“You can take this. Only the Earth Realm of the game and a notes program are loaded on it. You can make either spoken or typed notes with regard to the world of Transformation.”
“Wow.” Kiri leaped toward the counter and picked up the tablet, eyes gleaming. “That’s wonderful!”
Jenni lifted a finger. “You are not allowed to show the tablet to anyone. No one on Mystic Circle, and no friends of yours.”
Kiri swallowed, nodded, though he saw a hint of disappointment in her eyes. “Okay.”
“And the computer is connected to our servers, and the servers will be recording the games, as these have.” Jenni waved to the monitors. “So be aware of that, and you must agree to have your games monitored and recorded.”
“That’s fair,” Kiri said.
Jenni waved. “All right, we’re done for the week.” She smiled. “Take some time for yourself over the weekend. Don’t play too hard.”
“No, I won’t. And...I have something else to ask.” Again, anxiety flashed through Kiri’s eyes.
“Yes?”
“I want you to let me know immediately if I have failed the prologue at any point.”
“Beyond redemption?” Jenni asked.
Kiri nodded. “Yes. Please let me know as soon as possible if I wash out of the application process.”
“Easier on you if we don’t string you along,” Jenni said, and nodded. “That’s fair, too. All right. Done.”
Lathyr stood and offered his arm to Kiri. “Would you allow me to see you home?” As soon as he made the gesture, said the words, he knew his old-fashioned human manners had betrayed him again.
But Kiri chuckled, put the tablet down on the desk only as long as it took to shrug into her jacket and pull the canvas handles of her bag over her shoulder, then slid her arm in his.
Wonderful.
* * *
Kiri got a call Sunday morning from Shannon, reminding her they were meeting for brunch at the dim sum restaurant on the west side.
Kiri was deep in the game and grumbled about it, but Shannon insisted. They wanted to talk about house hunting. Kiri wanted to continue exploring the game. It had her hooked, even in just the Earth Realm.
Then, of course, Shannon said she and Averill were worried, wanted to check up on Kiri after the terrible bus thing.
But the morning away from the game was just what she needed to get perspective, and Kiri felt really confident that she’d get the job—a buoyancy that reassured her friends.
They all headed out to look at a house Shannon and Averill were interested in, southwest and at least an hour from Kiri when traffic was good.
The place was a charming two-story Victorian with a pretty paint job, large yard, and within walking distance of Shannon’s work and a highly rated elementary school.
Kiri made a pitch for the couple to buy one of the empty houses in Mystic Circle, said she’d talk to Rafe Davail about the two he owned, but Averill and Shannon just shook their heads, so Kiri had to let it go.
Monday, at Jenni Emberdrake’s request, Kiri loaded one of the Earth Realm characters she’d developed over the weekend into the main game computer and played her. The toon was a configuration that Jenni hadn’t anticipated and the woman was full of praise.
It was also great to see Tanna the brownie again.
Tuesday and Wednesday Jenni requested Kiri explore the Air Realm thoroughly. She nailed it and even led a team Jenni had provided with no losses.
Though Kiri loved being an elf, she wasn’t too fond of the realm itself, or the spells, and she really, really loathed the banshees. Not to mention the airsprite.
Kiri thought she was doing fine, had the job, the career she wanted, in the bag. Though she had noted that the energy drain increased and a few odd things continued to happen, like sore muscles, a bruise on her knee when she fell down a bank. Had she fallen in the room, too?
Yes, she was sure she was doing well. Until she reached the Fire Realm on Thursday. With Jenni Emberdrake.
She made it fifteen minutes at the max before dying. Ten times. She’d even tried a couple of missions on her own after Jenni and Lathyr had been called to one of their meetings. Then Kiri’d just given up and requested—and got—permission to leave by email. She felt like she’d slunk out with her tail between her legs, her dreams smashed.
Kiri fumbled her key card and keys as she unlocked her front door, grunted as she kicked it behind her, and dropped her bag, hoping she didn’t have anything in it that would break. Her mind was so fried with exhaustion that she couldn’t recall what was in her tote.
