Rafe cleared his throat and nodded. “Deal.”
Another snort and Tiro vanished. Rafe looked at Amber. “How long do you think he’ll—”
And Tiro was back, smelling of other places. He placed a stick on the table in front of Rafe. It was a real stick, made of a wood that Rafe couldn’t determine, two inches thick and heavily carved with a colorful angular pattern and stained in primary colors. Oh, yeah, like he wouldn’t stand out holding this thing—it was forked for two hands.
He met Tiro’s simmering look, then gazed at Amber. Her eyes widened, but her return stare was challenging. The tip of the stick appeared to be pointed and encased in copper. Rafe stood and bowed to Tiro. “A work of art. Thank you.”
“Ready to start?” Amber asked.
While they’d been talking, the clouds had cleared. It would still be cold, but the sun was out. A tendril of hope deep in his being began to grow. “Sure.” He picked up the dowsing rod, meaning to twirl it, and got a sizzle through him down to his soles, tweaking his balls on the way. He sucked in a breath.
Amber was right there, a concerned expression on her face, her fingers on his forearm. “Will you be able to use it?”
“Only one way to find out,” Rafe forced through his lips. He felt…felt like some of his insides had been seared and sloughed away, leaving him rawly cleansed and vital. Like that one moment of anticipation before a race…with a feeling that he was going to win this one.
“All right, let’s start with the house, particularly the basement,” Amber said. Down they went. The basement was one large space, though Rafe saw where walls had been. The room had finished brick walls that gleamed, a flagstoned floor and polished wooden doors, taller than a person and each very individual, in each wall.
Tiro stood, feet-planted and cross-armed at the door toward the front of the house and the cul-de-sac park.
Rafe nodded and said, “Cool.”
“It’s a lot different than it was last week,” Amber said drily.
“Uh-huh,” Rafe said. The dowser was stirring in his hands, quivering and pointing toward Tiro. As he got closer to the brownie, the stick dipped and held steady about an inch above the ground…which the brownie mostly felt like. Ground, dirt, earth. Heavy, slow energy trick…ling…through…him…slow…ing…his…thoughts.
Chapter 15
“SNAP OUT OF IT!” TiRo said and stepped on Rafe’s toes.
“Ouch!” The brownie looked light, but Rafe’s toes ached.
Smiling and showing pointed teeth, which Rafe had forgotten about and hadn’t wanted to be reminded of, Tiro said, “The rod is a tool to be used.”
Rafe got it. The tool wasn’t supposed to be using him. “Brownie is earth.”
“That’s right,” Amber said. “Minor earth race.”
Lifting his lip in a sneer—again with the pointed teeth—Tiro said, “If you’d pointed that at a dwarf and the tool used you, your mind would have been trapped in earth.”
Rafe nodded, just to make sure his neck and head worked. “Thank you, again.”
Tiro pushed the rod aside, and when the brownie connected with the rod, and to Rafe, he felt the grief and anger and dread that filled the smaller being. The brownie had already been charmed by Amber and thought that she would perish when she broke Rafe’s curse. Rafe stared. Tiro scowled ferociously.
“Go check out other energies. You can feel other elements, can’t you, death-cursed?”
Rafe uncurled his left fingers from around the rod, shook out his hand. Took the time to shake out his arms and legs, too. Lifting his feet from the flagstones eased him the most.
“You broke your grounding,” Amber murmured.
She was right, something he’d remembered from his martial arts training and had used in his sports. Would his fencing coach mention grounding? He was sure of it.
He turned, shook his left hand again and grasped the left fork. The stick pointed at Amber. Once more energy moved up the stick in waves. This gave him a little buzz, was much lighter, made him smile. Unlike the brownie’s energy, this wasn’t just one type of solid flow. It felt tangled. Light and buzzy and jumbled. “Sort of…frothy…” Rafe said.
Tiro snorted.
“Squishy,” Rafe and Tiro said at the same time.
“Ha, ha,” Amber said.
