“So, Sal or no Sal?” I asked.
He thought about it for a moment. “No weapons at International Conclaves,” he said. “No matter how interesting her evolution has been these past few days.”
The twins were probably carrying their fair share of mundane weapons, though. “Too bad. I suspect Sal would like a word with Tyr Bragisson.”
Arne humphed. “She was never so… alive… before.” He patted my shoulder. “You’re good for her. She’s growing.”
Whether or not a magical elven battle axe “growing” was good for the world, I did not know, but she was definitely good for me. “So her full name is Salvation? Seems a bit ironic, don’t you think?” And odd, since she was an elven weapon. “Shouldn’t her name be in Old Norse?”
Arne laughed. “One day, she may tell you her story.” He stood with the graceful elegance all the elves shared. Arne might be large and strong—he stood taller and wider than most mundanes—but he still moved like a dancer even when lifting himself off the ground.
“The plane is ready.” He nodded toward the house. “Remy will meet you at the airfield. Dagrun, Magnus, and I will join you Thursday at our appointed time.” He stretched his shoulders. “Remy got you rooms in the Conclave hotel. None of the Courts will be staying there.” He shrugged. “This convention—ElfCon, Remy called it—has booked the entire building.”
“The convention is called ElfCon?” The elves would likely be as amused as they were annoyed by the costume choices of the mundanes on hand.
Arne slowly inhaled and exhaled once again, as if attempting to keep his disappointment under control. “Ironic. I know.”
“I’ll get myself to the airstrip,” I said. Looked like no extra rest for me tonight. I’d better get my bag packed.
“You don’t have a lot of time,” Arne said.
No, we did not. “We may not find her.” Unless Remy had good leads, four days often wasn’t enough for such an investigation.
“Try. Please.”
“We will.” Remy and I would do our best. “Thursday, then.”
Arne extended his hand to help me up even though I outweighed him by at least one hundred pounds.
I took it. A little stability never hurt.
“With each new day comes a newer and greater responsibility.” He clasped my arms. “The Courts will all understand the value of my ways.”
I stared down at the elf I considered more of a father than the man who stitched me together. It was Arne who taught me how to live in this world. Arne and Dag taught me how to contain my rage. They gave me the tools I needed to understand that the colors I saw around people were representations of their magic.
They taught me how to be whole, and now Arne needed me to find someone who could make the case that such wholesomeness was worthwhile.
I hoped he was correct.
He walked toward the path to the front of the house. “Hug Akeyla for me.”
“I will,” I said, and made my way inside.
Maura waved as her father pulled his car around and made his way down my driveway. She watched until his taillights vanished into the trees, then turned toward the house.
I watched from the door. Akeyla—teeth brushed but still in her day clothes—hugged my leg.
She yawned. “I don’t want to go to bed,” she said.
I picked her up. Now that she was almost nine, only Arne and I had the strength to carry her around. Neither of us minded when she asked.
She hugged my neck as she watched her mother return to the house. “Grandpa said you’re leaving tonight.”
“I am,” I said.
“Are you still sad, Uncle Frank?” She snuggled in again.
“I’m better. Your grandpa and I talked.”
“Good,” she said, and wiggled so I’d put her down. “You don’t need to be sad.” I obliged just as Maura stepped in and closed the door.
Why I had been “sad,” I wasn’t quite sure. Arne said I was clean of vamp magic. That didn’t mean I was clean of their damage.
Perhaps a couple of days away from Alfheim would set my mind straight, even if that “away” was Las Vegas.
“Go put on your pajamas,” Maura said to her daughter.
Akeyla yawned and shuffled off toward her room. Her busy day manifested in her young bones the same way it did for all kids, magical or otherwise—half asleep on her feet but still excited enough to not want to go to bed.
Maura watched her go. “If you need to talk about what happened with the vampires, I’m here. Instead of swinging Sal at your truck, I mean.”