All she wanted was bed, but as she shuffled toward her bedroom, passing her computer set up in the window, big red letters seemed to pop in front of her eyes, as if she still wore the visor. “It’s THURSDAY.” Thursday. She was scheduled to play Fairies and Dragons with Shannon for an hour, then hook Shannon in with the Mystic Circle group team.
For a minute Kiri wondered if she could log on to her online email account after turning off her monitor, her eyes throbbed so at the idea of looking at more bright light. The firespells had really done a number on her optic nerves. Squinting, she got to the mail, composed.
To: Gothicperky. Sorty cn’t makee tonigght. Gam wiped me tt. Love, Kii.
With a few last lunges, she made it to bed and fell facedown onto the futon. OWIE! Whimpering, she passed out.
“Kiri, Kiri, wake up!” The voice was Shannon’s. Hell, Kiri wasn’t going to be late to class again, was she? She had to stop the last-minute wee-hours essay writing.
“Yo.” She jackknifed up and moaned as every muscle in her body protested the movement, then blinked at the bright light. Bright light, dark night. Pale yellow walls. Bedroom. Her bedroom in Mystic Circle.
“Kiri.” Shannon sat down onto the bed next to her. “Oh, Kiri, you look bad. How on earth did you get so sunburned?”
“Fire Realm?” Ouch, her dry lips cracked open. Damn.
“Doesn’t look like virtual burns to me,” Shannon said tartly.
“Seriously, Kiri, you look like shit,” Averill said from the doorway. He was holding a sopping washcloth that dripped water onto Kiri’s wood floor.
She held out an imperious hand for the plush terry square. “Thanks a lot. Gimme.”
But Shannon intercepted the cloth and dabbed at Kiri’s face. Cool, delightful, soothing water.
Kiri whimpered again, her mouth felt better. “Thanks.”
“We haven’t heard from you often enough,” Shannon scolded. “And you misspelled your email. You don’t do that. Oh, your poor eyelids, they look swollen.”
From the inside out, they felt swollen, too.
“Figured you were working too hard on the game,” said Averill with a grin and a wink. He tended to be a workaholic. “We brought Thai food.”
“Nom,” Kiri said reflexively, just as her stomach rumbled. She sniffed and, sure enough, smelled Pad Thai. Her mouth watered. “Lemme grab a shower, and you’re always bringing me food, lately.”
“It’s the nesting mother, here.” Averill walked over and kissed the top of Shannon’s head.
Shannon said, “All right, you can have a shower. But I’m sitting on the toilet seat to make sure you don’t fall.”
“Most household accidents take place in the bathroom. We’ll be babyproofing ours to the nth degree,” Averill said cheerfully. “I’ll set up the card table and stuff.”
After a cool shower, Kiri felt much better, but still put on her oldest, softest sweats before she sat down on a folding chair with a plateful of rice noodles and chicken with peanut sauce...including real peanuts.
Shannon still frowned at her as she ate. “What happened?”
Since Kiri had a little time to think about it, she offered a logical explanation. “I had a long lunch break and ate on the top of the building. Fell asleep. Got sunburned.”
Shannon shook her head and tsked.
Averill paused with a forkful of twined noodles. “I think you should have
stuck with the Fire Realm injuries, myself. More exotic.”
“Yeah?”
Lips pursed, Shannon scanned her. “You weren’t moving well, either. Sitting at a desk so long isn’t good.”
“Nope,” Kiri said. Neither was getting trampled on by a few heavy, muscular djinn, but her body felt like that had happened.
“But, other than that, how’s it going?” Averill grinned.
Kiri deliberately relaxed her shoulders that had tensed and risen again, and grimaced. “I don’t know. I did okay for a newbie in the Earth Realm, then went back and nailed it, complete with a companion and a team.” She smiled, then took the lip salve from Shannon and rubbed it on her mouth. “I think I was above average in the Air Realm.” She sighed. “But I really wiped out in the Fire Realm.”
“Today?” Shannon asked sympathetically.
