by Susan Conley
Mona nattered on about inconsequentialities as she quickly assembled two outfits, along with boots—you couldn’t go through a Buffalo winter without boots. She also added several credit company-based gift cards, as she was pretty sure Raine had no money and she’d need something once she left the mall. Admittedly it was worrying when the clerk threw a pair of matching Buffalo Bills stadium blankets and deluxe emergency car kits she had earned “free with purchase” to the pile. Her brother said twice was a coincidence and three times was a plot. Not that he was always right. But it sure looked like at least one of them would need the supplies.
Done, they headed out to the mall restrooms. Raine changed and came back out looking a whole lot more comfortable and ready to face the weather.
“You look fabulous!” Mona said.
“Thanks,” Raine said, setting the bag with her old things by the trashcan. “I can’t tell you how much better I feel wearing new, clean clothes.”
“I know what you mean.”
Mona watched the spell shift around again as Raine become more relaxed. Some of the sigils were brightening again. Shit, she needed to get them out of the mall. Leaving would help reinforce the new settings of the spell. When they reached the garage, Mona followed Raine to the lower level where Raine stopped by a tiny excuse for a car.
“Are you kidding? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car that small!” The exclamation was out before Mona could stop herself.
“Yeah, isn’t it great? I never have any problems finding a spot. Even when those honking big SUVs bulge over the edge of a space, I can fit in.” A frown crossed her face. “Guess I’ll need to trade up for something larger soon enough.”
They settled the bags in what passed for the trunk space before Raine slid the seat back and settled into the front seat, secured her belt, and checked the mirrors.
Mona stood in the open door and handed Raine the gift cards she’d picked up. She waved off Raine’s thanks.
“Call me, all right? If I don’t hear from you every couple of hours I’m going to come track you down. I don’t care if I told you I’d give you twenty-four hours.”
Raine shook her head. “Not every couple of hours. I’ll check in with you when I get there, but I need a little time to figure things out. It’s okay, isn’t it? To be by myself?”
Mona didn’t like leaving her alone, but doubted Raine would do anything drastic in the one-day window. Mona was more worried that whoever had set the spell might track her down. But . . . so long as Raine didn’t set off the spell’s beacons, she should be fine.
“Yes, if you stay calm, you should be fine. Just, call me when you get to the motel, okay? I’ll feel a lot better knowing where you are.” Mona leaned in and hugged Raine.
“Thanks, Mona. For—for everything,” Raine whispered into her collar.
“You don’t call me, and I will track you down. Like a dog after a bone.” They both chuckled; Weres hated the saying.
Mona moved away and Raine shut the door. She started the engine, waved goodbye, then slowly backed out. Mona watched Raine until she turned and headed to the exit, fighting the urge to follow her. Raine was right; she needed the space to be by herself for a bit, even if Mona didn’t like it. And now that she was out of the mall, she would be harder to find.
Outside the garage small, fine flakes skittered through the late afternoon sun. Mona looked at the steel-grey clouds edging their way across the sky toward the setting sun. Shit, what time was it? Mona quickly checked her phone. Damn. Too late for her to go home if she wanted to get to her shift at Fat Louie’s on time. And crap, she had an assignment to read before she met absurdly early tomorrow with her teacher, Warder Smythe. After being bored for the first six months of her training, if the spells on Raine were any indication, life was about to explode.
• • •
With the storm moving through, the bar had been quiet. For a long time the only customers had been her friend Francine and the date she brought to get Mona’s feedback. The woman was as suave and sophisticated as Frankie, and Mona thought her friend may have finally met her match. Oh, and right before closing there’d been that elfing, about to emerge into power. That happened a lot now; elves whose talents were on the cusp of emerging would find her. She’d quietly grilled him on what he needed and agreed to meet with him during her next shift. Other than that it was the same old, same old, except her boss closing early because he was worried about his pregnant wife. When they’d left, Mona had hoped to be home by eleven. Between having to clear the snow off her car and then needing to dig a trench through the pile plowed next to it so she could pull away from the curb, it was almost midnight when Mona finally drove away. She headed home in the hope of getting a couple hours of sleep before she went to Smythe’s.
The maintenance crew was out with the tractor plowing the lot of her townhouse complex when she turned into the back drive. Mona knew from experience that the rear access got cleared first because the shed that housed the tractor was there. Mentally making lists of things to do, she almost missed that there was something odd about her townhouse.
If she hadn’t come in the back way, or if it had been snowing any harder, she might not have seen the two shapes in the snow by the patio exit. She thought she saw a glow of magic about them, but given the distance she couldn’t be sure. Mona drove past her unit.
Damn. Okay, she wasn’t sleeping here. And she wasn’t confronting them, whoever they were; she was too tired and didn’t have back up. Calling the local Were pack was out of the question. One, she wasn’t sure how much help they’d be dealing with the goons, and two, well, they tended to be jerks and she avoided them as much as possible. Plus they'd want to know why the men were there and she'd promised Raine to hold off on telling the pack. If the shapes were still there when she came back tomorrow, she’d call and deal with their testosterone-laden leadership and comments on how helpless women were. But right now, no, thank you, she wasn’t in the mood.
