Enchanted No More

by Robin D. Owens

  He wore a raw silk shirt the same color as his eyes, brown slacks and a long, dark brown leather trench coat.

  Jenni gulped, and her heart thumped heavily in her chest. She should have anticipated Aric would arrive that way—he was half Treefolk and could travel the world through any tree.

  “I knew they would send you,” she said, and the heat of her emotions dried her throat, “the kings and queens of the elements, the Eight, to convince me to go on that mission. I don’t want to see you. Go away.”

  Aric rolled his shoulders, the gleam of pleasure she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes vanished. His face went impassive, then he said, “I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time.” His voice lowered. “I hoped you would be done mourning.”

  He didn’t add that it had been fifteen years. Aric was nearly immortal and she—half human and quarter djinn and quarter elf—was very long lived.

  Fifteen years was like three years to a mortal. “Oh? How long do you think a person grieves for the loss of two brothers and two sisters and both parents?” She wanted the words to be sarcastic, but they also were laden with sorrow. She stiffened her spine and lengthened her stride. Aric wouldn’t accompany her to a busy human area.

  He kept up with her, glanced down. “I wouldn’t know how long your grief lasts,” he said. “But I have had losses, too.” He looked away. “I am sad when I think of my lost friends. Your father, your brothers.”

  She didn’t care. Sometimes she had moments when wild grief tore at her from the inside.

  “You didn’t say goodbye,” Aric said.

  The sentence was a blow that stopped her breath. She struggled for air. She understood, then, that though Aric might grieve as she did, he felt none of her guilt for making love instead of being with her family for their mission.

  That was a wide gulf between them that she couldn’t cross, didn’t even want to think about. Didn’t want to think about that time at all, only could speak one sentence of her own to reply. “I thought Rothly throwing salt and silver at us, showing we were dead to him, was enough.” Again her voice rasped from her throat.

  She turned away, ready to hurry back to her house, her home, her sanctuary. A place untouched by any magic save her own and the brownies’.

  His wide, warm fingers curled around her wrist, touching her skin, and she experienced an unwelcome shock of attraction. While she was dealing with that, he said, “You could be a Lightfolk Princess, that’s what the Eight are offering you as payment for this mission.”

  She snorted. “Unlikely.” Then she shrugged. “I don’t want to be a princess.” But she felt the vibration of yearning in his body, saw the ambition in his eyes. When had he become interested in Lightfolk status? He hadn’t been much before. He’d been as easygoing and laid-back as any Treefolk man she’d known. She wouldn’t ask. None of her business.

  “There is nothing you can offer me that would make me help the Lightfolk. My parents—family—wanted to be accepted, like most half humans. They’re dead and I’ve made my home in the mortal world. Leave me be.” She tugged at her hand.

  “It’s not just the Eight, the Lightfolk rulers. The entire magical community needs you, fast. Just for a month and a half—through March.”

  “I don’t need the magical community!”

  His jaw flexed. “My family needs you.”

  “My family needed you and you failed them.” Her anger poured out with the words, her hair charged with her temper, lifted and nearly sizzled in the cold air.

  Aric dropped her wrist, stepped back.

  Ugly emotions seethed between them. Jenni couldn’t take the words back. She swallowed and pressed on. May as well lance this festering boil. “When you and I ran to the ambush at the dimensional gate, I went to my family to try to help—to balance the energies—to save them from the Darkfolk warriors. You went to the royals and fought.” Another thing she didn’t think she could forgive him for.

  He paled, and replied steadily, “I knew if the Eight fell, all would fall. The loss of the greatest elemental leaders would be such a blow, cause such an imbalance, that the Lightfolk wouldn’t recover for centuries. Easy for the Darkfolk to kill us, take us over.”

  Her smile was cold. “And my brother and I struggled with all the elemental energies in the interdimension. A huge mass of energies that my whole family had called, stabilizing the magic, releasing it slowly so magic would not destroy everyone. Knowing if we stepped out of the gray mist we would be attacked and killed.” She found she was grinding her teeth.

  A huge shudder shook Aric. “I didn’t know.”