Rafe nodded. Soft and essence-of-woman and sexy were better terms, but squishy would do. The woman wasn’t tough-minded. A soft risk-taker. He hadn’t run into many of those. They didn’t last long on the sports circuit. Usually fell for some sad story and got screwed.
He swept the rod from the pile of Amber’s stuff toward the south wall. Immediately his hands heated. His palms began to sweat, the rod dipped and rose faster. When he reached the door in the wall, the stick lowered with brownie energy. One step to the south and he caught his breath. The dowser seemed to nearly float in his hands. His mind was centered and clear. His balance seemed perfect.
Here he could feel swirls of energy, four types, all nearly equal. He strove to memorize them. The heat and quickness of fire, the extreme lightness of air, the slick dampness of water, the heavy earth. Each had its own sensation, each a different rhythmic pulse. He could almost grasp the innate pattern.
Amber and Tiro came to stand beside him. Amber sighed and Rafe sensed that she felt something, but not like he did. And that was weird.
Tiro said quietly, “Got a pocket of balanced energy here because of Jenni Weavers, the elemental balancer.” He wrapped long fingers around Rafe’s wrist and pulled him back. “We oughta keep it that way as long as we can.”
Rafe stepped back into the basement and it was as if he’d left fresh air behind. Sounds jangled, the stick oscillated. This time he took his right hand off that fork.
“You progress,” Tiro said flatly, pointed a finger at the stairs. “Take your experiment outside so I can continue my work.”
“I didn’t ask you—” Amber began.
“Yes, of course I do this to please myself.” Tiro’s lip curled. “Go.”
With a huff of breath, Amber turned and started up the stairs. She had a fine ass, Rafe noted once more as he followed.
A few minutes later they were out in the sunlight. He wore his leather jacket and Amber a bright blue windbreaker.
Outside there was more distraction. Now he felt the energy of plants and trees, different from the other four elements, mostly comprised of earth and water and sun and green. That energy was alive in some way that the other elemental energies weren’t.
Rafe pointed the rod at the Tudor house north of Amber’s—number six—and sorted out the energies. “The woman who lives here is half human. Her magical heritage is three-quarters air-elf, and one-quarter dwarf.”
“Wow,” Amber said.
He was all too aware of the sexual attraction. Yeah, he liked that buzz. Amber was a serious woman, but these were serious times and he wasn’t feeling too lighthearted about the whole situation, either.
She was incredibly easy to be with. Soft, female, sexy. Squishy. He didn’t want to squish her.
So he turned toward the top of the cul-de-sac and the castle. He went all the way up to the iron gate and stuck the dowsing rod through the bars.
And had to do some fancy footwork to stay on his feet and not get knocked to his ass.
Amber coughed. He knew she was covering laughing, but didn’t care.
“Wow,” he said.
“What?” she asked.
“Everything. Just…” He wiped his palms on his jeans, one hand after the other. “Everything, and strong!”
“Like?”
“Like shades of the energy Pavan the elf and Vikos the dwarf left in your living room.”
He braced himself, settled into his balance as he slowly pushed the stick through the bars. The end of the rod began to give off sparks and his hands shook from the force. “Strong magic,” he said between his teeth. He felt himself rock back and forth. “Individuals. Not balanced.” And the taste of it was rich
cream on his tongue, the scent a mixture of tempting smells: deep, mysterious forests that could hold golden chests of magic; air so pure and effervescent that it slid into him and lifted his spirit; the gentle warmth of fire removing any chill from the air, cradling him in comfort; the taste of clear and potent water with the vitality of the essence of life. Rich.
The sparks died and he fell to his heels, realizing that he’d been on tiptoe. He staggered a step back.
Amber was there, wrapping her arms around him, holding and steadying him. Power rushed through his veins and he eyed the park in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Though the brush was thick, Amber’s blue windbreaker and pale linen slacks would be seen if they made love in the park.
He forced the thought of her damp and welcoming body, of plunging into her, from his head. But he wanted that.
