Stolen Magic. Esri Rose

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      I paused at the door, halfway out. “Uh-huh?”

      He leaned over his folded arms to see me as I edged even farther out the door. The faded denim shirt he wore hung from his broad shoulders and showed a V of olive skin at his neck. “Adlia, is everything okay? You seem a little subdued today, as opposed to your normal, talkative self.”

      “Ha-ha. I’m impressed you managed to say that with a straight face.” Were there shades to my sub-duedness? If so, did everyone notice them, or just Mark? “I’m fine.” I cleared my throat. “Thanks.”

      He grinned, the corners of his mouth curling. “Okay, then. Let me know if you have any problems in class. Oh, and that picture you took of the tree roots going into the creek?” He gave an emphatic nod. “Really nice.”

      I couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. The twinkle was in full effect, making me wonder if he were making fun of me. “Thanks,” I muttered again, then made a sharp turn around the door frame, snagging my T-shirt on the door’s hardware as I escaped into the hall. Elves…we’re so frickin’ graceful.

      Outside the Photo Center, August heat radiated off the sidewalk, even though it was evening. Hipsters sat at café tables outside trendy restaurants, looking down their noses at out-of-town parents bonding with their kids before college started.

      Soon the parents would go back to California and Texas, leaving their young’uns to get tattoos and learn how to smoke dope. But maybe I only thought that because I was jealous of their family happiness. Some of them probably wouldn’t get tattoos.

      Walking three blocks took me past the restaurant-and-boutique zone and across Canyon Boulevard, to the city park that ran along Boulder Creek.

      Elves merge with our bit of Ma’Nah, the earth, to recharge. While in this energetic state, we can also travel through the earth. But the grass felt so wonderful under my feet, I resisted the urge to melt into the ground and flow to my destination. Instead, I walked parallel to the concrete bike path.

      The fast, catchy beat of a drum circle came from my right somewhere, punctuated by the occasional incoherent shout of a bum nesting under a tree.

      No one bothered me as I walked the rest of the way to the Canyon Gallery and Theater, an annex building of the Boulder Public Library and location of our nerdy secret headquarters.

      I let myself in with a key, being careful to lock the door after me. It was after-hours for everyone but elves, or it should have been. One poor human sat slogging away at her computer.

      “Hey! Who are you?” she demanded, swiveling in her chair as I passed. A shot of elf glamour and she turned back to her screen, oblivious.

      I wondered how many times this had happened to her tonight, and how it was affecting her spreadsheet results.

      The sign on the door to our covert office said ARCHIVES: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and no human had tried to come in since we’d screwed it on. Either no one cared about archives or they weren’t sure if they were authorized. I closed the door behind me and turned the dead bolt, then tensed as I saw that our boss, Kutara, was the only other person in the room.

      Kutara was the head honcho and supreme ruler in chief of the elves in Boulder, Colorado. She had organized the defeat of Fellseth, an elf-gone-bad who had cut a swath from New Mexico to Colorado, killing elves to take their energy and glamouring humans to put him in their wills. Dark elves weren’t that common, but since we were already fighting to survive against human encroachment, they were seen as the ultimate betrayers.

      With Fellseth dead, Kutara was determined to use his fortune to preserve wilderness areas and the elves who lived in them, and also to buy some kind of building that could serve as office space for us.

      She looked up, giving me the same look a hawk gives a rabbit. Kutara is lovely, with violet eyes, black hair, and a heart-shaped face, but none of this makes her any less intimidating, nor does the preppie clothing style she’s adopted. Today she wore tan slacks and a sleeveless pink shell. “Did you check the tree?” she asked.

      The message tree was a twisted-wire sculpture that ran up the wall by the door, its branches stuck with paper reminders. We mostly used e-mail, but sometimes there wasn’t a spare computer.

      Once, once, I had forgotten to check the tree, and missed a reminder to get a new toner cartridge. I would never hear the end of it.

      “I’m checking the tree.” I plucked off a scrap with my name. “Get more copy paper.” It was Kutara’s handwriting, of course.

      I sat down at one of the four desks that occupied the center of the room, across from She Who Must Be Obeyed. The desks faced each other, with a space in the middle for cords and cables. The effect was a sort of fountain of laptops, over which we stared at each other when we weren’t staring at our screens. The rest of the space was taken up with a copier/fax, a couple of file cabinets, and storage boxes.

      I thumped the office-supplies catalog on my desk and felt my spine slump all the way to my skull.

      Once upon a time, one of us would have gone to Office Depot and glamoured the staff to ignore some sizeable thefts. Now we paid our own way, thanks to Fellseth’s money. Well, except for rent on this space.

      “Do we need anything besides paper?” I asked. “Because it’s free delivery if I get over forty dollars worth of stuff.”

      Kutara gave me the smile I had come to dread. “Galan and I have talked about getting an investment-tracking program. I thought you might be the person to learn it.”

      Galan was Kutara’s second-in-command, and one of the few people I considered a friend. Galan had created the message tree—the one pretty thing in our office, even if Kutara had turned it into yet another tool for making me feel guilty.

      At her suggestion that I learn a new program, I felt the corners of my mouth turn down. Across from me, Kutara’s did the same. It was like looking in a mirror. “I’m really not sure I’m the right person for that,” I said.

      “Why not? You’re smart enough, Adlia. You’re not having any trouble learning how to use the digital camera, are you?”

      “No.” The camera was for taking pictures of prospective properties. I’d mastered the basics by reading the manual, but when Kutara suggested taking a photography class, I’d jumped at the excuse to get away from the office. Basking in Mark Speranzi’s presence was a bonus. “It’s just that numbers make my head hurt. That’s more Galan’s thing.”

      Her expression was like a black cloud now. “Numbers make all of our heads hurt,” she snapped. “Galan has done it in the past because it has to be done, but Erin needs him at her store.”

      Erin was Galan’s human mate. They had bonded when Fellseth had taken Galan’s land and tried to kill him. Erin had found Galan when he was near death and had brought him home, not knowing he was an elf. Now Galan, whose elven talent was metalworking, made jewelry to sell in Erin’s New Age shop.

      Kutara went on. “With Erin needing Galan, I really can’t rely on him as a full-time worker.”

      I felt a stab of alarm. Did she plan to rely on me? “Couldn’t we hire someone to track investments? Rich humans have brokers, or whatever they’re called. I’d be happy to look in the phone book—”

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