An elf stood at the door to my bakery. Well, actually, it was Bryn’s and my bakery, but still … an elf.
In Whistler.
I mean, I expected this sort of thing in Vancouver. But if you weren’t into outdoor sports involving snow, then Whistler was a pricey destination in the winter months. Plus, the village and the municipality around it were both seriously lacking in the magical department.
Or at least they had been.
In less than an hour, I was hosting a grand opening for Cake in a Cup Too. And I was pretty damn magical. Also, still not much of a wordsmith when it came to naming things. Plus Bryn, not being magically inclined herself, had unwittingly staffed the bakery with at least one skinwalker — Maia Thomas, an Adept who could cloak herself in the form of a chosen animal. In her case, a raven. And just for good measure, I’d dragged a telepath along to help pass out free mini-cupcakes to potential customers.
The elf caught my eye and smiled.
Smiled.
And despite the rows of sharp, shark-like teeth she displayed, I briefly believed she was genuinely pleased to see me. A dense crowd of shoppers and skiers crossed back and forth through the retail square behind her — all of whom were nonmagicals. I could tell that with utter certainty because the new bakery wasn’t warded. Unfortunately, despite the lack of shielding magic between us, I also couldn’t taste any power from the elf. That was unnerving.
Her long hair, pale to the point of being practically white, flowed gracefully over her shoulders and halfway down her back. Simple braids twisted back from her temples, exposing ears that were indeed slightly pointed. As with vampires and werewolves, the fantastical depictions of elves in nonmagical culture were obviously rooted to some degree in the truth, perhaps from the earliest encounters between Adepts and humans.
This particular elf had a pale, iridescent complexion with a subtle green undertone. If I’d been closer, I knew that iridescence would have revealed itself as finely scaled skin that was currently picking up light reflected from the bakery’s floor-to-ceiling front windows. The elf was easily six feet tall, wearing the cutest baby-blue puffy winter jacket and skinny-legged jeans tucked into calf-hugging polished black boots. She had the same sharp features as the warrior I’d faced in a park in Vancouver three months before. But with her significantly smaller frame — that first elf had been even taller than Warner — she came off as delicate. More feminine, somehow.
Based on my limited experience and the few ancient tomes detailing historic clashes with elves that I’d read since the previous September, I had the distinct feeling that regardless of how graceful, even elegant, she appeared, the elf likely packed a punch. Thankfully, the same went for me. Though standing five foot nine inches and endowed with ample assets, ‘delicate’ or ‘elegant’ weren’t adjectives that had ever been applied to me.
The elf also had a massive gemstone embedded in her forehead. The gem was a slightly darker tint of her skin tone and appeared to be surrounded by a simple raised design that followed the edges of the stone.
It bothered me that with nothing but twenty feet and some triple-paned glass between us, I couldn’t taste her magic. Because that was my thing, my advantage. The thing I was supposed to do better than anyone else. The thing that made me special, made me THE DOWSER in all caps.
Elves, it seemed, were very skilled at masking their power. Either that or I wasn’t particularly attuned to their magic because they came from another dimension. But since the elf standing just beyond the bakery door was only the second one I’d ever encountered, I didn’t have enough experience to draw a conclusion either way. Still, it was better all around for the very vulnerable humans meandering through the center of Whistler Village that she wasn’t doing anything that would have allowed me to taste her power.
Speaking of magic, Peggy Talbot paused a few steps beyond the door that led back into the kitchen, just on the edge of my peripheral vision. The willowy blond was dressed similarly to me in jeans, a brown Cake in a Cup T-shirt, and a white ruffled apron. She was also carrying a large tray of mini Chill in a Cup — mint-chocolate cake with mint-chocolate buttercream. The telepath had frozen at the sight of the elf. Her blackberry-jam-infused power swirled around her.
Well, it was always good to know I wasn’t seeing things.
