The outer door hissed open. The troll stepped through.
Behind us, someone else yelled. Remy scowled but did not turn around. He ran toward the now-open door.
I turned around and held up my hands. “Grandma’s been gambling too much,” I said, then followed Remy and the troll out the door.
She was gone. Remy threw his hands into the air. “Stupid troll!” he yelled.
I looked back at the casino entrance. The two floor security guards stood just inside. Both watched us. “Come on,” I said, and oriented Remy toward our vehicle.
He paced the sidewalk in front of the casino bent forward with his hands on his hips like a cop examining evidence. “She’s gone,” he finally said.
I nodded toward the guards. “We should be gone, too.”
He sniffed the air. A smile replaced his anger and he made a show of slapping my shoulder. “I guess grandma’s gone back to the hotel,” he said.
I shrugged and walked toward where we’d parked. “So much for stealth.”
Remy rubbed the back of his head and sniffed at the sleeve of his shirt. “We need showers. We can’t be walking around with this stuff on our clothes.”
We still carried tar residue. “It smells terrible.” I pulled my shirt sleeve off my bicep. “Organic with a sulfur aftertaste.” Whatever she hit us with also carried strong natural magic, which was probably why she could manipulate it with ease. But the substance was not, itself, built of magic.
“It’s not low-demons,” I said.
Remy flicked at a speck clinging to his shirt. “It’s troll scat,” he said, as if trolls threw scat every day.
I stopped mid-flick. “What?”
He pulled the keys from his pocket. “They’re like monkeys.” He sniffed at his shirt and made a disgusted face. “They throw their scat when they’re mad.”
“She flung troll poop at us?” I was pretty sure I now hated trolls more than Las Vegas.
Remy got in as I walked around the SUV. “It has mild psychedelic properties,” he said.
I opened the passenger door. “What?” I said again. I knew nothing about trolls. We didn’t have any around Alfheim, and honestly, she was the first one I’d ever met. Even my one trip to Iceland had been troll-free.
“Mild, Frank.” He started the SUV. “Don’t worry.”
I fastened my seatbelt.
“To be honest, I didn’t think she’d do something like that.” Remy pulled out onto the street. “But then again, I didn’t think she would run out into the morning light, either.”
Remy sat silent for a moment. “At least we know the apartments are nearby.”
The troll had given us some useful information.
I resisted the urge to wipe the troll scat onto the SUV’s seat. “Did the troll survive?” Would a troll commit suicide before talking to us?
Remy turned onto the road leading to our hotel. “Probably,” he said. “She sure found you interesting with all that fake jotunn nonsense.”
I chuckled. “I’ve been telling Arne for two centuries that I’m not a giant.”
Remy laughed. “I guess we stick with paladin, then, huh?”
Paladin. “Not a paladin. Don’t have Sal.”
Remy laughed again. “Let’s get those showers.”
Chapter 9
Remy shouldered his bag. I shouldered mine. We looked at the minefield standing between us and the elevator to our hotel rooms.
Green and gold carpet covered with massive, semi-Egyptian-themed florals rolled out before us like a gaudy yellow brick road. Above, fluorescent lights hidden in beams bounced harshness off the high, white ceilings. The occasional window and plenty of eight-foot-tall potted palms fanned out against the wide hallway’s walls.
The space buzzed with chatter and a literal high-pitched whine that was part lighting, part ambient noise from the casino on the other side of the lobby behind us, and part electrical haze from the battery-operated costumes.
ElfCon festivities had already started. Turned out smaller stalls and information booths would set up the entire week, with the big events starting Thursday evening.
Tables backed by banners advertising everything from comic books to foam armor creations lined both sides of the wide walkway. Lights flashed here and there, and beeping battery-powered space weapons whooped and whistled. The distinct tang of grease paint and fried foods mingled with the over-conditioned hotel air and the troll-scat stink still on my shirt.
Remy grinned. “Looks like fun,” he said.
I didn’t like crowds. My patchwork body’s senses didn’t always pick out details well against a busy background of humans—and this background was confounded by painted faces and bright costumes. The buzzing, beeping, and laughing made it worse, as did my fatigue.