“Yeah.” Kiri wiggled her shoulders again. “I don’t think I could have done much worse. I suck at being a djinnfem. Just couldn’t get the hang of it at all.” Hadn’t mastered the movements and her spells had misfired more often than not.
“Sort of like Shannon being a squishy ranged magic user,” Averill said. “And thus the reason why the game shouldn’t assign characteristics. Will they let you repeat, you think, play to your strengths somehow?”
Just the idea of entering the Fire Realm again made Kiri shudder. “After ten times? I don’t know.”
Shannon pointed a fork at her. “You did all right as a dwarf and...what was air, elf?”
“Yes.”
“Surely all of the realms must be visited by every form of magical elemental critter,” Shannon said. “Maybe you can redo fire as a dwarf or elf.”
Kiri let the tang of good food explode in her mouth, comforting. Just eating was helping with her attitude—when she didn’t remember lying facedown on tiles and djinn running over her poor body, mashing it. “That would be good.”
“What did Jenni Weavers say?” Shannon asked.
“Just looked appalled, at first,” Kiri managed between mouthfuls. She didn’t want to admit she’d been a little cowardly and hadn’t hung around. Cowardly, yes. Human, yes. She’d have to do better, though.
“So Weavers might be better at fire than any other element,” Averill said.
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Kiri drank the iced tea they’d ordered for her.
“And her being good at fire doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be,” Shannon said.
“True.”
“And you still have the last element, right? And you’re learning as you go—”
Averill took over, “And the last element is water, so if you sucked large at fire, maybe water will be easy-peasey and you could ace it.” He grinned. He was one amazingly handsome guy with the light brown skin and dark brown eyes and black hair; Kiri had always thought so. But now Lathyr’s paleness seemed to be more of her standard for men. She winced at the thought that she hadn’t seen him before she left, either, but she hadn’t wanted to face a man she was beginning to have feelings for with failure in her eyes.
Yes, changes were happening.
“Thanks for the support,” Kiri said.
“You’re still one of the best game writers I know,” Averill said. “Don’t give up.”
“Don’t give up,” Shannon said at the same time as her husband, and they shared a smile.
“I was creamed,” Kiri said, then, “Nope, I was fricasseed, in the Fire Realm.” And she was glad she’d managed to find the humor in the situation.
The others laughed and she rose with only a few twinges of her abused body and cleared the paper plates. They’d demolished the meal. “So, thanks a lot for coming over to check on me.”
She blew out a breath, sent Shannon an imploring gaze. “Jenni Emberdrake and Lathyr Tricurrent promised to let me know immediately if I washed out of the program.” Kiri pressed her lips together, then sent a stare in the direction of her workbag. “I didn’t hear my phone. Can you check it in my tote? And my email, too?” Pitiful that she didn’t want to look herself, that she was using her friend to find out and face the music. Her pregnant friend.
“Sure.” Shannon rose and went toward the door where Kiri’s bag was, pulled out her phone. “There’s a call here from Jenni Emberdrake.” Shannon walked back with Kiri’s phone.
Kiri had to drink some iced tea before she had enough spit to answer. “Go ahead and put it on speaker.”
Averill reached over and linked fingers with her.
“Hey, Kiri, I guess you’re exhausted, right? Probably don’t want to play Fairies and Dragons tonight?” The woman sounded way too cheerful. “I know you were going to introduce your friend to us, so if you get this voice mail tonight, have her message me in the game to my DevGem handle.”
“Oooh.” Shannon’s eyes gleamed and she pressed Kiri’s phone to her breasts. She did a little prancing around. “DevGem is Jenni Emberdrake! And I’ll be on her team.” Shannon pumped her fists.
“Aren’t we supposed to be checking to see if Kiri still has a shot at the new job in Transformation?” Averill asked.
Shannon grinned. “Oops. But she wouldn’t offer this to me if she was going to dump Kiri, would she?”
“Jenni’s a really nice person,” Kiri said.
Averill slanted Kiri a glance. “Not so nice that she’d keep on an incompetent.”
“No other messages,” Shannon said.
Averill shoved his chair back, flexed his fingers and went to Kiri’s computer, opened her email account. “What’s your password?”
