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Life was good.

Then I heard a scream and saw a very suspiciously familiar cloaked person race around the corner ahead of me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I was getting really tired of my peaceful life, or dreams thereof, being disrupted by noise and mayhem. The screams came from my left, whereas Alric—unless our other cloaked elf had switched cape colors—had scurried to the right.

I ran to the left corner where a woman sat stunned on the ground. She looked intact, no blood I could see, and wasn’t screaming anymore.

“Are you all right?”

She looked blankly at me, then shook her head. “There’s a ghost running around here. Robes, white face, a real ghost!”

What Alric had been doing out here, and more importantly, out here with his face showing, I had no idea. “Did it attack you?” I doubted it, but always best to ask.

“No, it chased off one of those flying black shiny things.” She shuddered. “They chased many of us in the market square earlier too.”

I looked around in case whatever it was had circled back. “Was it really skinny and had lots of teeth?”

“No, it was kind of round, like a fat, flying goat.” She shook her head and got to her feet. “Do you think it was a good ghost?” Her lack of concern told me Alric had chased off a chimera and not a sceanra anam. She was far more worried about him than it.

I turned toward the direction Alric had gone. “I’m sure it was.”

As soon as I was out of her sight, I ran the way Alric had gone, but at first didn’t see him. Then I hit the pub lane. That road was straight and, for once, not crowded. I watched a hooded figure clear the end of it and dart up toward the ruins. I also saw the small flying black shape he was chasing.

I took a side road that would be faster. The chimera and Alric were either going to the ruins or the fields near them. Within ten minutes I’d caught up to Alric but the chimera was nowhere to be found.

“She saw you, you idiot.” When I caught him, Alric was standing at the edge of a field watching or listening to something I couldn’t see. “She thought she saw a ghost.”

He didn’t turn around. “I’m supposed to be dead, so that’s fitting, isn’t it? I think I’ve found the chimeras’ lair.” He took a few steps toward a cluster of abandoned barns. “Do you hear anything?”

I shook my head. I heard the pounding of my heart from racing after him, but that was…wait. “Yes, over that way.” A few ramshackle barns were clustered together, part of a commune that failed a few years ago. An odd chanting or buzzing sound started coming from a large mostly intact barn near the back. “You think that’s the chimeras?” I couldn’t clearly hear what the sound was, but it was a lot louder than twenty or so chimeras should be.

“I don’t know.” Obviously, it was enough for Alric to go on, as he moved forward and started creeping up on the barn. I was mad as hell at him risking exposure, but I also had to admit finding the chimeras’ lair would be handy. As long as it was them and not the sceanra anam. The chimeras hadn’t eaten anyone that I knew of.

The chanting was definitely coming from this barn. While I couldn’t tell what was being chanted, I really doubted the chimeras had the power of speech. I was about to whisper that to Alric when he slipped inside.

Damn him. I looked around, but whoever was inside didn’t seem to have any outside guards. I shook my head and slipped in after him.

The barn was warm and dark, and the chanting was getting louder. The voices were all suspiciously high and a bad feeling came over me. Before I could act on it, the chanting went shrill and bright lights flooded the area. Or rather, the track. A small, oblong track was lit up before us. Us and about four hundred formerly wild faeries. A bell rang, the chanting turned to yelling, and a row of gates opened on the far side of the track.

Whatever I had been expecting it was not the sight of my three faeries, plus four others, riding cats. Rather, racing cats. The faeries were holding tiny reins clamped in the felines’ mouths and steering them around the track.

Cat racing. The girls had been stealing coins for cat racing. And judging by the large number of their kin here with them, they’d introduced it to the wild faeries as well. Or rather the formerly wild faeries.

Garbage Blossom saw Alric and me as she raced around the corner where we stood. Her eyes went wide, then she yelled her mount on to faster speeds, one Fluffy Nuggets, if I heard her right. Leaf came by not long after cheering on Spazbot, and Crusty followed on a yellow and black cat named Bob but she was backwards and holding its tail. The other four faeries raced past as well, but I was too numb to hear the names of their cats.

The race was over in less than a minute. The cats knew when they finished as they all stopped past the line and started cleaning.

“I don’t know what to say.” My faeries had created an illegal gambling den of racing cats. It could have been started by another faery, but my three had pretty much been the corrupting influence for all of the wild faeries. Now Foxy’s comment of ‘losing meows’ made sense.

