Forty minutes later and happily sated, I leaned back and sighed. “I’ve missed this.”
He raised a brow.
“You and me. Quiet evenings. The simplicity of it.”
Elron reached across the table and locked his fingers with mine. “We will get through it.”
“I know we will.” That wasn’t what worried me. “It’s not about us anymore. It’s about the events, symbolism, everything but two people who love one another.”
He squeezed my hand. “We cannot change who we are. You will be the premier. With that comes a life that is not entirely your own. I am an elf, and to others that fact complicates our union. It will not be like this forever.”
“I’m tired.” That was the truth I’d been avoiding. It wasn’t just the wedding. Or his family. It was everything.
“Tonight, I will deal with the plants. You can write up the report, and I’ll talk to Landa. With a little urging, the Lodge won’t let anyone near your apartment.”
“Not to sound ungrateful, but you know that’s not what I mean.” I tugged my hand away and toyed with a leftover crust.
Elron studied me. “It will help.”
I shrugged. “The wedding has lost its soul. I don’t want to marry you for show. I want to marry you because I love you.”
“Is it so difficult to marry for love in front of a camera?” Elron asked. “I have been to the elven weddings, ones that used every tradition my parents desire. The customs, the extravagance, they were for the guests. They did not change the feelings between the couple.”
I dropped the crust on the plate. “My love for you is private. It doesn’t exist for their pleasure.”
There was more to it than that. A tangle of emotions I didn’t know how to separate. So many people weren’t happy about our union, but so many people were. It felt like our marriage was symbolic, holding meaning to everyone. Only they didn’t have the one meaning that really mattered. Love.
Love strengthened by loyalty, devotion, caring, and shared experiences. As a child, I couldn’t have imagined a love like this. And all of what made us a unit, that was private. The world knew we killed the demons. They didn’t know the cost both of us had paid. They didn’t know how those events had shaped us, brought us together, nearly broken us.
“We can add elements, little traditions specific to us,” Elron said.
“Where?” I asked. “What’s left after Dorthea and your parents get their share?”
He leaned forward and locked his eyes with mine. “There’s always room for us. For a venue we like, for flowers we chose, for whatever little tradition we want. There is always room.”
I slid my hand across the table. “Can you help me find it? Because I don’t see where we fit.”
“You have my word.” He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to the center of my palm.
I blushed.
“Flowers.” Elron winked. “We are getting our rhododendron and sunflowers, right?”
“That much is settled. Everything else is still being debated.” His mom was still making comments about spider silk, which was never going to happen. My skin crawled just thinking about it.
We sat there and talked about what we wanted. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped. Elron took notes to give to Dorthea. He said it was time he was more active in the decisions. After weeks of arguing, I wasn’t going to say no to some help.
“Now,” Elron said. “What would we like to do for us?”
It had to be unique to the two of us. I didn’t share his passion for plants, especially not when they were prone to biting. He didn’t share my magical abilities. “What if we made a new magical plant? I’m sure I can get approval.”
He thought for a moment. “Could you get permission to release it into the wild?”
“Maybe. It depends on what we do and how it will affect the ecosystem.”
New magical flora was frowned upon. Which stopped only the ethical people. To be fair, there were good reasons. A while back, someone had made a tree whose pollen could sedate people even at very low quantities. The victims then slept for months.
Fey, elves, and witches had worked to eradicate the tree in the wild. Last I’d heard, the remaining samples were in a lab being studied to see if the tree could produce less potent pollen.
“The American Chestnut. It was the most common tree in this part of the country until it was devastated by a magic-infused fungus. Between the two of us, we could make a variant immune to the magic fungus.”
“Maybe. That’s been tried, and it didn’t work. The fungus adapted. That is the problem when magic gets involved like that.” I hated to ruin his idea. “We could try. You could experiment with it at work.”
He sighed. “I had not realized.”
“We’ll think of something.” I lifted one of his hands off the table and pressed a kiss to his knuckles.
The waiter chose that moment to show up with the check.
