Enchanter's Echo

by Anise Rae

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Well, that erased the smile. He turned onto Spring Street, heading west.

  “But only because it’s obvious what Vibe Girl wears under her short, twirly skirt.” Her teasing tone brought a different kind of smile to his face.

  “I’m hoping it’s nothing.”

  Just before they hit Neil Avenue, the pain lessened. Wrong way. The discordant vibrations lessened like a whisper creeping away from his ear. “Not the zoo.”

  “Then I don’t know where it is.”

  “I’ll figure it out.” He made a U-turn in the middle of the road, heading east. The burn of the fissure worsened. This was the right direction. “Back to what’s under that skirt, please,” he ordered gently.

  “She’s not naked under there. I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

  “I’m hoping you’re going to make it up to me.”

  “Obviously her panties have to match the color of her skirt.”

  “Pink.” Panties. Blood rushed to his groin in such a flood that he probably shouldn’t be driving. “Go on.” His strangled voice rasped through the car. “Is it a thong?”

  “No. I’m sure Vibe Girl refuses to wear a thong. She probably told Mageman she’d only wear one if he did.”

  “Vibing hells. Not happening.”

  Her smiled turned mischievous. “Exactly what he said, I’m sure. I bet they compromised.”

  They crossed over Front. Wrong way again. They needed to head farther north. He turned on North High and refocused on her as the burning in his gut flamed higher. “Which means what exactly? What’s a panty compromise?”

  “I’d have to guess she wears panties with minimal coverage in the back.”

  “So there is some bare cheek under that skirt. I knew it.” He sat very still. His cock throbbed against too tight pants. He glanced around the neighborhood, searching for something to point out so she’d look away and give him a second to adjust himself, but there was nothing.

  His gaze landed on her soft smile. Kissing those lips was exactly what this moment called for. He lifted his hand to caress her cheek.

  At least she’d stopped glittering.

  “We’re getting closer.” He focused on the task at hand. Get it over with and get her back home, to the couch, to her bed if she’d invite him.

  She sat up with a suddenness, an alarming fright that singlehandedly cured the ache in his groin. A puff of glitter popped into existence.

  “It’s not the zoo. It’s at the elephant fountain. I should have known.” She lifted her fingers to her lips as if in parody of a fright, but there was nothing false about her fear. “I don’t go there anymore.”

  “Ror, it’ll be all right.” Apparently, heir-mailing a letter at the newly replaced mailbox hadn’t had any effect on her. “We’ll be quick. It will be just like all the other fissures. You yank the bond’s energy through, re-balance the spot, and we’re out of there.”

  But his words didn’t help. The closer they got, the tenser she became, until her back was off the seat. She dug her fingernails into her cheek. Little curved marks imprinted in her soft skin. Glitter clouded the car until it might have choked them both if not for its ephemeral nature.

  He took her hand in his, rubbing her fingers until they relaxed in his grip. He turned onto Buttles, made a left on Park, and pulled along the curb.

  Goodale Park was surrounded by Victorian houses. The pond and its fountain sat in the northeast quadrant, engulfed in darkness at four in the morning but visible to his mage sense. All looked calm to him, but Aurora’s fear vibrated through the car.

  He slipped his arm around her, would have pulled her onto his lap if not for the console between them. She stared out the window. “I was there…that day.” Her chest rose and fell as if she couldn’t get enough air.

  He sucked in a fast breath between clenched teeth, hissing. A helpless rage burst inside him. Fucking terrorists needed to die again. Painfully. Slowly.

  “I was sitting under a tree.” She lifted her finger and pointed out the window. “Just over there. Away from the pond a little. On a blanket. By myself.” She spoke as if the memory came in pieces, as disjointed as the results of the damned terrorists’ bomb. “I was watching the paper boats floating. Helping them along as they got stuck.”

  Of course she was. That was what an enchantress did. Or at least his enchantress.