  He would have if he’d thought about it instead of springing to help the royals. Jenni trembled, too, then cut her hand through the air. “Past is past. But the disaster was such that I have no love of the magical community, no reason to help, no wish to help.”

  His nostrils flared. He set his feet as if settling into a solid balance, braced to give or take a blow. “I have news of your brother.”

  Jenni flinched, caught sight of birds circling in the blue sky and realized they were talking of matters in the open where wind could take words to Lightfolk—or Darkfolk. She was glad Aric hadn’t said Rothly’s name.

  Her chest tightened but dreadful hope spurted through the constriction. She hadn’t bothered Rothly since he’d disowned her on his sickbed the night of the ambush. Jenni would have known if he’d forgiven her—a lightness would have infused her spirit. He’d have come to her, or sent a message asking that she return home.

  Home. Home was not in Northumberland, England, anymore, would never be there again. If she walked in the hills the shadows would flicker and she’d think her parents were there. If she walked along the shore the tide pools would reflect the images of her lost family, the endless waves of the restless ocean would carry their voices. She couldn’t live there.

  She stopped, could not take another step. Trapped.

  By love, as Aric had trapped her before.

  This time not for him, but for her beloved brother who now hated her. Rothly had been coldly, flayingly acid to Aric, too, but maybe he’d forgiven Aric. If he had, maybe there was a chance he’d forgive her, too.

  “What news of my brother?”

  “Must we speak of this on the street?” Aric asked.

  “I don’t want you in my house.”

  He winced and only a twinge deep in her heart regretted hurting him. She’d spoken the truth after all.

  His breath soughed in and it seemed as if the trees on the street bent toward him in sympathy. He straightened to his full height and Jenni got a feeling of implacability. “There’s a commercial area a few blocks down, yes?”

  She blinked. That didn’t sound like the Aric she’d known, ready to mingle with full humans. “Yes.” She smiled briefly. “There’s a coffee shop. It’s very busy. I agree, we must speak of matters.” She had to know about Rothly. Aric wouldn’t lie to her.

  He angled his head then waited until she came parallel to him, though she kept a good two feet from him. “Calm your djinn nature,” he said. He swept a hand before them and the bare branches of the trees shivered as if in a wind. The needles of the evergreen trees whispered against each other.

  Aric lowered his voice so that his words were covered by the sound, murmuring so only Jenni’s magical hearing had her understanding him.

  “Listen. There’s been plenty of change since the old Air and Fire couples went through the gate and new ones took their place.” He paused, then said even lower, “The sacrifice you and your family made to stabilize the dimensional gate was not for nothing.” His gaze was set straight ahead, his expression impassive.

  Jenni’s laughter mocked. She’d been over every instant of the ambush, the fight, the frantic effort to save her family and everyone at the gathering from wildly unbalanced magic. She no longer thought the “mission” had been important. “All occurred just because two of the kings and queens had reached the height of their power and wanted to move into a dim
ension richer with magic than poor Earth.” She laughed again and it was dissonant.

  Once more his jaw tightened, released. “The decision to open a portal to another dimension was the Eight’s, not yours or your family’s. Your family equalized all four elements so the gate could be made and stay for the time it took for two of the four couples to leave.”

  “We were so flattered as halflings to be asked to help.” She shook her head. “Pleased that we could invite guests to such an important ritual and gathering.” Sarcasm. Aric had been her guest. “All the family was close to the portal, the target of the Darkfolk, and died.”

  “Not you, or your brother,” Aric said.

  “Has my brother’s crippled magic and arm been restored?”

  Aric was silent.

  Jenni hissed out a steamy breath of anger. She wanted to turn back, to hole up and hide again in her house, but she needed to know about Rothly.

  She swept her senses around her, glanced over her shoulder toward the entrance to Mystic Circle. In the entire cul-de-sac and all its houses, earth was equal to fire to air to water. Her doing by just living there. The natural magic within her made it so, a comforting thought. All the strongest magic and spells worked better when all elements were equally balanced.

