Her green magic flowed outward from her body in a specific sigil pattern. It shook and manifested more than moved, and Remy and I were suddenly in a pocket inside the pattern. None of her magic touched us, yet it flowed around our bodies.
Remy didn’t take his eyes off Portia Elizabeth. “I tried to find you,” he said.
She wasn’t just beautiful, she was beauty. Not in an idealized way. Not like the exaggerated transformations of the kitsune. She was a real woman with soft breasts and real muscles under smooth-yet-textured skin. Her earthy deep-brown eyes did not shimmer beyond the green of her magic. Her nose had a slight bump, her lips a generous pout, and her hips the width needed to carry the world.
The woman standing in front of us was the abundancy of all things female.
The feel of her magic changed, and its pattern reformed. One of the new lines touched Remy.
And me.
I would never lie to Portia Elizabeth. Not because I felt compelled to tell the truth. Because telling her the truth was the correct thing to do.
“Whoa,” I said, and stepped back from the line of her green magic—and the connection I felt, the trust and belief, vanished.
She didn’t notice. All her attention was on Remy. “I know you’ve been looking for me,” she said.
Remy dropped his hands. “Come home.”
No small talk. No conversation or questions about her life. Just a flat-out please come back.
She tried to cover the emotions dancing through her eyes. She tried to hold her face still, but her cheek twitched and her lip quivered.
“Alfheim is no longer my home,” she said.
Her dress whiffed when she moved, and shimmered as if made of silk. And though I knew it was red, I couldn’t tell what red it was—first candy apple, then red wine. When a shadow hit, it looked like fresh blood.
The dress was neither suggestive nor modest. A tall band of fabric covered her neck, more like a thick ribbon than a collar. The fabric skimmed across her chest and breasts, but more like armor than party clothes. Her arms were covered all the way to the back of her hands. There, too, the fabric seemed to thicken into bracers.
But yet it did not. It was still a dress, and an impossible puddle of red fabric pooled around her legs.
“It could be,” Remy said.
She closed her eyes. “I work for someone.” The red of her dress shifted tonality and texture again. “My work keeps me here.”
Remy took a step toward Portia Elizabeth.
She raised her hands and stepped back. The green magic around us changed pattern—and vibration—again.
We weren’t inside a sigil. We were in a resonance pattern.
This was not magic I recognized, nor was it magic I had learned about in my studies. This magic was almost… modern. Technological. Almost. It was still clearly magic, though, and not of mundanes.
“Who do you work for?” I asked. If Remy wasn’t going to stick to basic conversation, neither would I. Because her magic might be a new threat worse than any we’d seen yet.
She pointed at me. “You were part of the dark magic that stole Anthea.”
“Not my choice,” I said.
Remy looked between us. “Those kids said something about Anthea being good? Is that possible? A good vampire?”
“You two need to leave. Now.” She pointed at the steps.
“Portia…” Remy took another step toward her.
Her green magic tightened around him. “Heed me. Go back to your hotel, Remy Geroux. Tell Arne Odinsson I cannot help.”
Remy shook as if he wanted to fight her directive, but he didn’t. I knew he couldn’t, because I also knew I would do exactly what she wanted me to do, not because she forced me, but because it was the correct course of action.
She was green and life and living. She was primal and perfect and our reason for walking The Land of the Living. To not do what she asked would be to allow the entropy of The Land of the Dead to win.
Yet…
Something was wrong. I couldn’t pinpoint what, or how, but my instincts pulled my attention from the resonance patterns of Portia Elizabeth’s magic to the apartment complex.
Its concealment enchantments were about to put up a fight.
The apartment doors wavered and flickered the way the world blanks and comes back when you’re too aware of your own blinking eyelids. I closed my eyes, then opened, and did my best to focus through the troll scat.
Were we truly inside the enchantments? Were we really talking to Portia Elizabeth? The swirling blue and red lights said so, but we weren’t supposed to be here. Raven didn’t want us here.