The elf’s green-eyed gaze flicked to Peggy, then returned to me. Her smile became challenging. Then she beckoned. Her slim fingers were tipped with thick nails that were only slightly too short to be called claws. The gesture was meant to be enticing, but I wasn’t that easily fooled. Too many big bad monsters with sharp teeth had a habit of seeing me as a little snack that would tide them over on their way to taking over the universe.
Yeah, I wasn’t feeling at all dramatic.
I tugged at the ties to my apron — which was white with chocolate-colored printing, rather than the pink I’d used to brand the Vancouver bakery. I placed it on the counter, then stepped around the glass display case.
Outside, the elf melted back into the crowd. Possibly literally, because I lost sight of her almost at once. Whistler Village on a Saturday morning in December was seriously thronged with people pre- and post-ski, but still.
“Jade?” Peggy set her tray down next to four others on the white granite counter that backed the display case. I had just finished stocking the domed case with cupcakes, but I didn’t glance back to admire all the tidily arranged prettiness.
“Stay here,” I said, stepping around the deep-brown plush chairs and the low, white-topped tables scattered across the bakery storefront.
Pausing at the glass door to scan the crowd outside, I glanced right, catching sight of Bryn rearranging the large seating area in front of a sleek gas fireplace that ran the length of the far wall. My dark-haired co-owner paused to artfully throw a native-inspired printed wool blanket across a low-backed couch. Then she retrieved it and tossed it again. Nervous, repetitive, soothing behavior. Bryn had sunk all her savings and then some into the new bakery. She was so deep into the zone that I knew she wouldn’t even notice me stepping out, as long as I was back before opening.
I unlocked and pushed open the heavy glass door, stepping outside. Smiling cheerfully in response to drawing the interested glances of nearby pedestrians, I made a show of glancing at, then tapping, my bare wrist. “Forty-five minutes! And we’re giving away mini-cupcakes and chocolate shots for as long as supplies last!”
A few people murmured agreeably, glancing up at the hand-carved bakery sign above my head. Bryn and I had decided to leave the windows bare of logos, making it appear as if there were no barrier between exhausted skiers, snowboarders, hikers, and Whistler residents seeking the comfort of cupcakes.
Similar to the setup of the original Cake in a Cup in Vancouver, apartments occupied the two upper floors of the cedar-sided, blue-metal-roofed building in which the bakery was housed, along with a bath shop and a clothing store. Specifically, six two-bedroom apartments — one for Bryn and five for crazily expensive short-term rentals. The entire village was filled with similar-sized mixed retail and residential buildings, then edged by million-dollar mountain chalets. The immediate area was considered ski-in and ski-out, hence the price tag.
I scanned the winter-clad, fleece-and-knit-swathed crowd with my eyes and my dowser senses. Unfortunately, I didn’t taste even a hint of unfamiliar magic in the immediate vicinity. I was beginning to regret that I’d had to murder the only other elf I’d ever met before I could truly taste his power.
Peggy appeared beside me, pressing my green ski jacket against my arm while awkwardly tugging a rainbow-striped toque with a bright-pink fake-fur pompom over her light-blond head.
“What did I say?” I asked without taking my attention from the crowd. Though I accepted the jacket. I was wearing only a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, and it was actually cold, even for me.
“Get my coat,” Peggy said perkily. “Tell Bryn we’re going to go spread word for the opening. Then follow me outside to look for the elf.”
I sighed. “I didn’t even think anything like that at all.”
Peggy laughed quietly as she mimicked my scan of the crowd.
I had hired the telepath and her twin, Gabby, to work at the bakery two and a half months before. I’d needed new staff with Bryn relocating, and had deemed it easier to keep tabs on the Talbot sisters if I saw them practically every day. I had forced them to work mostly opposite shifts, though, discovering early on that they were incapable of getting anything done while together.
Gabby had taken a liking to baking and was proving to be a quick learner, which was good — because she wasn’t particularly delightful with customers. That was Peggy’s forte. Hence, the decision to bring her with me to Whistler to help Bryn with the grand opening. Todd, Tima, and Gabby would handle the Saturday rush in Vancouver, and I had put up a notice over a month before informing customers that the bakery would be closed on the following Sunday and Monday.