  Aric followed her stare, his glance lingered. “Wonderful place,” he said. His gaze slid over her, then he looked forward again and began walking. “The old Kings and Queens of Air and Fire left, and new couples ascended to their rank, and change began,” Aric said smoothly, as if he was telling a tale. He hadn’t been much of one to tell stories before, preferred to listen.

  He continued, “The new Kings and Queens of Air and Fire are progressive. More, human technology is catching up with our magical energies enough that we might be able to merge the two. Lightfolk could live easier with mortals, and mortals could stop harming Earth for their fuels.” He glanced at her. “As you know, you use a little of that in your work to develop that game you write.”

  “Fairies and Dragons.” Jenni’s mouth twisted. He knew more about her than she’d thought. “Neither of which exist anymore. I just finished working on a leprechaun story line. They are gone, too.”

  “And shadleeches have become.” The tone of his voice was grim and laced with hurt.

  Jenni didn’t know much about shadleeches, they were a relatively recent phenomenon, appearing in the time since she’d turned her back on the Lightfolk. She knew they gnawed on magic.

  They reached the coffeehouse, the Sensitive New Age Bean, and Jenni pulled the door open. Human noise and luscious scents emerged, along with warmth. Her mouth watered. She wanted to taste something hot and fiery and jolting down her throat. Espresso and cinnamon.

  There was a line at the long wooden counter and she stopped at the end. The icy cold had the humans bundled up in puffy coats, scarves and hats. Jenni was wearing her red leather trench and Aric a brown one—unbuttoned and open. She hadn’t felt so inhuman in years, especially in a place she loved, and it unnerved her.

  They waited in silence. Her body felt starved for the ineffable essence of standing near Aric, a purely magical being who carried elven blood, and she despaired of herself.

  He wasn’t manipulating her through active control, he couldn’t do that, not as one with Treefolk blood, but he was tempting her with what she shouldn’t want and now discovered that she did—news of her brother. That would remind her of all that she’d been and lost.

  But she longed for news of Rothly.

  Aric leaned on the counter, absently stroking the smooth finish with his fingers, and charmed the women. He ordered hot chocolate with whipped cream and made it sound manly. Of course a male who topped six-four and was built on muscular lines would automatically make whatever he did “manly.”

  When the logo-etched glass mugs were slid toward them, he casually paid and had Jenni staring. He appeared as if he knew mortal money and was accustomed to using it. Before she could comment, he lifted a glass in a half toast and she followed his gaze to the top of the bookshelves in the other room. “You kept the brownies.”

  The brownie couple was there though they had been home when she’d left. They were dressed in their best colorful patchwork made from Jenni’s fabric scraps and old clothing. Small round upright hats glittering with tiny mirrors sat on their heads between their huge ears. They both had little leather slippers of bright red that Jenni thought were made from one of her old and shabby purses.

  Their eyes were locked on Aric’s drink. Like every being in the Folk world, they loved chocolate. Jenni’s liquid cocoa had disappeared within hours of their arrival.

  Jenni didn’t keep chocolate candy in her house. She couldn’t. The minute she touched solid chocolate, it melted, a tiny physical idiosyncrasy of her and her mother and sisters. Her lost family.

  The espresso burned her throat but it wasn’t as hot or as bitter as the taste of tears she’d thought were all gone. Or the memories that Aric and the dwarf and the damn brownies stirred up.

  Aric took his mug and two small paper sample cups of cocoa in his other hand. He crossed to a corner surrounded by bookcases, an alcove with a wooden table that was painted in colorful green and blue swirls. He sat sideways in the wooden-runged chair, his arm across the top, angled toward her. His perfectly “pressed” linen trousers couldn’t hide the long, thick lines of his thighs, the narrowness of his waist. His silk shirt emphasized the broadness of his shoulders, the proportional length of his arms. His expression was studious as he examined her, but a sad wistfulness was in his pretty eyes. Yes, he was beautiful. But not for her ever again.

  His whisper—a sound more like the rustling of leaves than a voice—came to her. “We can talk here, no magical creatures can eavesdrop, and the brownies are loyal to you.”

  Jenni stared. How could they be after only three weeks?

