“Of course I’m not any help,” Dragos said. “I don’t actually want you to go.” He paused, then scratched the edge of his fingernails lightly along the bare skin of her back as he asked slyly, “So does that mean you’re going to cancel the trip?”

She shivered all over and sighed. “No.”

“Then shut up and go,” he told her. His gentle tone was in direct contrast with the brusque words.

She lifted her head and stuck out her tongue at him. It was a stupid, childish thing to do, especially when she had been enjoying that back rub so very much.

He retaliated by rolling her onto her back, taking hold of her jaw gently and leaning over her with a machete smile. Just before he brought his mouth down to hers, he muttered, “I’ve got better uses for that, you know.”

Boy howdy, did he have better uses for that.

• • •

While the Offices of the Elven High Lord, Calondir, were located in downtown Charleston, his consort Beluviel had invited Pia to Lirithriel House at three o’clock for tea. The house, along with its famous gardens, was the public face of the Elves. It was located an easy half an hour’s commute from Charleston and it bordered the actual heart of the Elven demesne, Lirithriel Wood.

The rain had stopped late in the morning. They traveled through a green countryside that sparkled in the pale yellow light of a winter afternoon sun. As they drove north, the sense of land magic grew more powerful. They passed through a small town with several shops and restaurants along the stretch of road that approached Lirithriel House. Pedestrians packed the quaint, Colonial-style cobblestone side streets. The Elven-run businesses enjoyed a robust tourist trade, no matter what the season.

Eva drove Pia’s SUV again. Everyone maintained the same positions they had traveled in the day before. All the psychos wore black. Pia couldn’t decide if that actually dressed them up or made them look like drug dealers. Maybe both. It did make them look scarier, at least as far as she was concerned.

She tugged at the edge of her lavender Dior wool Grisaille Bar jacket and checked her patent leather, peep-toed pumps for scuff marks. Beluviel was famous for her beauty and style, and Pia had looked hard for the right kind of outfit to wear for their first meeting. With the help of Stanford, the personal shopper Dragos had retained for her, she had settled on a suit that conveyed a sense of Jackie Kennedy’s suits—or at least she hoped it did. The jacket, matching dress and shoes cost as much as a quality used car.

Just months ago she would have been really happy to own that car. She and her mother had lived frugally throughout her childhood, while her mother had put their diminishing resources into hiding escape packs with cash and new identities in various places throughout New York.

Her mother’s version of setting aside nest eggs for a rainy day had been more like preparing for immediate evacuation in case of catastrophe. After her mother’s death, Pia had honored those choices by leaving the escape packs untouched while she had lived on the modest income she made tending bar.

She thought it might boost her self-confidence if she wore something high-end and classic when she met Beluviel, but instead that morning the expensive suit just added to her nervousness. She was going to spill something down the front of that gorgeous wool suit or break a heel, she just knew it.

You can take a girl out of a Target store, she thought, but you can’t take the Target store out of the girl.

“Stop fussing,” Johnny muttered under his breath. “You look fine.”

Pia took a deep breath and looked sideways. Johnny had his nose buried in his video game again. Compared to the others, his narrow bone structure was almost delicate. “How can you tell? I don’t think you’ve looked up once since you turned that thing on.”

An angelic-looking smile touched his lips, an expression that was there and gone again so fast, she would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching him. “Scoped you out when you came down the stairs earlier. I’d commit murder to borrow that suit. Those shoes would be too small for me though.”

She turned to look at him again. In the front seat both Eva and James had gone still and watchful, and while she applauded their protective instincts, it wasn’t necessary.

She said, “Are you any good with makeup?”

Johnny’s gaze lit up, and he looked from his game.

Eva snorted. “He’s better than anyone I know.”

“Wish somebody had told me that sooner,” Pia grumbled. “I could have used some help when I got ready earlier. I had to redo my eyes three times before I got them right.”

Eva and James relaxed. Johnny’s grin returned, wider this time. “Next time give me a holler. I’ll see what I can do.”