Peggy tugged on arm warmers — also rainbow-striped, but with rows of hearts — that I guessed were a gift from Mory. The young necromancer knit practically every waking moment, to the extent where she couldn’t possibly wear everything she made. The telepath lifted her hand, her jaw resolutely set as she pointed to our right.
“You can hear her thoughts?” I asked, already stepping in the direction she’d indicated.
“Nope.” She followed at my heels. “But there’s a weird feedback coming from that direction.”
Feedback.
Delightful.
Preceded by her huckleberry-and-wild-onion magic, Maia Thomas — Cake in a Cup Too’s second full-time employee — jogged up behind us, keeping pace with Peggy without a word.
I glanced back, giving the dark-haired skinwalker one of my best narrow-eyed glares. My disapproval slid off her like softened butter on Teflon.
Great. I was following a dimensional interloper — who might just be able to manifest knives out of thin air or snap a dragon’s neck — with two young Adepts at my back. I could freak out and fret. But unless I actually locked them up somewhere, and possibly lost the elf’s trail in the process, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop them from wading in.
Welcome to my life.
“Stay behind me,” I said, brushing shoulders with various winter-weather-clad pedestrians as I negotiated the crowd.
The cobblestones underneath my feet were mostly bare of snow, thanks to diligent village maintenance crews, but the mountains soaring above the village were covered with fresh powder. It was currently snowing, but so lightly that the icy crystals were almost mist.
Warner, Kett, and Drake were skiing some crazy-high trails that had required them to be out of the apartment at five a.m., then flown to the mountaintop in a helicopter. Audrey, the beta of the West Coast North American Pack, and Lara, a pack enforcer, were skiing black-diamond runs on Blackcomb with Kandy. The werewolves had flown in from Portland for my pending shower, bachelorette party, and wedding — if the elf I was following didn’t have other nefarious plans for me. Jasmine was doing something tech-related in the apartment she and Kett had rented above the bakery. Or maybe she was gaming. Whatever it was took two laptops and a tablet. Although she could tolerate being outside by day, the newly turned vampire still preferred to stay out of the sun.
Yep, everyone else was playing while I was getting ready for the grand opening of Cake in a Cup Too. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Especially since the vampires were the only ones who I trusted around cupcakes. What with them only needing blood for sustenance.
An elf following me to Whistler was an added and unexpected complication.
Over the previous three months, we hadn’t heard a peep from whoever had occupied the other two prison cells that had been unexpectedly discovered hidden along the shoreline of Kits Beach. Warner and Kandy had expected immediate attacks — or even an attempt by the elves to claim the entire territory. And I couldn’t blame them for that strong a reaction, given that the one elf we’d faced had made a serious attempt to murder them both. But it had been so quiet since that attack that I’d begun to think the elves had simply moved on. Or, based on this sudden reappearance, perhaps they’d simply retreated an hour and a half north into the mountains.
And yeah, I was still waiting on the meeting I’d demanded with Pulou, who had apparently stashed powerful beings — not just magical treasure — in hidden caves in the Vancouver shoreline. Despite the fact that he’d previously summoned me himself — and sure, I had pretty much told him to screw off — the treasure keeper had ignored every request I’d sent him through Blossom. Our mutual disdain was possibly about to bite me in the ass. Because all the things I didn’t know about the elf that I was presently attempting to track with two fledglings at my heels was … well, pretty much everything.
At the corner of the building, I picked up the first hints of the elf’s magic. Conveniently, this drew me away from the main thoroughfare. Well, it was convenient for me. I knew that even with the two teenagers tagging along, an elf wasn’t going to get the upper hand over me easily. But she could quite easily force me to expose the magical universe to the fine residents of Whistler. And even I wasn’t going to get away with that level of transgression.
Maia was gazing overhead. I followed her eyeline to a crow perched on an upper balcony, overlooking a narrow lane to my immediate right. The crow dipped its beak and shuffled along the railing, peering down at the lane.
“Can the crow see the elf?” I asked Maia.
