Enchanted Ever After. Robin D. Owens

want that new job so remember you promised me you’d go to your block party tomorrow and meet Jenni Weavers. Don’t duck out of it! And, no, I can’t make it, Averill has a family thing. Tell us all the deets Sunday brunch. Smooches!”

      Kiri’s smile faded. She always liked backup when entering a new social situation. She squared her shoulders. Much as she might want to, she wouldn’t skip the party. It was important on two levels—really interacting with her neighbors and meeting Jenni Weavers, Kiri’s heroine.

      Her gaze went to her computer set up in the bump of the side bay window. She’d stay out of the game, Fairies and Dragons, tonight—sometimes the game beckoned more than reality. And once you began spending more time in the game than anywhere else, you were in trouble. Not in control.

      She sighed. Her living room was bare—she had a lot of house and not much of anything else, like furniture.

      But quiet and peaceful. Her shoulders relaxed more than just from the release of the bag’s weight.

      A soft golden sunset slanted through the window. The smack of an early autumn had already swatted summer evenings gone for the year, but there was still enough light to walk around the cul-de-sac, Mystic Circle, to wind down from work. Get the kinks out. She was at the age, twenty-six, where she considered how wide her ass would spread if she stayed in a chair all day long every day.

      And she’d check on the fabulous koi in the center park’s pond.

      She’d recently moved from concrete and asphalt near Capitol Hill and the beautiful fish captivated her. With a smile, she slipped back out into the cool evening.

      Hers was the first house of the cul-de-sac, Mystic Circle number one, located on the southeastern corner. The craftsman bungalow was the smallest home and slightly more than she could afford. But, if she could land that new job, maybe... She wanted to love her work. To live her job, not do it.

      Like much of Denver, the homes in Mystic Circle were a variety of styles, each house different. She’d passed the small house named “Fanciful,” the Spanish-influence two-story with orange-tiled roof; the redbrick four-square with the many window-paned porch and neared the top of the Circle and the Castle. She walked quickly, the day dying faster than she’d anticipated with thick gray clouds blocking the sun.

      A movement caught her eye and she glanced toward the round center park.

      The first thing she noticed about the pale man with the pale hair was that he was tall. The next was that he had pointed ears...like a Vulcan...or an elf...and a certain shimmer like a famous vampire.

      Halloween was a month and a half away.

      He stepped from the shadows of the tall pine, almost as if he’d come from the pond, but there was no splashing.

      “Kiri Palger?”

      How did he know her name? She hadn’t seen him before, and though she hadn’t met all her neighbors, she knew them by sight.

      Kiri scanned the area. No one was around. Mystic Circle was safe, but... He didn’t live here and he’d been lurking in the dark shadows of the park. She backed up to the far edge of the sidewalk. No help from the Castle residents—the owners were never home.

      “I was told to approach you tomorrow, but since you’re here tonight...” He shrugged elegant shoulders under a thick capelike coat.

      Not overly broad shoulders, a runner’s body. And not threatening, but she’d moved from a rather dangerous neighborhood and was wary.

      Should she yell? The houses were old and nearly soundproof. There were lights in several of the homes, and if she zoomed... But the guy had a runner’s musculature. She didn’t think she could beat him.

      “Pardon me.” He dipped a hand in his pants pocket. When he brought it out—something funny about his hand, too, like he might have more joints than the norm or more flexible bones—he held out a card. “I’m with Eight Corp. Human resources.”

      He put an odd spin on “human.” Had some sort of soft, lilting accent she couldn’t place.

      “Eight Corp,” she murmured. The parent company of the game Fairies and Dragons, where she’d applied for the job she yearned for, to create new stories for the game.

      He turned his body so he looked at the two-story redbrick Denver square where Jenni Weavers lived. “Jindesfarne Mistweaver Emberdrake will vouch for me.”

      Again the unfamiliar accent.

      Jindesfarne Mistweaver Emberdrake? Kiri slid her glance to the house he’d indicated. Jenni Weavers’s house. Did he really know Jenni? Kiri had never heard the “Jindesfarne” bit.

      Day had gone, darkness was falling. She wanted that perfect job badly, that career. She wanted to love her work.

      But his hands were in his pockets now and the card seemed to be floating in midair. He puffed a breath and it drifted toward her.

      She blinked and blinked again and the evening was just dark enough that she wasn’t sure she saw what she’d seen. She hadn’t been in the game; this shouldn’t be a game, but reality...but...

      One too many too weird items. Kiri whirled and trotted home, her feet slapping concrete, her breathing ragged. She hopped up the stairs to the porch. Sticking the key and key card in the slots, she swept through the door of her home, slammed the door. She stood sucking in breaths in the entryway on smoothly finished honey-colored wood floor. Walls safe around her.

      He hadn’t tried to stop her. Might even still be where she left him. She wasn’t going to look.

      Instead, she yanked on the cord that drew the thick burgundy curtains over the front window and hustled past the bay window bump with her home office setup and into the tiny bedroom. Safe.

      The man had been too fascinating—compelling—and he was so not her type, urbane and with the runner’s body. She liked men burlier. Overtly muscular. No, this man wasn’t what she wanted. Really.

      He said he was from Eight Corp. The company that was looking for a story developer and writer for Fairies and Dragons. Everything she’d ever wanted. She sniffed, realized her nostrils were straining to get the last whiff of the guy’s scent. A fragrance she couldn’t pin down, just like all the rest of him. Sweetly musky? With a faint sharp tang? His skin had seemed to shimmer. That couldn’t be good.

      Would she really see him tomorrow?

      * * *

      Lathyr Tricurrent watched Kiri Palger hurry back into her home. She seemed odd even for a human, the waves of her personal field resonating in ways that he recognized—Kiri had a potential for magic.

      It was that potential vibrating around her, bending the light into tiny rainbows enveloping her, that had drawn him out.

      He’d underestimated the charm of this place and of Kiri herself.

      In the spring, more magic had graced the world and much had changed for the Lightfolk. Lathyr was one of those who had begun to experience new powers. And the Meld—merging magic and human technology—had rapidly increased.

      Some humans could actually become Lightfolk, transform into magical elemental beings.

      Lathyr was one of those who could sense such potential in certain humans—his new talent. He’d been unsure whether to be pleased with this or not.

      He was not quite a full Merfolk; there was the slightest trace of elf in his background, enough to give him a point to his ears.

      And the highest Lightfolk did not value anyone who wasn’t pure Lightfolk—or purely of one element. He’d been abandoned by his mother, no family claimed him, he had no home. He’d mostly lived on sufferance as a servant at the royal palaces or a guest of lower nobles, forced to be a drifter, and he hated it.

      He could never reach the highest status, or even be awarded a tiny estate by the eight who controlled all the true domiciles under the ocean. He wanted a home of his