Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

“Ask your questions, and then let me go home,” I said. “The wizards have been nothing but cooperative. I’ll ignore the fact that you’ve taken me against my will.”

Mace’s smile gave me chills. “Don’t be impatient. The other Synod members will be here shortly.”

Reclaiming his seat on the sofa, he reached over to a side table and pulled a thin cigarette from a carved wooden box. As he lit it, the smell of lavender and olive filled the room. “Would you like one? They’re quite mild.”

I shook my head. “No, and if you’re using the herbs in your smoke to calm me down, that’s not going to work either.” Tricky, smooth-talking, kidnapping elf. I’d match my Green Congress herbal knowledge against his any day.

It looked like I was about to have my meeting with the elves whether I liked it or not. I looked at my watch. Forty minutes had passed since I left Alex sitting behind the counter at Plantasy Island, assuming time in Elf heim ran parallel to the modern world. He’d probably been raising holy hell for at least a half hour and had already called the Elders. No way repercussions from this weren’t going to be ugly.

Mace took his seat again, then raised his chin and looked at the ceiling. “The others are almost here.” I couldn’t hear anything but the crackle of the fire.

I assumed the others were the three remaining clan chiefs. “What is it you hope to accomplish tonight?” Did they want the staff? To know what I could do that they’d consider elven magic?

Mace took a drag on his happy smoke. “We’ve been watching you for a long time, the first wizard with enough elven blood to hold some of our magic. You’re woefully unskilled, of course, but that might be just as well considering the quality of instruction you would have received from the wizards. Have you had any at all?”

I pondered my answer. Would the Elders want the elves to know they were trying to teach me to use my elven magic, or that Gerry had encouraged me to use it my whole life? Probably not. “None to speak of. This is all about the staff? Because it claimed me?”

A darkness crossed his face, and his expression sent a spear of unease through me. Those refined manners could dissipate in seconds.

“One of our ancient staffs should never have fallen into wizard hands. The fact that it claimed you as its master is”— he clenched his jaw so hard it could have cracked nuts— “unacceptable.”

I smiled at him, seeing a solution. I loved the way the staff enhanced my magic, but I’d survived without it before and could do so again. Long before I lit a flame at Six Flags and burned down a good chunk of the protected wetlands in Plaquemines Parish, I’d set a table in the Napoleon House banquet room on fire (I’d been aiming at Jean Lafitte), exploded a goodly number of ancient crypts in the Beyond’s version of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, and had done lots of damage to my own house.

“No problem,” I said. “Just send me home, I’ll return the staff to the elves, and our business is finished. I’m sure you’re too busy to worry about me, and I have a necromancer to find.” And a life that doesn’t involve sinister, cigarette-smoking elves and their pretty flunkies.

“Once a staff has claimed you, you cannot give it up while you still live,” Mace said, his voice flat, the threat understood. Rand reached out to give me what was no doubt a comforting touch, but at my glare, he pulled his hand away.

There was more going on here than just the elves wanting to reclaim Charlie. Political considerations, Mace had said. Maybe it had something to do with the Interspecies Council, but those negotiations were far, far above anything a wizard on my level would know about.

“If you don’t want the staff, what do you want?”

“We first verify your lineage, to see if you really are of Vervain’s fire elves,” he said. “I understand you can use hydromancy but that’s not specific to any clan. I’ve seen no sign that you hold any of the skills unique to my airfolk or Lily’s water elves, but that remains to be seen.”

“How did you know I could do hydromancy?” It wasn’t a skill I advertised since the Elders didn’t like it.

“We have ways.”

The number of people who knew I could do hydromancy was limited, and unless he pulled it out of my mind, Quince Randolph wasn’t one of them.

“Who talked to you?” I leaned forward in the chair. Other than Alex and Jake, no one outside a small group of wizards— including Zrakovi and Adrian—knew of my skills. Although Gerry could have told people I didn’t know.

A woman’s voice, whisper soft, spoke from behind me and sent a wave of tingles over my skin. “We keep track of these things.” I stood and turned, fists clenched. Couldn’t elves just knock on the door like civilized people instead of this scary appearing-out-of-nowhere shit?

In this case it was two elves. I stared at the woman who’d spoken.

“You.” It was the tall, pale- haired woman who’d been in a tête-à- tête in Etienne Boulard’s office. And she’d been sitting with Etienne’s assistant Terri when we came out of our meeting. Had Adrian been running his vampire-besotted mouth and telling people things they didn’t need to know?

“I am Lily,” she said, and I fought the urge to hide my hands behind my back. I couldn’t pinpoint where the impulse came from, but I really, really didn’t want to touch her. Still, if I could salvage any relationship with these people I needed to try. I forced myself to take her hand, and a light tingle of energy rushed over me before I jerked it back.

“Fascinating,” she murmured. Lily’s hair, pulled atop her head in an elaborate up-do, set off her pale green eyes. Now she was an elf, or at least what I expected an elf to look like. She hadn’t seemed so exotic in the dim lights of L’Amour Sauvage. Then again, maybe she could assume some kind of glamour in public. Or maybe she’d been wearing camouflage jewelry of some kind. Rand had been even prettier once he stripped off the peridot.

A short, dark- haired man with swarthy skin and charcoal eyes came to stand beside her. He too held out a hand for me to shake. I wondered if the elves had a secret handshake and if they were waiting to see how long it took me to figure it out. It was all terribly polite for a kidnapping.

“I am Betony, of the people of earth,” he said, and turned to Mace. “She is definitely one of Vervain’s—look at her.”

I wasn’t one of anybody’s, thank you very much. “I’m a Green Congress wizard. That’s the only cult I belong to.” Well, it felt like a cult. And it was better than an elven clan, which probably had its own Kool- Aid.

“Then let me greet her.” I looked around for the source of the voice and saw a woman rising from a chair in the shadows of a darkened corner I would have sworn was empty a moment before. The elves must have their own type of transports.

She was petite, a bit shorter than me in my overpriced designer boots. Her rich blond hair ran in a braid down her back, and while her skin was smooth, an old wisdom dwelt in her blue-green eyes—very similar to the color of mine. And Rand’s. How whacked was that?

Her demeanor was more imperious than the others, not arrogant like Mace, but regal. She held herself with detachment, showed less curiosity. I couldn’t read elven emotions but I got that much from the set of her jaw and the tilt of her head. She was older than the others.

“You’re Vervain?” I held out my hand to get the secret handshake over with.

She nodded and smiled, and the difference it made in her face was dramatic. Years dropped away, and her cold beauty melted into something warmer and prettier. How much of it was illusion? I got no uncomfortable vibes from her touch, just warmth.