  “A family stepped in front of me. A mom, a dad, and their little girl, and her even smaller brother. The grandmother, too. I couldn’t see the boats anymore. They blocked the view, but I kept giving this one boat a stream of energy. It was soaked and should have drowned already, but the boy who’d made it was so happy.”

  She stared out the window as if it were replaying before her. “The little girl looked at me, gave me a smile. And then....” She shook her head. “Reality was gone. Something else was in its place. Like I’d blinked and in that minute space of time everything ignited.”

  She fell silent, caught in that wretched scene. He cupped her chin and pulled until she turned to him, wanting to wipe this away for her like tears, but he was helpless against her memories.

  “There was blood everywhere.” Her eyes were wide with remembered horror. “Parts of people,” she whispered. “Parts. Do you understand? Because sometimes I still don’t. My mind doesn’t want to understand, so it switches back to disbelief.” She whispered as if it were a secret, as if speaking of it was wrong. “It doesn’t want to believe that feet and arms and legs could just lay on the ground without the rest of their people. Bits of clothing with bloody chunks of bodies. So much dying all around me, in front of me, behind me, beside me, but I wasn’t hurt. Because I was casting power at the time. I think it protected me.” She shook her head. “I had to help them. I had to help but….”

  “But there was nothing you could do.”

  She spoke over his interruption. “I had to help Lily. That little girl…” She shook her head and clamped her lips together. “Her family…they died. Except Merida. That’s how I met her.”

  Merida. An unusual name, but he hadn’t made the connection. “Rylan and Petal Harland. He was a reader mage. She was a botanical. Their son was Rylan Jr., just turned two years old; their daughter was Lily, four years old. Her body was never found. Neither was Merida Harland’s.”

  Aurora looked away and clamped a hand over her mouth, her skin flushed. One of her secrets. “You knew them?”

  “No, but I know the names of all the Rallis mages killed in the three attacks in our territory. Merida. She’s your junkyard healer, isn’t she? And now you keep her safe, tucked inside the privacy of the junkyard. How are they?”

  Aurora slid away from his touch against her cheek. She stared out into the darkness. “Fine.” She reached for the handle and stepped out of the car.

  Crickets. The flat, bitter word was a lie.

  He followed her, letting his car door slam shut behind him, a needless warning that he was coming after her. He’d never stop coming after her. Did she know that by now?

  She stood four steps onto the park’s paved path, breaching the space. Pulling her hat from her head, she lifted her face to the night sky. Her breath puffed in the cold air. “I wish the moon would shine. I need light.” Tears drenched her voice.

  He stepped up to her, pulling her back into his front, and rested his cheek against her hair. Her warm scent filled his nose, his lungs, his body. “You smell like sunshine to me even in the dark. Even among the hell that happened here, even with the fissure.”

  Its chaos shimmered ahead and a bit to the right. High up. Exactly where the small elephants had sprayed their water. The bronze pair sat on top of four concrete tiers that resembled a wedding cake.

  The baby elephants weren’t the only ones that needed mothering. The whole city needed mothering, the benevolent hand of the goddess to wipe this clean.

  “People still bring flowers and stuffed animals.” His mouth
moved against her hair. “They’d tapered off for awhile, but they’re back in piles now.”

  “Since you mailed your letter.”

  “Saw that, did you? There’s caution tape around the pond. It’s drained, but it’s cleared of the debris. They left the two big boulders in the pond though.” He described the scene to her, though she could see for herself.

  “Those boulders look like their sculptor forgot to give them life.” That bitter tone was so foreign from her lips. “Like all these days without sunshine and these nights without stars. Unformed. Incomplete. All we have are clouds.” She stepped out of his hold, her voice lifting. “Where is the sun? The moon?” She turned to face him. “Do you know how long it’s been? Forty-eight days.”

  He frowned, his heart hurting for her. She never complained like this. It was this place, too much horror, too many memories. “Maybe this is simply the mix of light and dark, the two swirling together. There’s a poem etched on the first tower.” Though she nodded impatiently, he continued. “I’d never heard it before.” He’d memorized it during his guard duty over the last three days. He lifted his fingers to her face and stroked her temple, her cheek, the softness of her neck, repeating the path over her fine skin as he recited it.

