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CHAPTERONE
After stoppingat the post office and heading downtown, I swung into a parking spot directly in front of my friend’s shop and hopped out of my car—a midnight blue Chevy Equinox. I frowned at the sun, grateful for my sunglasses.
I didn’t like heat. I didn’t like thesun—the heat and light had an angry feel, and fire elementals were almost always destructive. It was their nature, of course, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous. Thanks to climate change, they were becoming more active, so we were going to have to get used to dealing with them.
In addition to spring, summer, autumn, and winter, we now had a fifth season—wildfire season, during which the smoke blanketed the sky. Luckily, smoke season wasn’t as predictable as Mama Nature’s normal four, but each year it grew worse.
At least here in western Washington, summers weren’t horrible, but I still missed the rain. Granted, itwasJune—technically, the time for sun—but that didn’t mean I had to like it. I came alive during the dark, gloomy days of autumn and winter.
I strode across the sidewalk in two steps, hopping over a crack, to push open the door to the Olympic Forest Expeditions Company. I wasn’t in the market for a guide through the Olympics, but thanks to the letter in my hand, I needed the advice of my best friend, Bree Loomis.
Unfortunately, she was busy with a group of tourists. I stood to one side, frustrated, hoping she would notice me. Which she did. She was a puma shifter with a laser focus that expanded to include everything within eyeshot. She held up her hand, sidling away from the clients who were peppering her with questions.
“One second, please,” she said. “I’ll only be a moment.”
Bree headed over to join me. She was dressed for the job—jeans, a flannel shirt neatly tucked in, and hiking boots. At five-nine, Bree was four inches taller than I was, but I was curvier with an hourglass figure. We were both muscled, though her muscle was more obvious while mine was padded with boobs and hips. Her mid-shoulder blond hair was swept back in a tidy French braid. I wore my waist-length flame-red hair in a mass of waves wilder than the ocean.
“Looking good,” she said, glancing over my outfit. “Special occasion?”
I snorted. “When do Ieverhave a special occasion? You know I’m a leather fiend,” I said. I was wearing a pair of leather jeans that laced up the sides, exposing a two-inch strip of skin on either side, a black cotton halter top, knee-high black platform boots, and opera-length fingerless gloves. “Can you take a break? I need coffee and I need to talk aboutthis.” I held up a letter, grimacing. The contents had left me shaken.
Bree glanced at the letter. “Youalwaysneed coffee. Sorry. Remember, Iownthis joint? I don’t get breaks,” she said. “Can you wait till five?” She glanced at the clock. “It’s three-thirty now.”
I sighed. I was impatient, but I was also aware that I made my own hours. Hers were printed on the sign on the door. “I’ll be back in ninety minutes. Dinner?”
“That I can do. See you at five.” She winked at me and returned to her clients.
They looked both excited and scared, and I wondered where she was going to take them. Half the clients Bree catered to were top-of-the-line fit, ready to go ziplining through the forests or descending into abandoned mine shafts. The other half looked like they could barely manage riding inner tubes down a low-flowing stream. Both sets usually came away happy and satisfied.
I headed back into the streets.
I’d lived in Starlight Hollow for nearly six months, and it had become home in a short time. The town was quirky, and it lived nestled in shadow. The populace had the requisite artists and writers, inventors and oddballs who all found the Olympic Peninsula a comfortable haven, but beneath the veneer, there were also some lost souls who lived here. Old hippies who had tripped one too many times and lived on the edge of reality made their homes here, along with the occasional survivalists holed up waiting for Ragnarok or Armageddon. The survivalists tended to bury themselves up in the foothills of the Olympics rather than in the town proper, thankfully.
A couple communes established their footprints in the surrounding hills, and I was pretty certain a cult or two had decided this wastheplace to be. In addition, several shifter organizations were headquartered here, and of course we drew in the requisite ghost hunters and paranormal investigators, because Starlight Hollow was the most haunted town in the state.
An invisible shadow hovered over the town, created by the ghosts of the past, the creatures who hid in the woods, and the souls who were dead, and those living who didn’t want to be found. But most of the residents were pleasant enough. Founded in 1855 by Scottish immigrants, the original settlers had brought their own spirits and legends with them and a unique culture had evolved. One that had its wonderful side, yet specters lurked in the thickets of one of the four rainforests of the United States. And around here, the earth and water elementals were strong, and the months of rain and fog and drizzle empowered me.
With a population of around three thousand, Starlight Hollow didn’t exactly invite tourism, and the unofficial town slogan wasn’t open-armed. Nothing said “Welcome to our town” like:Starlight Hollow: Where dreams become nightmares, and nightmares become reality.But for those who felt invited in by the town, lifecouldremain a dream.
I didn’t care about ghosts or monsters—I could handle most of them, though my real strength was in the forest and lakes, the earth and the sea. I’d been trained since birth to cope with the paranormal. Hell, Iwasparanormal incarnate. As for the storms, I welcomed them, drawing my power from them, and when the winds raged I would weave my charms to try and appease the gods of air. Yes, I could handle most things…except vampires. Ihatedvampires, and wanted nothing to do with any of them. Of course, there was no guarantee that Starlight Hollow was vamp-free, but none had been spotted or mentioned, and that was good enough for me.
So I had ninety minutes to kill. I didn’t want to go grocery shopping because I didn’t want to leave frozen food in the car for that long, so I decided to head for the plant nursery. I needed more primroses and johnny jump-ups for the walkway, and they could survive in the car for a few hours until I arrived home. I tucked the letter away, not wanting to think about it until I could talk to Bree. She always helped me get my head on straight.
I drove down by the edge of the bay to The Grapevine—a plant nursery. The parking lot—and the town—was located right on the edge of Dabob Bay. The store was huge, bigger than the grocery stores around town. Not a surprise, given the number of small farmers who lived in the area.
As I pushed through the double doors, the smell of flowers and plants overwhelmed me and I smiled. The store smelled of life—plants and soil and all the wonderful things that belonged to the earth. And the earth was my source of power, and her woodlands and waters, my sanctuary.
“Elphyra! Back so soon?” Tracy, the owner, saw me and hurried over. “Are the flowers all right? Did they die?”
I laughed. “No worries. No, they’re doing great, at least so far. We’ll see how long I can keep them alive. I need more, though, to finish the walkway. Probably about half of what I bought last time.”
I found a handcart—large enough to handle bags of fertilizer as well as plants—and threaded my way through the aisles until I was facing a series of shelves filled with flowers. I preferred primroses, given they were perennials, and I sorted through them, looking for the right colors. I wanted my walkway lined in purple and fuchsia and crimson. I could feel the plants. They sensed my intent, and there was a quiet excitement.
There was no way to explain it—plants didn’t “think” like people, they didn’t have the same kind of sentience that people and animals did, but there was a basic understanding of the difference between life and death. And when you went further out—onto the astral plane—you could find the great Devas, the oversouls of each plant type, which were like what you might call a hive mind. All of the blackberry bushes in the world were part of the great Blackberry Deva, for instance, which was greater than the sum of its parts.
After I found enough flowers to finish the walkway, I added ferns. My property overflowed with ferns, but I didn’t want to bother with cuttings or digging up existing ones and moving them. I added an array of fiddlehead ferns, maidenhair ferns, western sword ferns, deer ferns, and lady ferns. On my way to the cashier, I added several packages of wildflower seeds and a few six-packs of marigolds.
“Buying out the store?” Tracy asked, coming around to my side with the barcode scanner. “It’s easier if I do this than have you move everything up to the register,” she added. “So, how are you enjoying life in Starlight Hollow?”
