CHAPTER ONE
The worst thing about bugbears wasn’t so much how horrifying they looked. It was how bad they smelled. Take equal parts hot garbage, wet dog, and rotting fish, marinate it in sewage, and let it simmer for a day on high heat, and you have roughly what a bugbear smells like. It was Staci’s first clue that she wasn’t alone in the woods surrounding the ruined Blackthorne Manor. She had known that there would be guards of some sort, though she wasn’t expecting them this soon; she was still a half mile from the mansion’s walls, and had been proceeding slowly on foot so as to maintain some semblance of stealth. Bugbears weren’t terribly smart, but they were tough and vicious. If she kept her wits about her (and didn’t throw up from the stink), she should be able to sneak past the sentries.
It took her another hundred feet of walking in quick little rushes, pausing to listen intermittently, before she finally saw what she had been smelling. There were two of them; from a distance, they looked like mangy black bears standing on their hind legs. Once she got closer, the differences were very clear. Both had shoulders that were hunched forward in such a way that they didn’t look like they were really meant to walk upright. Heavyset and barrel-chested, their skin was covered with coarse and filthy dark fur; leaves, mud, and worse were matted into it. She realized that if either of the creatures were to lie down, they would probably blend into the ground almost perfectly. The hands were as big as dinner plates and ended in cruelly curved black claws. The absolute worst part of the bugbears were their faces, however. All similarity to bears ended there. Instead of a snout and close together, ursine eyes, their faces were flat and vaguely human. The jaw was broad and square, with broken and yellowed tusks protruding from the top and bottom lips. The nose consisted of two slits, constantly sniffing the air and dripping with mucus. Then there were the eyes; wide set and disproportionately large, they gaped wide open and had blood red irises.
The bugbears hadn’t noticed her. As much as Staci wanted to be invisible, that was out of her power. She had done as well as she could, though, with the next best thing. Her clothing was all close-fitting without anything that could snag on branches, and was colored in earth-tones that fit the season and the area that she was in. Most of her skin was covered: a brown and green long-sleeved cotton turtleneck shirt that she had gotten off a website that specialized in “natural” and “forest camouflage” clothing, ending with a pair of thin leather gloves. The rest of her gear was cotton cargo pants and a leather belt covered with various pouches, along with a pair of dark brown, all-leather hiking boots. Maybe it was her imagination, but wearing stuff made of all natural materials seemed to work better with magic. For her, anyway.
She hadn’t used any face-paint to cover up with, or any natural foliage to break up her outline; the shape of a person is one of the most recognizable things in the world, especially when contrasted against a natural backdrop. Instead . . . she had used magic. It was a spell that Tim, her mentor in all things supernatural, had taught her. Invisibility was far outside anything that she could do. There were some creatures that could do it, and rumors and legends of certain people achieving it, but nothing beyond that was known to Tim. What her spell did was good enough, though. It basically made it so that people (and other things with eyes) didn’t want to look at you. It was an entrancement spell wrapped with a minor illusion; it suggested to someone that there were other places that they wanted to look. If they did happen to look at you, they would either see you as someone utterly forgettable, someone or something they expected to see there, or something fuzzy and hard to pin down if they really tried to search for you. It didn’t work on everyone, and she couldn’t do it indefinitely; the spell was constantly draining energy from her. If she let it go on for too long, she wouldn’t have enough “juice” to power any other spells, and would be almost magically defenseless.
The two bugbears weren’t making a circuit or patrol of any sort, or if they were they had come up short for some reason. Staci couldn’t afford to wait all day to get to the mansion; she had to move, and going around the sentries would cost her time. She was standing tight against a tree, barely peeking around the edge of it to observe her quarries.
Just need a little bit of a distraction. Nothing too flashy.
She reached into one of the pouches on her belt, producing a small tuft of rabbit fur bundled with a bit of twine string. Clasping her hands around it, she concentrated for a moment. Her mind’s eye swam with formulae, incantations, and the shining power of her own will. She sent all of it into the fur between her gloved hands. The fur and twine collapsed into dust, sifting through her fingers. A moment later, there was the sound of a rabbit’s distress cries in the distance; the opposite direction she was in. The bugbears both immediately perked up, then seemed to confer with each other for a moment before setting off at a stumpy jog towards the noise. Again, bugbears were not very smart, and tended to think with their stomachs. They were probably thinking that not only could they make a meal of that “rabbit,” but if they were quick enough, they could feast on whatever had attacked it, too.