I should have known better than to think a gatekeeper would simply let us in. I should have paid attention to the real make-up of the enchantment. To the shimmer in the air and the electricity dancing along my skin, and to motivations behind the concealments.
Just because the troll scat made my brain see rainbows and my skin feel the universe’s tug, didn’t mean any of it was real magic.
My arm extended, and my fist flicked—my body instinctively went through the motions of tossing out a tracer enchantment. A century’s worth of practice with spells along my forearms was hard to break.
But my brother had stripped me of my tracers and protection enchantments. “Remy,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
I should have remembered what Maura said before we left: Beware the tricksters.
I looked back toward where Remy should have been standing.
Chip waved and popped a “teriyaki Chablis” potato chip into her kitsune mouth.
Chapter 16
I was no longer inside the apartment complex’s enchantment walls. I was no longer outside at all, but back in the hallway between my hotel room and Remy’s. Gravel-like, golden-green carpet whiffed against the soles of my boots. The bright glare of the halogen light overhead burned down onto my head.
I shielded my eyes.
If the kitsune had snatched me right out of the apartment complex and through an entrenched, powerful concealment enchantment, they would have had to open a gate to move me, and no such gate had happened.
Two supposedly-minor Japanese trickster spirits moved me, or they were messing with my head and I was still standing on the walkway in front of Portia Elizabeth’s apartment door.
My money was on an illusion.
“What did you two do?” I spread out my arms as if I could keep them off me by pushing them away. “Portia Elizabeth!” I yelled. “We have a kitsune issue!”
“Troll scat will do that, Mr. Victorsson,” Chip said. “It makes you sensitive to all you see.”
The two kitsune leaned against the wall on either side of my door. I threw the troll scat bag at Chip’s head.
She ducked. Lollipop pulled a bright yellow tsking emoji sucker, complete with little waving cartoon finger, out of her mouth.
“How did you get past the enchantments?” I yelled. “Where’s Remy? Where’s Portia Elizabeth?”
Remy was probably on his way back to the hotel. Portia Elizabeth wanted us to leave. The kitsune did me a favor, really.
No. She used her magic to influence me into thinking we needed to leave.
Lollipop rolled her eyes.
The kitsune had switched clothes. Lollipop now wore the blinding tropical shirt and Chip, the yellow polo. Chip had shifted into an anime-worthy, bouncy, super-sexualized female body with gravity-defying balloon-breasts and a waist that, though possible, was not probable on any real woman, magical or mundane.
Lollipop still appeared to be a stereotypical young tourist with bags and pockets full of devices, though the cargo shorts and the white tube socks with the sneakers seemed more American than Japanese.
“Is he safe?” They weren’t going to give me a straight answer, no matter what I asked, but I had to try. “Is Portia Elizabeth safe?” What if they messed with her, too?
I pressed on my forehead. Why was I so worried about a woman I didn’t know? One wi
th major magic she used to influence me?
Because she influenced me.
Lollipop winked.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Why are we back at the hotel?”
Chip rustled her bag of potato crisps, and the label and coloring shifted from “salt and salmon” to “melon paprika.”
“Why do you think you left?” She set a chip on her tongue and slurped it in like a lizard.
“I thought you two were fox spirits, not reptiles,” I said.
Lollipop shifted her eyes to lizard slits, then back. She grinned and pulled a happy, cartoon gecko candy from her mouth.
Both flicked their huge, multiple fox tails.
I pointed at Remy’s door. “At least tell me if my friend is safe.” And Portia Elizabeth, I thought.
“This is not good,” I said. She influenced me to heed her and now I was fixated.
Lollipop pulled from her mouth a smiling lemon-colored happy-emoji-shaped candy.
There would be no reasoning with the kitsune, nor would they tell me more information about the hows and whys of the moment than what served them. They might have an agenda. They might not. They, like the troll, might just be on vacation. They might be working for a higher-up kami. They might not.
