For a few seconds, she couldn’t get her feet to move, she just stood and stared at the two-story house of gray stone, long side facing her and two wings on each side angled back toward the hill, forming a small courtyard in the back. A courtyard where the family spent most of their time, usually noisy with their talk and shouts.
She found wetness on her cheeks. Not tears, rain. She shivered. The day was cold and wet and she wasn’t used to the humidity of a relatively near ocean. Now she lived in the middle of a huge continent. The air wasn’t as thin as a mile high, either. Clamminess coated her skin, tightened her hair until she thought she could hear a twang as individual strands curled.
The breath she dragged in was thick and the damp seeped into her skin until she shivered again. So different than Denver, this humid cold, this dense air. How had her half-djinn mother and her half-elf father and all her brothers and sisters managed?
Because it had been home, and was in a land steeped in magic, richer and more ancient than that of Denver, a mixture of Lightfolk races who had lived there for centuries and worked magic.
Aric’s fingers touched the small of her back as she shivered again. “I’m here with you. Let’s go in.” She thought she heard him gulp, but disregarded that notion because the smooth, in-control guy that he’d become wouldn’t do something so nervous.
She was glad of his touch, the touch of a pure magical being, of a man who hadn’t been raised here, wouldn’t cherish this place more than Denver.
This wasn’t home anymore.
Her particular fire and air—and human—nature preferred where she lived now, a bustling city with towering mountains in the distance instead of huddled against a hill in a bit of forest with the ocean an hour and a half away.
Aric’s hand flattened against the small of her back and she realized she hadn’t moved, so now she did, to get away from that warmth sending sensual tendrils unfurling through her. He kept pace with her, his fingertips still in contact with her, and she wondered at it.
She stepped up to the house. Would Rothly’s silver-and-salt spell that disowned her keep her from opening the door? Or would the house spells still recognize her as family?
The door was blue-gray with a tarnished brass knocker. The tint had faded from glossy to flat. It hadn’t been repainted in a long time.
Jenni braced herself before she put her hand on the ornate brass knob that was covered in fire runes…from her mother.
More hurt, deeper hurt, welled through her.
“We need to find your brother,” Aric said.
The knob was warm under her hand and it turned easily. Jenni stepped inside her old home.
Anger slammed against her, pushing her back into a solid Aric.
Rothly’s anger, both directed at her that she dared to come into his space, and a long-term ire that pervaded the place.
Jenni panted through the constriction of her chest, striving to pull a trickle of air into her lungs. An air-and-fire spell directed at them! The spell tightened over them like a net, choking, heating, burning.
Aric shuddered behind her and she turned. He was against the closed door and she was against him. His skin had darkened, taken on a coarser texture more like bark. He was half elf, half-dryad Treefolk, he didn’t need as much air as she.
Faint steam radiated from him, the ends of his hair crisping. She hadn’t felt the fire as much as the air.
Aric was turning browner. His hair became greener, and he’d lost a sizzling inch that sent a fragrance like burning redwood needles into the air.
Rothly had tailored a spell to both of them, to his sister and his friend. Disowning all friendship, all bonds. She and Aric could die!
Jenni widened her stance, struggled to inhale. Any spell Rothly had crafted, she should be able to unravel.
Time was too short to step into the gray mist. She wasn’t prepared. She couldn’t push through Rothly’s spell to reach the older ones that the rest of her family, and she herself, had crafted.
She only had a few seconds.
So she visualized her new home—high, dry Denver, with the thin air of altitude—stripped the humidity from the air of Rothly’s spell and pulled enough in to survive. She leaned against Aric’s solid strength, twined her fingers with his and heated his cooler body to her own skin temperature, sharing the protection of her fire nature. As his temperature equalized to that of the spell, he stopped burning.
Good. She looked at the spell. It was frayed in one corner. Rothly’s magic was crippled. Jenni mentally reached for a loose thread and yanked. The net vanished.