Alric turned to go back out the way we came, but I grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?”

He waved at the cheering faeries as coins and slips of paper changed tiny hands. “I don’t see any chimeras in here.”

“But look at what they’re doing!” Gambling was legal in Beccia, but only if it went through one of the crime families. I was pretty sure no one on The Hill was getting a cut of this. The last thing I needed was for one of the crime families to find out about this and hunt me down for the faeries’ crimes.

“The cats seem happy.”

I turned back to the finish line where all seven cats were being given milk and lots of faery scritches. I would need to deal with this, just not today. With a sigh, I followed Alric back out of the barn.

He led the way back to my house, but detoured to grab a few small, green berries.

“What are those for?” I hadn’t been able to get a good look as he started walking faster after he got them, but they looked like jackle berries, mildly poisonous berries of no real use.

“The injured faery is slowly recovering, but I need more supplies. There is a poison in that barb that these can help offset.” He gave me a grim look. “She almost died.”

I caught up with him and pulled his arm. “We have to destroy the rest of those shards.”

“I doubt we can if they are what I think they are. And not all of them are poisonous.”

He clearly wasn’t going to tell me what he thought they were. I couldn’t blame him since we were still out and about, but it annoyed me. I focused on the fact it looked like he could save the little purple faery. If I couldn’t remove the threat to them, I’d settle for making sure we could heal any of them that got attacked.

Providing we figured out how an inanimate shard stabbed a faery in the first place. They may have come from the sceanra anam holes, but I hadn’t seen anything like that on the creatures themselves. I carefully ignored the voice muttering in my head that maybe there was more to them than had been seen and followed Alric back to my house.

Harlan and Covey were arguing about something in a scroll when we got back, which could explain how Alric escaped again.

“You two missing someone?” I pushed open the door and waved for Alric to go in ahead of me. “I spotted him up on The Hill.”

Both of them looked up, but Covey first pulled the scroll off the table and rolled it up tightly. A mystery for later. Alric ignored us and went to the kitchen with his berries.

“He…ah….” Harlan looked around as if he’d just noticed Alric.

Covey pulled up a chair and shot Alric’s back a nasty glare. “He told me he was going to help that poor faery. I didn’t know I had to babysit him.”

“I was helping her, but I needed a few things. Then I thought that since I was already out, I could catch one of those chimeras. There has to be a connection between the flying ones and the artifact. Perhaps catching one will lead me to the real one.” Alric came out with a noxious concoction in one of my bowls. “And I can’t stay here all the time. If someone can get me some dye root and a spell pack, I can at least color my hair.”

“No!” Covey, Harlan, and myself all said it at the same instant.

“Your hair looked awful before, my friend.” Harlan beat Covey and me to that part but we were both nodding in agreement. I still wasn’t used to the white-blond hair, but I had to admit it looked a lot healthier than his odd flat dye job had left it before.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t just glamour it, like you did with the rest of you.” I may not be a magic user, but that was just common sense.

Alric rubbed the side of his face and I noticed for the first time that he almost always rubbed where his elven lord markings were. Even when I’d thought he was just a thieving and annoying human, he’d rubbed that side of his face when under stress or embarrassment.

“A spell was put on my hair a long time ago.” He offered that up along with a look that said he hoped that would be enough. All of us gave him smiles and nods that said it wasn’t.

“Fine.” He leaned back in his chair, trying to show he was more at ease than he was. I was glad he was squirming. “When I was a teenager, I kept trying to find ways to dye my hair. I hated being who and what I was, and I thought if my hair looked more like the other elven kids, and if I could hide my marks, people would treat me different.”

“I take it that didn’t work?” I was really loving him looking uncomfortable.

He recovered enough to shoot me a glare. “No, it didn’t. My father had a spell put on my hair by a mage so much more powerful than me, that I would never be able to break it. A glamour won’t stay on my hair. This proved a problem to them when the old mage died and I was trained to go out into this world as a spy. No one has been able to break the spell.” He looked around the room. “I didn’t think my dye was that bad.”

“Not bad?” Covey stepped forward with a sad shake of her head. “It was what made me think you might be a real academic. I figured anyone that bad with his hair dye must be a true researcher.”

