Silent siren, p.1
Silent Siren, page 1
COPYRIGHT
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SILENT SIREN. Copyright © 2022 by Ash Fitzsimmons.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover design by MiblArt.
ISBN 978-1-949861-48-8
www.ashfitzsimmons.com
CONTENTS
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Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Acknowledgements
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
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On paper, learning magic sounds like fun. Say the right word, make the right motion, brew the right ingredients together, and suddenly, reality shifts in fantastic ways. For a Virginia kid like me who never did anything more magical in school than make flames change color in chemistry, the notion of studying real magic was exciting once I got past the impossibility of it all. Magic. From me, Rose Thorn—an artist, sure, but otherwise pretty run of the mill.
Or so I’d thought seven months prior, before I got a taste of the Pactlands, the world that had been hiding just out of my peripheral vision.
As it turned out, I wasn’t ordinary at all. Appearances aside, I was half elven, meaning I had an innate gift for magic and probably a very long life ahead of me. Weirder still, I’d inherited a rare wild talent, farsight. While most farseers could look to the future or the past, my vision seemed firmly tuned to current events, which, while maybe not as sexy as seeing the future, had proven useful enough for criminal investigations when it deigned to cooperate. I wasn’t a reliable farseer yet by any stretch of the imagination, but with steady practice, I’d slowly improved.
Unfortunately for my dreams of magical mastery, “slow improvement” seemed to be the best I could muster. Elves tend to use gestures as focusing tools, meaning that every spell I tried to cast had both a mental and a physical component to mess up—and as a twenty-six-year-old latecomer to the game, I messed up a lot. But by that November, as my muscle memory improved, the basics began to come more easily to me, and I dared to hope that the worst was over.
And then Emarae ti’Mal swept into my life with all the delicate gentleness of a flying sack of cement. Sure, magic could be frustrating…but under Emarae’s tutelage, magic hurt.
Since 1953, the director of the Pactlands’ Division of Plants and Potions had been Pateme ti’Tam, an elf from one of the middling Halls who’d come up through the ranks before the nascent DPP even had ranks as such. Equally comfortable in affairs on the Regulatory and Interdiction sides, Pateme was well versed in politics and had proven himself to be a conscientious, law-abiding citizen.
Except, of course, for the tiny matter of me.
That I had a talent for magic was undeniable, though I was scrambling to play catch-up. And my farsight had already come in handy. Twice that year, I’d helped DPP crack a case—and considering that people my age in the Pactlands were still stuck in school, my accomplishments weren’t too shabby. There was just one problem: legally, I was human.
Pact law was clear that I had no business being within the borders of the Pactlands, nor were any of its citizen authorized to teach me magic. My grandfathers might have been elves, but that alone wasn’t enough to give me a free pass. After all, the magically gifted races had banded together and built their private pocket world to escape human encroachment, and the last thing they wanted was visitors.
Which was why my first lessons in magic had taken place in the privacy of my own home.
Special Agent Yven ti’Ansha knew the rules as well as anyone, but he’d taken pity on me—or maybe something more, though I tried not let my thoughts wander in that direction—and made the trip to see me once a week. I taught him to paint with more skill than the average kindergartener, while in return, he taught me how to change my appearance and beckon items from across the room into my hand. Between our lessons, we went out to dinner, and he always made breakfast the next morning. We had a system in place, and it worked.
Unbeknownst to us, Pateme was keeping tabs on his underling’s portal excursions, and he put two and two together. After my first unplanned journey into the Pactlands, Pateme had pulled some strings. He wasn’t just the agency director, after all—he was my grandfather’s uncle. After quietly giving Yven permission to keep tutoring me, Pateme had lodged credentials for me in the portal system, allowing me to come and go without having to hide in the trunk of someone’s car. And then, seeing as Yven wasn’t great with defensive magic, Pateme had organized supplemental tutoring sessions for me at DPP’s in-house gym.
I knew he meant well, but I wished he had a less painful method of showing it.
On my initial solo jaunt to the Pactlands in early November, I’d anticipated a long weekend at Yven’s bachelor apartment, where I could continue to work on my gesticulations while surrounded by his incredible orchid collection. Instead, Yven had taken me to the office and up to see the boss, who met us in a conference room with only another elf for company and locked the door behind us.
Elves don’t tend to be built like linebackers, and Pateme’s companion was no exception. He was a bit taller than Pateme and Yven, maybe a couple inches over six feet, with tied-back black hair and dark blue eyes that regarded me appraisingly as I took a seat. Unlike the director, who sported one of the embroidered sleeveless robes typical of Pactlands business attire, he wore a simple black shirt and pants, the sort of tactical gear DPP used for fieldwork.
Pateme introduced him as Emarae ti’Mal, the second in command on the Interdiction side of DPP, then gave me the good news. “Emarae has agreed to tutor you in defensive work,” he said as the agent continued to study me. “You’ll come here for lessons and work with him in private. And before you ask, I trust that he can keep his mouth shut.”
“Absolutely,” said Emarae. “Because I’ve been informed that if I don’t, my chief will rip me in half.”