Benta had said the same thing. Not about Sal, but about discussing vampiric aftereffects. “I know.” I gave her a quick side-by-side hug. “Thanks for moving back in.”
Maura poked my side. “Akeyla likes your place. She likes the lake.” She nodded toward the back of the house. “I think she likes the calming effect the natural magic here has on her fire spirit.”
She looked up at my face. “And she loves her Uncle Frank.”
“I love her,” I said. “Both of you.”
Maura squeezed my hand. “So Dad has you and Remy running recon in Vegas, huh?”
“Looks that way.”
“Be careful.” She touched my arm again. “We don’t have tricksters here in Alfheim. Dad keeps them under control.” She shook her head. “He’ll bring in vampires and witches and werewolves, but a trickster elf? Nope.”
I’d heard rumors about some of the smaller enclaves under Norwegian rule. About how they didn’t have the power level necessary to control the worst of their kind.
It got elves killed, International Conclaves called, and kings deposed.
Was Arne sending us to Vegas to scout an elven trickster? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, Remy would tell me once I reached the airfield.
Maura watched her daughter. “All the magicals have tricksters. Elves, kami, fae, spirits of all kinds, including the New Zealand and Polynesian spirits we’re finally building relationships with. Tricksters eat vulnerability for breakfast.”
“My vulnerability, or your father’s?” I asked.
Maura walked toward Akeyla’s room. “Both of you.” She winked and stopped in front of the threshold.
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
She moved her foot across the floor just inside Akeyla’s door as if attempting to avoid slipping on something I could not see. “We’ll take care of your place while you’re gone.” She frowned, then blinked as if confused.
“I’ll find your dog, too. So don’t worry.” Her foot kicked a notebook out into the hall. Then Maura Dagsdottir stepped into her daughter’s room.
I stared at the notebook. Smiling sherbet-colored unicorns and flying horses danced across the cover.
I picked it up. Maura and Akeyla were fully engaged in their bedtime activities. Something told me that they wouldn’t attend to the notebook anyway, even if I did interrupt. I flipped it open.
The first page contained notes, in my blocky hand, about someone named Chihiro Hatanaka, who lived in Tokyo. The next page, notes about a village in Germany. The next, San Francisco. The next held a little sketch of a kangaroo, all obviously written and drawn by me.
When did I take one of Akeyla’s notebooks and write international notes? I flipped the book over and checked it for magic.
Nothing. It was simply a third grader’s school notebook.
I walked into the kitchen and set the notebook next to a pile of mail. I’d ask Arne when I got back if he thought perhaps the vamps messed with my memory.
Outside, the waning moon shimmered across the lake. Inside, my sister flipped off the lights in my little niece’s bedroom and turned on her nightlight. Little stars, unicorns, and happy birds danced across the hallway wall opposite her door.
Even if the vampires did extra damage to me, they were gone, and Akeyla and Maura were safe. And I could handle a trickster or two.
I made my way to my own bedroom to pack my bag.
Chapter 7
She called herself Portia Elizabeth when she lived in Alfheim.” Remy tucked his bag under the Cessna’s buttery champagne-colored leather seat.
Magnus had booked us one of his charter company’s six-seater corporate jets, with a sleek “chrome and ice” interior. The bar glistened as if cut from a glacier, and the thankfully oversized seats swallowed up a body whole.
The plane came with a pair of pilots who held their interactions to “Welcome aboard” and pre-flight checks. No attendant, which didn’t surprise me at this time of night. The co-pilot ran through safety information and instructions on how to serve ourselves from the bar.
I tucked my own bag under my seat. “And no one knew what she was?”
Remy tucked his copy of The Atlantic into the pocket next to his seat. “The consensus was that she was a spirit. The only thing we knew for sure was that she wasn’t indigenous to North America.” He sat and fiddled with his seatbelt. “The native spirits were as confounded by her as the elder elves.”
Only three times in my life had I met a native North American spirit. One was while I walked the Canadian Arctic into Alfheim. We didn’t communicate, but he followed me for a full week. Honestly, looking back, I think he found my hounds fascinating and was protecting them from cougars and bears.