  “Wrap my cloak of darkness tight to your skin.

  Dance my song of lightness now, then again.

  A glitter of starglow, a soft beam of moon,

  shadows in sunshine, a cloud’s veil at noon,

  darkness and light ray, within you, alive,

  One needs the other to live and revive.”

  She lifted her long lashes, her gaze finding his immediately. He wanted to wrap her up and carry her away at the need in her eyes.

  “Light and dark,” he whispered. “Both existing at the same time. That’s all these days are.”

  For a moment, he thought he’d said the right things, but then she shook her head and stepped back, shattering the moment. “But I don’t think I can exist in this gray. I don’t understand this,” She pointed into the darkness that contained the scene of violence, greed and selfishness. “Why did it happen in the first place and why we aren’t allowed to fix it if we can? To let life keep its glow. To revive it. That’s what I don’t understand, the things that prevent revival and renewal.”

  The sad frustration in her voice broke his heart. “The park will be fixed someday. For all the frustration the committee has caused, they want the best for the place.”

  She shook her head again, disheartened or disappointed, something he couldn’t read. She stepped down the path, past the bouquets of flowers encased in thrive spells. A yellow string of tape around the pond, supported by a spell, bobbed gently in winter’s night.

  The wind stirred the empty branches of the hibernating trees, swaying in sympathy of the pond’s loneliness. No one stayed to play anymore. No one floated paper boats.

  He stayed at her side as she ventured forth, slow and hesitant.

  “It’s at the top, isn’t it?” She ducked under the yellow tape and jumped the four feet into the empty, concrete-lined pond. “I’ll be back.”

  That was her way of saying she was going alone, that he wasn’t to come with her.

  With her gaze fixed on the concrete tiers of the crumbled fountain, she passed the humped boulders to her left, a warrior goddess on a mission with hips swaying. She didn’t hesitate as she reached the fountain, climbing the first tier and then the second.

  “We don’t know how stable it is. Be careful,” he called, unable to stop himself. He paced down the sidewalk, keeping even with her. “And don’t touch the fissure. Remember to use your mage sense.” She looked so small up there.

  The other side of the fountain had borne the brunt of the damage, a wedding cake stomped in half by a giant foot, leaving enough intact for the cake topper of elephants to stand. One leaned against the other. Both their trunks were broken off and the far elephant, the one sitting upright, was missing half its face.

  Aurora unbuttoned her coat and let it fall to the pond’s floor. At eye level with the creatures, she lifted a hand stroking one, then the other. Just like that, the energy of the land righted itself. His soul sighed in relief.

  He smiled, his own vibes suddenly light, as if he’d inhaled a puff of a light-hearts potion. There was nothing to grin about though. After all, he’d learned Aurora had almost died in the terrorists’ bomb, someone had tried to blow up a trash tower, his family had turned on him, the fissure culprit remained at large, and the Republic would go to war if this evil wasn’t stopped. Too much horror abounded to contemplate happiness. Nevertheless, his soul had been doused with joy from the inside out.

  Perhaps he should have been alarmed as his tension drained away. Perhaps, he thought, following her gaze as she lifted her face to the sky, he should have commented on the fact that the persistent clouds were finally thinning. Instead, he laughed and sat down on the metal bench at the edge of the pond’s paved path. He leaned back, arms spread wide against the cold metal.

  The world slowed, even the trees’ sway looked drunken and sedated. Just like him. Wait. Whose spell was this? He took a breath to call out to her, warn her, but all that came out was a whisper. “Aurora.”

  She looked at him and graced him with that sexy smile. He hadn’t seen that in a long, long time. Since after dinner. Way too long.

  She trailed her fingers over one ailing elephant’s head. It glimmered, as if she’d dusted off the dirt, revealing the bronze beneath. Another brush of her hand and it glowed under her touch. No, it glowed under the moon. The ever-present clouds parted wide, revealing the sparkling sky that was the moon’s vast stage.

