Enchanted Again Read online

  “Conrad?” asked Amber, then felt a surge of anger at herself. Don’t ask names. Don’t get involved. Her gift didn’t age only her. And she’d given up her magic as too dangerous months ago, gotten the puppies to ensure she wouldn’t waver.

  The blond man weighed her with a hard stare.

  Words tumbled from Conrad. “I’m Conrad Tyne-Cymbler. My curse has already happened. I’m worried for my son.” He drew in a ragged breath. “I don’t want him to grow up without a father like I did.”

  She flinched at the pain in Conrad’s voice. “I’m sor—”

  “Please help me. You’re a genealogist. I have a family tree. I can hire you to work on that as well. I’ll pay you whatever.”

  “I can’t find your son—”

  “I have private investigators,” Conrad said at the same time the blond man said, “We’re working that situation.”

  Conrad continued, “I’m desperate. Please help me.”

  Amber blinked again, this time against stupidly stinging eyes. She couldn’t refuse a direct and desperate request for help. At least she could listen, maybe trace the original curse so the guy could break it himself. That could happen. Maybe.

  “All right.” Her voice was thick, dammit! She didn’t want the man to know how weak she was.

  “Can we come in?”

  She said the first thing that came to mind. “Do you have your family tree?”

  “I…uh…no.”

  She looked at the blond, who had angled his body as if to protect his friend from her. “Do you?”

  He snorted. “No.”

  She widened her hands. “I need to prepare. Come back tomorrow.”

  “You promise you’ll listen?” persisted Conrad.

  Amber hesitated.

  “I need you,” he pressed.

  Again she couldn’t say no. A problem most of the women of her family had had. They were all dead now. “All right. Tomorrow. Nine a.m. at my office on Hayward and Oak. You have the address?”

  Conrad nodded. “Thank you.”

  “This is crap,” said the blond.

  She sucked in a breath. “Do you have a card?”

  “Card?” Conrad asked blankly.

  After another narrow-eyed stare at her, Conrad’s friend dipped a hand in the pocket of Conrad’s fine gray suit jacket and pulled out a piece of pasteboard. Scowling, the man shoved it though the spears of the gate.

  Amber had to go closer to get it and as she did, the hair on the back of her neck rose. This man’s curse was even worse than the other’s. He didn’t appear to care.

  She took the card, avoiding his fingers.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She turned and walked to her backyard. Pred, the brownie, was still there.

  They stared at each other silently until the roar of the engine announced that the men were gone. The brownie looked up at her with big, sad eyes, his ears rolled down to his head. “Too late now. I will have to tell Tiro about you. He will be angry.” The small being shook his head. “It is not good to live with an angry brownie.”

  “Live! What?”

  With a shake of his head, Pred said, “And that is not the worst. Your magic hurts you when you use it. I am sorry for you.”

  But not as sorry as Amber was…

  Chapter 2

  RAFE HAD BEEN driving for several minutes when he had to say it. “That was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen you do.”

  “I’m dealing with my curse and the aftermath,” Conrad snapped, not opening his eyes. “Unlike you. And you’ve made a career of being stupid. Rock-climbing, glacier snowboarding, extreme sports. Like you’re tempting death to take you before you’re thirty-three.”

  “Like I’m living every moment of my life to the fullest,” Rafe said evenly, an old argument.

  “I really love Marta and my son.” Conrad veered back to the most important topic.

  “I know you do,” Rafe said. He threaded through the traffic on Speer, muscles moving as he used the clutch and gearshift. He was better with action.

  Conrad said, “You told the P.I. team to check out flights to Eastern Europe, right?”

  “Of course. And did you do a run on her?” Rafe asked.

  “Marta ran,” Conrad answered.

  “I meant, did you have someone investigate the sexy genealogist?”

  Conrad cracked an eye, the side of his mouth near Rafe kicked up. “Sexy, huh?” He closed his eyes. “She did have a good body. Looked like her name…Amber. Yeah, I had someone research her background.”

  “When?” Rafe asked.

