Enchanted No More. Robin D. Owens

She shivered. Chinook mewed again and Jenni tore her gaze from downtown.

      She was here to find her brother. She swallowed hard.

      The Lightfolk believed Rothly was lost in the gray mist of the interdimension.

      How long? A person died after a period of time…Jenni wasn’t sure of the length. But she wasn’t the scholar of the family. Another reason to return to Northumberland, for information.

      Since she’d never spent more than forty-five minutes in the mist, the time it took to die had seemed long to her as a youngster. Now she thought it was under three months. How long had Rothly been gone? She’d been too angry, too frightened for her brother, to ask the right questions.

      Maybe she could sense him. She wouldn’t be able to see him, or move in the mist without becoming lost, but she might know.

      She hoped. A lot of hoping and praying going on. As usual when involved with the great Lightfolk.

      She wanted to save him more than anything else in her life.

      He’d be the only other person in the mist.

      She sent her energy probing through the interdimension, searching, searching. There! Somewhere, north? Northwest? Geographically she couldn’t tell…but there was a pulsing human-and-Lightfolk-elf-djinn aura… Rothly.

      If she stilled enough, breathed shallowly, she could feel the faintest touch of his fractured energy against her skin.

      She closed her eyes, and visualized an image from the sensations she felt. His aura was damaged—his magic didn’t envelop him evenly. It was ragged, uneven, with a couple of splintered spots.

      A sound broke from her, a keening in this silent place. She couldn’t tell how far it echoed, how long.

      His aura pulsed slowly, too slowly, like he was dying. Trapped in the interdimension without the magic to save himself.

      How could she find him and retrieve him? Love poured from her toward him and she thought his aura throbbed slightly stronger. How aware was he? She waited but he said nothing, not mind-to-mind, not aloud.

      “Rothly!” she screamed. Still nothing, not even a flinch. She thought he’d have moved, yelled, cursed if he were conscious.

      She didn’t know enough about this deadly dimension, would have to research family records to save him. But she’d have to be where he was to haul him out.

      Shivers ran through her. She couldn’t bear this. Bad enough that only one of her family had survived the battle. Horrible that he’d been maimed. Worst of all that he’d condemned her as she had blamed herself, bitterly lashed out and cut her guilt deep.

      She couldn’t lose him. Not the very last of her family. She must save him.

      Then she sensed something else around him. A flickering, fluttering blip. How could that be?

      Jenni’s breath stopped as the thing, some other magical being—a shadleech?—swarmed around Rothly, blocking his aura, hung on him batlike. It was here in the interdimension. It—perhaps more than one initially—had trapped him as much as his own crippled power. The shadleech sucked away his magical energy.

      Worry gnawed on her like the shadleech on Rothly. She must find out exactly when he’d entered the mist, started so ill-fated a mission. Find him!

      She lifted her foot. Another mew and a tug from Chinook, Jenni’s tiny anchor, reminding her that she didn’t dare step away from the place she’d entered.

      Time to leave the interdimension, search and find where Rothly had entered the gray mist. Haul him out.

      Hope she could save him and not die herself.

      CHAPTER 4

      JENNI DREW IN A BREATH, STICKY WITH THE strange misty atmosphere of the interdimension, said the spell to leave. Her limbs trembled and her legs gave out and she stumbled until she fell onto the soft bed. She shook not only from the exertion, but also from fear for Rothly.

      Fear for herself, too. She couldn’t save Rothly herself, needed to have the help of the Lightfolk to battle the shadleeches. The last time she’d trusted the Lightfolk her whole family had died.

      Chinook hopped onto the bed and settled onto her stomach and it was even harder to breathe.

      There was a knock on the door.

      “Come in, Hartha.” Holding Chinook, Jenni panted as she scooted up against the headboard.

      The brownie woman set a laptop tray of thick and hearty stew before her. There was more herbal tea, the stuff to build up her energy.

      “You weren’t gone long,” Hartha said, some curiosity in her voice. “Less than a quarter hour.”

      “Long enough,” Jenni said. There was fresh bread and not from the local deli. Hartha had baked it the night before. Fresh sweet cream butter that didn’t come from the cheese shop. More and more the magical way of doing things was overtaking the human customs Jenni’d lived by for so long.

      “We have thought how to repay you for all your kindnesses. We know you want a sunroom and will add one to the house when you are gone,” Hartha said.

      Jenni stared, thought of all the permits, shrugged. The sunroom might very well go up overnight. When they noticed, none of her neighbors would say anything to the authorities. People with magic gravitated to Mystic Circle. Not that she’d ever spoken openly about magic or magical heritages with her neighbors. “Sure.” She cleared her throat, did a half bow. “Thank you.”

      It took Jenni the rest of the morning to arrange for time off and the journey—first to save Rothly, then to complete the mission for the Lightfolk.

      She told the game developers she worked for that she was going on a research trip for the next big expansion issue that they were designing and that would go live in the autumn. She also suggested the idea of including flying horses as optional mounts for players. That made the devs dither enough about the work it would take that they’d be glad she was gone.

      The brownies and she discussed her mission and she drew up documents, then she inspected the house from attic to basement. The squirrel holes in the attic were gone, the eaves repaired. In the basement she found that her half crawl space was no longer “half.” There was a new and suspicious-looking polished wood door set in the wall fronting the cul-de-sac.

      Jenni decided not to dress in a professional suit; instead she tried an arty look for her appointment with the Lightfolk, feeling more comfortable. Feeling like she might be able to hold her own.

      She finally finished the espresso from the coffee shop just before she hopped the bus to downtown. She could transport herself magically with great effort, but she sure wouldn’t be able to handle a meeting with manipulative Lightfolk afterward and she wanted all her wits as keen as an elven blade.

      As the bus wove the five miles into downtown Denver, the sky darkened from the crystalline blue of bitter cold to thick clouds of bruised gray. Humidity spread through the air with the taste of snow and Jenni shivered. Wet cold sank into her like nothing else.

      She disembarked with many others in LoDo, lower downtown, at the stop for the free Sixteenth Street mall shuttle toward the business district and the Capitol.

      “Got any change, lady?” Coins rattled in a paper cup. Jenni glanced at the guy, her hand dipping into her red trench-coat pocket, pulling out change. She swallowed hard. He was…grotesque, with disproportional head and limbs, growths on his face and hands, a yellowish bad-kidney tinge to his skin. The scent of stale bubblegum rose from him.

      She shouldn’t stare, but couldn’t help herself. He grinned a broken-and-missing-toothed smile and Jenni’s fingers opened, dropping coins. He caught them deftly with his cup. People streamed around her.

      Jindesfarne. It was less the audible sound of her name than a feeling, not quite a mental touch on her mind. Not from the homeless