Enchanted No More

All the stray molecules in the atmosphere of magic were being pulled to one source, then emanated from it, like a recycling pump…her nose and tongue and skin and scalp told her that the new magic emanating from that point was just a little richer than it had been.

Walking close to a concrete wall, she trailed her fingers. As she’d suspected, the building was soaking up magic. It was penetrating into the electrical system. Fascinating.

After skirting a winter-dry fountain, she crossed to the doors of one of the tallest buildings in Denver, hesitated as she put her hand on the door pull, which sparked energy against her palm. She suppressed fear that sparked with the magic—fear for her brother, for facing great Lightfolk who assigned missions that only caused her hideous loss.

But she had to save her brother and the Lightfolk had information and the quest was the price.

With one last deep breath, she entered the building and approached the security desk. There she showed her human ID that stated her birth date was fifty years later than it had been. She would be twenty-five for a while yet.

As the guard scanned her ID against the computer’s appointment list, Jenni studied the directory. Eight Corp was the only business on the thirty-second floor. The guard murmured “Good afternoon,” and indicated the correct elevator, not that she could have missed the bay. The magic was much stronger there.

During the elevator ride, she breathed in a calming rhythm, checked that her natural fire was banked. Losing control in these negotiations would be disastrous.

The door opened and Jenni stepped out onto moss. To humans it might look like a dark green sculpted rug, but it was true moss. Her toes wiggled in her shoes.

She faced a gray-blue marble wall that framed a large granite desk with a top-of-the-line computer system. Fountains bubbled somewhere near.

The female dwarf receptionist—dwarves traditionally guarded entrances—didn’t stand when Jenni swished in, the layers of her filmy, multicolored skirt rustling. But the receptionist gave her outfit a glance and frowned at the bright gold blouse Jenni wore, easily seen since her red leather trench coat was open.

The dwarfem’s wide nostrils flared, “Djinn and elf,” she stated, then, “half-breed human.”

Dwarves responded well to rudeness. Jenni showed her pointy incisors. She could be ill-mannered, too. She scanned the female with all her senses. “Full dwarf, ancient fem.” She didn’t meet the receptionist’s gaze. “And I am an elemental balancer.” A quality that no one else now in this world could claim. “Why would anyone choose a dwarf as a greeter?” She let the question hang. “Surely one of elven blood would be much better.” But pure elves wouldn’t see the job of greeting others as important.

The receptionist grunted, a sound like pebbles rolling down a rocky slope, then said, “My apologies, Jindesfarne Mistweaver.”

A full-blooded dwarfem apologizing to her. Things certainly had changed. Jenni curled her tongue to the bottom of her mouth, letting the taste of magic coat it. The best, finest kind of magic, all four elements in nearly equal measure.

Then the atmosphere changed and the tang on her tongue turned to honey. More elves had entered the suite. Odd to even think of elves in a modern office building…any of the Lightfolk.

“Djinnfem?” The receptionist was prompting a reply to her apology.

Jenni didn’t know the dwarfem’s name and the scrolled-and-engraved brass nameplate on the granite stated Mrs. Daurfin. Jenni snorted. No Lightfolk would ever put a real name out for anyone to see. Jenni narrowed her eyes but did the proper thing, naming the dwarfem’s heritage as she did so. “Apology accepted, Dwarfem of the Diamond clan.”

The receptionist narrowed her eyes, too. They became glinting slits of black between brownish curves of flesh. “Mistweaver, Desertshimmer, Cirruswisp,” she rumbled again, defining Jenni’s ancestry.

“I’m Jenni Weavers in the human world.”

“Please wait,” the dwarfem instructed, and gestured with a stubby hand to two semicircular groupings of furniture in the space between the elevator and the desk. Both were black and cushiony, one side was leather, the other looked like leather but was actually made from the hide of naugas.

Jenni was not early enough to sit down. They were making her wait. Her inner fire simmered. She heard the tiny clicks of multikeystrokes from a nearby room and tasted another wave of magic. With a smile, she headed for a corridor off the lobby. She found what appeared to be a smooth wall with a bespelled door behind the illusion. Jenni waved and the spell vanished.

“You can’t go in there,” snapped the dwarfem.