  “When?” Conrad’s tones were getting slow and foggy. “When I got her name. ’Bout a year and a half ago, I guess.”

  “You still have the file?”

  “Sh-sure.” Conrad fell asleep.

  Rafe took the exit for Conrad’s mansion in Cherry Creek. Since Rafe only had a small, dusty apartment in Manhattan that he hit from time to time between adventures, he was bunking with Conrad.

  At a stoplight, he punched the in-car phone for his investigators.

  “Mr. Davail,” the detective’s assistant said politely. “We will call you with any updates.”

  “Got another job for you.”

  “Oh. Yes?”

  “Name is Amber Sarga, gypsy genealogist, age in the early thirties, brown hair and eyes, about five feet seven inches, a hundred and thirty pounds.” He still thought of the woman as honeyed, much warmer and more vital than amber. Not stony to him. “She lives at number seven Mystic Circle in Denver.” He paused, mouth turning down, decided to say the words anyway. “Supposed to be—” but he couldn’t get “a curse breaker” out of his mouth “—psychic.”

  “We’ll get right on that,” the assistant assured him.

  “It’s urgent. Got a meeting with her tomorrow morning.”

  “We’ll have a report to you by the end of the day.”

  “Thanks.” He disconnected the call and wondered what the hell he was getting into. Conrad twitched and moaned.

  A fleeting curiosity about his own family tree—and all those first sons who died before thirty-three—wisped through Rafe’s mind.

  Maybe he’d call his younger brother. Gabe was the practical one, running the family corporations, salt of the earth. He’d said something about a family tree a long while back. Rafe would bet his helicopter that Gabe had a chart or two Rafe could slap down in front of the honeyed Ms. Sarga.

  Not that it would change anything. A tendril of fear began to whip acid inside his gut. Conrad’s curse had come true.

  Would his?

  Amber played with the pups, enough to tire them for a few minutes, then went to her downstairs office and initiated a computer search for Conrad Tyne-Cymbler.

  He didn’t have any social network pages, but her online investigation program showed his home—inherited—at a pricey address in Cherry Creek. His worth was recently downgraded due to a prospective divorce settlement. Amber winced, recalling the hurt that had emanated from the man. A quick search of public court files showed that the divorce hearing had been set for this morning.

  She did an online query about his wife, Marta Dimir. Nothing showed up…except a quick ice-cube quiver sliding through Amber. Her minor magic that she used in genealogy, a certain past-time-sense, warned her that if she explored Marta Dimir’s background she would find violence, despair, darkness.

  Amber shook off the feeling. Let Tyne-Cymbler’s investigators take care of the wife angle. The man had spoken of his son, and Amber noted that the boy was nearly a year old. But that wasn’t what snagged her interest. Tyne-Cymbler obviously felt that the curse that affected him would also impact his son.

  A father-to-son curse.

  She brought up the professional genealogical database she used most often. The Colorado Tynes had a family tree available online, about five years out of date. The chart listed Conrad’s father, deceased, and Conrad, but named no other Cymblers. It didn’t show the Cymbler line.

&nbs
p; There were some pics in the family albums and one of them showed the blond guy, an old college roommate of Conrad—Rafe Davail. Very uncommon surname.

  Very good-looking guy who lived in Manhattan.

  Without thought her fingers typed in his name on the ancestry site and got a hit. She stared at the chart.

  Davail had a father-son curse, too. Anxiety tightened her throat as her eyes tracked the graph. For the past three hundred years, the first Davail son had died before he’d turned thirty-three. Rafe’s father was gone, so was his grandfather and great-grandfather. There was a great-uncle who was a second son, and Rafe had a younger brother.

  That wasn’t good.

  The only item of value Amber had in the world from her family was a gypsy ancestress’s journal. A far too sketchy journal when it came to talking about curses.

  But she knew what she was seeing.

  Rafe Davail was very cursed.