“Capital R, lower case e-x-x-a, same word, capital R, lowercase e-d,” Kiri said.
He glanced at her. “You got an offer for half off at Shout! restaurant and didn’t let me know?”
“Grrr. Is that all?”
“All. Nothing from Jenni Emberdrake or that guy from human resources or Eight Corp.” Averill shut down the program. “Your eyes still look terrible. Go back to bed.”
Relief dropped from Kiri so fast and hard that if she’d been a dwarf, rock would have crashed off her body. Kiri squinted at him. “But you have news.” Finally she was concentrating on someone other than her poor, pitiful, selfish self.
Shannon crossed to Averill and slipped her arm around him, then they both beamed at Kiri. “We bought the house.”
“You bought the house.” Kiri sat suddenly. They were really moving far across town from her. She put cheer in her voice. “The one close to your work.”
“Yup,” Shannon replied. “I can walk to work, and Averill is getting more work-at-home days so he can take baby to the wonderful park that’s close.”
“Awesome! I am so happy for you.”
Shannon hugged her tentatively, keeping pressure off Kiri’s skin, though that felt much better. “And I’ve got a good feeling about this career for you.” With a smacking kiss on Kiri’s cheek, Shannon stepped back, waved the phone before putting it on the table. “Now we gotta hustle to get back home and log on to Fairies and Dragons and hook up with the Mystic Circle team. Since you’re going to be off tonight, can Averill take your slot?”
Averill rubbed his hands. “Good idea.”
Kiri looked at her computer setup. “Sure.” She shook her head. “Nope, I don’t want to play tonight.”
“Great, I mean take care of yourself.” Averill gave her a soft kiss on the cheek and he and Shannon left.
Kiri cleaned up the dinner, took the trash out, then folded up the card table and stashed it in the closet.
Her bare home was pristine again, but didn’t have the same feel as even a few short days ago. Change had come and more was imminent.
Shannon and Averill were moving away, and not only physically. Transformation was affecting Kiri in odd ways that she didn’t want to acknowledge—like being able to feel her face pressed against hot tile in the Fire Realm, or the pounding of boots on her body.
Couldn’t be! But amorphous fears lurked in the back of her mind.
She went to her
chair-and-a-half and huddled in it. Her life was spiraling out of control again and she didn’t like it.
A knock came at her door and she straightened. Almost, almost, she thought she sensed Lathyr there.
Just logic. Unlike many of the inhabitants of Mystic Circle, Lathyr wouldn’t be at his computer and playing Fairies and Dragons.
So when she opened the door, she wasn’t surprised to see him.
Chapter 15
SHE WOULD NOT plague Lathyr with worry-questions about her job.
He dipped his head. “Hello, Kiri. You left while we were in a meeting and I came to see how you were doing.”
She was very aware that an exceedingly empty house was behind her itchy shoulder blades, not at all like the luxurious comfort of the Castle he was living in. There was no help for it, she stepped back. “I’m doing all right. Would you like to come in?”
“Thank you.” He walked in with an easy glide that reminded her of how the elves had moved.
“I don’t have much.” She gestured to the chair. “Please, sit. Would you like some coffee or tea or iced tea?” She shut the door to the cold night air.
“Nothing, thank you.” He was staring at her, came up close and took one of her hands in his. Tingles, oh, yes, the guy attracted her. “And you have a lovely house, and whatever you do have in it is your own.”
“Yeah.”
“And I don’t think that you are entirely well since you aren’t playing Fairies and Dragons with the rest.”
“Oh.”
He pushed the sleeve of her sweatshirt up her arm. “What’s this?”
She winced. “Just a little burn from the Fire Realm.”
“You did not look like this when I left you. You didn’t tell me!” He stepped close nearly brushing her body, way within her personal space. Then he set his hands on her shoulders and...somehow, somehow, Kiri felt her skin tissues plumping up, easing. Even her muscles felt better. Probably because she really liked Lathyr’s hands on her.
Enchanted Ever After (Mystic Circle) Page 13