The second was while I walked with Rose north along the Mississippi. That spirit, too, had not interacted, and again looking back, I think she had been more interested in Rose than in me.
The third time I met an indigenous spirit was about fifteen years ago, when Arne began a serious attempt to atone for Alfheim’s past with the local communities.
For the most part, the indigenous magical populations of the Americas wanted nothing to do with the elves, fae, and kami, mostly because the non-native magicals always sided with their cultural mundanes. Always, no matter the atrocity.
The elves had more contacts among the Southern Hemisphere Pacific Rim spirits and magicals than they did with the magicals on whose land they lived.
Remy watched me stuff myself into my seat. He half-smirked as if part of his brain found the dance I did to get my huge body comfortable in a seat not built for an almost-seven foot, three-hundred-pound man to be funny. The other part of Remy’s face betrayed his empathy for my situation.
But that was Remy. He was a hooligan unless someone needed help, and he often knew before the person in need even realized they needed that help.
He chalked it up to his wolf senses. I chalked it up to him recognizing everyone as pack—mundanes, magicals, dogs, cats, horses, it didn’t matter. No matter what the international elves thought of werewolves, the world was a better place because the Geroux brothers learned how to live with—and utilize—their curse.
Remy’s hooliganism did make him entertaining, though.
The co-pilot closed the door just as the pilot announced that they would have us in Las Vegas in about four hours. Magnus had already given us our rental car and hotel information, and had suggested we sleep, since we’d be arriving in the middle of the night.
“Has Arne ever told you about his fae earth goddess princess?” Remy asked.
“He’s mentioned her,” I said. Remy must have meant Arne’s fae of femininity.
The plane’s engine revved, and we began to taxi. The pilots closed their door and turned down the cabin lights.
Remy leaned his head against his seat. “When Portia Elizabeth showed up, I think he thought she was his princess.”
The twitches moving across Remy’s face said that Arne wasn’t the only magical in town who thought Portia Elizabeth was some sort of primal female spirit.
“This was the mid-sixteen hundreds,” Remy said. “Gerard and I were just coming to terms with the elves and what they offered, and we were still a bit skittish.”
The plane accelerated for take-off.
Remy grinned as he flopped back into his seat. “I will never forget the day she walked into town,” he said.
The plane climbed and we both concentrated on popping our ears until we leveled off. The engine roared, but the little jet was quieter than most of the other small planes I’d been in.
“I brought something,” Remy said. He pulled his bag out from under his seat and flopped it onto his lap.
The zipper’s grinding vanished into the plane’s noise, as did the bag’s rustling. Remy lifted out a leather satchel about the size of a large manila envelope.
Gentle magic curled around the pouch—gentle magic I recognized. “It’s carrying protection spells,” I said.
Remy set the pouch on his thigh and stuffed his bag back under his seat. “They’re preservation spells.” He untied the string holding the flap in place and flipped it open.
The spells didn’t change.
“Interesting,” I said.
“The spells form a sort of stasis.” Remy pulled out a leather bound notebook not unlike Rose’s. “Nothing inside ages.”
The spells were a lot more intricate and complicated than they looked, then. I peered at the pouch. “I need to get me one of those,” I said. “For Rose’s notebook.”
Remy tapped the pouch. “It’s bearskin. The elder elf who made it passed before you came to Alfheim.”
Arne or Dag might still find value in enchanting a satchel for Rose’s notebook, if for no other reason than to keep an eye on it.
Gently and with reverence, Remy opened the notebook. The first page was full of lovely handwritten French script, as were the next two pages.
The fourth page held a sketch of what looked like the shores of Lake Superior. The fifth a sketch of what appeared to be a Native American encampment. The next few pages were portraits.
“For a while, I was filling one of these a year.” A slight smile danced over his lips as he touched the pages. “When I could get my hands on paper and pencil or pen.” He looked up. “I still have forty-seven, all of them dating from our acceptance into Alfheim forward.”