We paid and left. Elron wanted to get the plants into pots. I wanted them out of my car.
Besides, we weren’t going to solve the wedding problems in one day. Not with the way they seemed to breed when I wasn’t looking.
Maybe it was a family problem. Mom’s wedding hadn’t gone smoothly either.
“What about day lilies? Or hyacinthia?” Elron kept going. “Or even sunflowers?”
My phone rang, saving me from the monster of my own creation. “Oaks Consulting, Michelle speaking.”
“Hey,” Rodriguez said. “I hate to bother you, but I’m still dealing with the Boxoween, and I got a call about a plant attacking a kid nearby. Can you take a look?”
“Sure.”
I pulled over, got the address, explained the situation to Elron, and turned us around. We ended up in a neighborhood only a quarter of a mile from the Boxoween street. Rodriguez hadn’t been sure of the house number, so I slowed, giving each house a good look.
A few families had gone all out on their decorations. Most houses had kept it simple, a carved pumpkin by the door and token skeleton in the yard. None of them felt at all magical, which was a relief. I’d seen enough magical decorations to last a lifetime.
“Park,” Elron said. “I can feel the plant.”
I parked along the curb and followed him down the street. As I jogged, I summoned my wand and lowered my shields, letting my power fan out. Elron paused in front of a house with a skeletal unicorn in the yard. Someone had painted the horn bright pink.
My magic snagged on something. I probed it, but it slid away. Whatever it was, which might not be magical at all, was on the far side of the house. A six-foot-high fence blocked access to the back of the house.
“Around back.” Elron sprinted for the gate to the backyard.
A yowl cut through the quiet night, followed by a sharp scream.
I took off after Elron. That sounded like a child.
Elron jumped over the fence.
Not being an elf, I opened the gate and went through like a normal person.
A single light shone above the door on the back patio. A man lay on the ground, vines holding his arms to his body and his feet together. To the side, between a stone planter and a decorative bush, a little girl in a pink nightgown hid behind a black cat. She’d curled into a tight ball, her face hidden in her hands. The cat hissed and clawed at a green monster with dozens of vines extended from the compact green core. The plant jerked a vine back, only to reach for the child with another.
The cat lunged forward, claws ripping into the center knot of the plant. The monster plant lurched back, curling its vines protectively around its body.
“Sowil.” A shield encapsulated the child.
Elron grabbed the plant. It wrapped vines around his arm while others reached for his neck. “No.”
The vine froze.
The cat spun in my direction, looked at me with orange eyes, and nodded. It turned away and sprinted into the night.
A woman ran over, phone in her hand. “They’re here.” She dropped the phone and went to scoop up the child. Her hand glanced off the shield.
“Ma’am,” I said, approaching her cautiously. “I shielded the child to protect her. I’ll take the shield down, but talk to her. She’s been frightened.”
The woman nodded and started talking to the girl in a ragged but steady voice. “These nice people are going to take off the shield, and I’ll scoop you up. They’ll take care of Daddy, and then we can go inside.”
I removed the shield.
The little girl peeked through her arms. For a moment, she didn’t move, then she hurled herself at her mother.
With that situation in hand, I turned to the man. The vines unwound from him without any encouragement from me. It was nice to have an elf around.
“Sir, your wife has your daughter.” I helped him sit up.
He hardly looked at me. “What was that thing?”
“A plant that encountered some magic. My partner is an elf. We’ll remove it and ensure no others are on the property.” I glanced at Elron.
The plant had calmed and now draped itself across his shoulder, the long vines flowing down like a cloak. “I’ll check, but I do not feel anything.”
It took a few minutes to get the family settled. They said they weren’t injured, only frightened. Elron showed the family the plant in the light. The little girl even petted a leaf. Hopefully that was enough to prevent nightmares. Creeping Jenny plants were a popular ground cover, and usually no more harmful than an ordinary blade of grass. She didn’t need to go through life fearing them.
Elron was too pleased to have a new specimen for his greenhouse and said as much while settling the Creeping Jenny in the back with the rest of the plants. Elron drove us home so I could talk to Rodriguez. I warned him other plants could’ve walked away. We both hoped this was the only vine set on exploration.