Plus I smelled of psychedelic troll scat.
“Is there another bank of elevators?” I asked. There had to be. I picked at my shirt to accent my question.
Remy shook his head. “Two hundred feet. That’s it. Then we wash off the troll and take naps.” He waved a hand at the people in their costumes. “This is nothing. Wait until the real elves show up.”
The Conclave would start with a Feast banquet Thursday evening, as would the elven yelling. They were not a calm lot, the elves, at least not in large, political groups. But at least I knew what I was looking at when elves were in the room.
Natural magic rose off the crowd in aurora borealis updrafts. Or perhaps I was looking at the interaction of costumes and scat. “Just how psychedelic is this stuff?”
Remy closed one eye and peered at the crowd. “So many pretty colors,” he said.
“Not helping, Remy.” Was he seeing the updrafts, too? I squinted at a blue-painted woman in a white jumpsuit who trailed little flashes of orange and lemon yellow.
Remy chuckled and walked toward all the chatter. “You’ll be fine.”
The humans with painted faces were more difficult to tell apart than they should have been. “Okay, okay,” I muttered, and followed him into the wide walkway full of faux creatures and critters.
Remy adjusted the strap of his bag and forged ahead. “Head down, eyes straight ahead. Walk with purpose. They will part like the Red Sea for you, my friend.”
A man and a woman dressed as “elves” stared at my scars as I walked by. They both wore long blond wigs, white robes, and v-notched ringlets around their heads. Both had low pointed ears that stuck out from the sides of their heads. The man carried a tall, carved stick with a glass globe embedded in its end.
“That’s all sorts of wrong,” Remy said as we passed by.
No elves anywhere looked so dour and emaciated, nor were any blond. These two looked more like fashion models than fighters.
Purples drifted off the stick. Reds wafted off their fake ears. Greens off their shoulders. The white-faced superhero standing next to them cackled like a parrot. When he slapped his leg, I could have sworn I saw the wave distortion of the sound.
I stopped walking. “I think that troll hit me harder than you,” I said.
One of the tables had a photo booth. A strobe flash popped and for a micro-second, the entire floor looked as if it was on fire.
Remy looked up at my face. “Okay, okay.” He looked around. “I’d tell you to enjoy it, but I don’t think that’s possible here.”
“I need to sleep this off,” I said. I was no good to Remy and the search if I was seeing things I shouldn’t be seeing.
Remy turned back toward the crowd, to take point. Perhaps if I stared at the back of his head, I’d get through the next two hundred feet without incident.
I looked up and over the crowd anyway, to chart our path.
To our right, between the tables, several doors to conference rooms stood open. Con-goers moved in and out, some carrying bags. Some not.
The twin Siberian elves leaned against the wall of a banquet room three doors up.
“Tell me you see them,” I said. They must have flown out yesterday afternoon, to have beaten us h
ere.
Remy glanced around. “Who?”
“The twins who locked us out of The Great Hall. They’re a couple doors up on the right.”
Remy stepped to the side to get a look. “Sons of bitches,” he muttered. “They’re probably establishing Feast enchantments ahead of the Courts’ arrivals.” He looked up at me. “Or they could be here because we’re here.”
Arne said we might not be the only ones here early. “The troll scat is making us paranoid,” I said. It had to be. They were guards doing their jobs and that was it.
Remy growled a real, wolf growl. It rolled from his throat low and deep. A little kid dressed as a spaceship captain yelped and stepped toward his mother.
Remy wasn’t looking at the kid. He wasn’t looking at the elves, either. He was watching two tourists who were standing in front of a comic book display.
I looked at the two elves. They stopped leaning, stood up tall, and pointed.
“Remy, the twins spotted me.” I towered over all the mundanes. I was surprised we’d spotted them first and not the other way around.
Remy didn’t respond. He stared at the two tourists.
One of the twins walked into the banquet room. The other continued to stare directly at me. “Remy,” I said.