Yeah, that’s right; Staci could do magic. Not sleight of hand—though that was a skill that often helped with magework—or party tricks, not stage magic. Real deal, turn-reality-inside-out magic. She hadn’t always been able to. Not even a year ago, she was just another normal, utterly average teen. Plucked from her home of New York City and essentially dumped by her father in the town of Silence, Maine, she had been torn free from everything and everyone that she had ever known. Silence was a quiet fishing town, and devoid of nearly everything that made modern life bearable for a young teen; no internet, spotty and unreliable cell phone service, and no shopping worth mentioning. Stuck with an alcoholic and not entirely stable mother, she had thought she would die of boredom in Silence.
Until she got caught up with elves. Not the kind that come on the packages of cookies, and not nearly as nice as the ones in Tolkien’s books. Fantastic beings that lived for millennia and wielded magic as easily as a teenager used cell phone apps. Staci had discovered that, somewhere in her family line, someone had intermarried with an elf. So, she had some elven blood in her, giving her inborn magic potential. Learning that fact, and that magic, elves, and even darker and more dangerous creatures existed had brought her here; an apprentice mage to the town’s local bookshop owner and mage-in-hiding, Tim.
It was funny how life could take you to the strangest of places, especially when you least expected it.
Not wanting to be around when two disappointed bugbears returned, Staci waited until they were out of sight before she continued on. It didn’t take her long before she caught sight of the Blackthornes’ mansion, or what was left of it. In only six months, since she and her friends had last been at the estate, it had fallen into ruin. The grounds were unkempt and wild, with waist-high grass over the lawns and grass and weeds sprouting in every crack and crevice, and all of the stonework and masonry was half-buried under vines and behind bushes that seemed to have grown at an unnatural rate.
She could feel the magical pulse of the object she was looking for. It was like a warm heartbeat, rhythmically thumping against her skin. Whatever it was, it was deeper in the manor, somewhere near the center. Staci licked her lips, working her way through the trees until she was nearly to the outer wall. Memories flooded back to her; clearing the wall with Dylan, being attacked by dark elves and worse creatures, the Gate . . .
Give your head a shake, girl, she heard Tim saying in her mind. She couldn’t get lost in the past; she had a job to do.
Effortlessly, she gripped the edge of the wall and pulled herself up high enough so that she could see over the top of it. I’ve gotten stronger in the last few months, that’s for sure. If she had thought the exterior looked bad, the interior was worse. What had once been well-groomed and maintained yards and gardens was now gone completely to pot; wild flowers, weeds, and what had been carefully confined and well-tended plants had sprouted everywhere, the grass now grown to well over waist height, with the hedges and bushes that had made up the maze or dotted the yard now unrecognizably overgrown. There were hints of broken furniture here and there, covered by the weeds. The swimming pool was full of stagnant water, scummy and so thick with algae it looked like pea soup, and there were invisible things in it, making ripples on the surface. Probably bugs and frogs, but you couldn’t tell with all the algae and duckweed.
The important thing that stuck out to Staci was that she didn’t see any guards. That was . . . odd.
There should be something, someone here protecting the manor. Other than those bugbears, I haven’t seen anyone.
She felt goosebumps rising on her neck and arms. Something wasn’t right. But she was so close! With a quiet grunt, she heaved herself up, settling on top of the wall in a low crouch. She couldn’t stay up there for long; even with her cloaking spell, she would eventually stand out enough for someone to get suspicious. Reaching into her pouch again, she pulled out a bit of glass about the size of a silver dollar. It had a hole in its center, which she held up to her eye while breathing incantations. Just because I’m cloaked, doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t using the same sort of trick. With any luck, this will reveal them. It didn’t take her long to complete her survey of the immediate area; there wasn’t anyone cloaked by magic, as far as she could tell.