Harlan had been noticeably quiet which made me nervous. It usually meant there were things going on in his head that shouldn’t be there. “I bow to your opinions that Alric can’t stay hidden all the time and as this seems to be a war of sorts, a good general does not hinder himself by refraining from using all of his weapons. I believe I can help with makeup. We can’t really get rid of those ears but if you keep your hair down it should help. And I believe Covey was going to dye that white mane?” Whatever it was he had been thinking about, he now had a solid course of action.

Alric opened his mouth, probably to argue, but then shut it when he got a good look at everyone. “I give up. Cover me up as best you can. If it will get me out of here I’m all for it. But first let me go treat the faery.”

After he left, I caught Harlan and Covey up on the shards, the faeries, and the fire on The Hill. Harlan was tail lashing by the time I’d finished but clearly it was because he felt left out.

Alric came back and looked more hopeful than when he left. The faery was going to recover. Then his face went back to despair as he took in Harlan and Covey armed with make-up and hair dye spells.

“Let’s get this over.”

I was still nervous about him going out there, but we didn’t have many options. We needed to get rid of the sceanra anam, find out what the chimeras were up to, and find that missing chimera artifact. As much as I hated to admit it, we needed Alric out there.

The three of them sequestered themselves in my kitchen, and since there wasn’t enough room for me as well, I took a chance to peek at the scrolls.

Not that it did much good. Like the one I’d seen of Qianru’s, I couldn’t make out much of it. I briefly toyed with trying to find Harlan’s sarcophagus pieces and seeing if put together they would tell me anything, but I doubted I could find them before they finished. Not to mention, knowing Harlan he probably booby trapped his room.

“I think we’ve done it.” Covey said as she came out of the kitchen drying off her hands.

I got up from the scroll and turned into the kitchen to come face to face with Alric as I originally knew him. Or almost.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Since he was more than a few inches taller than me, we weren’t face to face. But even with the hair down so his ears were covered there was still something non-human about him.

“He still looks like an elf.” Truth was, he looked like a half-elf, but far more attractive than he did either as a human or an elf. It was as if the humanizing features made his elven handsomeness even more approachable and less overwhelming.

I chased that thought out of my head with a large stick. I did not need to fall for him again. I let myself do that months ago and all it did was cause me a massive headache. Besides, I had a nice stable, rational elf of my own now. One who wasn’t out and about being a spy for his people.

“Yes he does, but he doesn’t look like an elven lord bent on world destruction anymore, does he?” Harlan beamed as he put away his makeup case. He had a right to be proud. Alric’s skin tone looked perfectly normal, yet you couldn’t see the faint lines on his left cheek anymore.

Fatigue slammed into me. This had been a really long day and not full of fun and ale as a good day off should be. There were things that needed to be thought about, but my brain was done for now.

I was just thinking of some way to get everyone out of my house for a bit, when three bright blurs of color came zipping into the room. They first flew to their castle, most likely stashing away their ill-gotten gains, then buzzed back to us.

“Big Man want Uncle Harlan.” Garbage Blossom landed on Harlan’s outstretched hand. Big Man was the girls’ name for Foxy. Some people they gave nicknames to, others they tried to remember their names. It had taken them two years to stop calling me Food Lady and use my name. Yet, I distinctly heard them each yell specific names for their racing cats. Obviously, their name memory was capricious and selective.

“Why does Foxy want to see me?” Harlan looked panicked. “How does he know I’m in town?”

I walked into my kitchen and started throwing together enough food for me. I didn’t want to encourage the others to stay, and making enough for them might do that. Even if half of them were sleeping here. “He probably spotted you last night. Half the bar probably spotted you last night.” His disguise hadn’t been that bad, but anyone sober enough to care probably had an idea it was him.

“Now that can’t be true. No one reacted to me.”

I gave the odd assortment of jars I’d found a critical look. Yes, I could make dinner out of them. It might be weird, but at this point my stomach was telling me to eat the jars themselves. “Because the ones who know you didn’t want to blow it for you.” Or they didn’t really care, which was most likely the case. Harlan had his own group of cronies at the bar, but none of them were there and they probably would have been the only ones who cared.

“He want smart lady too.” Leaf grub fluttered over to Covey who beamed and gave her a treat.

Crusty, not to be outdone, fluttered over to Alric. “Pretty sure he want this one too!”

I was surprised at his asking for Harlan, even more so about Covey, but I knew there was no way he knew about Alric. Crusty was just fishing for sugar.

“Did Foxy say why he wanted Harlan?”

Crusty Bucket shook her head, but Garbage Blossom nodded. “He want to talk about dead guy, tree, and you boss lady.” She shoved an entire sugar cube in her mouth.

