Soul Marked: After the Fire Book 1

by C. Gockel

  Eisenberg sighs. “We hope so.”

  She only stayed for her mom and the foolish idea that she might be able to help humans.

  This is what she gave up the love of her life for. She swallows and bites her lip. “I’m in.”

  Where Will You Be for Ragnarok?

  Tara sits at a desk in her office, head bent over an Elvish scroll.

  There’s a knock at the door, even though it is open. Looking up, she sees Dr. Eisenberg just outside. Beckoning him in, she gets up and closes the door fast. The room is shielded with the magic-blocking Promethean Wire stuff, making it impossible to magically spy and see what they’re talking about.

  In a rushed voice, she says, “I think this scroll is talking about radiation, Dr. Eisenberg. To magical creatures, radiation is just another sort of energy. They can use magic to turn radiation into other sorts of energy. I don’t understand the physics of it, but I think maybe you will. If we could turn radiation into light, or heat, or electricity …” They could rid the world of dangerous radiation. Lionel’s gift of languages keeps on giving.

  She glances at him. His eyes are downcast.

  “I know it’s not what the Pentagon guys want but …” she says.

  His shoulders sag.

  “What is it?” she whispers.

  “Another group of refugees are joining the lab this afternoon,” he says, referring to the Dark Elves of the new Dark Elf Underground Railroad. It had just been forming before Tara was abducted. That was the source of Eisenberg’s cryptic, “If you see something, call me ...” statement.

  In exchange for Elvish aid with magic, some unnamed VIPs in the federal and local governments have seen to it that Dark Elves have fake IDs. Eisenberg, Tara, and others see that they get schooling, housing, and paid positions in Chicago’s research institutions.

  Tara’s stomach feels like lead, and then he says what she already knows. “By the descriptions I heard, there was no sign of Lionel.”

  Tara bows her head and looks at the scroll, the Elvish script running together in a blur. “He’ll be safer in the Dark Lands,” she says.

  “So would you,” says Eisenberg.

  “I wouldn’t do anyone any good there,” Tara mutters.

  “Hmmm …” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “I think he’ll come back. Nothing stops—”

  “Don’t you dare say true love,” says Tara.

  “I was going to say nothing stops a man who’s made up his mind,” says Dr. Eisenberg. “And it sounds like he has.”

  He’s going to launch into his “across-the-world trek to woo his beloved Irma.” It’s a sweet story, but Tara’s not sure it applies to her and Lionel. There are so many obstacles between Lionel and her—besides Odin, prejudiced elves, and velociraptors, their cultures are very different. She comes from a mixed-culture household. She’s seen how well it can work out, but her parents were very clear on the challenges as well. Her mother always said they’d vowed early on that they’d make their own culture and to grow together as they grew old. Lionel and Tara had made no such promise.

  “I’m so sorry, Tara,” says Eisenberg, instead of telling his and Irma’s story again.

  She nods.

  “For you and the lab!” he exclaims. “All the most talented elves are going to the University of Chicago.” He scowls. Just the name of the elite, private university tends to make him do that. “One of our new hires has minor training … but that’s nothing like how you described Lionel’s abilities.”

  Tara rubs her eyes. Of course he would be thinking of the lab … She reminds herself that the translations she’s worked on this morning may save millions of people … maybe not from Odin, but from humanity’s own foibles.

  Taking a deep breath, Tara asks, “No word from Naleigh, either?”

  Eisenberg shakes his head.

  Tara nods. They’d only heard from him once since she’d returned. Lionel had been imprisoned when he’d returned, but then the Light Elves tried to overtake the fortress. In the confusion of the battle, Lionel had disappeared. Naleigh believes Lionel slipped out of the fortress and across enemy lines.

  “I really am sorry, Tara,” says Eisenberg. “For you … even more than the lab.”

  She melts a little. “I know.” Eisenberg isn’t completely self-absorbed. The doctor just doesn’t have a filter on what he’s feeling. On the one hand, sometimes it feels insensitive; on the other hand, he keeps singing her praises to Dean Kowalski even though they fall on deaf ears. And he helps the Dark Elves because he sees it akin to helping Jewish refugees before WWII.