“Tell me what you see.”
He sounded much more wolf-like than I liked—much too wolf-like to be in a crowd of mundanes.
His wolf magic manifested. Remy Geroux, Alpha of the Alfheim Pack, who had moments before claimed the troll scat let him see “pretty colors,” was suddenly, utterly encased in a bubble of brilliant blues, silvers, icy purples, and all things moonglow.
The colors swirled and shifted, and Remy’s wolf-magic condensed into a wolf. Not a real wolf, but a bubble-ghost shimmering magic mirage of a wolf with perked-up ears, a massive ruff, and a big, fluffy tail.
“Whoa,” I said. I’ve been out with the pack when they changed. I was aware of their moonglow wolf-magic and its ethereal shimmer that sets it apart from elven magic. But never had I seen it shape itself into a wolf.
He growled again.
“Hey,” I said. “Calm down. Remember, eyes forward and head down.”
He shook and blinked, and the wolf looked up at me. Not Remy. His wolf.
“You can’t be terrorizing the mundanes,” I said to the wolf. “I’m scary enough without adding you and your magic.”
The wolf closed one eye and pursed his wolf lips. Then he nodded and vanished back into Remy.
“I just talked to your wolf,” I said.
Remy pointed at the two tourists.
Magic swirled around them, but not like the normal shifting sheets of energy I usually saw. Their magic, like Remy’s magic, wore pointy ears, snouts, and huge, fluffy tails—three tails each.
They were shorter than most of the people around them, both probably standing five and a half feet. Both looked to be Japanese, the male with short, messy hair, and the female with a long, glossy ponytail. Both wore cargo shorts, white tube socks, and sneakers. The male had a camera on a strap around his neck, and the female carried a large camera backpack. The camera bounced against the male’s garish blue, red, and green tropical-print shirt. The female’s equally garish lemon-yellow polo shirt somehow shimmered more like moonlight on the ocean than the sun, but was still blindingly bright.
The male pulled a potato chip out of his fanny pack and stuck it in his mouth. The female sucked on a lollipop.
They were definitely shapeshifters.
Shapeshifters eating potato chips and sucking on a lollipop while wearing stereotypical Japanese tourist garb.
“What the hell am I looking at?” They were not at all like any spirits I’d ever seen before.
“You see the tails?” Remy asked. “Three big tails each with the white and black tips?”
“Fox tails,” I said.
Remy growled again. “How did the kami know about the Conclave? No one said anything about kitsune.”
Kitsune. Shapeshifting fox tricksters. They often worked as messengers, so even if Remy was surprised to see them here, I wasn’t. They were likely here to recon ElfCon right alongside us and the twins.
“Ignore them,” I said. They probably didn’t want to interact with Remy any more than he wanted to interact with them.
“Ignore them? They’re kitsune. You do know that kitsune hate canines, right? We can sniff them out and we won’t fall for their tricks.”
“So don’t fall for this one.”
I glanced back at the Siberians. They were more important than two kitsune, anyway.
An elf I didn’t recognize walked out of the conference room, and the twin by the door stood at attention. The twin who had gone in followed the new elf out, then stopped next to his brother, bowed his head, and pointed at me.
“We don’t have time to mess with kitsune,” I said. Or to figure out what they were up to.
The new elf’s glamour looked minimal, at best. His ears were clearly visible, as were his deep, rich, berry-stained leathers. His trousers looked as if they’d been dipped in red wine. His thick, black, laced-up boots appeared to be military even though they were made from the same soft leather as the rest of his clothes. His jacket was a slightly lighter red than his trousers, and tied at the waist like a robe.
He was far enough away I couldn’t make out his features, though his elven magic swirled around him in great curlicues of magentas, dark greens, and rich golds. And he was almost as tall as the twins.
Remy looked away from the two kitsune and at the elves. His eyes widened. “That’s Niklas der Nord.”
The elf grinned and waved us over.
“Who?” The only elves I knew lived in Alfheim, and though I’d met a handful of others here and there, I wasn’t up on non-Alfheim politics.