And spit it out a second later and turned to Alric. “Oh, and other guy want talk to you too.” The cube went back in.

“Foxy?” Alric said.

And out came the cube again, a bit smaller this time. “No, silly. Elf guy like you. He holding bar hostage ‘til you come.” The sugar cube went back in and from the look on her tiny face she intended to keep it there this time.

We all looked at each other. There were only two other elves in town, and I didn’t think Glorinal would be holding the bar hostage. Of course the person might not be holding the bar hostage at all. The faeries had different definitions for our terms. Sometimes radically different.

“The one from the ruins must be in the bar and wants you back.” Harlan scowled.

“Again, we’re back to that not making sense,” Covey said. “They had him. You yourself said he couldn’t have escaped in that condition. Why set up a fall guy to be on the run, then demand he come out of hiding?”

“The game has changed.” Harlan said with a slow nod as if it all suddenly made sense to him.

“We don’t even know what the game is. How could we tell it’s changed?” My stomach gave a loud rumble that I hoped the others were too busy to notice.

“The game is the chimera. I know that’s what the mage in the ruins was looking for. And he must know that’s what I’m looking for.” Alric had retrieved his cloak and rags and put them back on. Even though he was now disguised, it would be difficult to explain to everyone he really was alive, so we’d avoid it as long as possible.

“It could be, although aside from the flying ones, nothing has changed on that score.” Covey put away the rest of her dyeing materials and came back to the living room. “Although I haven’t really had enough time to fully examine the chimera head I found, I don’t know that those creatures would count as an artifact.” She headed toward the back bedroom with a large duffle bag.

That explained what she had been shoving in her bag outside of the pub.

“Wait, where did you find a chimera head?” Maybe they were self-destructing?

She frowned. “It was lying in a bush of all places. No body, just the head.” She continued down the hall.

“Where are you going?”              

“If I am going to consult, I need to change. I brought out all of my things from the abbey.” She went into my guest bedroom.

“You’re moving in here too?” Covey was my best friend, but I already had Harlan and Alric taking up space in my rapidly shrinking house. I tried to keep my voice from sounding as terrified as I felt.

She popped back out of the room immaculately garbed in what I considered to be her professorial attire. A no-nonsense tunic topped fitted and equally no-nonsense trousers. A no-nonsense frown finished it all off, leaving me feeling like I was about to be chastised by a former teacher.

“Why would I do that?” She slung the duffle over her shoulder and I noticed an extra lump poking out of the side, one a bit more solid than a bunch of clothing. Most likely she had the chimera head in there now as well. “I do have a home of my own, and glad I will be to be able to enjoy it again.” She marched toward the door. “Are you coming, Harlan?”

“Yes, yes, just grabbing a few things.” He scowled over to Alric. “You coming?”

Alric shook his head and reached over to rub Crusty Bucket between her wings. “No, I asked the girls for clarification and they said it was Foxy asking for Taryn’s elf boyfriend to come.” He gave me a look that was a cross between amusement and annoyance. One similar to what I’m sure was on my face every time I dealt with the faeries. “I think I’ll stay in tonight.”

They left, leaving Alric and me alone except for the faeries. I gave a brief thought as to how to get him out of the house without getting him kidnapped, killed, or otherwise imperiled, but came up with nothing.

Normally, being alone with a handsome man would be considered a good thing. But nothing with Alric was ever normal.

I went to the kitchen and started putting together something to eat and tried to ignore him.

Like it or not, I had a soft spot for him. But I was sure that with enough time with Glorinal and maybe some heavy medications, I could get past that.

Alric was silent in the living room. Which was nice, since I’d wanted quiet, but it also made me nervous. Kind of like when the faeries were too quiet. Like they also were right now.

I stuck my head out of the kitchen to find all of them gone and the front door open a few inches.

Crap. I ran out to the front. Had someone been able to take all of them while I was in the next room?

I swung open the front door to find all four of them sitting out on my pathetic front lawn. Alric was sitting cross-legged on the grass, without his cloak or extra rags, and the girls were sitting all over him. Crusty Bucket on his shoulder, Leaf Grub on his arm, and Garbage Blossom stood on his knee and spouted forth a long stream of gibberish.