Mona checked the time. Twelve thirty-five. Far too early to head out to Smythe’s and too late to call pretty much anyone who had little kids or babies, which meant most of her friends. Okay, then, it’d have to be her brother. She’d only be able to grab a couple of hours, given he was southwest of the city and Smythe was almost straight east, but something had to be better than nothing. Luckily she always kept a gym bag with a change of clothes in the car; part of her training with Smythe was showing up when spells went awry no matter what the time.
Nic answered on the third ring, annoyingly alert. “Mona?”
“There’s a problem at my unit and I can’t sleep there. Can I come crash back at the house tonight?”
“You need me to come over? What broke?”
Nic was an elf, like herself. After their mother left, he’d suppressed his abilities, which were quite strong from what Mona had read at one point, and ignored his heritage. Not fully ignore it as he worked for a secret division of the federal government monitoring Folk activity. He’d be less than thrilled to learn she’d come to embrace her Folk connections. Mona frantically thought of a safer reason she’d need to head over. “Nothing at my place; a plow hit the fire hydrant and the road’s blocked.”
“Even if you did get in, water’s probably off. I’ll go shovel the drive.”
Tomorrow . . . no, today was already shaping up to be a hell of a day. She dreaded Smythe’s reaction when he found out that she’d not done the assignment. Curmudgeon was the least of his bad traits. But given each region only had one Warder and he was it, she really didn’t have a choice on teachers.
Nic had shoveled to the street by the time she arrived. She unclenched her hands from the steering wheel as soon as she turned onto the driveway, only then realizing how close they’d been to cramping. Her brother stood inside the garage, leaning on his shovel.
“Hey, sis,” he said as he took her bag. “Were you able to find out when they expect the water to be back on?”
She blinked at his question and,
knowing he caught her blink, covered for it.
“It’s late and I’m short on sleep, so, no, I didn’t think about calling. It’s Sunday night, remember? Plus, they’ve likely got everyone available out plowing and shoveling.”
Nic merely grunted and led her into the house.
Warmth enveloped her as soon as she entered. Mona had lived here from the time she was in fourth grade until she’d moved out a couple of years ago. Their mom had, with foresight, put the deed in Nic’s name once he’d hit eighteen. When she’d moved on—almost a decade in one place had to be a record for their mother—Nic was out of college and Mona was almost in high school. Mom had made sure they had money to take care of things. Odd as it had been—and there were times when things got very odd, not the least of which were the hoops they’d had to jump through since their mother had given Mona her last name and Nic his father’s—they’d managed. Mona had learned only recently that the elves traditionally gave their child the last name of the parent they felt would give their child better social standing. Apparently, that was one tradition her mother hadn’t bucked.
Mona was glad Nic had redecorated since she left. The natural woods and blues and yellows in the kitchen were nothing like the brown and avocado she’d grown up with. Some memories she was happy to leave behind.
“You want something to eat?” he asked.
And some never left. What he was really asking was if she wanted him to stay up and keep her company. Particularly since she knew if they ate, she’d be cooking. Not because he couldn’t, but because she loved to. She loved being in a kitchen, despite the fact that she’d dropped out of culinary school after a couple of semesters. Not that she had much time for it these days.
Imps were here, too? She blinked at the stove light. Yes, that was an imp. Were they always this prevalent and she’d just not noticed them, or was something going on? Had Nic somehow attracted them? Even though he ignored his magic, it was very strong; the imps might well have responded to it. Another thing to ask Abner Smythe about.
Nic was waiting for her answer.
“No, I’m bushed. Unless you want to stay up?”
“Nah, I should try to get back to sleep. I’m judging a regional Taekwondo bout tomorrow.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Night, sis. Let me know if you want me to come out and help with any clean up from the water being off.”
Now there was an idea, she thought giddily as she trudged up the stairs behind him. She could have him come out and “fix it.”
Mona hadn’t read him recently, but the last time she did, he was still teetering on the precipice of coming into his powers. Knowing his rejection of his elf side, she didn’t want any action on her part to be the catalyst to propel him into a life he clearly did not want to accept.
Exhaustion hit her in a wave as she flopped down on her mattress. She really sucked at this lack of sleep thing.
Her mind buzzed with all the worries she’d shoved back during the night: what was going on with Raine, how she’d now become a target, who could have set the spell. And, mostly, how much about the situation she was going to tell the Warder.
Sleep first, figure things out later. Mona rolled over, pulling the comforter on top of her, and decided that that was an excellent plan.
Chapter Three
Headlights flitting across wind-driven flurries, Mona turned the last corner of the tree-lined drive to find the entry of the Warder’s complex in complete darkness. The dashboard read six fifteen. Hell, given the crappy roads this morning, she was lucky she’d arrived only a quarter of an hour after her scheduled lesson. She knew Smythe would be snitty about her late arrival, but turning off the lights seemed a bit extreme.
Yet another reason to wonder why she put up with his crankiness. If there was anyone besides the self-important old coot who wospell himself; warders uld teach her about wards and spells, she’d take them up on the offer in heartbeat.