  He gestured the “currently invisible to human eye” brownies down to the table, where they perched on two corners. Blocking the view of humans, he poured cocoa in the sample cups for the brownies. When they took the pleated paper cups, the vessels “vanished.”

  “We like you, Jenni,” Hartha said after she’d taken a sip of her drink.

  “Your basement and the house and the cul-de-sac are wonderful,” Pred said.

  “We do not want to live anywhere else, such as in trees,” Hartha said, glancing at Aric.

  “Or in a tall building with steel and fake rock, high above the ground in downtown Denver,” said Pred.

  “Thank you, Hartha, Pred.” Jenni managed courtesy, but her yearning to hear about her brother slid like a fever under her skin. She stared at Aric. “What of Rothly?”

  Though Aric didn’t change his casual pose, she felt tension radiating from him. He’d promised to tell her of Rothly and now had to deliver.

  A dreadful anticipation seeping into her blood told her she was going to lose in this struggle with the Folk.

  As she’d lost before.

  Lost too much when her family had answered a previous summons. Aric was going to win.

  She hunched over, curving her fingers around the heat of her glass mug, the same warmth as her hands. She looked at the dark espresso, not at Aric.

  Skinny, long, four-jointed fingers were laid across her knee. Hartha had hopped from the table to stand beside Jenni, her big eyes sad. “Do not keep us if it makes you indebted to the Eight. The Treeman can arrange another place for us.”

  Pred hissed and she snapped at him in words that thunked in Jenni’s ears, but she couldn’t understand.

  “Rothly,” Aric breathed on a sigh. He shook his head, straightened in his chair, met her eyes. “The dwarf Drifmar made him the same offer he’d made to you. If Rothly did the mission for the Lightfolk, he’d become a Prince of the Lightfolk.”

  Jenni stood. Her chair slammed on the floor. “No.” Silence for ten rapid heartbeats. “Tell me that’s not true. Rothly is crippled. Physically and magically. He can’t work any of his once natural elemental bal
ancing magic without peril.”

  “Crippled in mind and heart emotions, too,” Aric added, “not to be able to forgive.”

  “Tell me that isn’t true about Drifmar.” Jenni’s strident voice overrode Aric. “Tell me you Lightfolk did not send my brother to his death.” Fury and terror dried her eyes so she experienced everything with an awful clarity—the human gazes focused on them, the trembling of the brownies, the small muscles of Aric’s hand flexing around his mug.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Is Rothly in danger?”

  Aric looked away, his jaw clenched.

  Jenni’s blood heated. Could she manage to save Rothly without the help of the Lightfolk? They’d said it was time sensitive. How long would she have? Especially since she hadn’t practiced any large magic, like stepping into the interdimension, for years.

  She locked gazes with Aric, his eyes looked like chips of deep green emerald…but not even as soft as emerald. Again she was facing a man she didn’t know, who had changed in fifteen years.

  He had his own agenda and he—and the Lightfolk—would keep up the pressure on her.

  Standing slowly, Aric said, “Your brother promised on the Mistweaver honor that the mission would be fulfilled.”

  Jenni flinched, as she knew that wording had been just so. If she didn’t consider herself a Mistweaver, was really just Jenni Weavers and not Jindesfarne Mistweaver, she could walk away.

  But Rothly had disavowed her, she hadn’t abandoned him.

  She felt tears gush to the back of her eyes, her chin tremble. She firmed it, swallowed and watched Aric’s eyes. “You win.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE WITH YOU,” JENNI said steadily, “or listen to you.” She didn’t sit. “But once again the Lightfolk have given me no choice, have they? They’ve endangered my brother.”

  “Jenni—”

  Without looking at him, she said, “Tell Drifmar and whoever else needs to know that I will take care of this ‘little mission’ with the ‘terrible problem’ for them.” Those had been Drifmar’s words. Without letting herself think, she said the words that might lead to her death. “I’ll finish what my brother tried to do. Uphold the family honor. You’ve done your job.” She’d never heard of a mission for the Lightfolk that wasn’t dangerous. “Now tell me of Rothly.”