  The world shined under its luminescence. The pale light hung heavily above them. The white gleam illuminated Aurora’s soft skin, giving her a halo of light and power. Her hair danced through the sparkly glow, trailing down her shoulders and back, tousled from the climb.

  She glanced at him with a slow-motion blink. Yes, he remembered that look. And this energy, he remembered it, too. Communing. He’d caught the trailing end of her ritual the day he’d first met her.

  A silent question formed in her eyes. Far be it for him to stop her. He crooked an eyebrow at her, daring her. After all, this family-filled neighborhood was sound asleep.

  Her pale belly came into view as she tugged her shirt from its tucked-in spot and offered it to the sky. Her lacy bra followed with a toss. It might have sprouted wings and flown around the neighborhood for all he knew. He couldn’t look away from those breasts, full and high, and capped with the most delicious nipples.

  She toed off her boots, twisting slightly. He almost winced in sympathy at the cold, but surely the connection between enchantress and skylight warmed her from within. Her pants fell next to reveal the curve of an ass that needed a lifetime of worship. He fisted his hands to keep from reaching out.

  She lifted her arms high, as if to reach up and touch the white glow of the symbol of the goddess’s nighttime form. Power rained down with Aurora as its focus. What would it feel like to be at the epicenter of that? He wasn’t mage enough to handle it. He could commune with the dark; he could destroy the world, but this was beyond his reach. Watching this was a close as any mage—except an enchantress—could come to communing with the goddess.

  Drenched in vibes she’d pulled from the moon, she was the goddess personified, every jiggle and bounce of that bountiful form. The light grew around her, brightening in an ethereal cloud of vibes, until it encompassed the statue and its tiers to the bottom of the concrete pond, an earthbound moon that seared his eyes. He had to turn his head.

  The first thing he noticed was the sound. The hard splatter of water against concrete. He turned back to see. The elephants, whole and perfect, were spouting their victorious healing. Water shot from their trunks. Mist sprayed from between the tiers. The luminescent energy disappeared, replaced by a wet, misty cloud with a drenched, naked enchantress at its pinnacle.

>   Edmund jumped to his feet and yanked off his suit jacket. He tossed it to the bench and raced over. The mist stuck to his clothes, not enough to penetrate them right away, but it would.

  He met her at the second tier. With a hand on her hip, he steadied her until she made it down one more level and then he lifted her shivering form off the fountain and into his arms.

  “Not how I thought that would end.” She laughed with the words, but stuttered from cold.

  He raced out of the pond’s hole, clutching her slippery form to his chest. He tried to warm her with a spell, but his vibes slipped from his control. He’d absorbed too much of the power that Aurora had conducted. It was like trying to move an ocean. “Warm yourself, Ror. You’ve got plenty of vibes after that. No need to just shiver.”

  “Can’t. Blissed out. Don’t destroy anything. Wouldn’t be able to help much.”

  “I’ll try to contain myself.” He stopped at the edge of the pond and set her on her feet at the top. He was eye-level with the most marvelous place in the world, covered in a soft patch of dark red hair.

  “Oh, princess.” He swallowed hard against the urge to lean forward. Instead, he stepped out of the pond, now filling up thanks to Aurora’s pull with the goddess’s power. Retrieving his jacket from the bench, he draped it around her, guiding her arms into its sleeves, and pulled it tight across her chest. He looked back at her clothes, now resting within a shroud of cold, icy mist.

  That was going to take heroic effort. Normally, he’d cast an arc of vibes to keep him dry, but he was so drenched in power his cast wouldn’t work.

  “Forget those.” Aurora laid her head against his shoulder. “Let’s just get in the car.”

  He scooped her up again and strode toward the car. “Next time I have a committee mired in disagreement, I’m going to stick you on them.”

  Chapter 12

  Encased in vibes, Aurora stared out the Donninger’s foggy windows as they passed through downtown and into the Drainpipe. She leaned her head against the seat and turned to him. His hooded glance shifted her way, dark, determined, greedy.