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Chapter Seventeen

I think we all said, “What?” at the exact same time and all with about the same level of disbelief.

“I am not a magic user, I have never been a magic user, and I will never be a magic user. I’m a magic sink. Most magic won’t even work on me, let alone let me use it.” I took the cup of tea Harlan handed me. “You know that, Alric.”

“I thought I knew that. But then I thought you had somehow found a way around it, or a talisman, or a spell that enabled you to fight on that level magically.” I didn’t like the look of worry now marring those emerald green eyes. “That person in the ruins just now was picking up on something, and it certainly wasn’t me.”

I shoved aside the terror that hit me at that thought. I really didn’t want someone who could flambé people in an instant thinking I was any sort of threat—magical or otherwise. “I think I would have known if I’d suddenly gained magical powers. I figured it was you during the battle. Well, at first we thought it was whisky. But I’ve tried it twice since then, the same brand, same type. It didn’t do anything.” There was no reason for Alric to lie now about running magic through me nor about the attention a deranged magic user may or may not have had in me. I was already pissed off at him for far more things, and one more wouldn’t hurt.

“Unfortunately since we don’t have any magic users handy, ascertaining Taryn’s magical status will have to wait.” Covey said with a gleam in her eye. She was waiting now, but I was going to have to watch her. There would be a full scientific inquiry down the line.

Harlan settled into the sofa as well and then everyone looked at me. I was glad the debate of my magic-less status was tabled right now, but that didn’t mean I needed to jump into another mess.

“What? Why am I the one who has to go first? I didn’t start this you know. Harlan and Covey were doing research, Alric was doing something sneaky and probably unscrupulous, and I was the only one not doing anything other than living my life.” They had to stop pulling me into these things. The only thing I had gotten involved with of my own accord as of late was that damned troll who tried to bust up Foxy. And I’d had no time to find out anything about that. Wait….

“Are any of you involved with a mountain troll, a treeless dryad, or an attack on the Shimmering Dewdrop?”

Harlan and Covey both shook their heads.

“Ah, the attack on Foxmorton’s new love,” Alric said. “I’m afraid aside from being there during the attack, I haven’t been involved. I was only there to try to talk to you. I’d never seen the troll before, nor the dryad.” He cocked his head. “But the man with the crossbow was this other elf you spoke of, right? I had figured he was wearing a disguise of some sort.”

Considering how close I’d gotten to Glorinal, I’d say it wasn’t a disguise. “I think I’d notice. Unless there are other races who have as much magic as a sneaky elven lord, I’d say he probably is what he appears to be.”

“Another elf? There are two in Beccia and no one told me?” Covey shared her glare equally with the entire room.

I looked over at Alric. “I think there might be three, right, Alric?”

Alric’s facial reaction told me all I needed to know. He knew that cloaked person at my dig site had been an elf, and a high-level magic user at that. But he wasn’t happy about admitting it.

Even Harlan started sputtering now. “A third? Where? When? Is he like Alric? Or is it a she? Oh, that would be quite wonderful, an elf woman to study.” He became so animated that his tea started sloshing out of his cup.

Alric scowled at me. “We don’t know for sure it was an elf. But it was definitely male judging by the voice. And even if it was an elf, how do we know it wasn’t your friend, Glorinal? He just got to town; you don’t know anything about him.”

“What a lovely, traditional elven name. I must meet him.” Covey nodded into her tea. She was still avoiding looking directly at Alric, perhaps she thought a regular elf would be easier to deal with.

“The second elf not only has a fine name, he’s had a date with our Taryn.” Harlan sounded so smug I wanted to punch him.

“Almost had a date. Last night. Until somebody came in and dragged me away from a wonderful evening and into this mess.” Which reminded me, I needed to try and be at the pub early tonight. We hadn’t set anything up because we thought Qianru had called me in to work, but after all of this crap, I needed a nice night out with a handsome and charming man.