The scent of her was better than any magic. Amber and woman.
He couldn’t prevent a rub of his groin against her softness.
She stepped back, but he was pleased to see that she was flushed, and not just from the spring breeze. If he looked hard, he could see her nipples pebbled under her clothes. Another surge of lust went through him and he banished the thought again.
“Interesting reaction,” she said.
“Not around you. Happens all the time,” he said thickly.
She laughed and her cheeks flushed a deeper pink under her golden skin, beautiful.
“Not that,” she said. She waved to the house. “Your rod.” She screwed her eyes shut and turned red, then when he laughed, she did, too.
After biting her lip, she said, “The reaction of the dowsing rod to the castle.”
“Who lives there?”
“We don’t know.” A cloud crossed her expression. “No, I don’t know. Jenni or Tamara might. People…beings, I guess?” She shot Rafe a questioning look.
He swallowed, he could still taste the cream. “Yeah, beings. All of ’em, dwarves, elves, mers and…djinns.” He couldn’t quite get his head wrapped around a djinn, a genie. Figured they must have feet.
Frowning, he considered all the waves of energy that had pummeled him, or slid through him, or whatever the hell had happened. There had been lighter, wispier currents. One had been brownie. “Probably all the minor folk, too.” He didn’t remember all of those.
“Oh.” Amber gazed at the castle. “Like I was saying, people come and go. There are lights and a feeling of movement.” Her hands opened and closed as if elusive things escaped her grasp. She smiled. “I’d say it was haunted but it doesn’t feel like that. No despair or anger.”
He ignored that comment, not even saying that he’d felt none, either.
The rest of the circle was less interesting, a mix of human and Lightfolk. Amber knew everyone and had stories. She’d also given him a tip on acquiring more property in the Circle. He figured the real estate would be better in his human hands than bought by Eight Corp.
“Next we have number two, the Fanciful House,” Amber said.
“Mine,” Rafe said, but thought he meant the woman more than the house. Didn’t matter, Mystic Circle and Amber were all mixed up in his yearnings, along with the sheer will to live. He fully intended to have them both.
Chapter 16
“YOU THINK THE Fanciful House is yours?” Amber asked as they sauntered down the sidewalk.
“Yeah, I’m hoping so. I put an outrageous sum of money down on it to hold it for me…until.”
“Ah.” She squeezed his arm against her and he liked it. Liked the connection. Didn’t know when that had last happened with a woman.
“What do you think you and your divining rod will find?”
He stopped. “Divining rod?”
“The guy I borrowed the dowsers from reminded me that it was sometimes called that…to find lost silver and gold in the forest maybe.”
The rod hauled his hands to the curb and he looked down to see what Amber had spotted. “Or coins in the street?” he asked.
“Or that.” Her smile was fey, three-cornered.
He nudged the silver in the street, got a fizz of magic energy. “Magic coins?”
Amber let his arm go and scooped them up. Two silver dollars lay on her hand. “Real silver, anyway. The Lightfolk are sensitive to silver. It can harm them.”
“Oh,” he said.
She tucked them in his front pocket and his body liked that a lot. Then she took his arm and male satisfaction flared.
They stopped at the corner of Mystic Circle and the small street leading to it, Linden. Amber started to cross, and Rafe trapped her arm against his side.
“I want to take this out of the neighborhood and down to the business district.”
She looked at the colorful stick—now some of the patterns on it showed silver and gold—and back at him.
He stood straight. “Think I’m not cool enough to carry this off?”
“You sure are,” she said. “But why?”
“I want to check out the neighborhood.” He still felt a little stupid with the colorful stick in his hands…obviously a dowsing rod. “I want to see where the magical energies fade.”
She nodded. “Good idea.”
He also wanted to go to the place the shadleeches had dive-bombed him and determine whether there was any lingering magic that he could feel. The elf had said the shadleeches were evil. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t felt “good” or “evil” with the rod. He didn’t think the stick was really made that way, to find human or Lightfolk good and evil.