The two SUVs made the correct turn and traveled at a sedate pace up an immaculate avenue lined with massive old-growth southern live oaks. The iconic trees towered around fifty feet tall, their gigantic thick limbs rippling outward in twisted sprays.

A three-story mansion sprawled at the end of the avenue. Lirithriel House was a perfect example of Greek Revival architecture. The building was balanced and spare with a front gable design, Ionic grand columns, tall elegant windows and a spacious front portico. Built with a light yellow sandstone facade, the house was famed for its golden glow in the early morning hours.

Behind the house lay extensive flower and herb gardens, complete with a labyrinth maze. Beyond that towered Lirithriel Wood, a dark massive presence that was so intense everyone in the car drew a collective breath. Land magic saturated the air, witchy and intoxicating. The lure of the Wood was so strong Pia could hardly look away. The wild creature that lived inside of her yearned to plunge into the tangled green mystery.

The size of Lirithriel Wood was estimated at around eighty square miles, including a secluded stretch of beach between the barrier islands that dotted the coastline.

The Wood was roughly a fifth of the size of its neighbor, the Francis Marion National Forest. In 1989 Hurricane Hugo had devastated the national forest until virtually none of its old growth survived, but Lirithriel Wood had somehow remained unscathed, dense and wild with ancient trees and a profuse tangle of undergrowth.

Aerial photographs invariably showed an impenetrable canopy of green, the Wood so dense that little of the underlying landscape was visible. A river meandered to a coastal outlet, but it never seemed to run the same path from one photograph to the next.

A river didn’t just change its course arbitrarily. Since the Wood contained the crossover passageway to the Elven Other land, speculation had it that the magic of the passageway warped both digital and chemical photos alike.

Pia met Eva’s wide gaze in the rearview mirror. She was vaguely surprised that she managed to think of something coherent to say, as she asked, “Have you ever been here before?”

The captain shook her head. “Never sensed anything like that in my life. Can see why people think the Wood is an actual entity.”

James stirred in the front passenger seat. “I’ve heard it called the Bermuda Triangle of South Carolina. A company of Union soldiers disappeared around this area and they were never found again. That’s almost a hundred people who vanished into thin air.”

“Didn’t the Elves adopt a laissez-faire attitude during the Civil War like all the other Elder Races?” asked Johnny. “I thought they claimed that the war was a purely human conflict.”

James said, “I don’t think official politics would have had anything to do with those soldiers getting lost in that Wood, and if the Elves knew anything about what happened, they never said.”

“Weird,” said Johnny. He turned off his video game and tucked it into a pack between his feet.

Pia had also heard more modern stories of hikers who had gone missing in the Wood, to emerge confused and disoriented days later. Legend had it the Wood itself did not like uninvited guests.

She glanced one more time at the avenue of enormous oaks. They weren’t quite the size of Angel Oak, which was located a short distance southwest from Charleston. Angel Oak was reputed to be the oldest living oak in America, perhaps the world. But these oaks had to be at least several hundred years old.

Was it just her imagination, or did their branches stretch more toward the Wood than anything else? What would it be like for them to live so close to the Wood and yet unable to become a part of it? Or maybe they were close enough that they were a part of the Wood. Maybe they passed ancient secrets through the air with the rustling of their leaves, and she just didn’t have the ability to sense it.

As the SUVs pulled around the wide circle in front of the mansion, the double doors opened. A tall, slim Elven woman dressed in a raw silk pantsuit stepped out of the house. Pia recognized her from countless magazine articles and TV news segments, and from the teleconference last summer. She was Beluviel, consort to the High Lord.

Other people exited the house, all Elves, but Pia’s attention remained fixed on Beluviel, who was breathtaking. Dark, sleek, shining hair fell down to her long, slim waist, and her face was beautiful, with high cheekbones and wide, gracious dark eyes. Her hair was tucked behind the tip of one long, elegantly pointed ear.

