Her magic erupted as a wolf mirage that extended a good twelve feet in the air. Magic shot out from her, toward Gerard and her pack, and circled back, but unlike them, her wolf was just as present as her human form.
It sniffed and growled.
Gerard spun around and looked at his wife.
“The wolves sense something,” I said. Something bad.
Ed handed the camera to Dag, now sans memory card. She rolled it around in her hands as if looking at it the way any mundane would, except she was wrapping it in some sort of spell, one that I suspected would keep it from working properly from now on.
The man’s posture shifted to belligerent, then back to submissive as if he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to do.
He took the camera, and held up his hands again, then pulled his wallet out of his pocket. What had to be business cards appeared, and he handed the wad to Ed, who picked them gingerly from his fingers as if they were poison ivy.
Dag pointed at the parking lot, and the man backed toward a nondescript sedan. When he looked over his shoulder, she dropped a tracer enchantment onto his back.
It slid off.
“Maura, your mother’s tracer just slipped off his back.”
“What?” she muttered. “That’s not possible.”
Ed read the name on the card. I couldn’t hear, but his lips formed some long-winded phrase.
Gerard responded to Axlam’s magic. He lunged at the now-running man, and would have caught him if his pack hadn’t held him back.
Dag tossed a second tracer enchantment at the sedan. It, too, slid off.
Jax and Arne pushed their way through the crowd. Jax immediately ran toward Akeyla, but stopped and looked between his proto-mate and his mother.
Maura tugged on Akeyla’s hand. “Let’s go see if Axlam and Jax are okay,” she said.
Akeyla blinked. She nodded, then ran toward Jax.
I reached for Maura’s hand. “What just happened?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Did you see any magic around that man that would interfere with the tracers?”
“No,” I said. “But from over here, the elf and wolf magic may have masked it.”
She squeezed my hand. “Go tell Mom and Dad that whatever dark magic is at work, it’s not obvious to you.” Then she jogged toward the kids, who were now both hugging Axlam.
Arne waved me over. I nodded, then looked back at Axlam. She stood tall with the same strong, stoic poise in which she always carried herself. The same poise every strong woman who had ever been, or continued to be, hounded by evil carried. Axlam Geroux, Alpha of the Alfheim Pack, was not a stranger to harm.
She held the kids against her sides, but reached for Maura’s hand.
Something sinister had just walked into Alfheim. Something that, unlike my brother, didn’t feel the need to slither around in the shadows. This sinister showed up at the reaffirmation of vows and destroyed the goodwill of the community just as effectively as popping the bouncy castle.
I walked toward the elves and wolves. Time to stand up, once again, for my King and Queen—and Alfheim.
Chapter 3
Gerard jogged by as I walked toward the knot of wolves and elves on the edge of the parking lot.
“What—” I started to ask, until he held up his hand.
His honey-colored eyes shimmered. His wolf was closer to the surface than it should be with all the mundanes around. “Ask Arne,” he said, and continued toward his wife and son.
Bjorn was tapping at his phone when I walked up, and only nodded. Ed stood apart from the other men, his hands on his hips and his eyes narrow, as he stared in the direction in which the photographer had driven away. The pack dispersed—mostly, I suspected, to inform and to rally.
Arne pinched the memory card between his thumb and forefinger and held it pointing downward as if the little bit of plastic and circuitry was some sort of magical tome. Dag, who stood at a forty-five degree angle to her husband, cupped her hand under the card, but did not physically touch it.
Magic coiled off Arne’s arm and around the card just as a matching magic coiled upward from Dag.
“I feel no magic here,” Arne said.
“Nor do I,” Dag answered.
Dag’s hand fell away. Arne motioned to me. He dropped the card onto my palm. “Do you see anything?”
I rolled it around in my hand, then pinched it the same way Arne had, and peered closely at its surface. “I saw your tracers slide off both him and his car, by the way.” I glanced out at the parking lot. “Don’t see them now.”
Dag swept her hand through the air and both tracers materialized over her palm. She rolled over her arms and flicked them back into place just above her wrists. “I sensed no counter-spell.”
Arne and Dag’s elf magic clung to the plastic and the metal connectors of the memory card. I squinted and flipped it over and peered at it edge-on.
“There’s a shadow.” Something clung to the card, or had at one time. “I can’t tell if it’s a remnant of removed magic or if there’s something else here.”
Arne frowned. “He obviously wasn’t as mundane as we thought.” He held out the man’s business card.
Tom Wilson Photography, it said. Weddings, engagements, and scenic photos, and an address.
“Why is a Bemidji photographer in Alfheim?” I asked. Especially one so slick magic didn’t cling to him.
“He said that he’d been hired by a corporation to document Northern Minnesota,” Bjorn said. “Said the images were for brochures. He’s been ‘documenting’ now for over a year.”
“How strange,” I said.
Bjorn held up his hand. “Found his benefactor.” He held up his phone. “Natural Living Incorporated.” He looked up from his screen.
Ed stared at the crowd, and specifically at the kids—his included—who chased each other around the bouncy castle. “He was lying.” He nodded toward the oak trees. “And excited like a kid making one of those stupid Internet prank videos.”
Arne frowned as