Jenni shrugged a shoulder, opened the door to ripe swearing of the minor Waterfolk kind. The room was long and narrow, painted a stark white that none of the eight Lightfolk and Treefolk workers would appreciate. There was a long counter holding eight computers, a mixture of desktops, laptops, tablets and pockets, according to the size of the beings.

Just in front of her was a naiader—a minor Waterfolk male—who was slender with a bluish tinge to his skin and natural spiky green hair. He stood next to a chair, shoulders hunched as he typed. A mug of hot chocolate made with real cocoa steamed on the desk as if he’d just gotten it.

Programming lines rolled across his screen.

Jenni stepped near him to look at the code on his monitor without him being aware, as he was so caught up in his own irritation. Orange symbols, magical symbols, lit the screen along with regular white human programming lines and mathematical formulas. She nearly choked on her tongue.

Magic.

And technology.

These Folk were writing spells on the computer to draw magic into…into what?

She frowned. She knew this spell, but it was an old and slow and limping one when they needed a big, gliding one to…store electricity? A magical and electrical battery?

Snared by the problem and the knowledge that she could flick it and fix it, she slid into the waterman’s—the naiader’s—seat, stared at his strange keyboard, memorized it, nudged his fingers away. She moved to the middle of the poorly constructed line, erased the spell he was trying to write and encoded a spell she’d developed and recorded in her spellbook a while back…with a shorter, elegant twist that came to mind. Now this spell would do what they’d intended better than the one that had been on the screen.

There was a wet sucking of breath. “Damned djinn,” the guy muttered. “Whole project is fire, electricity, why did it have to be djinn? Fluidity should be the key. Flexibility.” He squatted and bumped her hip with enough force that she had to stand or fall. He took his chair, brows down, staring at the screen. Then his fingers flew to the end of the spell as his mind engaged and he began writing code.

“I’m plenty flexible, and you’re welcome,” Jenni said.

He stuck out his lower lip. “Irritating.”

She studied the rest of the full-blooded Lightfolk in the computer room. They lounged, watching her, like a tableau of the beauty of the Folk.

There was the water naiader that she’d displaced, a Treefolk dryad with a tinge of green in her skin and her body encased in a black fake-leather catsuit, a dwarf with a heavy scowl and long beard that marked him as one of the older generations—what was he doing here? At the end was a small red fire sprite perched on the ledge of a monitor, wearing a merry grin. He-she winked at Jenni, but remained stationary.

“Jindesfarne, we did not bring you here for your computing skills,” Aric said coolly from the open doorway.

At the sight of him, Jenni felt a melting inside. That didn’t stop her hair from lifting in individual shafts as her aggravation transmuted into static electricity.

“Dampen spell!” The naiader flung his arms wide, scowled at Jenni, his face beading with drops of distress. “That’s why I hate djinn. Should know better than to release static electricity around all these computers.”

She did, but she wouldn’t apologize. “I’m excellent with computers, and I know a little something about business ergonomics, too.” She looked down at the computer counter. “This is a pitiful working space.”

The tree dryad perked up.

Aric’s brows lowered. The dwarfem receptionist, half his height but nearly as broad, joined him, tapping her foot.

“Everyone should have individual spaces,” Jenni said.

“Rounds and semiround rooms,” breathed the dryad.

Jenni cast her a sympathetic look. “Or cubes, and those of like elements grouped together, or those working on congruent inquiries—”

“Enough.” Aric glanced down at the receptionist. “Please note what Jindesfarne Mistweaver advised.”

A rock pad and a tiny chisel appeared in the dwarfem’s hands. She scritched on it, glaring at Jenni. “You’re keeping the Air King waiting,” she said, “and I’ll tell him a lot.” She showed red pointed teeth before marching back to her desk.

“Du-u-ude,” breathed the water naiader, his round eyes getting wider and more orblike, staring at her. He must be a baby…born in the last thirty years or so.

The palm-sized red fire sprite whizzed to Jenni, buried itself in her hair. “Ver-ry fun plac-s-s-se,” it hissed. “Glad to s-see you, Mis-stweaver energy balanc-ser. You s-smell fine.” It nuzzled her head, nipped her ear, took off to prance along the top of watery guy’s monitor.

Aric prompted again, “Jindesfarne.”