“And no,” I turned toward Alric, “I do not think that murdering maniac in the ruins was Glorinal. I would have recognized his voice and he’s the type of elf who saves total strangers, not flambés employees.”

Alric’s laugh wasn’t friendly, nor was it meant to be. “He’s a magic user. All elves are magic users. Even if he’s a mixed breed, he probably has some magic. He could easily disguise his voice. And even without magic he could change how he sounds.” The last line was said with a much lower voice, one that sounded nothing like Alric.

“Fine, he could have disguised his voice. But he didn’t. I can tell. I’m a good judge of character.” I refrained from bringing up my track record with Marcos actually being the jinn brothers and Alric being an elven lord. I waited for him to bring it up, but he just shook his head and went back to his tea.

“I think someone needs to explain what happened in the ruins and this third elf.” Harlan dragged us back into the subject at hand.

“Second,” Alric just said it loud enough to be heard by me.

I ignored him. Glorinal wasn’t from Alric’s odd and reclusive homeland and that alone made him better than Alric. And I knew he wasn’t the elf we just saw, I knew it. His eyes were too kind, too honest. I briefly covered what we’d seen and heard at the dig site. This involved a lot of stopping and explaining to Covey since she was behind on all the newest happenings with chimeras, sceanra anam, and self-contained burning trees and people.

By the end everyone was caught up as much as they could be, although none of them had any helpful information about the attack on Amara, nor any information about her. But all agreed that a treeless dryad was almost as unique as chimeras popping out of the ground. Covey sided with me—that the mysteriously cloaked killer elf was most likely not Glorinal—while Harlan switched sides and now decided Glorinal had a shifty look and an ill-favored demeanor.

“What possible reason could he have had to save Amara and probably a fair number of people in that pub, including me, if he was some rampaging psychopath?”

Alric looked at me and shrugged. “Psychopaths don’t need reasons. And am I the only one who thinks it’s a bit suspicious that he showed up in town just in time to stop the troll? Someone who had recently come to town, as well?”

I got to my feet. “You know, I think we need to find out more about him, and I am just the girl to do it. And if we’re talking coincidence, what about you arriving in the pub the same time as a killer troll? Was he part of your plan?”

A pounding on the door saved Alric from having to answer. It repeated three more times before I made it to the door and flung it open—after checking to make sure that Alric had his cloak on and Harlan was ushering him into his bedroom.

A group of five guardsmen stood there in tight array behind their captain, a surly-looking man with one of those very pretentious mustaches that curled up at the ends almost to his eyes.

“We’re looking for one Harlan Clocksetter.” The captain sounded bored, so I figured Harlan hadn’t done anything too bad—the guards got very excited when they got to haul in the serious offenders.

“I’m sorry, but he’s not—”

“I’m here, I’m here,” Harlan came rushing out waving his hands but without Alric. “I told you to use my other name, Sny Snigglethorpe. Not my real one.”

The captain shrugged and the rest of the guards all relaxed their posture. “Sorry, boss, it’s what’s on our checks, I gots confused.”

Now he was sounding like a dock worker from the lower east river. Which he didn’t sound like a minute before. And although he was big and burly, his hands looked too soft to be a guardsman, dock worker, or even a decent thug.

I let out the breath I’d been holding when I first saw the guards. I told myself it wasn’t that I was concerned about Alric being taken in, I was concerned with them grabbing me as well. If I kept telling myself that, eventually I’d believe it.

“Actors.” I wasn’t asking a question, but simply stating the obvious. They took it as a compliment.

“Why yes we are, m’lady. A small troop working the boards for our daily meal.” The captain now sounded like a dandy from the highest part of The Hill and he dipped into an impressive, knee-torturing bow.

“No, no, no.” Harlan looked around outside, then pulled all of the guards into my incredibly crowded living room. “You can’t let people know you’re actors—no funny accents, no bows, nothing. You are guardsmen, pure and simple. And who am I again?”

