Enchanted Ever After (Mystic Circle) Read online

  Was that what he’d done? Kiri didn’t know. She wiped her hand across her eyes and shook her head. “No problem.” Another deep breath. “I lost track of the conversation. You were telling me about the, uh, new game?”

  “The game is called Transformation and has a preliminary stage, almost a tutorial, like a few other games in the past.” He gestured with his beer. “The individual is ‘tested’ to determine what area they begin the game in.”

  “I’ve heard of that.” Vaguely...she couldn’t snag the detail, though.

  “Yes, we have lands of rivers and volcanoes and aeries and caverns.”

  “Hmm.” She pummeled her memory. “And there was an old game that measured...um...qualities? Like loyalty and honor and compassion?”

  “That’s right.” Again the smile. “Though the prelude of the game has tests which will actually determine your powers and attributes. A...player...does not choose them ahead of time as is usual in most games now.”

  “Interesting twist.” Her water went down better this time. Her breath was steady now. Whatever stupid moment she’d had before had passed.

  His eyes narrowed, the color intense, though he didn’t meet her gaze. “We believe you are an excellent candidate.”

  Kiri blinked. “Yes?”

  “To test through the prologue. Anyone who will be working on the new game will need to go through and clear that part, so you know the basis of the world building.”

  “That makes sense.”

  He leaned over the table. She looked into his eyes again, then he cut his gaze away, seemed to scan the party and flicked his glance back to meet hers. “I believe that you have great potential for this...employment. Can you start on stage one, the prologue of the game on Monday?”

  Her heart thudded hard. She wanted this opportunity to break into game writing so much! She tried to look casual and swallowed another gulp of water. “I can after work is over. I’m downtown—it wouldn’t take me more than a few minutes to make it to Eight Corp’s offices.”

  Lathyr frowned, his fingers slid back and forth on the table. “I would like to offer you employment, but I can’t until you finish going through the preliminary stage of the game. We would, of course, prefer you to be at your best when you work with us. Naturally the person with the highest score—who develops their character to the highest level and with a minimal amount of defeats—will be offered the position first.”

  He was right. She’d be better fresh instead of struggling with a new game after a tiring day of being on a computer and handling complaints.

  “I overheard. We do need to move on this fast.” Jenni sat down beside Kiri. “Do you have any vacation time coming?”

  Kiri gritted her teeth. How much did she want the job? How much did she believe in herself? Enough to use her full two weeks of vacation?

  Yes.

  Gamble, roll the dice and hope. “I can take a full two weeks, but beginning on...Thursday?” A quick glance at their faces. Lathyr seemed attentive, but Jenni had twisted in her seat at the sound of metal sliding on metal. Rafe Davail and some of the unknowns were fighting...with swords. People from the Fencing Lyceum, then.

  “You can ride with me to work on Thursday, if you don’t mind getting in early and waiting while we set up,” Jenni said.

  Her husband was there, shaking his head, looking at Jenni, not Kiri. “No. I’ll be taking you to work, Jenni.”

  Lathyr made an abrupt sound, maybe a curse in his own language.

  “Eight Corp will send a car for you,” Jenni said. “We’ll pay you for your time, though I know it’s not the same as having vacation days. I’ll let Lathyr here close the deal, tell you more.”

  Another dismissal, this one distracted. “That would be good,” Kiri said.

  * * *

  Lathyr met Princess Jindesfarne’s eyes and inclined his head. The clouds and wind had only been a precursor. As Jenni moved away, he believed she’d be reporting to more powerful Lightfolk that minions of a great Dark one were flying over Mystic Circle.

  He could feel the evil, see the gigantic stingray-like creatures as they circled and flickered against the sun. They couldn’t land, but they cast shadows that humans could uneasily sense.

  It pleased his ego that the interesting Kiri Palger remained focused on him. He stood and offered his hand. “Why don’t we walk around the Circle?” This place was safe, but she was human and the others might want to use more magic that would disturb her. The park in the center of the Circle, the koi pond she liked, would be safer for her.