  Thumps and bumps woke Amber in the night. Her heart pounded—home invaders! The pups sprang from her bed and shot down the hall, barking. She snatched at the phone, pressed 911, started shouting over the dispatcher. “This is number seven—”

  The ceiling light flicked on and a brownie appeared on the end of her bed. The phone slipped from her grip.

  He wasn’t Pred from next door. This one wasn’t as skinny, though he was still thin. His face was more wrinkled, with lines of bad humor. His head between his large triangular ears was black. “Go ahead,” the brownie said. “Let’s see some fun.” He went transparent.

  Amber fumbled for the phone. “Never mind,” she panted into it. “False alarm. My… A friend came in.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” asked the dispatcher.

  “Fine. Fine,” Amber said.

  “We have a fix on your phone and will send a squad car by.”

  The brownie opened and closed his hands, fingers stiff, mumbling something. Again her phone dropped.

  “Changed the signal. They’ll go to the wrong address, blocks away from Mystic Circle,” he sneered.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” Amber asked.

  His features drew together and darkened with anger. His large triangular ears shook, probably with fury. She felt at a disadvantage in bed so she hopped out. “Who are—”

  “I heard you the first time. Tiro. I gotta live with you.” He jumped from the bed, making gargley noises that might be brownie cursing.

  “Tiro?” Amber asked.

  “My name, human.” The brownie stalked over and walked around her. She turned in place to keep an eye on him. He opened his mouth and curled his tongue…like a cat using a sixth sense.

  “The Mistweaver brownies were right. A wretched Cumulustre descendant. I thought your whole line had died out from stupidity four generations ago.”

  Amber crossed her arms. The March night was cold since she kept the heat low. Her nightgown was flannel, but her feet were bare. “I beg your pardon,” she said in a voice as chilly as her feet.

  She heard the grinding of his teeth, then he flung his head back. “And you look as stupid as all the rest. Smell like it, too. A curse breaker, right? And when you ‘help’ someone, you age? And your body is nearly a decade older than your true age?”

  He knew her magic. He knew her family. What else did he know and what could she learn from him?

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  Tiro stomped to the middle of the room. “If you human women of the Cumulustre bloodline had learned your lesson, I wouldn’t be here. Bound to watch over you and serve you—those’re my ancient orders from the elf.” Stomp. “Can’t contact Cumulustre without permission. Those damn Mistweaver brownies won’t talk to him, either. Stuck.” A hard jump on her floor.

  “Watch over me why?”

  He shot a finger at her. “’Cause you’re a curse breaker and you age when you do magic. Cumulustre wants you watched until all of you are gone.”

  Amber opened her mouth.

  “Stop pestering me,” he snapped, whiskery eyebrows dipping.

  She took a different angle. “So are you going to fall down and froth at the mouth?”

  “No.” But he stomped again. “But you’re going to press your luck and break curses and age and die before your time, ‘helping others,’ like all of your ilk. Damn women.”

  Now ice chilled her insides as well as the late winter air wrapping around her. She was afraid he was right.

  “Never saw a curse you didn’t want to break. Have to help.” He barked a laugh and the puppies yipped louder, pushing against him. He rubbed each of their heads and didn’t move an inch when they bumped against him. “Stupid,” he repeated, staring with a considering eye. “You look softer than most. You’ll probably go fast.”

  “I don’t think so.” She cleared her throat, knowing she shouldn’t ask, but couldn’t help herself. “You can’t help me with my gift?”

  Tiro smiled with all his pointy teeth and Amber took a step back. He looked more than happy, positively gleeful. “Give me permission and I can contact Cumulustre and all your problems will be over.”

  Grue slithered along her spine as if she’d stepped into a horror movie. One where you made a bad choice or a bad wish and suddenly you were running for your life or tortured or dead. She could hear her now-rapid pulse in her temples. “No, thank you. You can take the guest room.”

  His lip curled. “I want your office. Ground floor, view of the gardens, round window.” He leered a bit. “Closer to the elemental energy balancer’s house and the best magic.”

  “Huh?”