  Holding out a hand, he says, “Let me see what you’ve translated so far.”

  She hands him her notes. Pushing up his glasses, he sits on her desk.

  Her phone chimes and she says, “I’m meeting my mother for lunch.”

  Peering over his bifocals, he says, “Do you have your magic detector?”

  Nodding, Tara pats her purse. Afraid that Odin might try to snatch her away, Eisenberg insists she take one everywhere. Tara’s pretty sure from what Thor, Odin himself, and the Norns had said about the “hunt for Loki” that Odin has bigger fish to fry … for now.

  Eisenberg holds up a finger. “If you start getting a beep—”

  “I’ll hit your number on speed dial and haul back here,” Tara assures him, gesturing to the magic-blocking Promethean Wire.

  He nods, and turns his attention back to her notes. Tara can see he’s already in his “mind palace.”

  Exiting her office and then the lab, she steps into the hallway and hears her mother’s voice in the receptionist’s office. “Yes, Tara got herself a date with a surgeon from Rush.”

  Tara sighs. Her mother doesn’t know anything about her trip to Alfheim or Asgard. When Tara had joined the Underground Railroad, she’d been warned, “If you want your family to stay safe, you won’t let them know.” Last weekend, her mother had arranged for Tara to meet said surgeon at a block party. “Helping” Tara is the only way Tara’s mother knows how to show love.

  She swallows. Her mother had wanted to straighten Tara’s hair as soon as she’d gotten back from vacation. But Lionel had loved Tara’s natural hair, and his unclouded vision of it had let Tara see it with fresh eyes. Tara had given up so much for her mother, her country, and her world … her hair she decided to keep. When she’d told her mother she didn’t want it straightened, her mother had burst into tears. “But Tara, if I don’t do your hair, what do we have?”

  And the thing is, besides kinship and time, her mother and Tara don’t share very much. It’s not the same as not loving one another; they’re just very different.

  With a sigh, she heads into the office. Her mother is leaning over the front desk, saying, “He’s so tall and handsome, he’s from Englewood, and he got scholarships to med school—”

  “Hi, Mom,” Tara says. “Ready for lunch?”

  Penny and Jayla, the secretaries, both smile at her in a way that says, “You’ve been holding out on us, woman.” Tara smiles back tightly.

  Tara’s mom turns and winks at her. “I just know you’ll find your soulmate soon!”

  Tara sighs. “I’d settle for my cellmate.”

  Everyone laughs. Tara doesn’t cry, which she figures is pretty strong of her. She’d set her cellmate free, and he’d never said he was coming back. She is still a prisoner of her feelings for Lionel … how long is she going to wait before she sets herself free?

  “Max Lund?” the woman behind the counter says, studying Lionel’s identification. She is surrounded by glowing boxes. A strange sort of glass and metal tablet on the counter is beeping faintly. The woman’s eyes fall on it.

  “That is what I am called.” Lionel says, careful not to lie. He thinks he can, but he is proud of his Elvish heritage.

  Narrowing her eyes at the tablet, she says, “You’re one of those Norwegian researchers, aren’t you?”

  That is the nation Lionel and his fellow elves have supposedly emigrated from.

&n
bsp; “You’re early,” she says before he can answer, sparing him from having to say something long winded like, that is what my immigration paperwork says, which would skirt the truth of the matter.

  “Everyone else is having their English evaluated,” he explains. Or their ability to magically translate English. “My language ability is nearly perfect and the evaluator let me out early.” Nothing could have kept him in that room with Tara so close.

  “Uh-huh,” says the woman.

  “I’m looking for Tara Gibson,” he says quickly. “I heard she belongs to this lab.”

  She blinks at a spot on his chin where his eyes appear to be to her—he’s illusioned himself to look more Elvishly short. He’d had to. Due to Odin’s well-meaning negotiations, he is still officially “a Light Elf.” Even after Naleigh's testimony, many of the Dark Elves are suspicious of him. A disguise is necessary.

  The woman points to his right. “Her office is right over there, but she just left for lunch.”