Staci dropped down off the wall on the inner side, and immediately knew that she had screwed up. She had felt ambient magic in the air, and just assumed that it was emanating from what she was after. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she felt a surge of magic and saw it racing lines through the tall grass and weeds. Alarm spell! Immediately she rolled to her right from the crouch she was in; a trio of spikes appeared out of nowhere, embedding themselves in the wall behind her. She dropped most of the enchantment spell, leaving only the part that would help her in combat; she was still blurry to the unaided eye, and would be harder to pin down. She started running, a hard sprint for the object. She drew on her magic, making her strides a little bit longer, her speed that much faster. She dodged and weaved randomly; arrows and spears fell from everywhere and nowhere, trying to find her. It took her a moment to realize that the projectiles were driving her somewhere, intentionally pushing her in a certain direction. Away from the mansion.
Staci faked to her left, her right, and then her left again. There! She found a gap to her right side between a pair of spears and slipped through them, turning her body sideways at the last second. Now the arrows and spears were falling in earnest; she had to duck several times in quick succession to keep from having some new and lethal headgear. She was getting closer; she could feel the pulses of magic coming from the unknown object much stronger now. They were waves crashing and breaking against her, guiding her. She only had a half-dozen strides left until she was inside the house, safe from the arrows, safe from the spears. If only she could get her hands around it—
Her sight had been attuned for magic when she hit the tripwire. A simple physical tangle trap wrapped itself around her ankle, bringing Staci down to the ground hard. She almost landed on her face, throwing her arms up just in time to prevent breaking her nose. The cord around her ankle tightened the more she struggled; she had to get it off if she wanted any chance to make it through this. She flipped over, reaching for a knife on her belt. Before the blade even touched the cord it was struck by an arrow, knocking the grip from her hand. She reached for it—another arrow, pinning it to the ground. She tried to roll out of the way, but three more arrows planted themselves in the ground, expertly placed to catch a bit of her pants with their points. Now she was pinned, as well. Before she could start working the arrows free, a large shadow loomed above her, and she felt a sharp pain in the center of her chest as she was knocked to the ground.
When Staci opened her eyes again, she saw that she was still in the forest. The traces of the illusion spell that she had been inside were still fading away, wisps of magic disintegrating into the air. Above her and to her sides were Wanda and Seth; Wanda was removing the string from her longbow with a self-satisfied smirk, while Seth was shaking his head and coiling a length of cord. At least he had the decency to look like he felt a little bit sorry for Staci. In the middle was Tim, with a long stave that had its tip resting against her breastbone.
“You get distracted, you lose, apprentice,” he said, calmly. “You are focusing on the wrong things at the wrong time. Magic is addictive; you can get lost in it if you’re not careful. You were so busy looking for magic that you forgot the mundane, even though I’ve told you over and over again, that magic is the least efficient and least practical way of getting most things done. It’s better to conserve your energy and do things with your hands than to do it with magic, unless you absolutely have to. That’s part of why the Unseleighe have so many minions.”
“Plus, you’re still clumsy as ever, girl.” Wanda was wearing an off-the-shelf hunter’s camo netting; the loops of burlap and nylon had been stuffed with tufts of grass, sticks, and other bits of local foliage. Next to her right shoulder, however, was a large and yellow “happy face” button.
“Smart ass,” Staci muttered under her breath. She had already plucked the arrows up, freeing herself. Seth offered her a hand up, but she stood up on her own. She thrust her chin at him. “You’re getting better with those snares. I should have seen that one, though.”
“Yes, you should have.” Tim looked at Wanda and Seth. “Wanda, you’re turning into quite the marksman with that thing; there’s not much more I can offer you in that regard. We’ll have to find you a dedicated trainer, soon. And Seth, keep up on your studies. You’re improving steadily, which is good.” Without another word, Tim started walking back in the direction of town. When he was out of earshot, Wanda and Seth turned back to Staci.
“So, he’s a little bit pissed.” Wanda punched Staci lightly in the shoulder.
“No, he’s right. I had my head full of magic. I need to keep my feet on the ground better, practice mundane skills more. It was dumb on my part.” She worried the three holes in the side of her pants with her pinky finger. “You’re totally stitching this up for me, by the way.”
“It’ll be all right. Let’s get some food and coffee; Tim is probably going to just go straight to the bookstore, so we’ll catch up with him later,” Seth said.