  “You can ask me what you need to know about the project,” he coaxed. Not that he’d tell her much of the truth, but he wanted to touch her and gauge her potential for transforming into one of the Lightfolk, especially here in the Circle where magic was balanced.

  The more time he spent with her, the more he liked her, though he’d made a mistake in holding her gaze. She was human and susceptible to his glamour. He wasn’t pure Waterfolk, but he was pure magic.

  She stayed seated, looked around, then squared her shoulders, something he sensed showed determination. Gestures were different for the Merfolk underwater. If she’d been mer and in the ocean she’d have flipped a hand to send a push of water current aside, indicating power and the willingness to follow through. Both those qualities he thought she had, along with the most important two that he’d discovered humans needed to become Lightfolk—a flexible imagination and a high level of curiosity.

  But as she didn’t rise, he deduced something held her here. “What is it?”

  She flushed, a pretty habit, also not seen much below water where mers kept their body temperature steady and cool. The rush of blood to her skin was unexpectedly enticing. “I still haven’t met all of my neighbors, or interacted with them. I want to stay here.” Her fingers went to the buttoned ends of her shirtsleeves and aligned them some way that seemed right to her. “The job is really important to me, but so is my place here.”

  He stared at her, blinked a couple of times to keep his eyes wet. If she turned into a dwarf or a djinn, even an elf—earth, fire, air elementals—she could possibly remain here. But if she became mer, she would have to move. What waters there were in Colorado were already claimed by naiads and naiaders.

  What were the odds she’d become mer? He didn’t quite know. There had been less than twenty humans changed into magical Lightfolk and though he had recognized their potential, his guesses as to what they might become had been poor. So he dropped his hand and stepped away, disappointment cooling the blood in his veins.

  Princess Jindesfarne, her husband, the Davails and several brownies had disappeared into unruly green brush in the corner of the yard and Lathyr sensed they were working magic. They didn’t seem to care that they had humans, including Kiri, in their midst, who might witness such.

  A wave of balanced power pulsed under his feet, flowed through him, pushed into the sky. Princess Jindesfarne and friends sending the great Dark one’s servants away.

  Sunlight became bright and hard and burning in the thin air.

  Lathyr said to Kiri, “We can talk later. May we send the car for you early Thursday morning, so you and I can discuss this before the workday at seven-thirty? I will be in earlier for a meeting and we can talk after that.”

  “You aren’t staying?” Kiri asked.

  It was a warm autumn day and he hadn’t soaked for over twenty-four hours. His skin was drying and he also needed to breathe water and keep his bilungs damp. He’d accomplished his first goal of getting Kiri Palger to agree to the testing game, and evil had faded.

  A line had appeared between her brows as she studied him—perhaps too closely. He shook his head. “I came in to Denver just a few days ago and still have not acclimated.”

  Her expression cleared and she nodded. “Yes, people have trouble with the altitude.” She hesitated. “You aren’t living here on the block?”

  “No, I am near—” what was the name of the park with the lake he was living
in? “—near City Park.” Higher-status mers had convinced the old naiader whose lake it was to let Lathyr have a small domicile there. On sufferance, as always.

  Kiri’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

  He raised a brow. “Oh?”

  “I just, uh, thought you’d live somewhere more sophisticated. Cherry Hills or something.”

  “Eight Corp arranged my lodging. It is...sufficient.”

  Now she appeared slightly offended. He tried a smile. “I am used to living near the beach.” Recently off the coast of Spain.

  Kiri laughed. “Not many beaches in Denver.”

  “No. I miss the ocean.” An admission he hadn’t meant to make, and not in public.

  “Only natural.”

  “Would you miss the mountains?” he asked.

  Her smile was quick. “I suppose so. I was born here and spent time with my grandmother, and moved here four years ago, but I’d miss Mystic Circle even more.”

  He nodded gravely. “It is a very special place.”

  Rafe Davail, a human with a magical heritage, crossed to them with a swordsman’s swagger. “And Eight Corp doesn’t own nearly as many of the houses of Mystic Circle as it used to. I think it’s better that the homes remain in private hands.”

