that he’d become wouldn’t do something so nervous.
She was glad of his touch, the touch of a pure magical being, of a man who hadn’t been raised here, wouldn’t cherish this place more than Denver.
This wasn’t home anymore.
Her particular fire and air—and human—nature preferred where she lived now, a bustling city with towering mountains in the distance instead of huddled against a hill in a bit of forest with the ocean an hour and a half away.
Aric’s hand flattened against the small of her back and she realized she hadn’t moved, so now she did, to get away from that warmth sending sensual tendrils unfurling through her. He kept pace with her, his fingertips still in contact with her, and she wondered at it.
She stepped up to the house. Would Rothly’s silver-and-salt spell that disowned her keep her from opening the door? Or would the house spells still recognize her as family?
The door was blue-gray with a tarnished brass knocker. The tint had faded from glossy to flat. It hadn’t been repainted in a long time.
Jenni braced herself before she put her hand on the ornate brass knob that was covered in fire runes…from her mother.
More hurt, deeper hurt, welled through her.
“We need to find your brother,” Aric said.
The knob was warm under her hand and it turned easily. Jenni stepped inside her old home.
Anger slammed against her, pushing her back into a solid Aric.
Rothly’s anger, both directed at her that she dared to come into his space, and a long-term ire that pervaded the place.
Jenni panted through the constriction of her chest, striving to pull a trickle of air into her lungs. An air-and-fire spell directed at them! The spell tightened over them like a net, choking, heating, burning.
Aric shuddered behind her and she turned. He was against the closed door and she was against him. His skin had darkened, taken on a coarser texture more like bark. He was half elf, half-dryad Treefolk, he didn’t need as much air as she.
Faint steam radiated from him, the ends of his hair crisping. She hadn’t felt the fire as much as the air.
Aric was turning browner. His hair became greener, and he’d lost a sizzling inch that sent a fragrance like burning redwood needles into the air.
Rothly had tailored a spell to both of them, to his sister and his friend. Disowning all friendship, all bonds. She and Aric could die!
Jenni widened her stance, struggled to inhale. Any spell Rothly had crafted, she should be able to unravel.
Time was too short to step into the gray mist. She wasn’t prepared. She couldn’t push through Rothly’s spell to reach the older ones that the rest of her family, and she herself, had crafted.
She only had a few seconds.
So she visualized her new home—high, dry Denver, with the thin air of altitude—stripped the humidity from the air of Rothly’s spell and pulled enough in to survive. She leaned against Aric’s solid strength, twined her fingers with his and heated his cooler body to her own skin temperature, sharing the protection of her fire nature. As his temperature equalized to that of the spell, he stopped burning.
Good. She looked at the spell. It was frayed in one corner. Rothly’s magic was crippled. Jenni mentally reached for a loose thread and yanked. The net vanished.
A tremor went through Aric, starting at his feet and raising his hair, accompanied by the sound of rattling leaves. Jenni realized she was still measured against his full length, righted herself and stepped away. She made a show of looking around the living room that hadn’t changed at all as Aric settled.
Something else hit her…but not with a slam, more like a whisper that coated her, sank into her, alerting all her senses. This was not the home she remembered. Her tapestry bag fell from limp fingers.
Scent came first. The fragrance of elf and djinn and human wasn’t as rich, nor were there any individual scents of her brothers and sisters, her parents. Only Rothly, and a crippled Rothly. Anger-fear-despair sweat. The slight hint of decaying magic, the astringency of healing herbs kept as potpourri, burnt as incense, used in bath and on wounds.
He was still crippled, then. Somehow Jenni had had a lingering hope that his wounds weren’t as bad as the last time she’d seen him—on a pallet in the triage area after the ambush. That his arm and magic might have healed a bit.
She grieved and this time the sharp grief wasn’t for her lost siblings and parents, but was for her remaining brother. As she stepped through the house, she understood that she had accepted the deaths of her family. It only needed her to come back here to this empty place for her to understand that.
“It’s not the same,” Aric said. He hadn’t touched her again and she was contrary enough to wish that he still did. “It’s so quiet. I’ve never heard quiet in this place.”
Jenni kept her flinch inside. She’d been ignoring the silence, focusing more on the unwholesome feelings that writhed through the atmosphere.
“Your sisters and brothers…even your parents were always cheerfully loud.”
Jenni gritted her teeth. “That’s right.”
Aric frowned and lines she hadn’t noticed before appeared in his forehead. He was maturing. A small tremble went through her as she did a quick calculation. He was two hundred years old, his seed would be viable soon, and he’d look for a mate. She brushed the thought aside as she feathered her hand over her coat, though the last of the rain droplets had disappeared minutes ago.
“Quiet and smells funny and…it’s out of balance.” His voice had lowered and deepened on the last. He lifted his feet one at a time and the action was slow, as if he pulled invisible roots from the ground below the shabby oriental rug and the flagstones beneath.
Jenni stilled. She’d been concentrating so much on her human senses that she hadn’t noticed. But he was right. From before she’d been born, for a century before that, this land—this house—was equal in all four elemental energies. Now there were equal parts of air and fire, but earth was about a quarter less than it should be. Water was a good two-thirds less than air or fire. The very thought of it shocked her.
After a quick breath, she nodded. “Yes. I’ll fix that before we leave.” The best practice she could have to build her skill set to save Rothly. She needed three balancings at least, with rest in between. But no resting here. “I don’t want to spend the night here. This is Rothly’s home.”
Aric grunted. “Not much of one.” He turned up his hands, spreading his fingers, testing the magic and atmosphere of the place in the way of Treefolk. “Feels like he’s just existing.” Aric’s mouth turned down. He shook his head. “Full of anger and grief.” There was a pause. “Like you, though worse than yours.”
“I’m not crippled,” Jenni said.
“Not physically or magically,” Aric agreed.
Jenni stomped away from him—through the house to the kitchen. It was clean and soulless, though it appeared the same as when her mother and sisters were alive. Jenni and her mother and one of her sisters—the one with more djinn than elf nature—had loved cooking. Together. Jenni’s throat closed and she pushed through the kitchen to the pantry. Her mouth twisted as she recalled that she’d painted her own kitchen the same creamy yellow.
She stopped in the large pantry, turned to the glass-fronted cabinets on her left that were for magical ingredients—and found it full of both the makings for the special tea and the tea itself. Pounds of it, stored in large tin containers. It appeared as if Rothly had made enough for her whole family for a decade—or enough to boost his crippled magic for a vital, dangerous mission?
Her heart simply ached. The tins had been labeled with the date…no more than two and a half weeks ago.