Enchanted No More

Jenni didn’t like the sound, either, but she’d been able to ignore it.

The man appeared interested. “You have mice. They said we would have to suffer many cats. Why do you have mice?”

Jenni sighed. “I have one old, fat, toothless calico cat.”

The brownie woman—browniefem—bustled back, stared up at Jenni with determination. “Go turn off the scare-mouse sound machine.”

Giving them a hard look, Jenni said, “You will guard this door and let no Lightfolk in.”

“We promise.” They bobbed their heads. “Please leave the door open for the warmth,” whined the man.

Jenni muttered a swear word under her breath—a human word—and tromped back to the kitchen. Sighing, she removed the sonic mouse repellers. In the summer she could live-trap the mice and relocate them, but in the winter and the bitter cold…no. If her cat, Chinook, had caught them and eaten them, that was different, that was natural. But she had too many advantages over mice to destroy them. Stupidity.

By the time she reached the entryway, the brownies were in and the door propped shut.

Chinook, always curious, descended the stairs two paws at a time. When she got three steps from the bottom she saw the brownies and her fur rose, her tail bottled and she hissed.

The male hopped into her face, bared his fangs and hissed back.

Jenni went to Chinook and picked her up. “She’s lived here for years, you’re overnight guests. As long as you’re here, you must treat Chinook with respect. She responds well to pampering.”

Before she’d petted Chinook twice the brownie couple had zoomed to the kitchen. Jenni followed.

The browniefem looked around, nose in air. “You need us. I am called Hartha and this is Pred.”

Pred grinned. “Mousies!” He disappeared into the crack between the stove and the counter.

“The cleaning team comes Monday, only three days from now,” Jenni said. The house didn’t look too bad to her.

Hartha was suddenly wearing an apron made from two of Jenni’s dish towels. That had been in a drawer. “Go sit down and I’ll make you some nice tea. You’ve had a shock.” Another sniff. “We must have the house warmer, but we will do it with magic, lower your heating bill.”

Jenni hesitated.

“We need the positions.” The woman lit the gas oven without turning the knob. She met Jenni’s eyes and her own were not pitiful but shrewd. “Those new shadleeches have nested in our home. We had to leave or they would drain our magic dry.”

Brownies were mostly magic. But Jenni didn’t want to hear their long, sad story.

Music filled the house, her computer was back on. She hoped she hadn’t lost much work.

Chinook wriggled and Jenni set her down. The cat sat and stared at the brownie. The woman went straight to the dry food container and filled the cat’s bowl. Chinook hummed in greedy pleasure.

Magic filled the atmosphere along with the lavender scent of home spells that Jenni recalled her mother using. She didn’t want to think of her family or the brownies or the dwarf. She let Chinook crunch away and went back upstairs to work.

Soon she’d turned in the leprechaun story and was in the depths of email consultation with the game developers about its debut the second week of March, only six weeks away. The scent of sweet-herb tea wafted to her nose. More memories of her mother, her five siblings, whipped through her. The browniefem set the pretty patterned cup before Jenni, twisted her hands in her apron.

So Jenni picked up the tea and sipped.

It was perfect. Just sweet enough.

Naturally. Hartha would have sensed her preferences.

The brownieman, Pred, appeared in the doorway, grinning. “There is no more mouse problem.”

Jenni let the brownies have the back storage room, messy with piled boxes, computer parts, cables, extra clothes, mailing materials, old software and broken appliances. She had a feeling it wouldn’t be untidy in the morning.

Grief and ghosts and guilt haunted her dreams.

She should have known that the arrival of the dwarf and the brownies would stir up the old trauma, but had worked that night until her vision had been fuzzed with static from looking at the screen. Then she’d fallen into bed and slept, only to watch the fight around the dimensional gate with the Darkfolk, and be too late again.

Her family had died in that fight fifteen years before. Jenni had been late to help her family magically balance energies as a portal to another dimension was opened. She’d been more interested in her new lover and loving. Hadn’t been there when the surprise ambush had occurred. A fatal mistake she was unable to fix, so she had paid the price every day since.

She would never forgive herself for her mistake.

Neither would her elder brother, the only other survivor of her family.

She awoke weeping and curled into a ball, and knew from the soft and muffled quality of the air outside her windows that snow fell in huge, thick flakes. She felt the silent coming and going of the female brownie, Hartha, but kept her back to the woman until the smell of an omelette and hot chocolate made with milk and real liquid cocoa teased her nostrils. She rolled over to see her best china on a pretty tin tray along with a linen napkin and tableware.

As she ate, Chinook hopped onto the bed, onto her lap, and purred, accepting bits of ham and cheese from the omelette. The cat was her family now, old and scruffy as she was.

Only one old cat.

As she stared out the frosted window, she accepted that the Lightfolk would not leave her alone.

They’d send others to negotiate.

They’d send him.

Her ex-lover.

CHAPTER 2

DURING THE NEXT THREE WEEKS, KNOWING the Lightfolk wanted her to go on another “time-sensitive mission” for them niggled like a sliver deep in Jenni’s skin. A splinter she could sometimes ignore, but sometimes would jar and send pain shooting through her.

She didn’t want anything to disrupt her steady life, didn’t want to recall her past or actively use her magic. She did fine living in the mortal world.

Missions for the Lightfolk were deadly.

Jenni stayed inside, hermitlike, avoiding any world beyond her computer, until she yearned for fresh air. So one bitterly cold morning when the snow had melted and the sun was high and yellow in the crystal sky, she left the house. She walked briskly from the Mystic Circle cul-de-sac toward the local business district a few blocks away, circling around the green spaces dotted with skeletal aspens and lush evergreens.

It was good to hear the slap of her leather boot soles on the clean sidewalks, to see shafts of golden sunlight bounce off window glass. The trees and grass were shades of brown, but the sky was blue and gold with sunshine and white with frost crystal clouds and she inhaled deeply of the cold, fresh air.

She was out of her house, away from the brownies’ earthy energy. They had made her life so much easier, she’d let them stay. Life might just be okay.

She’d just left Mystic Circle when she heard the sharp crack of a branch breaking. Her shoulders tensed. That sound echoed from the past…when her ex-lover wanted her to know he’d arrived. Stopping in her tracks, she turned back and looked. Aric Paramon stepped out of a huge evergreen tree.

The sight of him jolted her down to her bones. She hadn’t seen him since the evening of the ambush, the failed mission. She’d left after her brother Rothly had thrown salt and silver at her, disowning her.

Aric was as gorgeous as ever. He was a tall man, like the California redwoods he lived in, about six feet four inches to her five-eleven. His skin was ruddy-copper. The sun accented the faintest tint of green in his long black hair. The deep green of his eyes would be ascribed to contact lenses by humans. Wide shoulders tapered to a muscular torso. His mother was a dryad and his father an elf.