His chief being a green-skinned, blonde-mohawked, eight-foot-two troll with razor tusks, I didn’t doubt the possibility. Gentle Breeze liked me, but even still, I worried about the potential for accidental crushing around her.
And so, over the following weeks, I began to slip off to the Pactlands for my extra lessons on Wednesday and Thursday nights. My work schedule was fairly flexible—I owned an art studio in Carytown, and I could open when I chose—but that proved to be both blessing and curse. While my availability for private tutelage was doing wonders for my magical education, by December, I could have used a spa weekend.
Yven was a patient, gentle teacher. Emarae was patient, too, as he could stand in the middle of the gym and throw rubber balls at me for hours while I tried in vain to dodge or generate a shield. Over two hundred years old and skilled in offensive and defensive magic alike, Emarae knew precisely how to hit me where it hurt—and he did so, assuming that pain would encourage me to quickly commit new techniques to memory. I couldn’t say that he was wrong, but I missed Yven terribly during those long hours of pummeling.
Somehow, despite my flailing, Emarae was convinced that I’d exhibited progress, and at the end of November, he brought me to a training bout with his full team. He oversaw about fifty Interdiction agents, all of them in peak physical condition, qualified on multiple weapons, and at least knowledgeable about the potions in their arsenal, even if they couldn’t brew them. I had more than a passing acquaintance with only one of those agents—Pars Mera, Yven’s best buddy, a seven-foot sorcerer with a crewcut and chinstrap beard who looked like he could hold his own at the caber toss but occasionally showed up with glittery fingernails after playing beauty parlor with his daughters. Another, much smaller, sorcerer was Elrid Kiefan, who looked unimposing but could take even a centaur to the ground. On the Friday I joined them for practice, Emarae swore the group to secrecy, then introduced me as a human farseer. “She’s a special case,” he said over the rumbling murmurs. “And a talent like that is too valuable to let sit dormant. Now, the director wants her to learn how to defend herself, so I don’t expect you to go easy on her tonight.”
They never asked my name. Pars just bellowed, “Duck, Red,” as he slammed a rubber ball into my chest and knocked me off my feet. From that moment, I was Red to them, the klutzy human with the weirdly accented Pactish who seemed to have acquired an odd affinity for elven focusing techniques. Lucky for me, as they grew comfortable with my presence, they only hit harder.
The second time I showed up for groupwork, Yven ushered me to the gym as usual but made camp on the bleachers with his computer and a folder of half-written reports. While we finished warming up, Emarae noticed him and yelled, “Hey, ti’Ansha, get down here! You can play with us!”
“Thank you, sir,” Yven called back, “but I’m not that foolish.”
For the rest of the session, he had to work while dodging the occasional
Though I complained while I iced my tender muscles, Yven insisted that I was progressing quickly. “Your shieldwork is getting stronger,” he said, handing me a tiny tube containing a potion he’d promised was sufficiently potent to let me forget my discomfort. “Honestly, I’m impressed.”
“Only because you’ve seen me at my worst,” I countered, and slugged the potion back. “I’ve made some dumb mistakes in practice.”
“And, uh…that,” he replied with a grimace.
“What do you—”
Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to drink the potion until I was horizontal. I passed out on Yven’s rug, narrowly avoiding the edge of his coffee table, and woke the next morning with a pillow beneath my head and a musty taste in my mouth. Ever the gentleman, Yven had somehow maneuvered me onto the couch, covered me with a pair of blankets, and left a glass of water within reach.
As supportive non-boyfriends went, he set the bar high.
Once per quarter, each Interdiction team spent a three-day weekend running skill drills—physical conditioning for everyone, plus spellcasting practice for those with the talent. Emarae’s slot on the calendar just so happened to fall in mid-December, and while he phrased his offer to me as an invitation to join in on the fun, I got the sense that it wasn’t optional and wouldn’t exactly be a trip to Disneyworld. Despite the fact that Emarae wasn’t my boss, he’d spent long enough wrangling the Interdiction cowboys to have mastered the art of the no-argument order, and so I found myself acquiescing before I really stopped and thought about just how much “fun” three days with an Interdiction team could be.
But as backing out wasn’t in the cards, I made the hour-long drive from Richmond in the dark that Friday morning, skirting patches of black ice on the backroads until I passed through the hidden portal in the woods and out onto Beukal’s cold but impossibly clean streets. The Pactlands’ capital was impressive even at night, a well-lit metropolis with a dense center of government and business towers, apartment buildings, and manicured parks to break up the concrete. While there were few trees in the city center—the soil could barely support them—some urban gardeners had compensated with arching trellises over which ultra-hardy flowering vines had been coaxed, creating pockets of shade. My favorite park was in the center of the sprawling museum complex north of downtown, which Yven had driven me out to see one evening, but I’d yet to visit any of the museums, and with the schedule Emarae made me keep, I wondered if I ever would.
Avoiding DPP’s tower in District 2 as long as I could, I headed straight for Yven’s apartment in District 3, and he met me at the door with a strained smile. “How are we feeling?” he asked.
“Under-caffeinated, but this is probably the best I’m going to feel all weekend,” I muttered, and schlepped my suitcase inside. Only once the door was closed behind me did I hug him, safe from curious eyes.
