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“Ready for what?”

“To offer them a gift. Music is very commonly welcomed, so that should work.”Advertisement

“I wish you’d told me in time to practice something,” I said as I opened the case and put the flute together. “I’m not sure the Cobb High School fight song is going to do the trick.”

Owen took the flute from me and put it on top of his pack, then he turned to face me. “And now, um, we have to do something that will attract them. There’s, uh, a certain energy that may draw them.”

I nodded, not sure where he was going with that, but then I remembered what he’d said when we’d investigated the creek in the town a few days ago, and before I had a chance to respond, he’d taken me in his arms and was kissing me.

It was as good as I’d remembered, whether or not it had any heart behind it. And I was pretty sure it had some heart behind it. You didn’t kiss someone like that and not mean it. I knew I meant it when I kissed him back. The whole thing was rather wildly romantic, kissing on the water’s edge in the moonlight. There was something primal and, yes, magical about it that made it dangerously easy to get carried away.

And then a voice from around the level of our feet said very loudly, “Ahem!”

W e sprang apart—well, we separated our lips, but we still held onto each other pretty tightly. I didn’t know about Owen, but my legs had gone all watery, and I wasn’t sure I could have stayed upright if I hadn’t been hanging onto him. Then when I got a good look at what was around us, I held onto him even tighter.

I almost felt like the heavens had come down to surround us. Pinpricks of light filled the creek’s gully, going all the way up the banks on either side. They were in the trees above us and floating in the water below us. When I got a better look, I realized the pinpricks were the eyes of hundreds of little creatures. For most of them, all I could see was their eyes. Judging by what I could see, I was rather glad that most of them remained hidden.

The one who’d spoken to us was in the water. She leaned against the rock where we stood, barely outside Owen’s barrier. She looked a lot like the fairies I knew, except she didn’t have wings. Her hair was long and stringy, almost looking like seaweed, and it draped over her slender body. Aside from the strategically placed hair, the part of her that was visible above the water was naked. There were several more creatures like her—naiads, I assumed—in the water.

The ones in the trees were like nothing I’d ever seen before. They were roughly the same size and shape as the water creatures, but their skins were mottled like tree bark, and their hair was short and shaggy. Their fingers and toes were long and thin, a lot like the “fingers” on tree frogs, and they clung easily to trunks and tree branches. They must have been the dryads Owen mentioned.

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There were also little sparks of light zipping in and out among the bushes on the creek banks. At first I thought they were fireflies, but then I realized they, too, were the eyes of creatures. These were tiny, and it was hard to see exactly what they looked like because they never stayed still long enough for me to see more than a blur of movement.

“I take it you wanted us to pop up, given that circle you created before you put on your show,” the naiad who’d gotten our attention said. “If you’d only come here to make out, you wouldn’t have bothered with the prep work, and boy, wouldn’t that have made things interesting.” She fluttered her eyelashes suggestively, then added, “And I think you might have been trying to signal the next river with the amount of aura you were sending out. My, such passion.”

Owen released me and knelt to speak to her. “I’ve come to call upon your people for assistance,” he said formally. I felt awfully exposed standing there, surrounded by all those not-necessarily-friendly faces, so I knelt beside Owen. He put his arm around me as he continued speaking. “There’s new power here that doesn’t belong, and I’ll need help to send it away.”

“Your power doesn’t belong here, either,” she said with a burbling laugh that reminded me of the sound of a small waterfall.

“I plan to leave of my own accord when this is over.” He glanced at me and added, “I may return as a visitor, but I wouldn’t be using magic then.”

A gruffer voice spoke from above us. “The power has been drained. Our energy may soon be depleted.”

We looked up and saw one of the dryads hanging from a limb over our heads. “Yeah, I noticed.

That’s why I’m here,” Owen said. “There is an outsider teaching people here to use power. He brought even more people like him here, and he’s determined not to let me stop him. I can’t face all of them alone, but with your help, I should be able to drive them away and bring the situation back to normal for you again.” pqdm.com