  “I’ll wait for her,” Lionel says, already heading in that direction. He reaches the door that has a placard with her name on it. It is slightly ajar, and he hears the rustle of paper inside. Heart beating fast—maybe the woman was wrong—he pushes the door open and steps in. Instead of Tara, there is a plump little man sitting on Tara’s desk, a notebook in his hand. He looks up at Lionel and says something that is completely gibberish.

  Lionel tilts his head and says, “Pardon?” and realizes the word came out in Elvish, not English. “Excuse me,” he says, and again, it is Elvish. Also, the man is looking him directly in the eyes. Lionel scans the room and sees the same curious wire on the walls that had blocked his magic in the Dark Lands. He backs quickly out the door, and the man’s eyes fall back to his chin as his illusion comes back to him. The little man blinks.

  Lionel decides right then that if he is staying on Earth, the first thing he is going to do is take those ESL courses and learn the language—really learn the language.

  Behind him, he hears one of the women at the desk with the glowing boxes say cheerfully, “So, Tara has a date with a surgeon from Rush, now.”

  Lionel’s eyes go wide, and he rushes back to the desk, even as the little man cries out, “Wait!”

  Lionel pretends not to hear. Reaching the woman, he demands, “Tara is going to have surgery? Where is she? Is she at a …” Heart clenching in his chest, he struggles for the English word. “Hospital?”

  The women stare at him, and the only sound is the beeping of the little glass and metal tablet. And then they both laugh. “You are from Norway!” says one.

  “Date … as in courting!” says the other woman. “Though the way her mother is talking, you’d think the marriage date is already set.”

  “Mm ... hmmm … she says they got along well.”

  The other woman laughs. Lionel takes a step back, stunned. He thought … it’s only been a few months. His breath comes fast and ragged. A few months … was it years to someone who hadn’t lived to thirty?

  “Sir!” cries the little man. “Wait!”

  But Lionel is already in the hallway. He immediately makes himself invisible. Leaning against the wall for support, he shambles to the nearest exit. The little man, waving a blinking tablet, cries, “Come back!”

  Lionel flings himself through the heavy exit doors, his mind filled with only one thought … he has to get away.

  “Your hair looks so pretty like that,” Tara’s mom says.

  “I like it a lot, Mom,” Tara replies, touching the braid her mother had done for her. It crosses her crown, keeping those few loose coils determined to flop in front of her face out of her eyes. The rest is loose. The strands would stretch nearly six inches if she straightened them, but not straightened, they appear only about two inches long. Thick and dense, they frame her face.

  “I think we should dye the ends blonde,” her mother says, gesturing with her hands. “It will make it look like a real halo. If you don’t like it, or just get bored, we could cut off the tips.”

  Ordinarily, Tara might think that sounded fun, but she remembers Lionel saying of her natural hair color, A halo suits you. All she can manage is a shrug.

  Her mother frowns and taps her spoon on the table. The silence stretches uncomfortably between them. Tara is about to ask if her mother has had any interesting customers today when her mother blurts out, “When are you going to tell me about what happened between you and Lionel?”

  Tara blinks, and her mother says, “You’ve been so odd since he was over.”

  “Nothing happened,” Tara says automatically, and her heart turns to lead. There’d been no time for anything to happen. Not for the first time, she finds herself daydreaming about having had to take a long bus ride from Iowa—or wherever in farm country they’d popped through the World Gate. She bites the inside of her lip, eyes heating, fingers curling at the thought of the Norns stealing those hours.

  Her mother’s eyes narrow. “Hmpf. You know, if he broke your heart, the best thing to do is get out there. Start dating again. You hold onto these things too long.”

  “Mom ...” Tara starts to say, and then her phone rings. She waits it out, trying to formulate what to tell her mother, and it buzzes with a text. And then it buzzes with another. And another. Her mother frowns, and Tara apologizes, “I’ll turn it off.”

  Slipping it from her purse, she glances down and notices a text from Eisenberg, right above the text from John, the surgeon her mom’s trying so hard to set her up with. She’s been ignoring John’s text. She almost ignores Eisenberg’s text, too—the little snippet she can see doesn’t have their code for Asgardian invasion—and she doesn’t want to encourage him texting her during lunch hour, but she can’t help reading.