With that, the trio set off back towards town. The diner was calling to them.
This had been the third training exercise that the group had done this week. Tim tried to give them three days of training and studying, with a day rest in between and weekends off . . . usually. They would set up in the forest, Tim would cast an illusion spell and outline a scenario, and they would work through it. Sometimes it was all three of them working together, or only one of them, or they would be paired off. After the exercise was over, there was an evaluation; depending on how the gang did, it would either be long and tortuous, or short and to the point. Today’s had been unexpectedly brief. Staci didn’t mind; she had had enough tear down sessions from Tim, and she was too tired to deal with it now. She knew what she had done wrong; her mistakes were obvious in retrospect and it wouldn’t happen again. For his faults, Tim was still a good mentor; Staci never forgot an object lesson once it had sunk in.
“I wish Riley and Jake were still here,” she said, as they began the long walk back to town. “They’d have had a lot of fun with this.” Riley and Jake had been in the group of friends that Staci had become a part of when she first arrived in Silence. They had been through everything with her, from discovering magic to battling dark elves.
“They’d have handed our asses to us,” Seth replied, with a grin. “They were the best LARP fighters we had. But . . . ” He shrugged. “How the hell were a couple of high school seniors supposed to justify staying here when their families moved?”
“Better question, how they hell were they supposed to eat and get a roof over their heads?” Wanda pointed out. “It’s not like any of our families would have been willing to bring in another mouth to feed. At least not mine.” Staci noticed that Wanda quickly looked to her feet for a moment, and then her mask was back up. Wanda never talked much about her family, and everyone had learned not to pry.
“Maybe Tim?” Seth shrugged his shoulders. “They could work at the bookstore, maybe . . . ”
“Tim tolerates us just barely, as it is. Besides, just because he’s a mage doesn’t mean he’s made of money. Even in a town like Silence, it’d cost him to hire on two people.”
“Yeah, I really don’t think he’s sitting behind the counter twelve hours a day all by his lonesome because he loves being there.” Staci had had enough experience in juggling her mom’s bills to have a firm handle on Life in the Real World by now. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her dad’s guilty generosity, they’d have been living on TANF and food stamps at this point. Mom had been getting better, though; she didn’t bring home skuzzy types anymore, and she had been drinking a lot less. Still loopy as all get out, though. But harmless.
It didn’t take them long to reach the edge of the woods; they were on a gentle hill that overlooked most of the town. To the west were the docks, where all of the fishing boats and their attendant canneries were located. Moving to the east was the town proper; most of the buildings were brick, the most recent dating back to the 1950s and most of them much earlier, and many of them looked their age. Things had been getting better, however. The Blackthornes, dark elves, had been secretly keeping the town locked in a sort of perpetual recession. Dark elves fed on misery, and Silence had been a miserable town if there ever was one. Now, it seemed like the town was coming back and even getting into this century, slowly. New stores were opening, the fishing industry was starting to recover, and people didn’t seem to look at their feet all the time, shuffling from one place to the next. It was as if someone had opened a window in a stuffy room, letting fresh and clean air in. There were even rumors of a new company opening up a factory near town, which would mean jobs and a much needed boost to the economy.
“Maybe we could get some fast food chains in town.” Seth often lamented the lack of variety in Silence cuisine, something that Staci agreed with him on.
“It wouldn’t be like NYC, but I would kill for some decent Chinese food.”
“Until then,” Wanda said, “it’s the diner for us. Greasy burgers on greasy buns, washed down with—somehow—greasy soda. Let’s see whether or not Beth is working.”
Beth had been one of the first people that Staci had met in Silence. She was one of the few waitresses at the diner, near the docks. She had stood out to Staci as someone who wasn’t as beaten down by the dreary nature of the town as almost everyone else had been. On Staci’s second day in town, she had visited the diner, and Beth had immediately been kind to her, even going so far as to draw her a map and give her the lowdown on Silence.
“Hey,” Staci objected, mildly. “The food’s been improving. It’s way better than the drive-in.”
“Or the pizzeria, though that’s not saying much,” added Seth, earning him a light elbow to his ribs from Staci.