“Good to see you, Rosie,” he murmured into my hair.
“You, too. Thanks for letting me stay over—”
He grunted. “Ah, yes, the finest accommodations in the capital! Behold, the wondrous couch,” he said, gesturing to the orchid-bestrewn den with a flourish.
“I like that couch.”
“Only because you haven’t tried the bed, and I’m more than willing to switch—”
“For the last time, Yven, I’m not stealing your bed.”
“It’s not stealing if I offer it,” he pointed out.
In reply, I rolled my eyes and patted my suitcase. “Mind if I unpack?”
The festivities kicked off at nine, and considering the battered state in which I usually found myself after a hard session with Emarae, I wanted my bed to be crash-ready. Yven didn’t protest, and while I tucked my spare sheets into place on his pristine tan couch, he unloaded a bag of goodies on the kitchen table. I’d brought along my usual first-aid supplies—bandages, hot and cold packs, wrap for sprains, and a value-sized bottle of Tylenol—but Yven, a gracious host, had purchased an assortment of potions as well and arranged them on the table for ease of chugging upon our return that evening. The pale green one was the mildest painkiller of the bunch, made with a pinch of potent dried goldenhaw fruit. A much stronger alternative was the peach potion in the little bottles, which would both numb the pain and knock me out. Somehow, Yven had procured three vials of the expensive burgundy healing potion that acted as both painkiller and tissue regenerator, though I suspected that he’d lifted them from Interdiction’s stock. And then there were the sleeping potions, useful if my discomfort made me toss and turn.
Between the magical pharmacy at my disposal and the promise of his homemade breakfasts, Yven was the best non-boyfriend I could have asked for. He’d opened his home to me for the last month, and when a nosy neighbor or two had enquired as to the apparent redheaded sorcerer crashing at his place, he’d explained me away as a colleague working on a tricky project with him. He couldn’t very well lie that I was his girlfriend. Genetics aside, my features were all too human, and though I could pass for a sorcerer, well-bred elven boys didn’t entangle themselves with partners from outside the species. While Yven had taught me how to create a mask for myself, and I could rearrange my appearance to coordinate with his—higher cheekbones, a more pointed smile, the long, unmistakable elven ears—we decided that the risk of a slip-up was just too great. Besides, if word got back to his family that he was seeing someone, we both knew that I wouldn’t be able to sell the illusion once my Virginia accent reared its head.
I wished I could have been his girlfriend. The truth of the matter, which I kept firmly to myself, was that I’d developed more than a mere crush on Yven during our seven-month acquaintance. Smart, sweet, and blessed with the most beautiful turquoise eyes I’d ever seen, Yven could make my heart somersault with a well-timed grin. Still, I couldn’t afford to shoot my shot. Unless one of my great-grandfathers decided to acknowledge me into their Halls—about as likely as the odds that I’d win a Powerball jackpot—then I’d remain legally human. Under the current conditions, were Yven to decide that he couldn’t go on without me, he’d be exiled from the Pactlands and handed a potion on the way out. The “death draught” was meant to suppress the drinker’s magical ability and give him a roughly human lifespan, but no one who drank it lasted more than a few decades. No matter how I felt about Yven, I’d be damned if I let him kill himself over me.
That I’d wondered many a night what his lips would feel like on mine was a secret I’d never confess.
“You know,” he said, bringing me a travel tumbler full of fresh coffee, “Pars probably would have let you stay over with him this weekend.”
I gratefully accepted the offering. “Maybe, but you know how sweary I get after a few hours with Emarae, and Pars and Canna probably don’t want me teaching the girls exciting new words.”
“True, but you’d have a real bed over there.”
“Again,” I said, smoothing out my fleece blanket, “I really like this couch.”
There was nothing special about that couch, and we both knew it.
Yven shrugged, but I caught his little smile. “In that case, shall we?”
I followed him into the apartment building’s corridor, feeling underdressed in my sweatshirt and yoga pants. By contrast, Yven was outfitted for the office—dark trousers, crisp white shirt cut loose in the sleeves, and a floor-length robe in a style similar to but plainer than Pateme’s usual attire. As what I’d seen of Yven’s work wardrobe rarely strayed from basic black, I was pleasantly surprised to see that his robe that morning was dark gray with a blue pinstripe in the weave. “This is nice,” I said, giving him a once-over in the elevator. “Did you go shopping?”
“Needed something new for winter,” he replied, though he flushed slightly and turned away from me to brush an invisible speck of lint off the shoulder.
We carpooled in Yven’s red Mustang, partly because he had a reserved spot in the DPP garage and partly because my gas tank had to last long enough to get me out of the Pactlands. While perhaps half the vehicles I’d seen on the streets of Beukal were recognizably human in origin, they’d been retrofitted with engines that somehow worked without fuel. I’d pressed Yven for details, but all he’d been able to offer me was a sheepish smile and “Magic?” Consequently, if my factory-standard Subaru ran out of unleaded on the wrong side of the portal, I’d have to hitch a ride to Virginia and back with a jerrycan.