But it might react to Dark ones. He needed to know if that were true and whether he had something that might warn him of evil in the future.
And wasn’t it a kick in the ass that he could actually think of that without believing he’d gone crazy.
As they walked down the street, Amber commented on people in one house or another. After the first cross street, he angled, trying to recall the geographic features of what was around him when he’d been attacked and fell.
With so much that had happened since, it seemed years ago. He didn’t have to press his memory. Nearly a half block from where he’d fallen, small shocks ran down the stick to his hands. Amber gasped and withdrew her arm from his, shaking out her own fingers. “What’s that?”
He glanced at her, gritted his teeth and pressed onward. “If I’m right, it’s remnants of the shadleech bombing.”
“Oh,” she said faintly.
“When I first checked—” his throat tightened “—there were bits of hollow bone and a scrap of what I thought was leather.” He shrugged. “Whatever shadleeches are made of. Might still be there. I don’t know how fast they decompose.”
She made a face. “Eeew.” But she stepped off the sidewalk and scuffed her cross-trainers down the gutter. Old leaves and twigs, dust and bits of paper tumbled. Then she sucked in a harsh breath, stooped and stared, stood up and moved her foot more gently. “Objects such as these?” she asked.
Since the rod was nearly bucking in his hands and an oiliness seemed to mix from the rod with the sweat on his palms, he was sure she was right. By the time he reached her, she’d separated a few brown-and-ivory-looking bits and a patch of fur-feather.
“Ick,” she said.
As he swung the dowsing rod toward it, the stick jammed his hands into his abdomen. Rafe moved back. “I think that’s an identification of evil.”
Amber buried the things again with her shoe. “Not sure what we should do about these? Do you sense any, um, active threat?”
He shook out his feet, wiped his palms on his jeans again, shifted his shoulders and eased into a grounded stance. Again he got a humming vibration, this one with a nasty tickle on his palms.
Atavistic fear shuddered from the prickling hair on his skin inward. “What’s that smell?”
“Something smells…” Amber said at the same time. She saw Rafe’s eyes go wide, his nostrils flare. His face set as he swung the dowsing rod up, pointing above the houses.
She frowned, there was a
waver in the air—crows. No! Something different, three flying stingray-things, just like the elf told her.
“Shadleeches!” Rafe muttered.
He pointed the rod like a weapon, grimaced.
Amber saw a tiny stream push from it. But the things were moving too fast. Dark and flapping, gray and black and fangs. Then the shadleeches dove.
She dragged in a breath—rotten meat and dust—and doubled over coughing. Felt the scrape of claws against her scalp, the sting. Then one flapped, caught in her hair with its leathery wings. She grabbed at it, her fingernails bit into the soft leather and stuff oozed under them. The shadleech screamed.
So did she.
She ripped it from her hair and flung it aside, knew she couldn’t put her burning fingertips into her mouth to soothe them.
Rafe was grinning…and swearing, beating the two shadleeches who’d attacked him with his rod. All three were smoking, but she saw no blood from him.
He stabbed at the shadleech that fluttered near her with the divining rod and it screeched high, hurting Amber’s ears.
Flipping the stick in his hands, he whacked at the shadleeches like he held a baseball bat and killed them all.
Amber gulped air, thin magic pulsed around her. A movement caught her eye and she lifted a trembling finger, squeaked, “Look!” The gray cloud broke apart into a fleet of shadleeches.
Rafe grabbed her hand. “Run!”
She winced as his hand closed over hers, and took off with him, knowing he was keeping his pace to hers.
The minute they turned into Mystic Circle, the stinging on her hands eased—as if the magic in the venom vanished. She tugged from him, stared at her fingers. The tops of her nails were burned black to the quick, her fingertips red but not blistered.
Rafe winced. “Nasty.”
“Yes.” She stared at the dowsing rod. Part of the tip was gone, ending in charred jags. One side of it had the paint singed off.
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