But this, this was just wrong. Even the motion sensitive floods stayed dark when she pulled over to park next to a pile of plowed snow. One or two windows of the castle Smythe called home hung lit and disembodied in the ebony bulk of the buildings, so the power was on.
No, something was off here. As much as a pain in the ass Smythe could be, and some days she swore he made it into an art form, he wouldn’t outright ignore her. He enjoyed busting her chops too much.
In the weak winter moonlight, the blue shadowed gate and the crenellated wall around the complex looked positively gothic.
Mona blamed the thought on too little sleep. Along with the sneaking worry that Warder Abner Smythe might be in trouble. She shook the worry aside; the complex was literally a fortress, built of stone and embedded with spells. Besides, clandestine images apart, the place didn’t seem to show any evidence of an attack. Apart from the gated entry being dark, and the eerie picture the moonlight painted, everything seemed . . . normal.
But she definitely needed to check things out, just to be sure. She was too far away to see whether the guard spells on the walls and gate had been breached. First step would be to look at them and figure things out based on what she found.
Opening the glove compartment, she pulled out her flashlight, hearing Nic’s smug “Aren’t you glad I made you put one in there?” She’d never told his overprotective self how, after the first time she’d gotten stuck in the snow heading out of Buffalo to the Warder’s to train, she’d made sure to keep one in the car. Particularly since she hadn’t informed him about her training. So not going down that road with him. He chose to deny his folk blood; she didn’t have a choice.
Mona bundled up and headed out into the lightly falling flakes. Her tire tracks were the only ones showing in the three-inch deep snow. Aiming the flashlight at the drive, she tried to find evidence of anyone coming by recently. Nothing obvious struck her, no lost hubcaps, no distinct furrows under the snow. Hell, she had no clue what she was expecting to find.
She cautiously moved toward the entry; the last thing she wanted was to turn her ankle. A strong breeze smacked her upside the head as if to ask what the hell she thought she was doing.
“Look, I’m just going to check the guard spells, then head back.”
Crap, had she really said that out loud?
The wind slammed into her, so strong that another step forward became impossible. She stopped and the gale force gust stopped with her.
She was reasonably certain wind sprites were incorruptible by evil. And this wasn’t a spell; no sigils or runes threaded the breezes.
Whoever or whatever had requested the sprites’ help didn’t want her to go any further.
Mona shone her flashlight over the frozen landscape. The gate stood perhaps fifteen feet away, the wall a touch more. Both were still too far for her to clearly read the myriad of spells scrolled upon them. She swept her beam across the ground, not sure exactly what she hoped to find.
A glint of pulsating red embedded in the dirt under the snow caught her eye. Mona cocked her head and leaned forward, angling the flashlight. Was that—yes, the glow came from magic.
Someone set a spell so it lay just under the gravel of the drive, hiding the telltale signs from her. Now that she knew where to look, she saw the working created a rectangle in front of the entry. If she’d driven up to the gate as usual she would have crossed into the field of the spell none the wiser.
The colors, including areas where it deepened, were exactly the same as the spell on Raine.
Mona shivered, and not from the cold. Given the little she’d seen, triggering the spell was a bad idea. How bad remained unclear. Several of the runes she did not recognize, her innate eye for reading them inexplicably blind. Warder Smythe had not yet covered these either. From what she could tell, the primary focus centered on stones and movement. An earth-based rune sat at the center. She reached out to trace the shape—sometimes doing so helped her learn the meaning, and if she knew the meaning she might be able to manipulate the spell to be less potent. The wind slammed
into her side, upsetting her precarious stance. Arms cartwheeling as she tried to regain her balance, the flashlight arced out of her half-frozen hands and flew forward.
The earth rumbled and heaved. Mona shrieked in surprise as the ground buckled. Move! Shit, her flashlight must have crossed the plane and triggered the spell. She ran back to her car. Slipping on the wet snow she scraped her hands and knees raw trying to move quickly. Finally reaching it, she slammed her side into the rear bumper in her rush to get behind its bulk. Once safely behind the trunk she turned to watch. Pain burst from her bruised shoulder and her knees screamed protest at her crouched position, but she ignored the distraction.
Two giant slabs of rock surged up and out of the ground, slamming themselves at each other like whales at play before sinking back down. Except there was nothing playful about the shattered bits of plastic, glass, and batteries they left behind.
Mona fell, her ass hitting the frozen ground. That could have been her.
Her.
Smashed.
If the wind sprites hadn’t stopped her from going forward . . . bile burned the back of her throat at the gruesome image. Oh! And had the lights had been on and she’d driven on like usual…
As if her thought triggered them, the floods above the entry flickered and the area was bathed in their warm glow.
Momentarily blinded Mona blinked away spots as she scrambled back to her crouch. No time to be sick, she breathed shallowly, trying to clam her frantic heart. Little puffs of breath hung in the cold air in front of her, giving her position away to anyone looking. Not like there was anyplace else close enough to hide.
The huge wooden door creaked open.
Smythe wobbled his way around the edge, the scant strands of his white hair bobbing as his head palsied. He took the few steps to the edge of the churned up area. She expected him to blame her for the mess because, goddess knew, anything that went awry when she was around was her fault.