At the Lodge, I escaped to my apartment. It could’ve been Elron or Landa or the Lodge, or even a mix of the three, but I enjoyed a quiet evening with my paperwork. With all the magic involved, I’d been worried the reports would take a long time, but I finished them in less than two hours and treated myself to a shower and bed.
It was perfect.
Until the clock struck midnight and my phone rang.
It took three tries for dispatch to get anything coherent out of me, but in my defense, I’d had two hours of sleep. Which was what I told them when they got testy. Apparently, it had taken four calls from people trapped in Halloween Essence, two police officers who couldn’t get into the shop, and two doors burning anyone who touched them to get the department to rouse me. Dispatch wasn’t happy that it would take me at least thirty minutes to get there.
I said that, but I was bouncing down the road ten minutes after the call. A light fog mitigated the benefit from the lack of traffic. Even so, I arrived well ahead of schedule. The address was in a previously trendy shopping area. A banner with Halloween Essence in spooky letters stretched above unit 113. A small cluster of cars sat in front of the shop, with two police cars at the curb. Their blue lights reflected off the windows and hung in the fog, casting an icy tone over the area.
I parked with the other cars and walked over to the building. The two officers were near the door, one watching it and the other facing the parking lot. I held up my ID and smiled politely. “Michelle Oaks, here to help with whatever magic is keeping you out of the building.”
The officer by the door turned around. The corners of his large eyes crinkled. “Michelle, good to see you.”
“Good to see you too, Kent. Wish it was under better circumstances.” I’d worked with the dark elf before. He was solid in an emergency and the perfect person to have my back at night. I recognized his partner too, though he had been less helpful last time our paths had crossed. “Officer Montoya.”
“Ms. Oaks.” He tipped his head.
“Dispatch was unclear about the problem.” I wanted this to be a quick case so I could get home and get to sleep.
Kent tipped his head toward the door. “At first, we could hear occasional screams. We tried both the front and back doors, but both of them are burning us. We haven’t heard a scream in twenty minutes.” He held out his hand with blisters across his fingers.
“I’ve got healing charms in the car.”
He nodded. “We had several calls from people trapped inside. They’re saying the store has come alive. It’s unclear if a person or spells are behind what’s going on. All phone communication went out for a few minutes. That’s when you were called. We’ve gotten on the phone with them one more time. They said they were safe, and the call ended.
“We have confirmed five people in the building. They have minor injuries: cuts, bruises, a sprained ankle. They don’t know of another person in the building. I think it feels like magic, but I can’t be sure. The department put Rodriguez on a no-call for the night after he worked thirty hours in two days.”
Lucky Rodriguez. He would be rested in the morning.
If this was simple, I might be able to finish it and get back to bed before my alarm. “Let me check for magic and get you a healing charm.”
I cracked open my shields. The shop lit up like a beacon. There was magic in there, all right. Thick swirls of opalescent black coated the building.
“Narzel.”
“What?” Officer Montoya asked.
Rather than answer, I extended a strand of magic and gently probed the building. It shoved my probe back, chasing it with a blast of anger and loss. “Blast.”
Kent grabbed Montoya’s arm and squeezed.
I ignored the two of them and went back to my car. I pocketed several healing charms of different strengths, including two minor ones for the officers. Before I walked back, I had to know what to say, and right now, I didn’t. The problem wasn’t magic.
Sure, the building was coated in magic, which I could fight, but it wouldn’t matter. It would keep regenerating itself, and this time, there wasn’t a core spell I could defuse. Not the way I had with the Boxoween.
I marched back over to the officers and handed them the charms. “It’s a curse.”
Kent’s eyes went wide.
Montoya just blinked.
“Maybe the store, maybe something inside the store, but there’s a curse.”
“Okay.” Montoya’s eyes darted between the store and me. “Can’t you remove the spells?”
“No.” I stared at the blackened windows. “To end the curse, I have to fix the shattered magic.”