All but the captain said, “Harlan Clocksetter”. The captain said “Sly Snaggletooth”. I almost doubled over laughing.

“Where did you find them? They are hilarious.”

“Never you mind.” Harlan gave me an evil glare that would have scared anyone far more than his fake guardsmen would. “They’ll do fine. Now, report.”

“We tailed the suspect, sir. He vanished into the woods with some friends, then we lost him.”

Harlan dropped his chin down to his chest and took a few deep breaths through his nose. “Friends? Was he perhaps being carried, dragged, or strong-armed?”

The captain nodded. “Aye that would be the right of it. They were such good friends they were carrying him between them.” He leaned forward. “I’m thinking he had too much to drink.”

Harlan muttered a few words into his chest, then finally looked up. “Or he was being kidnapped?”

The captain pursed his lips and turned to his fellows. They all shrugged and nodded. “Aye, that could be the better truth of the situation. As in the long play, The Widow Sleeps in Twilight, the great bard once said—”

“I don’t care about the play. I don’t care how many rave reviews your adaptations got.” Harlan wasn’t yelling yet, but he was a lot closer than I’d seen him in a while. “You’re telling me that you, all of you, never once thought the man in question was not there of his own free will?”

I was trying so hard not to laugh that I went off to the kitchen. Harlan still hadn’t made food, but I could scrounge some, and if I stayed out in the living room any longer, I was going to start laughing.

Covey obviously feared the same thing as she followed me out a minute later.

“Did you know about this?” I waved a chunk of bread at the comedy show taking place in my living room.

“Not at all.” She took a slice for herself, added a huge chunk of cheese, and savagely bit into it. She wasn’t angry, she always ate aggressively, something left over from her predator ancestors. “I was just working with him on the artifacts.”

We watched the spectacle for a few moments, then she put down what was left of her food and turned to me. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

She could have pushed me over with a feather. Covey didn’t make it a habit to apologize. She hated doing it so she endeavored to simply always be right.

“I hated watching you like that. I thought it was my fault.” Which was the honest truth. I’d felt awful that me, Alric, and that stupid glass gargoyle had done that to her.

She gave a small squeal and enveloped me in a huge hug. That was another thing she didn’t do much. Like never. “I am so sorry. I did have some problems initially. The week after the battle was a difficult one. I don’t recall much, and the nuns told me I was little more than an animal. But then I came back. Harlan told me about his theories, about The Hill, and you.”

I rubbed the space between my brows. I wasn’t angry with her anymore, just annoyed at all that unnecessary worry.

“Where’s Harlan?” Alric hissed from the edge of the hallway leading to the bedrooms. He was still cloaked but staying out of sight from the fake guards. He had something closed tight in his hand, but it was small enough that I couldn’t see what it was. “I need to talk to him now.”

Harlan was getting into a very flamboyant fight with his hired guards at the moment.

“He’s busy talking about your friends who helped you into the woods the other day,” I hissed back. It dawned on me while it most certainly was Alric they had been tailing, he’d been kidnapped a lot lately, and I wasn’t sure which time.

“I need him. Now.” Alric looked really freaked out, which in turn freaked me out. Covey still wasn’t looking directly at him so she wasn’t freaked out yet.

“Can you go ask Harlan to send away his friends and come here?” I asked her to go since Harlan would freak out about my unease and those wacky actors might pick up on that.

Covey cocked her head, and I waited for her to question my actions. But then she nodded and went to help kick the actors out. I stayed on guard and kept a solid glare up on Alric. Whatever he had in his hand was something he found either in my room or Harlan’s belongings. Neither of which made me happy.

Chapter Eighteen

Alric barely waited until the door shut behind the last thespian before he barged into the living room. “We have a serious problem. These. Where did you find them, Harlan?”

