Stolen Magic. Esri Rose

I need Guy to help me with the files I have at home.”

      Guy was Kutara’s human lover, although they weren’t bonded. Kutara was still bonded to land of her own, and she insisted she only used Guy for sex energy and his contacts in land development. But I had my suspicions that she really liked him.

      “So I get to take care of Fia. I see.” I saw that both of them wanted to get home for a little energy-raising sex with their human partners, while Adlia, who didn’t have anyone, elf or human, got to babysit.

      I looked at Fia. “What do you think, kid? Should we knock over a convenience store?”

      She stared into space. “I’m hungry.”

      Chapter Three

      There are a lot of ways you can “work” without working. Surfing the Internet counts as researching human behavior. Reading pop-culture blogs counts as finding possible new companies to invest in, like that company that makes shoes with little tubes for each individual toe. And listening to music online counts as, well, goofing off.

      Every once in a while I got up and kept Fia from doing something inappropriate, like pouring paper clips down the shredder. By the time morning came, Fia looked decidedly peaky and I was done sitting in the office.

      I called Lenny, one of my coworkers. He didn’t answer, so I left a message. “Hey, it’s Adlia. Where were you last night? Since you’re such a slacker, I think you’re the next person to do a little babysitting. Meet me by the creek, near the office.” That ought to bring him, if only to figure out what I was talking about.

      I locked all the file cabinets, put the key under a mess of binder clips in Kutara’s desk drawer, and left a message on her cell telling her where it was. If I were lucky, she wouldn’t listen to it before she needed something. Ha.

      “C’mon, Fia.” I slapped my thigh and whistled. “Here, girl.” I was counting on her to get better or I never would have done it.

      She followed me outside and across the concrete bike path to a couple of dry boulders beside the water.

      “Sit on this rock.” I waved a hand at it. “Do you remember how Galan showed you to get energy?”

      “No.”

      “Do you at least remember Galan? He’s the hot one.” I sighed. “There’s energy coming off the creek. Humans call it negative ions, but we call it ma’na’spira—mother’s breath.” I sat next to her on the rock, squirmed until I found a spot that wasn’t too pointy, and put my hands on her waist.

      If I closed my eyes, the energy around us looked like swirling blue mist against my lids. I opened to it, felt it soak through my skin, then shifted my physical boundaries slightly so that it passed through the edge of Fia. “That’s it. Take a big drink.”

      When she was doing it on her own, I stood and watched her hair regain its wave and shine, her face plump up again.

      Eventually she turned and gave me a little smile.

      “Better, huh?” I asked. “Do you remember your name?”

      “Fia.”

      “That’s right. And what’s my name?”

      “Um…”

      I gave her the first syllable. “Aaaa…Aaaa…”

      “Adlium?”

      “Adlia. Very good!”

      “What’s wrong with me?” The lost look on her face was enough to break your heart.

      I sat on the grass and opened my messenger bag. “I don’t know, but Kutara’s bound to figure it out. As far as I can tell, all that bitchiness just hones her intellect.”

      “That what?”

      “Biiiiitcheeeeeeness.” I sounded it out for her as I opened my journal and ripped out a page to give her. She held the paper uncertainly. “Kind of flimsy, huh?” I folded it in quarters, then handed it back along with a pen. “Here. Draw a picture or something.”

      Instead, she sat and gazed at a couple of ducks that had risen early to stake out the best sludge. Well, there were worse ways to pass the time.

      I found my place in my journal and started a new entry.

      Galan found Fia today. Is she still bonded to some land somewhere? What are we going to do with her if she doesn’t regain her memory?

      Of course, Fia wasn’t the only one with memory problems, although mine were limited to the past. Unlike every other elf I knew, I couldn’t remember my parents.

      Kutara’s best guess was that I had been orphaned at an age when most elf children still drew energy from their parents and would have died from the separation. Instead, I had apparently bonded to my dead parents’ land and spent the next couple of centuries merged with it.

      Kutara was the one who had found me, corporeal once more and clueless about my place in the world. That was about a year ago, shortly after they had gotten rid of Fellseth.

      Kutara had taught me to be an elf in the way a stern aunt would foster an unwanted relative. She wasn’t maternal and I wasn’t filial, but she felt I should have a purpose in life, and working at Elf Ops was all I knew. My crush on Galan used to pull me into the office, but any lingering feelings I had were merely irritating now that he was taken.

      Kutara had also set me the task of learning about humans, since all elves had to deal with them. I had spent the last nine months watching movies, learning to read newspapers, and observing humans. That’s when I had started keeping a journal, and I still jotted down expressions I liked and movies people talked about that sounded interesting. And then there was The List.

      I flipped to the back pages of the journal. Every other elf in the universe had some artistic talent. The List showed all the talents I didn’t have. Wood carving, ice carving, stone carving, metalworking, painting, drawing.

      Oh, sure, I had picked up drawing a little faster and better than the average human, but if that were my true ability, Mark Speranzi wouldn’t have asked if that was his picture I had drawn—he would have gasped at seeing his likeness leap off the page.

      I jiggled my pencil over the blank page and wrote, Is Mark Speranzi taken? Recently I had become obsessed with his forearms, which had the most silky, luxurious hair I had ever seen on a man. Elves didn’t have much in the way of body hair. Mark’s animal magnetism fascinated me, as did the way he seemed to invite me to laugh at the world, including myself.

      I heard scratching, and looked up to see Fia scribbling on the piece of paper I’d given her. “What are you writing, Fia?” Maybe it would give us a clue to her background.

      She held it up.

      “Oh, you’ve drawn the ducks. Very nice.” That was a feeble compliment for her sketch of a duck raising itself in the water and flapping its wings. The flying drops of water she had drawn made me want to wipe my face.

      My cell phone rang, and I saw it was Lenny. “Finally.”

      “Got your message. Are you still at the creek?”

      “Yup. I’m sitting on my favorite boulder, and do I have a present for you. A sweet, shiny girl elf!”

      “Are you talking about Fia? Kutara left a message about her. It sounds pretty sad, actually.”

      I rolled my eyes. “Of course it’s sad, but if you can’t laugh, you’d have to cry. Where were you all night, anyway?”

      “Someone must have cleaned out their garage, because I had a bunch of paint come through in the groundwater. You haven’t lived until you’ve spent all night corralling molecules into one clump.”

      “What color paint?”

      “Orange, but it’s gone now. I’ll be right there.”

      “Bye.”