“I don’t think you two care one bit about why we’re in Las Vegas.” I could still expedite whatever trick they wanted to play and pull off that bandage, so to speak. They were going to mess with me no matter what, so I might as well get it over with and get back to the job Arne sent us to do.
“What do you want?” I asked again. “Spit it out. I’m busy.”
Chip shrugged and bit into a “lavender marmalade” chip.
I pointed at the bag. “Could you wait until the troll scat wears off before flicking out the strange flavors?” If she flipped over to oyster-flavored anything, I’d vomit on both of them.
“Now, now, Mr. Victorsson.” Chip suggestively laid a crisp on her tongue. “We have questions.”
“You have questions? Where is Remy?” I banged on his door. “Remy!”
Lollipop wagged her finger. She frowned and pulled the chocolate wolf out of her mouth again.
“He’s not going to hurt either of you!” I yelled. “Bait him. Bait me. Have your fun, but neither of us is here for you.” We were here for…
I stopped the influenced thought in its tracks and pounded on his door again.
“You will answer our questions first,” Chip said.
“Why? Where’s Remy?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Maybe my GPS would tell me where I actually was.
Chip stepped close and looked around my arm.
I swiped open my phone’s screen and looked down at a woman hugging my dog. An exceptional woman.
“Ohhh…” Chip pointed and grinned.
They knew something about the woman in the picture. The woman who I knew I should remember.
More so than Portia Elizabeth. This woman was why I walked The Land of the Living. Literally why I was still alive. I was sure of it.
“Who is she?” I waved the picture under their noses. “Why can’t I remember her?” Why did I keep forgetting that I didn’t remember her?
Chip popped a now “dark chocolate mole” chip into her mouth.
Lollipop pulled the shimmering, cartoon love-filled heart out of her mouth once again.
Maybe they were only sensing my emotions. Maybe they didn’t know any more than I did and were just taunting me. “You tell me who she is.”
Chip shook her head. “Information first.”
Of course they wanted information. “Niklas der Nord is looking to depose Arne Odinsson. How’s that?” I tucked my phone back into my pocket.
Lollipop rolled her eyes again.
Chip crinkled her snack bag. “Your brother,” she said.
The creature my father built out of vampire parts? “What about him? He’s a nasty piece of work.”
Chip leaned closer. “He is new magic.”
“No,” I said. “He’s reconstituted old demon-magic.”
Chip and Lollipop looked at each other as if they hadn’t even considered the idea.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t have time to mess around, no matter how fun you two might be.” Because they were just as likely to derail our search as they were to point me in the right direction.
Lollipop grinned and winked. This time, when she pulled her sucker out, it was shaped like a lime-flavored heavy metal devil’s horn hand sign.
I chuckled. Maybe I could reach some sort of equilibrium with them. “Why do you want information about my brother?”
They looked at each other with tightly-closed lips, then shook their heads no.
“If your kami bosses have a vampire problem, all they need to do is ask,” I said. “Alfheim—Arne’s Alfheim—will help. Not just me. We will help. Vampires are bad for everyone’s business.”
I no longer cared about the dangers of offering help to tricksters. Arne would help. Der Nord, I wasn’t so sure about. Not that he could keep me from providing support to anyone fighting vampires.
They looked at me again.
But they were tricksters. I had to give them some excuse to be naughty. “As long as you promise to leave Remy alone.” He could handle two kitsune, but it would be nice to not have the distraction. “And tell me what you know about the woman in the picture. You do both, or no help.”
Chip frowned. Lollipop pulled out a purple snarling pit bull sucker wearing a spiky collar.
“I know you don’t like dogs, and dogs don’t like you, but Remy’s a werewolf. He’s a man. He’s not going to hurt you.” I nodded toward his door. “He’s much more angry at the elves downstairs than he is at you, anyway.”
They flicked their magical tails and looked at each other again. “We must promise, Mister Huge and New?”