  The man meant in human hands like his own, not owned by the Lightfolk royals of Eight Corp. “We still have the Castle,” Lathyr murmured.

  “And Eight Corp owns the other bungalow across from Kiri,” Amber Davail, Rafe’s wife, who was related to a great elf, said. “Number nine.”

  “Really?” Kiri said. “I didn’t know that.”

  Rafe smiled easily, but Lathyr was aware that the man was blowing spume at him for some reason. “Maybe Eight Corp will let you have number nine.”

  Jenni joined them again, shaking her head. “Nope, no pool.”

  Lathyr dipped his head. “Yes, a pool is necessary.”

  Kiri looked puzzled and Rafe laughed.

  “I am weary. I must go,” Lathyr said. “I am sorry that we didn’t speak more, Kiri.”

  “I’ll expect the car at 6:50 a.m. on Thursday morning,” she said.

  Lathyr smiled.

  Princess Jindesfarne’s husband came forward. “I’ll see you out,” Aric said. Lathyr sighed. The Treeman meant that he would take Lathyr home by way of tree. In this dry country it was faster than letting his molecules disperse into water droplets and finding a stream or cloud to take him where he needed to be. But Lathyr found traveling from tree to tree profoundly disturbing. Instead of moving as individual components, he felt solid and trees seemed to move through him. Stressful. “Thank you,” he said politely but with an underwash of resignation.

  Aric laughed, jerked his head toward the park, then glanced at Jenni. “Be right back.”

  She grinned. “Sure.”

  Lathyr decided everyone was enjoying themselves at his expense. He was the outsider. He rippled his fingers as a land man would shrug. Nothing new. That small bit of elven air magic in his being had always made him an outsider, ensured he had no permanent home. Most mers had their own space and were territorial. Ocean-living Merfolk preferred to live in communities—as structured as any other Lightfolk setting. He’d always been on the bottom level and so had become a reluctant drifter, always an outsider.

  Then Tamara Thunderock was there, and he realized that he was wrong about the residents of Mystic Circle. Everyone here believed they were outsiders but had melded together as a family, and thought he was the insider with the Lightfolk. Jenni was half-human; Aric was Earth Treefolk, not other-dimensional Lightfolk; Tamara was fully magic but half-Earth and half-Air and no doubt despised by both due to their opposite natures; Rafe and Amber were human.

  So he was the outsider of their Mystic Circle, but they believed him to be more accepted by the Lightfolk than any of the rest of them. Very discomfiting.

  Right then he decided to ask his superior for leave to live in the Castle of Mystic Circle while he tested Kiri. The Castle had a huge pool in addition to a natural spring and a well on the grounds. He, too, would become one of the Mystic Circle community—for a while.

  Always and only for a while, until he was more valued.

  Since all their gazes were on him, he ran a finger along the curve and the point of his ear, let it show for an instant along with the bluish tinge to his skin that was all mer.

  Demonstrating his own mixed heritage that would keep him from the highest ranks.

  Rafe stopped laughing and narrowed his eyes. The human must not have noticed Lathyr’s mingled water-air nature before.

  Tamara said, “Or I can see you out, Lathyr.”

  Again they were confusing Kiri, making too much of walking him to the front door. Tamara would no doubt take Lathyr through tunnel and rock. He suppressed a shudder, worse than tree being passed through him was rock. “Thank you for your offer.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Aric assured the small dwarf-elf woman. “Tamara, why don’t you load up a plate or two for him.”

  She nodded and moved toward the tables, efficiently making a box of food that Lathyr would encase in a bubble to store underwater. He’d noticed they had salmon, a treat.

  He realized he’d underestimated the sun and the altitude and the dryness and had to draw on a bit of his air magic to keep the pressure around him and prop him up. His blood had to pump hard through his body.

  Kiri’s eyes were wide—beautiful, beautiful sea-foam-green eyes. He also admired her curvaceous body. He’d let the attraction to her, as well as this magically balanced place, keep him too long.