“He’s Siberia’s Magnus—their Second in Command.” Remy shifted his bag on his shoulder. “He’s also Dag’s ex-husband.”
Chapter 10
Most long-lived elves marry multiple times. They have multiple families across multiple generations, often out-living children and grandchildren.
Once, in a moment of intimacy, Benta had referred to a past relationship—a husband gone three centuries, and a child—as her “ancestors.” Then she closed up and never again spoke of anyone not part of her current life in Alfheim.
All the elves were like that. Magnus rarely spoke of his time as a silent movie star, and that had been only a century ago. When he did, the sense of “ancestor” permeated all his stories.
So I wasn’t surprised that I knew nothing of Dag’s ex-husband, though I’d always assumed that each new life was a reaction to the death of a partner. That for the elves, at least the ones I knew, re-marrying was more about moving on than leaving behind.
I guess I was wrong.
“You cannot be serious, Remy,” I said. The elf smiling like a shark and waving us over was Dag’s ex-husband?
“I am dead serious. I only know because Gerard and I had a run-in with him when we pulled Sergei Popov into the pack.”
I knew some of the Sergei story—in the sixties, while I was away at college, Sergei Popov had been part of a Soviet film crew working in the Arctic. A plane crashed. A feral wolf tore through the survivors, and by the time Gerard and Remy got to them, only Sergei had been salvageable. The Siberian elves helped to down the wolf responsible. Sergei lived with the Alfheim pack for a few years before he, too, became too feral.
Sergei Popov was now a boogeyman among the pack, a ghost wolf, and yet another reminder that the Alfheim Pack had its own little Cold War going on with Russia.
And now Niklas der Nord wanted a word.
The two kitsune turned toward us in unison. Both of their faces rounded into masks of surprise. The female in the bright yellow polo pulled her lollipop out of her mouth.
The candy at the end of the stick was shaped like a cartoon wolf. All this time, the Japanese fox spirit had been sucking on a wolf-shaped, chocolate-colored lollipop.
>
The male—who no longer appeared male—let out a high-pitched chittering that sounded more like a parrot imitating a car alarm than any sound a mammal should make.
They vanished. Just disappeared right in the middle of a crowd of painted and foam-board-armored mundanes as if they hadn’t been there in the first place.
No one noticed. No one. Not even the three Siberians who, in my psychedelic haze, were becoming more and more shark-like.
“Remy, the kitsune are gone,” I said more matter-of-factly than I was feeling.
He sniffed, then snarled. “Hate foxes,” he muttered.
I grabbed him by the collar. It was one thing for me to get muddled and out of sorts while lumbering through a crowd of mundanes, but it was a whole new level of bad when a werewolf did it. “Eyes ahead. Walk fast. The elevators are right there.” I pointed into the shadows. “You said this wouldn’t be bad, so let’s make sure it stays not bad, okay?”
He shook as if resetting. “Right, right,” he said, but his lip continued to curl. When another group of blond fake-elven Con-goers walked by, he snarled. Thankfully, none of them noticed.
I pushed him forward. We still needed to get past the Siberians—and through the swimming colors.
Faux magic flared, swirled, and danced in hypnotic, gyrating sheets of energy around every single mundane parading between the many tables filling the annex. Every mundane in green body paint carried a red shimmer. Every pale elf sparkled with little fairy lights. Every space captain carried a swooping space travel effect.
Remy rubbed his eyes. “The kitsune,” he said. “They’re doing this. They made the troll scat more abundant because they do that. Make things abundant.” He shook his head. “Little bastards.”
“We don’t know that,” I said. The two kitsune might have nothing to do with the extra swirling colors. “Walk.”
He stopped. “Do not say anything about the kitsune to the other elves. Nothing.”
“Why?”
“We do not want to be associated with tricksters before a Conclave.”
I glanced at the twins. “Okay,” I said. I’d follow his lead on this. Seemed the wisest thing to do at the moment. Plus, it would simplify what was going to be an unwanted interaction.
Elf Raised (Northern Creatures Book 3) Page 7