“Let’s get there, already. I’m starving after turning Staci into a pincushion.” Wanda made as if she were pulling back a bowstring, eliciting chuckles from Staci and Seth.
When they finally arrived at the diner, Staci noticed that it was actually somewhat busy. A year ago, it would’ve been dead quiet at this time in the afternoon; the only relatively crowded times would be when people were getting off of shifts at the nearby canneries. The busiest times were late afternoon when the fishing boats came in, and Oh-Dark-Thirty just before they went out, and the fishermen were fortifying themselves with bacon and eggs and lots and lots of coffee.
Beth immediately spotted the trio as they entered, waving her order-pad and pen at them. “Hey, guys! Be with you in just a minute; find a space wherever you can.”
The three friends found a corner booth that wasn’t occupied and sat down. They mostly talked about the training exercise, or the tabletop campaign that Seth was running. Despite Staci’s mistakes earlier, she was happy. Things were finally making sense for her; she had found a place in the world where she was doing something that she was good at, and was actually useful. Her friends seemed to share in her happiness, too. They had all been through hell, but they were stronger for it.
Eventually Beth extricated herself from her other customers and the demands of Ray, the diner’s new cook, long enough to see her friends. They chatted for a moment and she took their orders, and before long the gang was hungrily chowing down. Using magic burned energy—and calories—whenever Staci did it; after a lot of magework she was usually famished. While they were eating, Staci’s attention occasionally drifted to the new dishwasher and busser that Ray had hired. He was a new boy in town, just a year older than Staci and the others, and he was named David Parish. It wasn’t much of a secret to the rest of the group that Staci had eyes for him, and they all encouraged her to try to get to know him better, in between bouts of teasing her about her crush.
After they had finished their meal, Staci caught sight of David getting a slight push to his back by Beth, sending him in the direction of the trio’s table. She immediately felt her cheeks flush. David looked a little bit apprehensive, bringing over a bin for dirty dishes. “Uh, hi. Everyone enjoy the meal?”
Seth and Wanda traded a look, then nodded. “Oh, totally.” Wanda faced Staci. “Hey, we’ll get the check and catch up with you at the bookstore. Bye!” Before Staci could object, both of her friends had dropped a few bills for the check and were up and out of the booth, heading for the door. She watched them whisper to each other and felt her cheeks go even redder than they already were.
“Thanks. David, right?” Staci had fought dark elves, Red Caps, and all sorts of other nasty beasts. But the prospect of talking to a boy that she liked terrified her. Staci, you’re absolutely hopeless sometimes. “You’re new in town. I only moved here a few months ago myself.”
“That’s right. Beth told me,” he said, chuckling lightly. Of course she did. Love that girl, even when she’s trying to play matchmaker.
Part of Staci’s problem wasn’t just that she was nervous around the new boy because he was cute. It was that she was still dealing with what had happened months ago. She thought she had been in love back then. Dylan . . . he had first shown her how to use magic, how to fight back. And he had been an elf, full-blooded. Ridiculously handsome as most elves were, though in a slightly rougher way. She thought that he had cared about her. That was until, of course, he had left her alone, to live or die on her own. It had left a wound in her heart, and she wasn’t sure that it was fully healed yet.
“Um, cool. How are you liking Silence?” Every word that came out of her mouth felt clumsy and forced. She hated small talk like this, anymore, and it didn’t come easily to her. Then again, it wasn’t like she could just blurt out her innermost feelings and secrets. How would that conversation go? “Hi, my name is Staci and I’m a half-elven-blooded mage. I fell in love with an elf and saved the town from a magical plague. How are you?”
“It’s all right. Seems nice enough, and it didn’t take me long to get a job after my folks moved here. Still trying to learn what the town has to offer.” He seemed to have the same trouble finding things to say as she did. “They’re here for the motorcycle works. We moved here from Georgia.”
“Oh, is that what’s getting built? The new factory or whatever?”
David nodded with more enthusiasm. “Yeah. They worked for a race-engine builder down in Georgia, and got the chance to transfer up here. Custom racing bikes. I—”
“Dave!” Ray barked. “I don’t pay you to entertain girls!”
“Yessir!” Dave replied, and favored Staci with a rueful grin. “See you around later.”
“See you!” Staci called after him.