  “Jin-des-farne Mist-wea-ver.” His so-precise enunciation was to intimidate.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Fine. Tonight you move everything in my office to the room above it, place things exactly as they are below. If you can do that, you can have the office as your room. If I find anything out of place, you immediately move everything back to the room on the ground floor and you get a cubicle area in the basement.” She didn’t know the brownie’s magical powers, and from his widened eyes and a hint of respect, she thought the job might press him a little.

  She kept her gaze steady and widened her own smile to show teeth, even though they weren’t as sharp as his. “And you do that without the rude thumping noises that woke the puppies and me.”

  The dogs were drooling on his feet and he didn’t seem to notice.

  Tiro clapped his hands. “Done!” He vanished, and the pups looked at the dark square of the hallway beyond her open door. Then their heads swiveled back to their baskets on the floor and her comforter on the bed. Baxt plopped onto his rump and scratched his ear, then hopped back onto the bed. Zor circled around where Tiro had stood, sniffing deeply. He ambled to the door, sniffed again, then joined Baxt on the bed. They stared at Amber with big brown eyes and thwapped their tails on the bed and her chest loosened. Tiro was not the new object of adoration.

  Settling back into bed and turning the light off, she considered the information she’d gleaned. Jenni Weavers’s real name was Jindesfarne Mistweaver. Sounded magical to Amber.

  The brownies that Amber had met that morning were now called “Mistweaver” brownies. Were they bound to Jenni like the unhappy Tiro was to Amber? So many questions.

  But with every conversation Amber learned a little more. Jenni was an elemental energy balancer and Tiro wanted a room closest to Jenni’s house. Amber could draw deductions from that. The old elements—earth, air, fire, water—Jenni could equalize, which, in turn, probably made the magic better somehow. Amber had always liked the feel of Mystic Circle and Jenni’s magic might be the reason why.

  As Amber let her eyelids drift shut, she listened for sounds. Nothing more than the dogs’ breathing, the hum of the furnace turning on. Nothing from Tiro. Was he a dream? Perhaps. Dream or not, would he still be here in the morning?

  She didn’t know. She snuggled deeper into the pillow-top on her mattress. She’d learn more about magic from him, she was sure. A smile curved her lips.

&nb
sp; Meanwhile he was moving all her bookcases and books and maps and charts and the huge desk and credenzas up to the second-story room at the end of the hall. She’d known after she’d furnished the office downstairs that she’d made a mistake and should have used the upstairs room that got more sunlight during the year. Now that was being fixed.

  Perfect.

  When sun glistened on the faint coating of mist on her windows, Amber woke again—a little late as the puppies weren’t bouncing around on her bed. She figured the brownie was taking care of them as she heard playful barks from the backyard. Stretching languorously, she wondered at her changed circumstances.

  Brownies in her garden, then a very grumpy one in her house. Just how nasty could he be? He wasn’t happy to be here, that was for sure, but if he’d moved her office, she’d cut him a break until he went on his way.

  She slid from bed and noticed her door was shut. She liked the wiggling warmth of the puppies’ bodies, but waking to dog breath wasn’t always great. And if the brownie decided to stay—and she’d surmised that the brownies at Jenni’s house were responsible for a lot of the changes next door in the past couple of months—she’d prefer nominal privacy from him. She considered herself an outgoing and laid-back person but Tiro had been sour.

  After showering and dressing, she went to the door at the back of the house that had been an exercise room.

  Tiro appeared before the closed door, now painted a rich vanilla color. Apparently what she’d thought was a part of his head was a skull cap…and he was twisting it in his hands.

  He was nervous. Good. She’d need to keep the upper hand in this relationship.

  Stepping by him, she turned the knob, swung the door open, entered the room…and stood in shock. It was no longer the drab gray that she’d been meaning to paint. It was creamy beige like her office. She hadn’t meant… But other than the fact that the room was slightly smaller than the one below, everything looked precisely as she’d left it. She stared for a good minute at the shelves against the walls, the U-shaped desk facing the windows, the credenzas stacked with her current open files.