He opened the fist he’d been keeping clenched, and I started swearing. “Those are my shards.” Some of them anyway—he only had about three of the smaller pieces and they were wrapped in a neck cloth.

I turned my glare from Alric to Harlan. “What were you doing with them?” I hadn’t shown them to Harlan yet because I wanted to do my own investigation on them first.

“Well, I noticed they were out when you left this morning and I thought they might be important….” He let his story drop as he got a good look at my face. “Fine, I went looking and I found them. They weren’t hidden very well, tucked under your laundry pile as they were.”

Tucked under what? That damn laundry pile had been sitting there, give or take a few inches, for the last week. It’s only real movement was to get larger. I’d hidden my shards in a false panel drawer in my headboard.

“Were there more?” I knew I had more than that, but who knew how many Harlan had found.

Harlan peered closely into Alric’s hand and shook his head. “No, that looks like all of them.”

Alric caught the emphasis in my question. “But not all that you found, are they?”

“No.” I sighed. “I found them at the holes where the chimeras came out. The same place you found the one in your pocket.” I didn’t know why he was upset about the ones I had when he had found one, too.

“These are different than the one I found. They have a magical charge that even
I
can feel.” Alric looked in his hand as if he was fascinated and repulsed at the same time.

“I think I know what they are. There was mention concerning shards of power in one of the scrolls.” Covey looked at the shards in his hand but didn’t touch them. Instead she went to the kitchen and got a glass jar, then came back and dumped Alric’s shards into it. “I don’t know exactly what they are, or what they do, but the scroll we were reading indicated danger. Although, they look small for what was described.”

“How did you access the university’s archives when you were supposed to be in a nunnery?” Yes, dangerous shards were more important, but I was still trying to mentally get around how sneaky my normally forthright friend had been.

Harlan looked up from his study of the non-moving shards in the glass jar and waved a hand at me. “I got them. I marched right in and requested them and they knew better than to argue with an archeologist of my stature.”

“You stole them didn’t you?” Great, on top of everything else—including hiding a wanted elven lord—I was now connected to a major theft.

“Now, that is a harsh word,” he said as he glanced around the room. “I prefer borrowed. I will give them back after all.”

Covey took a deep breath and I could tell she was checking her responses before she exploded. The old Covey would have just exploded and demanded he take them back. She wasn’t against stealing for a good cause if needed, but stealing from the university was akin to stealing from her, even if it was
for
her. In her mind anyway.

She nodded slowly. “Sometimes that’s what has to be done.”

I about fell over in shock. First she apologized, then hugged me, and now she accepted what Harlan had done? Someone that up until three months ago she really didn’t like? Whatever that berserker rage had been, it left a far mellower Covey in its path.

“Where are they now?” Alric didn’t care much about stealing, borrowing, or paths of personal growth. He cut to the chase. “We need those scrolls. The rumors my people have of these shards….” He cut himself off and glared at me.

“Wait, so you have rumors of the shards but not of the flying pack of chimeras that caused them?” How messed up was the elven rumor mill anyway? Granted, he did say that when they left here they were in a pretty bad way. But still.

“I don’t know that they are the same.” Alric ignored the sarcasm in my voice. “The rumors of the shards are vague, but definitely not good. The one I found had no energy at all so I didn’t recognize what it was. We need those scrolls.”

I remembered why Harlan was living in my guest room. “Please tell me they weren’t in your rooms when you blew up the place?”

Harlan looked at Covey. “I think they might have been. I’m sorry, I couldn’t get to the chest that had your scrolls.”

Covey wasn’t upset. This was going from Covey having had a personal growth spurt to her being taken over by an evil mage. “That’s okay. I hadn’t told you, but I took them home with me every evening.” Ah, all was right with my world. Covey was back to not trusting anyone.

Harlan looked affronted for a moment, then let it drop.

Covey rocked back in her seat of the sofa. “They are secure in the Sisters of Catastrophe nunnery. There is no one who can get them who is not a member of the order or a case like me.” She looked smug.