The teenage skinwalker sneered. “What? You think I can talk to crows? Because I’m First Nations, I must commune with animals?”
Well … it wasn’t a completely stupid assumption, was it? I laid on an equal amount of snark myself. “I was thinking it might be a secondary ability. What with your changing into a raven and all.”
Peggy stifled a giggle.
Maia scowled. Then she begrudgingly said, “Yes. Something shiny wanders this way.”
Laughing under my breath, I stepped into the narrow lane that cut between the buildings. The cobblestone alley led to the road that ran out of the village proper and onto the highway. It was just wide enough for a couple of ATVs to get through. Actual vehicles didn’t drive through the pedestrian-only retail section of Whistler Village except in emergencies.
Halfway down the lane, magic rippled around me. It tasted of an evergreen forest after a rainstorm … and something else I couldn’t immediately identify.
One moment, I was walking on cobblestones, with snow packed against the walls of the buildings to either side. The next, I was standing in an atrium with soaring, vaulted ceilings — and that churned with magic. I’d never seen anything like it, except maybe for renderings of grand cathedrals or glass castles in fantasy movies.
I might have been a little too hasty with that ‘not easily gaining the upper hand’ boast. I really had to learn to keep my mouth shut, even in my own head.
Peggy gasped, pressing a shaking hand to her temple. She looked pained, as if she’d just been stabbed in the head. “Something is wrong,” she murmured, peering around. Her eyes were narrowed in discomfort, as if the muted daylight was suddenly too bright.
“What gave it away?” Maia asked snarkily. “The purple water?” The skinwalker jabbed her finger toward a stream that now appeared to be twisting along the edge of a black stone path. The purple-tinted creek wove through strange plants and trees, leading us forward.
“Water? Where?” Peggy wrapped her hand around my elbow. Her sweet blackberry-imbued magic slipped through my personal shields with the physical contact. “Oh! Pretty!”
I sighed. Apparently, the telepath could use me as some sort of seeing-eye dog. “Did you ask permission to touch me? To use your power on me?” I side-eyed Peggy, who was even cheekier about Adept etiquette than I was. I really had no idea how her adoptive mother, Angelica, kept her brood from getting slaughtered by easily offended Adepts on an ongoing basis.
Oh, right. She’d moved them all to Vancouver. A problem shared was now annoyingly my problem.
Peggy widened her sky-blue eyes, then blinked at me with feigned regret. Apparently, I also shielded her from whatever had caused her instant headache.
I shook my head. “If I have to move quickly, you’re going to get hurt.”
“I’ll let go.”
Stifling yet another sigh, I slowly traversed the path that had been apparently laid out just for us. I could still feel the cobblestones under my sneakered feet and the cold morning air on my exposed neck, rather than the warmth that visually radiated from all around us. So apparently I was walking through some sort of illusion. And since Peggy was also a truth seeker, which I loosely understood to be some sort of human lie detector, the fact that she’d felt the change but didn’t see the illusion until she touched me made sense.
“No birds,” Maia murmured, scanning left to right in a way that seemed to mimic the raven form she could wear. “Or animals.”
“I think we’re indoors,” I said. “Or at least we’re meant to believe we are.”
I rounded a tree, or maybe it was a really large bush, whose red-veined blue flowers dripped with what looked like malicious magic. “Don’t touch anything,” I belatedly murmured to my young companions. I still wasn’t accustomed to being the babysitter. You know, what with my own childish tendencies. Which included grabbing anything magical within my reach.
The atrium opened up before us to a wide area covered in opalescent black tile, easily large enough for a hundred elves to congregate. The purple stream dropped into a pool near the far side. A dais topped by a single chair rose beyond that short waterfall. Actually, it was a massive throne — and along with the dais itself, it was carved out of some metal that shone with foreign magic.
I slowed, reaching back and physically tucking my two companions tightly behind me. They complied without protest. Seriously, I was just in town to open a damn bakery. So I didn’t need an elder of the local First Nation band and the rest of the itchy-trigger-fingered Talbots gunning for me because I’d led their kids into an elf slaughter.