A tremor went through Aric, starting at his feet and raising his hair, accompanied by the sound of rattling leaves. Jenni realized she was still measured against his full length, righted herself and stepped away. She made a show of looking around the living room that hadn’t changed at all as Aric settled.
Something else hit her…but not with a slam, more like a whisper that coated her, sank into her, alerting all her senses. This was not the home she remembered. Her tapestry bag fell from limp fingers.
Scent came first. The fragrance of elf and djinn and human wasn’t as rich, nor were there any individual scents of her brothers and sisters, her parents. Only Rothly, and a crippled Rothly. Anger-fear-despair sweat. The slight hint of decaying magic, the astringency of healing herbs kept as potpourri, burnt as incense, used in bath and on wounds.
He was still crippled, then. Somehow Jenni had had a lingering hope that his wounds weren’t as bad as the last time she’d seen him—on a pallet in the triage area after the ambush. That his arm and magic might have healed a bit.
She grieved and this time the sharp grief wasn’t for her lost siblings and parents, but was for her remaining brother. As she stepped through the house, she understood that she had accepted the deaths of her family. It only needed her to come back here to this empty place for her to understand that.
“It’s not the same,” Aric said. He hadn’t touched her again and she was contrary enough to wish that he still did. “It’s so quiet. I’ve never heard quiet in this place.”
Jenni kept her flinch inside. She’d been ignoring the silence, focusing more on the unwholesome feelings that writhed through the atmosphere.
“Your sisters and brothers…even your parents were always cheerfully loud.”
Jenni gritted her teeth. “That’s right.”
Aric frowned and lines she hadn’t noticed before appeared in his forehead. He was maturing. A small tremble went through her as she did a quick calculation. He was two hundred years old, his seed would be viable soon, and he’d look for a mate. She brushed the thought aside as she feathered her hand over her coat, though the last of the rain droplets had disappeared minutes ago.
“Quiet and smells funny and…it’s out of balance.” His voice had lowered and deepened on the last. He lifted his feet one at a time and the action was slow, as if he pulled invisible roots from the ground below the shabby oriental rug and the flagstones beneath.
Jenni stilled. She’d been concentrating so much on her human senses that she hadn’t noticed. But he was right. From before she’d been born, for a century before that, this land—this house—was equal in all four elemental energies. Now there were equal parts of air and fire, but earth was about a quarter less than it should be. Water was a good two-thirds less than air or fire. The very thought of it shocked her.
After a quick breath, she nodded. “Yes. I’ll fix that before we leave.” The best practice she could have to build her skill set to save Rothly. She needed three balancings at least, with rest in between. But no resting here. “I don’t want to spend the night here. This is Rothly’s home.”
Aric grunted. “Not much of one.” He turned up his hands, spreading his fingers, testing the magic and atmosphere of the place in the way of Treefolk. “Feels like he’s just existing.” Aric’s mouth turned down. He shook his head. “Full of anger and grief.” There was a pause. “Like you, though worse than yours.”
“I’m not crippled,” Jenni said.
“Not physically or magically,” Aric agreed.
Jenni stomped away from him—through the house to the kitchen. It was clean and soulless, though it appeared the same as when her mother and sisters were alive. Jenni and her mother and one of her sisters—the one with more djinn than elf nature—had loved cooking. Together. Jenni’s throat closed and she pushed through the kitchen to the pantry. Her mouth twisted as she recalled that she’d painted her own kitchen the same creamy yellow.
She stopped in the large pantry, turned to the glass-fronted cabinets on her left that were for magical ingredients—and found it full of both the makings for the special tea and the tea itself. Pounds of it, stored in large tin containers. It appeared as if Rothly had made enough for her whole family for a decade—or enough to boost his crippled magic for a vital, dangerous mission?
Her heart simply ached. The tins had been labeled with the date…no more than two and a half weeks ago. After Jenni had refused the dwarf at her door and the mission of the Lightfolk.