“And when can we get them? These shards are dangerous and can become something even more dangerous.” Alric looked ready to physically kick Covey out of the house if need be.

I got up, grabbed the glass jar, and trotted toward my room. There wasn’t time for me to be territorial about them anymore. “You probably want them all together then.” I’d been handling the shards since I found them, although I still had no idea how some of them ended up in my laundry pile, but now I didn’t want to touch them.

I grabbed a shirt from the laundry pile and wrapped it around my hand. Then I took them out of the small drawer and made sure all of them ended up in the glass jar.

I tightened the lid as far as it would go, walked back to the living room, and handed it to Alric. Harlan looked like he really was about to claim they should go to him, but one glare from me and he backed down. I wasn’t happy that Harlan had been prowling around my room.

“Now all we need are the scrolls.” Alric leaned toward Covey causing her to give a slight swoon. “There should be three of them.”

Covey gazed into his big green eyes and smiled. I gave a sharp cough and she shook her head and returned to looking somewhere over Alric’s shoulder.

“I think we need someone to get his magic back soon.” I admit it was a bit of an adjustment dealing with Alric in all of his elven lord beauty, but I could still tell it was him. Covey was really having a hard time getting over her elf worship.

“I have four.” She waved off Harlan. “I took it upon myself to liberate two from my office. They were mine to study after all, just because I wasn’t there didn’t mean they weren’t still mine.”

Alric scowled. “Four? Are you sure they are all related? Our scholars calculated that there would have been three. Most likely you misread one of the segments, but we should be able to figure out the error quickly enough.”

Covey rose to her feet. “There are four,
elf
. I do know how to count, and thanks to you, I can read them fairly well.” She cocked her head and it was like a light went on inside. Alric had risen to his feet as well. “As a matter of fact, thanks to you, I almost went completely crazy.” She stood toe-to-toe and jabbed him in the chest. She wasn’t looking over his shoulder now. “I almost lost my best friend.” Another jab. “And almost lost my entire city.” One final jab and then she stepped back and all signs of elf worship fled. “So, elven high lord or whatever, do not try and tell me what I do or do not know about my own scrolls.”

I really wanted to run up and hug her, but I was afraid to break the mood.

Alric looked surprised at first, then a real smile, something I hadn’t seen since he’d appeared last night, took over. It was reassuring that the smile was exactly the way the Alric I knew smiled. “Thank the gods, I was wondering when you’d get past that elf worship enough to get mad at me.”

Covey let loose a small smile as well. “I haven’t forgiven you. For anything. The least of which is being a damn elf and not telling me. But we need you to fix this newest set of disasters that your people left behind, so, truce.” She held out her hand and Alric took it.

“That’s wonderful. What say we get that scroll collection back over here, Taryn goes to find mister tall, elven, and questionable, and we start figuring what the hell is going on?” Harlan said.

I got up and stretched. It was pretty early in the afternoon to go to the pub looking for Glorinal, but I still had the mystery of the dryad and her attempted assassin to deal with. “Agreed.” I looked down at my clothes. Not the best in terms of impressing anyone. In case I stayed out long enough for a rendezvous with Glorinal, I really needed to change.

It took a good ten minutes to find something hiding in the back of my closet that wasn’t too old, too fancy, or too blah to wear. That laundry pile was becoming a serious nuisance.

I brushed out my hair and adjusted my far more black than I usually wear ensemble and went back to the living room.

Covey was arguing with Alric as to why he couldn’t go with her to the nunnery, and Harlan was scowling at the black shards and rattling them about in their jar.

“I wouldn’t disturb them, at least not until we know what they are.” I ignored Covey and Alric—now that she was back to herself there was no way he was going to even come close to winning that argument. “I’m heading out. Alric do not leave this house.” I turned to Harlan. “You either.”

With nods from all three of them, I swung open the door and almost stepped on a faery.