  His skin was beginning to tighten and flake. He needed to be in water now! Another foolish mistake that would cost him. The royals would hear of his errors, of course.

  Aric or Princess Jindesfarne or Rafe Davail would tell them. Then Lathyr would be sent away.

  And he didn’t want to leave this magical place. Here was community and safety.

  Outside was a begrudged sleeping spot, solitariness and the threat of a Dark one and his creatures.

  The threat of evil pained less than the certainty of loneliness. For the first time, ever, Lathyr considered living permanently on land, though a prized place here in this special location would not be given to the likes of him.

  Despite everything, all his mistakes, all his past experiences, the sun beating on him, he wanted to stay.

  “Let’s go,” Aric said, clamping a large hand that felt like wood around Lathyr’s biceps.

  He shrugged off the hand. After another half bow to Kiri, he followed the Treeman.

  He’d made more mistakes. The project wasn’t beginning well. He hoped that wasn’t an ill omen for the whole thing.

  He didn’t want Kiri Palger to die.

  Chapter 4

  AFTER THE PARTY, Jenni Emberdrake and her husband, Aric, closed up the house and sank into plump cushioned lounge chairs in the sunroom—a room her brownies had made earlier in the year. She loved the place.

  Aric grunted. “Good party.”

  Leaning back and closing her eyes, Jenni said, “Yes. I love the neighborhood parties, but don’t care too much for hosting them. I think Amber and Rafe should do it all the time.”

  “Our turn,” Aric reminded. “Thank you, Hartha and Pred.”

  From the sound of his voice above her, Jenni figured he’d stood and bowed to the two brownies who lived with them.

  Opening her eyes and hauling herself up, she bowed to the couple, as well. “Thank you for all your work.”

  Hartha shrugged little brownie shoulders. Taller than her husband, she still stood less than a meter high. Her mouth was straight and the tips of her huge triangular ears folded over in concern, and Jenni sat sideways on the chair so she’d be eye to eye.

  “The party was easy,” Hartha said, then crossed her arms. “We don’t like that Darkfolk are flying over Mystic Circle, trying to harm our homes.”

  Pred said, “We don’t like it at all.”

  Jenni sat tall, stared at
the brownies. “I have it handled. They can’t get in. No evil, not human and especially not Darkfolk, not even great Dark ones.”

  “But only here is safe,” Hartha pointed out. “We are stuck here.”

  Aric said, “We can all take care of ourselves—you brownies and Sargas the firesprite, and we Lightfolk. Amber has defensive Air Spells from her magic. Rafe has his sword and shield.”

  “Kiri the human does not have anything,” Pred said. “We liked Kiri.” He grinned big. “She made us brownies.”

  “And you want her to continue to make brownies,” Aric put in, coming over and sitting next to Jenni, sliding his strong arm around her waist, letting her lean on him a little. She loved that, being a couple. Loved him.

  Hartha tapped her foot. “You are not listening to us. Kiri may be in danger.”

  “I do hear you. We’ll figure something out,” Jenni said.

  Hartha gave Jenni a look, sniffed and trundled away, followed by Pred, who glanced at them over his shoulder, mouthing, We need more chocolate.

  Jenni turned into her husband, rested against his broad chest, breathed in the Treeman scent of him, redwood needle spice.

  “They’re right,” she said.

  “I will report the Darkfolk incursion to the Eight royals, of course.”

  Jenni hissed, letting off some of her fire nature steam. “You know they won’t do anything.”

  “The great Dark ones rarely leave their domains, and are unassailable there. We cannot prevail against them in their strongholds.” Aric stroked her hair. “I’m sure the one who showed up today is already back on his estate.”

  “But they are vicious, and since they are down to a handful, they are even more rabid.” She paused. “More violent. They’d like to kill us all.” Frowning, she forced herself to consider the matter. “The great Dark ones are more powerful than individual royals. Than some couples, too, I think.” She glanced at Aric. “Some are older than the royals, aren’t they?” Jenni was half-human, new to associating with the Eight royals. Aric had served them—and with them—for years.

  “That’s right,” he confirmed. “They’re very old and powerful.”