Thrusting that thought and guilt away, Jenni flicked her fingers to let the steam roiling within her out and banish negative emotions. She took off her backpack and flipped back the flap, then opened the cabinet. The canister was a large, squarish tin with rounded edges. She took it, pried open the top and sniffed.
A wave of dizziness engulfed her. The edges of her vision grayed and thinned to mist…. This was a prime mixture of the tea. Better than Rothly had ever made before. He’d taken more care with it. He’d had to. He was lucky even a nonmagical human could make the tea…the magic was in when the herbs were cut, how they were dried and the processing itself.
With an impatient shrug, Jenni poured the concoction into a smaller tin, plenty enough to see her through a couple of years of intense daily balancing.
She’d brew the potion to balance this place before she left, as well as filling a few travel vials for emergencies.
Aric watched from the doorway but said nothing. She glanced at him. “Maybe you could check the library.” She cleared her voice. “And Dad’s study to see if Rothly left any notes?”
Nodding, Aric left and Jenni let out a relieved breath. She didn’t think Aric had the nose or the magical sense or training to sort out the mixture of herbs, but she felt better keeping him away from the family secret.
They should have separated the moment they walked into the place. Why had he followed her to the kitchen, the heart of the house when her family had been alive? Maybe he, too, missed them.
The thought insinuated itself into her emotions and she couldn’t rid herself of it. He’d told her that he’d grieved, hadn’t he? She hadn’t allowed herself to believe him. Was she so selfish in her grief? As selfish as Rothly had been. Calming her feelings, she settled into her own balance, unfocused her eyes and murmured the proper words over the tea mixture to reinforce Rothly’s arrhythmic and limping spell. This would boost the magical properties of the herbs, keep them fresh.
When her tin was stowed in her pack, she went to see if Aric had discovered anything. As she entered the hallway bisecting the house, she comprehended that he wasn’t on the ground floor that held the library and den. He wasn’t even in the sunroom that ran the length of the back of the house. He was upstairs where the bed rooms were.
Jenni hadn’t planned on going upstairs, hadn’t wanted to. From what she’d already experienced since she’d walked into the house, she was damn sure that her bedroom wouldn’t be as she had left it.
She hesitated, but couldn’t bear to leave Aric alone with her family’s things. Slowly she took the stairs to the second floor. They creaked beneath her feet. When she turned right at the top of the landing, shadows laddered the hallway. The dim light let in by the window at the end was watery—like tears instead of rain.
The hall was full of silent squares of closed white doors, except one. The door to her parents’ room was open and Aric stood as if frozen outside it. She thought she saw a silver glinting line on his cheek.
“What are you doing here?” She’d wanted her voice to be strong, to snap, but it was barely a whisper disturbing the silence.
“I never got to say goodbye to them, either.” Aric’s words fell stark.
Something inside Jenni just shattered, tearing her patchwork heart back into bits. A liquid cry escaped her, she staggered back and hit the wall and slid down it, dropped her pack as she curled into herself, and wept. Wept like she hadn’t since her family had died.
Before she knew it, Aric sat beside her, gathered her into his arms, next to his warm chest, holding her, shaking himself.
They were my good friends, too, all of them, and I didn’t get to say goodbye, he said mentally.
Guilt ate at Jenni in fat, greedy, bloody bites. She sobbed, but managed a coherent thought or two aimed at her former lover, who had failed, also. I was too late to save them. Finally, finally she could expose the depth of her guilt. They all left an hour and a half before the circle dance to open the portal, early, like I was supposed to do. But I stayed with you.
CHAPTER 7
ARIC SHUDDERED. “AND WE MADE LOVE AND the Lightfolk moved up the ceremony to open the portal and the Darkfolk attacked.”
“I sh-sh-should have b-been th-ere.” Jenni spoke through wet gulps.