I didn’t call forth my knife, which was strapped as always in its invisible sheath on my right hip. All my instincts told me I should. But I actually wasn’t certain what sort of tableau we were creating outside the illusion. Would a nonmagical passerby see us standing huddled together in the narrow lane, gazing off into the distance? If so, then waving my blade around like a maniac would really put a dampener on the grand opening to come.
“I know this game,” I said, cutting through the bullshit with snark instead of my knife. “I haven’t played it. But I get the gist. I’m supposed to ask who sits on the throne.”
I glanced around, searching for the elf who’d drawn me out of the cozy interior of the bakery. Waiting for an answer, I scanned the overflowing greenery along the edges of the atrium, seeing nothing other than layers and layers of magic. And Maia was right — I couldn’t hear anything natural within the space either. I should at least be able to hear the waterfall. So the illusion somehow blocked out the sound of the busy marketplace behind me, but it didn’t come with its own audio. Either that or the elf wielding the illusion magic wasn’t strong enough to completely enthrall me. Or she was limiting the display to give me a false impression.
There were too many unknowns. And I wasn’t particularly interested in games where someone pretended to be something they weren’t just to secure my attention … or to distract me.
Though I couldn’t hear anything within the vision created for me by the elf I’d followed out into the cold, I could feel that I was surrounded by her magic. Her particular power was apparently different than the magic the elf in the park had wielded. Either that or he hadn’t bothered showing off — thinking I was easy prey, perhaps.
Feeling the teenagers behind me becoming restless, I wrapped my hand around the hilt of my knife. Someone was going to have to teach Peggy and Maia to be patient hunters. Sadly, I was concerned that that person was supposed to be me, and I was honestly getting bored myself.
I broke the weird silence again. “The thing is, I’m a little busy, and using magic on an Adept without permission is seriously frowned upon in this dimension. So this is strike one for you.”
“Ahead to our right …” Peggy whispered. “You have someone’s attention. I can feel the weight of it.”
Using the telepath’s direction as a focus, I tracked the eddies of magic running up and around the atrium’s arcing walls and vaulted ceiling, sensing a possible source about twenty feet ahead and slightly to our right. Still keenly aware of the scene I was possibly putting on for pedestrians who weren’t caught up in the illusion magic, I gathered the power simmering underneath my feet, coaxing it upward to curl around my left hand. I kept my right hand still loose around the hilt of my knife, just in case I was about to instigate an attack.
When I’d drawn enough of the elf’s power firmly into my grasp, I tore the energy free, ripping through the illusion with strength and will, no blade necessary.
A massive tear appeared, slicing across the black-rock path and the purple river to expose the cobblestones underneath. Through the rupture, I could once again see the cedar-shingled buildings that sided the narrow lane, and the tidy piles of snow edging their concrete foundations.
Maia gasped.
Peggy giggled, quietly delighted.
I allowed the effervescent magic — now tasting of bark and moss — that I’d ripped from the illusionist to collect in my knife. Storing it rather than absorbing it fully. Then I reached for another handful.
The illusion collapsed before I could touch it again.
The elf was standing at the spot where I’d sensed her magic, and the lane around her was otherwise thankfully empty. She was supporting herself with one hand propped against the corner of a building sided in naturally weathered cedar shingles. Though she appeared winded, possibly hurt, she locked her fierce gaze to mine.
“In this dimension, we introduce ourselves before attacking each other,” I said. “It’s just polite.”
She curled her lip in a snarl.
“You were trying to be friendly, yes?” I asked mockingly. “What with the smiling and beckoning?”
The elf pushed herself away from the wall, her gaze flicking to Peggy, then to Maia, both of whom were peering around my shoulders. “Perhaps you should see to your young, witchling.” Her accent was an echo of Pulou’s British lilt, similar to the elf in the park but less labored. Perhaps she’d spent the last three months in ESL classes. “We shall play another day.”
“I’m not interested in —”
The illusionist elf spun away, running with swift, light-footed strides.
