more than once because he shared his juicy tidbits with the wrong person.”
“And the rest?” she asked, tilting her head toward the box.
“I called a few old acquaintances and cashed in a favor. We serious collectors of objets magiques all know each other. These were what I could find quickly. There may be more.”
She touched the mirror because it called to her, which reminded her of the little mirror she’d broken but had saved her anyway. She handed the precious box to Chance, then pulled out the brass frame from her back pocket. She unwrapped its bandanna covering and held it out to Mr. Maxen. It looked sad with only one corner of mirror left.
“I found this in your backyard, and it broke when Richie jumped me. How much do I owe you for it?” She hoped it wasn’t too high, or she’d be paying it off forever.
He picked it up and examined it with his fingers and eyes. “Nothing. It’s not mine.”
“It’s magic, though, isn’t it?” She frowned. “Can it be fixed? Maybe I can find the owner.”
Mr. Maxen shook his head. “The only magic I sense in it is yours. Otherwise, it’s just an old shaving mirror that yellowed with time.”
Chance put a hand on her shoulder. “Just-in-time magic, remember? You needed it to get out of the cave, and your magic found a way. The wolves even let you keep it because it looked like a broken tourist trinket.”
“Huh,” she said, for lack of anything more cogent. She needed time for thinking.
Chance turned to Mr. Maxen. “Did you find the charm I told you about?”
Once again, she was lost.
“Yes, right where you said it would be,” Mr. Maxen replied. “Nasty piece of work, that. I’ve locked it in the shielded vault for now. Stolen alpha power is extremely valuable on the black market.”
“You’re talking about the small thingie that was in Pruhon’s ass?” At Mr. Maxen’s nod, she continued. “It was weird, sensing its presence and having the knowledge sort of pop into my head. I didn’t even know what alpha power was until I felt it. And when Pruhon was fighting Chance, I got the impression that the witch who made it did it out of revenge, but I don’t know for what. It felt really ancient. Centuries, maybe.” Realizing what she’d said to a two-thousand-year-old elf, she hastily added, “Not ancient. Mature. Seasoned. Experienced.”
“Ancient will do, Ms. Graham. It is, after all, the truth as far as humans understand it.” He crossed his arms. “Do you have any questions?”
“So many, I can’t think of any of them,” she said ruefully. “Except one. What’s a ‘demesne’? An estate or something? That’s where Shiloh said the djinn guards came from, and where the town armory is.”
“They are lands in a different plane. Fairies create them.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Think of them as cul-de-sacs of other dimensions that are glued to this one by gateways. The glade is full of them.” He waved a circling finger. “My workroom is a modified version of a tiny demesne, so the accumulation of magic from these objects doesn’t tempt anyone.”
“Glade?” She shook her head. She had so much to learn, and maybe unlearn, too.
Mr. Maxen smiled. “Sort of like the wards on this building, but on a much larger scale. Elves can pool their magic to create a perimeter. They tie themselves to the land, and the land to them. They draw strength from the land and living things, and protect them in return. This glade was created in the early 1800s by a company of like-minded elves and their paramours, who were fleeing their own disapproving clans, and a cabal of English alchemists who wanted their magic. T
hey first offered sanctuary to fairies and other magic users in need who could also help defend the glade. Now, we’re a beacon of hope in this part of the world. Kotoyeesinay is one of the more diverse sanctuaries on the continent, probably because the New World attracted the adventurous.”
“Like you?” asked Chance. She could tell he was guessing, but it felt right.
“Perhaps.” Mr. Maxen raised one shoulder slightly. “Many of us here are unique, and don’t fit in elsewhere.”
“What did the Native Americans think of all this?” Moira asked. “This valley seems like prime summer camping ground to me.”
He laced his fingers together. “The town founders came to an understanding with both the Arapaho and the Ute.” He frowned. “To our shame, we did not do well by our accommodating friends. We thought it enough to warn them not to trust the government’s negotiators, and did not stop the Army from forcibly herding our proud allies into the Utah territory, like they were wild horses to be broken and penned.” He sighed. “That’s why we made the valley into a reservation land trust and built the casino. Its profits fund tribal scholarships. It’s our atonement.”
“I respect that.” She appreciated people who admitted a mistake and tried to make up for it.
Mr. Maxen gave her a considering look. “Will you stay in Kotoyeesinay, do you think?”
She looked to Chance, then back to Mr. Maxen. “We’ll have to get back to you on that, but I’ll be here on time tomorrow, if you still need my help in the shop.” She pointed to the ceiling. “And we’ll finish your guest quarters.”
His mouth twitched with a smile. “Very good, Ms. Graham.”
Epilogue
Chance lay naked on the bed, staring up at the stars painted on the canopy above him and Moira, sated and relaxed. The August weather had been unreasonably hot that week, and the high, dry winds required constant vigilance for wildfires. Kotoyeesinay’s glade magic couldn’t protect the whole mountain range, so physical methods were needed, including superior shifter senses and strength.
Shift of Destiny: Ice Age Shifters Book 2 Page 14