“If you had been there—if we had been there—we would be dead, too. You would have stepped from the misty interdimension when your mother, the anchor for the great spell, was killed, just like the rest of your family. Instead we arrived after the first fighting, and you had the chance to help Rothly keep the balance of elements, contain the uneven powers so that we all didn’t perish.”
Aric paused and stroked her hair. “I thought of what you said yesterday. You were right. If you and Rothly hadn’t managed all the elemental magic your family had summoned, the portal would have collapsed. The older two couples wouldn’t have made it through to their new world. If the dimensional portal had become unstable, it would have killed many. If you Mistweavers hadn’t taken the time to dismiss the elemental energies your family had gathered, they would have killed us.” His inhalation was audible. “I reminded Cloudsylph of that after you…left.”
Some of the guilt she’d punished herself with for so long had leaked away with her tears.
Aric shifted and rubbed his chin on the top of her head and new tears welled. They’d sat like this before and it felt too damn good. His tone was softer when he continued. “Those of us fighting didn’t see you and Rothly working so hard, doing such dangerous duty in the gray mist. We didn’t think of how our lives were in your hands. The Air King realized that, so did the others of the Eight. Eight Corp has transferred five million dollars to your account.”
Jenni yelled in outrage, tried to pull away from Aric’s embrace. “You think I care about money! We didn’t do the mission for money.” She thrashed, but Aric set his large hands on her biceps and rose with her.
“No, I knew your family didn’t accept the mission for money.”
“They—we—they only wanted to be respected in the Lightfolk community. Half-breeds aren’t.”
Aric flinched. “They weren’t. Now that Eight Corp has been established and the Lightfolk are moving more into the human community, able to merge magic and technology, you are more valued, I promise you.”
“Huh.” Once again Jenni pulled away and this time Aric let her go. She pulled a tissue from a wad in her coat pocket, wiped her face and blew her nose.
A distant roll of thunder sounded through the window, a brief flash of lightning illuminated the hall. It looked just as she had remembered except it was dustier. And she’d never remembered it dim. The overhead lights had always been on, doors had remained open with cheery yellow light pouring from the rooms.
Cold and wet and dark and late winter in Northumberland—winter had always been outside the house but not inside, where warmth and laughter and family filled the rooms.
How long had Rothl
y lived in this dim silence? Enough to feed bitterness.
Jenni walked unsteadily toward her parents’ door, the only one open, bracing herself with every quiet footfall. One pace away, she hauled breath into her body and stepped from dark shadow into gray light, pivoted to look into the large room that should have gleamed warm wood and rosy chintz.
It was blue and gray with shadows and dust. Pain caught and strangled in her chest, along with breath and voice.
Aric put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Then he entered the room and marched through the thick layers of dust, his face set. When he reached the bureau against the wall and the many tarnished-silver framed photos he stood, hands fisted at his side. A fine tremor shivered up his body and pain flashed across his features. Then he scooped up two pictures, turned, scuffing gray globules of dust, and returned to the threshold where Jenni hovered, breathing shallowly.
As she’d watched him, she’d become aware of a scent…not just her mother’s fragrance of heat and perfume, but the air element that her father had mastered held his scent—and the smell of them together. Parents. Love. Home. She barely saw Aric through renewed tears.
“Here.” He handed her a frame crusty with grime, and she glanced down to see a photograph of the whole family—all her sisters and brothers and her parents. It had been taken a year before she’d lost them.
In the picture, Jenni sat cross-legged on the floor between her sisters, her arms around them, grinning cheekily. Her parents sat on a plump love seat behind them, her mother’s head tilted against her father’s shoulder, obviously both loving and beloved. Rothly lounged against the right arm of the love seat, lanky as he’d reached his final inches. Her second brother, Stewart, leaned against the left arm in a mimicking pose. Her oldest brother stood behind her parents. Lohr had looked the most like their father, the half elf. His smile was shy and proud.
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