hall was full of silent squares of closed white doors, except one. The door to her parents’ room was open and Aric stood as if frozen outside it. She thought she saw a silver glinting line on his cheek.
“What are you doing here?” She’d wanted her voice to be strong, to snap, but it was barely a whisper disturbing the silence.
“I never got to say goodbye to them, either.” Aric’s words fell stark.
Something inside Jenni just shattered, tearing her patchwork heart back into bits. A liquid cry escaped her, she staggered back and hit the wall and slid down it, dropped her pack as she curled into herself, and wept. Wept like she hadn’t since her family had died.
Before she knew it, Aric sat beside her, gathered her into his arms, next to his warm chest, holding her, shaking himself.
They were my good friends, too, all of them, and I didn’t get to say goodbye, he said mentally.
Guilt ate at Jenni in fat, greedy, bloody bites. She sobbed, but managed a coherent thought or two aimed at her former lover, who had failed, also. I was too late to save them. Finally, finally she could expose the depth of her guilt. They all left an hour and a half before the circle dance to open the portal, early, like I was supposed to do. But I stayed with you.
CHAPTER 7
ARIC SHUDDERED. “AND WE MADE LOVE AND the Lightfolk moved up the ceremony to open the portal and the Darkfolk attacked.”
“I sh-sh-should have b-been th-ere.” Jenni spoke through wet gulps.
“If you had been there—if we had been there—we would be dead, too. You would have stepped from the misty interdimension when your mother, the anchor for the great spell, was killed, just like the rest of your family. Instead we arrived after the first fighting, and you had the chance to help Rothly keep the balance of elements, contain the uneven powers so that we all didn’t perish.”
Aric paused and stroked her hair. “I thought of what you said yesterday. You were right. If you and Rothly hadn’t managed all the elemental magic your family had summoned, the portal would have collapsed. The older two couples wouldn’t have made it through to their new world. If the dimensional portal had become unstable, it would have killed many. If you Mistweavers hadn’t taken the time to dismiss the elemental energies your family had gathered, they would have killed us.” His inhalation was audible. “I reminded Cloudsylph of that after you…left.”
Some of the guilt she’d punished herself with for so long had leaked away with her tears.
Aric shifted and rubbed his chin on the top of her head and new tears welled. They’d sat like this before and it felt too damn good. His tone was softer when he continued. “Those of us fighting didn’t see you and Rothly working so hard, doing such dangerous duty in the gray mist. We didn’t think of how our lives were in your hands. The Air King realized that, so did the others of the Eight. Eight Corp has transferred five million dollars to your account.”
Jenni yelled in outrage, tried to pull away from Aric’s embrace. “You think I care about money! We didn’t do the mission for money.” She thrashed, but Aric set his large hands on her biceps and rose with her.
“No, I knew your family didn’t accept the mission for money.”
“They—we—they only wanted to be respected in the Lightfolk community. Half-breeds aren’t.”
Aric flinched. “They weren’t. Now that Eight Corp has been established and the Lightfolk are moving more into the human community, able to merge magic and technology, you are more valued, I promise you.”
“Huh.” Once again Jenni pulled away and this time Aric let her go. She pulled a tissue from a wad in her coat pocket, wiped her face and blew her nose.
A distant roll of thunder sounded through the window, a brief flash of lightning illuminated the hall. It looked just as she had remembered except it was dustier. And she’d never remembered it dim. The overhead lights had always been on, doors had remained open with cheery yellow light pouring from the rooms.
Cold and wet and dark and late winter in Northumberland—winter had always been outside the house but not inside, where warmth and laughter and family filled the rooms.
How long had Rothly lived in this dim silence? Enough to feed bitterness.
Jenni walked unsteadily toward her parents’ door, the only one open, bracing herself with every quiet footfall. One pace away, she hauled breath into her body and stepped from dark shadow into gray light, pivoted to look into the large room that should have gleamed warm wood and rosy chintz.
It was blue and gray with shadows and dust. Pain caught and strangled in her chest, along with breath and voice.
Aric put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Then he entered the room and marched through the thick layers of dust, his face set. When he reached the bureau against the wall and the many tarnished-silver framed photos he stood, hands fisted at his side. A fine tremor shivered up his body and pain flashed across his features. Then he scooped up two pictures, turned, scuffing gray globules of dust, and returned to the threshold where Jenni hovered, breathing shallowly.
As she’d watched him, she’d become aware of a scent…not just her mother’s fragrance of heat and perfume, but the air element that her father had mastered held his scent—and the smell of them together. Parents. Love. Home. She barely saw Aric through renewed tears.
“Here.” He handed her a frame crusty with grime, and she glanced down to see a photograph of the whole family—all her sisters and brothers and her parents. It had been taken a year before she’d lost them.
In the picture, Jenni sat cross-legged on the floor between her sisters, her arms around them, grinning cheekily. Her parents sat on a plump love seat behind them, her mother’s head tilted against her father’s shoulder, obviously both loving and beloved. Rothly lounged against the right arm of the love seat, lanky as he’d reached his final inches. Her second brother, Stewart, leaned against the left arm in a mimicking pose. Her oldest brother stood behind her parents. Lohr had looked the most like their father, the half elf. His smile was shy and proud.
Jenni clutched the picture to her chest, wailing breaths pounded her body. Again Aric was there, arm curving around her, gently moving her down the hall. They passed doors on the right and left that belonged to her siblings—rooms that Jenni was glad were closed. She yearned to open them, but knew the pain would be beyond bearing.
They stopped at the landing, and Aric pressed her to descend, but she balked.
“Come, Jenni, enough of memories. We have work to do. We must find Rothly’s notes.” Aric had tucked his photograph into a large pocket that had appeared in his coat, then vanished.
“No.” She pivoted in the circle of his arm and paced away to the door at the far end of the hall and the little room—the smallest in the house, as she’d been the youngest—and stood there. She steadied her breath and her emotions, once again groped for the mass of tissues that Hartha had put in her coat pocket. Foresightful brownie.
After cleaning herself up again, she stared at the door. “I need to do this,” she said in a cloggy voice. “H-he— Rothly—threw silver and salt at me.”
“At us, and he was wrong.” Aric laid his arm once again