“What are you doing out here? Trying to test your new look, or just freak out my neighbors that I have the presumed-dead-hero-of-the-city sitting on my lawn?” I pointed to Garbage Blossom who was still muttering gibberish under her breath. “And what is she saying? That’s not native faery.”

Alric didn’t look concerned about being found out, and even though it was getting darker, it was a very strong risk. This was when some people in my neighborhood woke up.

“It’s not native faery, although I think I could probably understand it now if they spoke slow enough. That’s the language they used to speak to my people. It’s one they created when we first found them after the leaving of the Ancients.” Crusty Bucket interrupted him and jabbered a bit. “Crusty really didn’t like that empty time, by the way. Everyone was gone so long the faeries forgot who they were.”

Maybe it was weakness from lack of food, but I sort of folded to the ground next to him. “So, now you remember the faeries? And they
were
actually here during the Ancients?” That had sort of been implied before with Crusty’s earlier declaration of being more or less immortal but the two ends hadn’t connected at that point. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or curl up in a fetal position. My little flying drunkards, mere nuisances on a good day, were a living connection to the Ancients?

And all this time they never gave a clue. Crusty Bucket flittered over to me and sat on my knee grinning her slightly idiotic smile.

Alric beamed and I was really glad we’d dyed his hair. I don’t think I could have handled that smile and that white-blond hair glowing at me at the same time. “Yup. I don’t remember them, I wasn’t around then, remember? But there is a cultural remembrance of the language.” He shrugged. “It must be magical in nature so it carried through to me. And like I said, unfortunately the gap of time between the Ancients vanishing and the elves coming into this area is foggy at best to the faeries. Maybe their queen recalls more, but these three don’t. They just know something bad happened and they were alone.”

I dropped my head into my hands. So close. “Not as fascinating or helpful as it could be, and I am glad you four were out here enjoying yourselves, but what say we move inside before one of my neighbors gets an early start on the pub crawling?”

“That’s another thing. The faeries are hiding me. You too, I’d say, since Crusty Bucket is standing on you.”

I looked at the faeries, then back at him. I knew my girls, and I knew what they could and couldn’t do. “They are magic, they don’t do magic.” Just as I spoke a big grumbly minotaur neighbor two houses down from me stomped into view. He glanced toward my house, but just kept walking.

“See? No see!” Crusty Bucket chirped and patted my knee. He certainly hadn’t appeared to have noticed us. I didn’t know his name, and if I was lucky I never would. But he pretty much shouted at anyone he saw. No shouting, probably no seeing.

I picked up Crusty Bucket and held her eye level. “How did you do that?”

“We go boom, no seeing.” She flew out of my hand and hovered right in front of my face. “Now seeing.” She dropped down to my knee again. “No seeing.”

“Let me get this straight, all of a sudden, they can hide people if they touch them?” This would have been so damn handy a few months ago.

Garbage Blossom frowned at Leaf Grub, motioned for her to stay sitting on Alric, and flittered over to me. “No, always do that. Then couldn’t. Now can.”

I looked over to Alric for translation.

“I think she’s saying they used to be able to do more during the time of the Ancients, then forgot it, or lost those powers when the Ancients vanished.” He gave Leaf Grub a few scritches between her wings. “Somehow their powers are coming back. Don’t you see what this means? I can go all over town and not worry about being seen.”

Garbage Blossom frowned again and flew back to him. “No work when moving.” Her scowl deepened. “Not yet. Used to, but not yet.” She patted his cheek. “Will again soon.”

So the girls couldn’t hide Alric if he was walking about, but there could still be times that being able to hide in plain sight would help with what was going on around here. For one thing, I could have hidden in Qianru’s mansion, waited for her to leave, then seen what exactly was going on there.

“Do you have any other powers?” Never thought I’d be looking at them as a resource, but that clearly was changing. I had no idea why their long-forgotten abilities would be coming back but we needed all the help we could get.

“Yup.” Crusty Bucket responded first, but the other two nodded.

When they didn’t elaborate, I held her up again. “What are they?”

“Don’t know.” She said with a huge smile. I looked to Garbage Blossom and Leaf Grub but they just gave me very enthusiastic grins as well.

“Ya know what? I think I’ve learned way more about new faery abilities,” I caught Garbage Blossom’s scowl, “rather, old abilities coming back, than I can handle for one day.” I stood up and Crusty Bucket flew back to Alric. “You four stay out here all night if you want, just tell Harlan to be quiet when he comes back in. And don’t leave the yard. And no cat racing.”