innocuous words. Jenni petted Chinook, rubbing her head, as she always did. “I’ll be back.” Usually when she was going on a trip she would tell Chinook the length—five days, a week. “As soon as I can.”
She bent down and kissed Chinook between the ears. “I love you.” Always the last thing her family said to each other before going anywhere. I love you.
There was a slight shifting in the atmosphere, then Aric knocked at the front door and was admitted to her space. Jenni slipped into her wool coat, shouldered on the pack, lifted the tapestry bag and walked downstairs.
He stood in the entryway and looked up. Pain seemed to flash over his features before his expression became impassive again.
“You don’t have any bags?”
He shrugged. “We won’t be in Northumberland long today, then we’ll go to the Earth Palace where I have rooms.” He seemed to close in on himself. “Warriors travel light. Ready?” he asked. He held out a hand for her again. Another step from the mortal world into the Lightfolk and Jenni knew it. She took his warm hand.
A soft “hmm” came and Jenni turned to see Hartha and Pred standing together in the arch from the entryway to the living room.
More emotion flashed through Jenni. She wanted to bend down and hug them both, but something in their manner prevented it. So she nodded to them. “Thank you for taking care of Chinook and the house.”
“We are honored,” Hartha said in a muffled tone.
Aric opened the door and she left with him. The sound of the door shutting and the locks being flipped were metallic clicks of her old life ending.
They walked to the round park in the center of the cul-de-sac. Then he stepped into a pine not wide enough for him and pulled her after.
There was the smell of resin and the harsh caress of bark. Jenni didn’t know how the trees—and the dryad’s homes—were larger on the inside than the outside. Some sort of inner space that the Treefolk called greenspace or greenhome, just as the Mistweavers had called the misty place the interdimension.
Greenspace was still on Earth—if you considered living in the spaces between atoms as solid reality. Jenni just accepted it as magic.
So they went through the tree into the greenspace and Jenni caught a brief glimpse of a dryad’s living room. Aric angled his body and there was a whooshing sound and a feeling of rushing.
They stepped out of the ring of beeches in the patch of forest and into a gray, early afternoon. Before them was the long, low house against the hill, and Jenni’s heart lurched into her throat. Her eyes stung. She hadn’t seen her childhood home for over fifteen years. It was so dear.
For a few seconds, she couldn’t get her feet to move, she just stood and stared at the two-story house of gray stone, long side facing her and two wings on each side angled back toward the hill, forming a small courtyard in the back. A courtyard where the family spent most of their time, usually noisy with their talk and shouts.
She found wetness on her cheeks. Not tears, rain. She shivered. The day was cold and wet and she wasn’t used to the humidity of a relatively near ocean. Now she lived in the middle of a huge continent. The air wasn’t as thin as a mile high, either. Clamminess coated her skin, tightened her hair until she thought she could hear a twang as individual strands curled.
The breath she dragged in was thick and the damp seeped into her skin until she shivered again. So different than Denver, this humid cold, this dense air. How had her half-djinn mother and her half-elf father and all her brothers and sisters managed?
Because it had been home, and was in a land steeped in magic, richer and more ancient than that of Denver, a mixture of Lightfolk races who had lived there for centuries and worked magic.
Aric’s fingers touched the small of her back as she shivered again. “I’m here with you. Let’s go in.” She thought she heard him gulp, but disregarded that notion because the smooth, in-control guy 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