“Yes,” I said. “Don’t be skittish around him. His wolf finds skittish very interesting, and even though he won’t hurt you, he might slap a paw on your throat just for good measure.”
They both nodded.
“Good,” I said. “First, tell me the truth about where we are. Talk.”
Chip popped a “wasabi chipotle” chip into her mouth. Lollipop continued to suck on her candy.
I shook my head and pulled out my phone again. Perhaps now they would give me information on the woman in the photo. “Why did you two—”
Lollipop snatched my phone. She twisted away, and danced down the hallway while holding the phone against her cheek.
“Hey!” I yelled. Goddamned tricksters. “Give that back!”
I looked down at Chip.
She’d transformed into the woman in the photo. Same face. Same eyes. Same clothes. “Frank,” she said. “I miss you.”
The best way to deal with tricksters was to not let them get under your skin, and to allow their taunts and jabs to roll off your back. Which, honestly, was one of the key lessons tricksters taught unsuspecting mundanes—don’t let the fools get to you.
The other lesson was to never take a situation for granted, and to always know that no matter how much you think you understand the context of an event, you really know nothing at all.
Maybe Chip mimicking the woman in the photo was the exact cut they needed to breach the surface of my skin. Maybe the mental gymnastics necessary to ignore the perceptual lack-of-context of the moment had frayed my nerves. Maybe it was the troll scat.
I didn’t know and I didn’t care.
All the exasperated calm I’d felt when I realized I wasn’t inside the apartment complex—or I was, and in the middle of a trickster mind game—burst like a balloon.
I bellowed and swiped at Chip’s head. She snickered and ran down the hallway after Lollipop. “You want my help?” I yelled.
They ran around a corner. Lollipop stopped long enough to blow me a kiss.
“Give me back my phone, you two obnoxious little—”
I skidded around the corner—and directly into an alcove at the end of
the apartment building’s walkway. A palm tree rustled just off the railing. Crickets chirped, but no one shouted from the pool. The air held the same night-in-the-desert chill it had when we’d landed.
Deep night and stars shimmered in the sky.
I’d lost hours.
What was going on? Was this yet another illusion? I backed out of the alcove. I’d bang on every door in the complex to get answers if I had to.
I rounded the corner onto the walkway—and pulled up short directly in front of Raven.
She still wore her hair in low braids, but this time, she also wore a black knit stocking cap, a black leather biker jacket, jeans, a white t-shirt, and a pair of big, tall, black boots.
Her magic flared and spread behind her like two massive wings unable to fully unfold in the apartment’s walkway. Feathers rustled. A breeze hit my face. And Raven smiled up at me.
“Mr. Victorsson,” she said. “Kitsune are downright naughty, aren’t they?” She tapped her finger against her chin.
“I need my phone.” My flare of rage, thankfully, had depleted itself once the kitsune were out of visual range.
Raven laughed. “Kitsune do enjoy a lonely man.”
I scowled. Damned tricksters.
“You do not wear your heart on your sleeve, Mr. Victorsson.” She swirled her finger at my chin. “You wear it on your face. I’d stay away from the poker tables, if I were you.”
She wanted to chitchat? “What, exactly, is going on here?”
She grabbed my chin and twisted my head to look at my Yggdrasil tattoo. “The elves do quality work,” she said. “The Tree of Life suits you.”
She wasn’t going to answer my questions. She probably wouldn’t answer any questions about anything unless that answer funneled me toward whatever lesson she believed I needed to learn, because that’s what tricksters did. They got their jollies from teaching the unsuspecting “lessons.”
“Please let go of my face,” I said.
Her fingers lifted off my chin and she held up her hands as if to signal “no harm.”
Her wings spread again. Iridescent greens and purples played along the feathers. Clouds of sparks rose. And just as quickly, she pulled them back into whatever pocket she kept them.
Elf Raised (Northern Creatures Book 3) Page 11