Apparently she wasn’t a fan of banter.
I followed, jogging as I assessed her path but not breaking into a full run.
She darted across the main road, Whistler Way, zigzagging through the slow-crawling traffic. Leaping onto the sidewalk on the other side, she nearly slipped on a patch of ice. Then, somehow, she stepped into the crowd at the crosswalk and disappeared.
Another illusion.
I paused at the edge of the road, hoping to catch sight of the elf before I crossed it. Just in case she was doubling back and around.
Peggy and Maia slammed against me, realizing too late that I’d stopped. Their slow reaction time reminded me that I wasn’t backed by my usual companions — powerful, quick-healing Adepts who’d been severely injured the last time we’d tangled with an elf. I occasionally caught Kandy rubbing her ribs as if they still ached from the warrior elf’s blades. And while the fledglings seemed fully prepared to follow me into whatever skirmish awaited us if we caught up to the illusionist elf, their magic practically sparking off them, neither of them wielded any offensive power. At least not any honed magic useful in a toe-to-toe tussle.
And still, I’d been completely ready to abandon my responsibilities and drag Peggy and Maia into danger.
The elf certainly had my number.
Maybe that was what the glittery display of magic was about. Enticement — and of me specifically, because with my companions off skiing, she’d thought I was alone. So exactly how closely had she been watching me? And for how long? I wondered whether she’d followed me to Whistler.
All without me picking up any hint of her magic.
Because that was troubling. And seriously irksome.
“We have a bakery to open,” I murmured, calling myself back to the present and to the teenagers shuffling their feet behind me.
But before I turned back to the bakery, I ran my fingers along the hilt of my knife, stirring up the magic I’d stored within the blade. At a minimum, the elf’s power was capable of making me think I was seeing things — and at its worst, she was invading my mind without me feeling it. So, tasting the magic I’d torn from her, I allowed the knife to absorb it completely. She wouldn’t be able to trick me again so effortlessly.
The fledglings at my back were another story, though.
And, silly me, I’d deemed it overkill to install wards on the new bakery.
“Why show us that?” Peggy asked. “That room?”
I didn’t have an answer for her. But I did have an idea that it had something to do with whoever sat on that throne. Someone who liked having the buffer of the purple pool between them and their subjects. Their followers? Citizens? I really wasn’t a fan of anyone who thought they deserved to sit on a throne carved out of magical metal. And yeah, I understood how totally judgemental that was.
“It was a test,” Maia said.
“Maybe,” I murmured, turning back to the bakery and drawing her and Peggy with me. “That’s what it felt like.”
A test. To see what I would do. How I would react. But had it been a test of my power? Of my willingness to engage? Or — much more potentially foreboding — had it been a warning? Because though I had no concrete evidence either way, I felt pretty certain that the illusionist elf wasn’t the person who sat on that throne. Because if that was the case, why wouldn’t she have revealed herself perched there?
So was she attempting to intimidate me … or was she trying to help me?
“If the elf comes around when I’m not here, I don’t want to be rescuing you after the fact.” I looked pointedly at each of the teenagers in turn. “You got it?”
“Sure, Jade,” Peggy said.
Maia snorted. “Like I’d be that stupid.”
Right. Maybe it was just me who dashed out into the street to follow beguiling magic whichever way it led.
Maia picked up the pace, sprinting as the bakery came into view. Peggy was at her heels. The sight was so carefree that I had to smile. They had just faced off against an elf — a mythical creature from another dimension — and hadn’t batted an eyelash.
Me? I churned the scene over and over in my head and fretted. Because they didn’t know how quickly pretty magic could lead to bloodletting, neck snapping, and utter despair.
Bryn opened the bakery door, peering around and looking a bit panicked. But she smiled as Maia and Peggy barreled by her, already stripping off their outerwear as they tumbled into the storefront.
“Ready, Jade?”
I returned Bryn’s smile. “As ready as I ever am.”
At least I had new cupcakes and hot chocolate waiting for me. Elf or no elf, that was something to relish.