But Beluviel’s physical beauty wasn’t what made her so striking. America’s media was saturated with the physically beautiful to the point of boredom. What made Beluviel unique was her rich, full radiance of presence.

All the immortal Wyr had a certain forcefulness in their aura, especially those who had been born at the beginning of the world for they carried a spark of creation’s first fire. Energy and Power radiated from Dragos. It seethed in the air around him. Pia’s own Power lent a natural pearl luminescence to her skin that was unique to her Wyr form.

What Beluviel carried was entirely different, the sunlit green of an eternal springtime. All Elves carried something of that brightness along with the sense that they walked lightly on the earth, but, Pia realized, it was stronger in Beluviel because the Elven woman was older than any other Elf she had met before. Instead of age weighing more heavily on her, it seemed to have the opposite effect. The High Lord Calondir was also one of the ancient Elves. He would carry that same shining, ageless light, tempered with a stern, elegant Power.

The other Elves had stopped just outside the house. Beluviel walked forward alone, her step as light and eager as a girl’s, a smile of joy on her bright face.

Suddenly it didn’t matter what Pia wore, or the nature of her troubles and insecurities. The political tensions that had brought her to South Carolina, along with the two SUVs filled with bodyguards, all seemed somehow inconsequential.

Stay back, she said telepathically to Eva as she climbed out of the car.

Oh f**k, said Eva with disgust. You gonna kill me, princess.

Just do it. As Pia walked toward Beluviel, she saw the Elven woman’s eyes fill with tears.

Beluviel said, “I see your mother in you even more strongly in person.”

The love and sadness in Beluviel’s voice were unmistakable. Everything blurred as Pia’s eyes flooded with moisture too. She put out her hands blindly. They were taken in a slender, strong, infinitely gentle grasp.

“I met your mother a very long time ago,” Beluviel said. “So long ago, it was a different age entirely, and humans had not yet begun to walk the Earth. She was always wary but predators had not yet forced her into reclusiveness.” A smile of reminiscence softened her lovely features. “The world was once a much larger place.”

“I never knew,” Pia said.

They sat outside at a wrought-iron table on a flagstone terrace overlooking the extensive gardens that held heirloom azaleas and camellias, gardenias, lilies and roses of all kinds. The gardens were dotted with magnolia and crepe myrtle trees, and the entire garden was profusely, brilliantly in bloom. Even though Pia had been raised a city girl and had never tended anything other than potted plants, she was fairly certain that the other gardens in the area would not be quite so colorful in January.

The day had warmed and the sunlight had grown more intense, or at least it was where they sat. The sun burned away the morning’s rain, and the evaporating moisture shrouded the nearby Wood in a ghostly, shining mist.

She told the consort, “My mom rarely talked of anything that was not in the present. I loved it when she did, but I think remembering made things harder for her. Also she didn’t want to emphasize how different we were from each other. I only just came into my full Wyr form last year, and she had died several years earlier, so she never knew.”

“I know she adopted a variety of different names throughout the years, but to us she embodied something sacred, and we called her Silme.” Beluviel pronounced the name seel-may, and her musical voice made it beautiful. “It means moonlight.”

“I didn’t know that,” Pia whispered. It hurt to think there was so much about her mother that she didn’t know, but that was an old ache that was so familiar it was almost comforting. She sipped her tea. The clear golden liquid was a strange, complex floral brew, and the taste and fragrance filled her with a sense of wellbeing and refreshment. “This tea is wonderful.”

“It is a flowering herb from our Other land,” Beluviel said. “Among its many restorative properties, the tea is quite effective for bouts of nausea. It would be my pleasure to give you some when you leave.”

She looked up quickly. Beluviel’s gaze had dropped to Pia’s waist, and a wistful shadow darkened her brightness for the merest moment. While children were rare for all the Elder Races, they were rarest of all for the Elves. She wondered if Beluviel had borne any children. Of course it wasn’t the kind of thing one asked.

Instead, she said, “That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”