“Are they all enchanted?” I asked. “Preserved?”
He shrugged. “They are now.” He flipped the pages and held up the book so I could see the portrait. “I drew this picture in 1657. This gentleman was the Chief of the Ojibwe band who lived near Alfheim. I wish I remembered his name.”
Remy sighed. “I remember his middle daughter.” He shook his head. “She spoke fluent French and English, and had a gift for navigation. She was murdered by two English traders. Gerard and I ripped them apart and brought her family their heads.”
He shook as if the memory pulled up all of its corresponding anger and shock. “Those were different times.”
He flipped to another page and held up the book again. “I don’t remember her name, either.”
The portrait showed a young woman with worldly eyes, as if she had been studying Remy as much as he had been studying her.
He flipped the book around. After a moment, he flipped through a few more pages. “Here,” he said, and held it up again.
The woman in the drawing lifted her skirts so that she could step over a puddle. Her hair was loosely bundled and fell around her shoulders, and she carried a bag.
Honestly, no matter Remy’s portraiture skill, she looked unremarkable.
Remy frowned and flipped through a few more pages. He held up the book again. “A closer look at her face.”
He’d drawn her hair black, so I assumed she was a brunette of some flavor. Her large eyes also appeared dark, and her lips full. Her features were round yet sharp, and looked Persian. She, like the young woman he showed me earlier, carried a worldly, intelligent expression.
She was beautiful, but not remarkable.
Remy closed the book and slipped it back into its enchanted satchel. “And that, right there, is her superpower.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Portia Elizabeth will get under your skin. You just won’t realize it until you’re husband number three living in a cabin outside of town because she wants her favorite in a special place.”
/> “That’s awfully specific, Remy,” I said.
He returned the book and its enchanted pouch to his bag. “Pretty much all I remember from the decade she lived in Alfheim is her. Without the notebooks, I probably wouldn’t even remember the two traders Gerard and I ripped apart.”
He looked out the window. “She asked me to take care of them. She was livid that they’d hurt the Chief’s daughter.”
“So this Portia Elizabeth has some sort of enthralling ability?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t call it enthralling so much as interweaving. She becomes indispensable to a man’s soul. She becomes purpose.” He rubbed at the top of his head. “There were three of us—an elf, a mundane, and me. She loved us all, and we all loved her. We didn’t fight. We didn’t complain. Honestly, none of the men did when she was around. The town functioned better,” he said. “Arne was head over heels in love with her, too, but she kept him at arm’s length.”
“Doesn’t sound all that bad,” I said, though losing your will and ability to choose for yourself was, even if some people liked that. Some people wanted to hand over all their intra- and interpersonal decisions to someone else. “I’m sure there were plenty who were willing to follow her around.”
Remy snorted. “Like a goddess. That was the issue. You know how we’re so careful with Magnus? Because if we left him to his own devices, he’d do exactly the same thing. He’d charm every mundane within a hundred miles of Alfheim, not because he’s bad, but because he’s so damned good.”
All the elves fit into that category.
“But Portia wasn’t good. She was primal. Primal means a lack of civilization. Primal means dancing and writhing and a lot of sex.”
Ah, the crux of the issue.
“I couldn’t get enough of her. Neither could any of the other men in town—all the men, by the way. If you had a Y chromosome, no matter your proclivities, she had an effect. She didn’t seem to have a lot of effect on the women, at least sexually.” He wiggled in his seat. “I don’t know if Arne kicked her out or if she left on her own. I think she made the decision to leave. Arne was trying to help her tame her magic. He was trying to teach her how to be less primal and more strategic. He did, at least according to him. But all I remember is that I wasn’t myself for at least three years after she left. I was weak, both physically and mentally. Gerard, too. The elves handled it better. It wasn’t until Dag and the infusion of new elf blood that came with her that Alfheim fully recovered.”
Elf Raised (Northern Creatures Book 3) Page 5