  It was him!

  Across the table, her mother says, “Tara?”

  She blinks. Swipes, and instead of going to her settings, begins reading Eisenberg’s rapid-fire thread.

  He was here.

  He was tall! But ears!

  HE RAN AWAY!

  Think he is on Polk. Can’t see him. Invisible?

  It was him.

  Tara’s breath catches.

  A final text comes.

  I don’t know how I scared him! Please don’t let him go to U of C!

  “If you answer those texts you’ll only encourage your boss to text you nights and weekends,” her mother says.

  Tara looks up at her. “Mom, I love you, but I’ve got to go.”

  “What’s going on?” her mother asks.

  “My cellmate has come!” Tara says, throwing some money on the table and grabbing her purse.

  She strides from the restaurant, and then it occurs to her that if Lionel made himself invisible, something terrible must be happening. She breaks into a run, darting through the traffic on Taylor Street, cutting across Ashland Avenue at a diagonal, heading northwest. She dashes west as soon as she reaches Polk, races under the Polk Street L station, and across Hermitage, her heart beating in her ears. At the intersection at Wood Street, she catches her breath. Looking south, she sees only students. Looking west, she sees Dr. Eisenberg, his head bent over a magic detector. Tara breaks into a jog. She’s just passing the entrance to the courtyard where a troll once emerged when her magic detector starts to beep in her purse.

  She stops, and looks into the courtyard. A troll? Or Lionel? Or Lionel and a troll … she sprints into the courtyard and the magic detector’s beeping becomes louder. Taking the device out of her purse, Tara spins, trying to locate the source of magic. There are no trolls, no students, no faculty, and no Lionel … just the ancient gothic architecture of the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical School, and a slightly unkempt garden. A few birds trill and her magic detector beeps, but the sounds of busy Ashland Avenue, cars, and Polk Street are blocked by the ancient building.

  Tara’s hands clutch the magic detector so hard her fingers hurt. She is afraid to use Lionel’s name—she doesn’t know how many spies Odin has, or where th
ey all are. Instead she says, “I know you’re here! Show yourself!”

  Her magic detector beeps … and she holds her breath.

  Lionel almost drops his spell as Tara dashes into the unkempt courtyard. She spins around, her beautiful face pained. Her magical talismans—or un-magical talismans—had saved him and his mother in the Dark Lands … and now he’s causing her pain. “I know you’re here!” she cries.

  He follows her eyes as she scans the courtyard, her face frantic. The great schools of sorcery in Alfheim have gardens that are immaculately manicured to the last blade of grass. Is Midgard like Asgard? Does it not value its magic masters? He doesn’t know, and that makes his heart sink. He’d thought the greatest obstacle between Tara and himself was time, but maybe it’s the differences in their cultures. He’d come back to her, naively thinking that she’d wait for him. He remembers the women’s words in the “lab.” Tara’s mother has plans for her wedding. Is it possible she couldn’t wait for him? Was her marriage arranged?

  “Show yourself!” Tara cries, clutching a strange beeping device in her hand, and Lionel rolls back on his feet. How does she know he’s here?

  She spins again, and Lionel blinks because she’s surrounded by blue skies. He’s hallucinating again, or seeing visions … His invisibility slips away without his volition.

  Tara’s jaw drops, and she takes a step back. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else …” Her voice drifts off.

  Lionel blinks, and realizes he’s kept his illusioned disguise—she sees a shorter, smooth-faced man with brown hair pulled back to hide his ears.

  He lets out a breath. Should he speak? Would she recognize his voice?

  Her eyes narrow at his chin and then go wide. She takes a step forward, eyes still unnervingly too low. “Did you find her? Your mother?”

  She recognizes him, and he doesn’t want to hide anymore. “Yes,” he whispers.

  Tara comes forward, arms outstretched, and her hands connect with his chest instead of wrapping around him, because of the illusion he wears. She’s so close, and he can’t care about her upcoming marriage, or the eyes of any of the Midgardian sorcerers who’d given him an ID, thinking he is a Dark Elf. He lets his illusion melt away, and pulls her into his arms.