LITMIR.BIZ

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break until he went on his way.

       She slid from bed and noticed her door was shut. She liked the wiggling warmth of the puppies’ bodies, but waking to dog breath wasn’t always great. And if the brownie decided to stay—and she’d surmised that the brownies at Jenni’s house were responsible for a lot of the changes next door in the past couple of months—she’d prefer nominal privacy from him. She considered herself an outgoing and laid-back person but Tiro had been sour.

       After showering and dressing, she went to the door at the back of the house that had been an exercise room.

       Tiro appeared before the closed door, now painted a rich vanilla color. Apparently what she’d thought was a part of his head was a skull cap…and he was twisting it in his hands.

       He was nervous. Good. She’d need to keep the upper hand in this relationship.

       Stepping by him, she turned the knob, swung the door open, entered the room…and stood in shock. It was no longer the drab gray that she’d been meaning to paint. It was creamy beige like her office. She hadn’t meant… But other than the fact that the room was slightly smaller than the one below, everything looked precisely as she’d left it. She stared for a good minute at the shelves against the walls, the U-shaped desk facing the windows, the credenzas stacked with her current open files.

       Amazing. But it wouldn’t do to be approving. She went to a bookshelf and lifted a cracked maroon mug that held pencils. Sure enough, her lucky penny was there. Slowly she walked into the U of her desk. A few pages of paper were on her desk, covered with notes on the Smart-Gortel job. She picked up the pen angled on the paper. It was blue.

       She didn’t think she’d used a blue pen yesterday. She glanced at her engagement calendar/journal to her left. The ink noting her progress yesterday—a few hours of work, she’d have to step it up—was green.

       Were brownies color-blind? Was Tiro?

       She picked up the pen, turned to look at Tiro, who stood in the doorway. “This is wrong,” she said as coolly as she could. Her wits were still scattered from the amount of work he’d done—the magic that had happened when she’d slept.

       His small shoulders tensed. She rolled one of her own, let her gaze scan the rest of the room.... “I’m sure there are other flaws. But the job is…acceptable.... You may stay in the downstairs room that was an office. Where did you put the exercise equipment?”

       “In the basement. I painted the ceiling here.”

       She glanced up. It was a wonderful trompe l’oeil, three-dimensional paint job, and it seemed like she was looking up into the round blue dome of the sky…with clouds.

       “You like?”

       Amber looked back at the brownie. She didn’t doubt that his disposition was grumpy, but there was a vulnerability in his eyes that softened her and she couldn’t crush his spirits. “Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.”

       He plunked his cap back on his head, turned and thumped from the room down the hallway and the stairs. “I’m going to my room. If I must stay here…” His grumbling tapered off.

       So far, so good. Somehow she’d convince Tiro to help her, and if not him, the Mistweaver brownies. She’d figure out how to make the curse breaking work without such a huge downside. There must be a way.

       Rafe got up early and ran the streets of Cherry Creek for exercise. He’d looked in on Conrad and found the man sweaty and moaning in his bed. Guy wasn’t going to have much good sleep again. They’d heard nothing from the private investigative firm that was supposed to be tracking and finding Marta and Dougie.

       Ace Investigations had reported on Amber Sarga. There was no evidence that she practiced as a psychic. She had a sole-proprietorship genealogical firm called Heritage that she marketed to expectant parents in upscale neighborhoods. She was a model citizen except for one speeding ticket on the elevated bridge on Speer Boulevard. That item made Rafe smile. The one anomaly was that although Rafe thought she was in her early thirties, her birth certificate said she was twenty-six.

       Three years younger than Rafe’s brother, Gabe. Rafe had called Gabe.

       His brother had been impatient when Rafe had called. A pang had gone through him. He’d once been the adored older brother. Not anymore, not for several years. He’d “played” and left Gabe to work at the family businesses. More, Rafe barely made time to see his family at holidays…what little family he had. Gabe was twenty-nine and hadn’t married, so there was only him and Uncle Richard. Rafe missed the closeness he’d had with Gabe, but they had little in common anymore. Rafe got the idea that his brother was counting the days until Rafe’s thirty-third birthday.

       Just as he had been trying to ignore the image of an hourglass with sand zooming from a small amount at the top to a large pile in the bottom.

       As his feet hit the sidewalk and force pounded through his legs and body, his thoughts segued to his curse, much as he didn’t want to think about it. How could he believe in something like that?

       He’d asked Gabe, and his brother had replied the same as Conrad had. How could he afford not to?

       Rafe still didn’t have any answer. But he knew one thing. If he were going to act, it would have to be soon.

       And how did you act to stop a curse?

       Curse breaker. Could there be such a thing?

       He’d find out soon. And if she screwed with Conrad, he’d break her.

      Chapter 3

      AMBER HAD BRIBED the brownies into attending the morning meeting with Conrad Tyne-Cymbler. The bribe had been chocolate cake and cocoa with whipped cream.

       She needed all the information on curses and her gift that the small magical beings could give her.

       The Mistweaver brownies had sensed that Tiro had arrived and had dropped in to check on her. Amber got the feeling that with Jenni gone, they were bored. And curious. Tiro appeared truculently curious himself.

       The only difficult part was that the shared office space she rented was down a few blocks in the small neighborhood business district. Apparently only the cul-de-sac was completely magical, and though the brownies could go anywhere, the cul-de-sac was “protected” against evil. So the brownies would be on the watch for any adverse magics. Since time was growing short, Amber didn’t ask about that.

       She wondered if Rafe Davail would be with his friend and decided that he would…no matter how stupid he thought the whole situation was. He struck her as a man who looked out for his friends.

       After a chat with the receptionist, Amber confirmed that the shared conference room was free and set up there. The brownies perched—invisible, she thought, though she could see them—on a corner cabinet, full of chocolate cake. The huge mug of cocoa they shared was between them. It seemed to waver between opaque and invisible if she stared.

       She put the remainder of the cake on the table along with plates and forks, and had urns of coffee and tea prepared on one of the credenzas.

       The sound of a high-performance car stopping and parking came. She twitched a lace curtain to look out the front window.

       Yes, there were the men. Wearing casual clothes today, high-end jeans and raw silk shirts, Conrad in dark teal under a black bomber jacket. Rafe wore a long-sleeved navy shirt under a black motorcycle jacket. Conrad Tyne-Cymbler looked worse than yesterday. Rafe Davail appeared fiercely determined.

       Her pulse beat faster. If she let it, the sound of her own blood pumping would magnify her anxiety. She could always turn down Conrad.

       The front door creaked open, and the receptionist greeted the men.

       Amber’s hands began to tingle and as she watched a faint pinkish-purple haze rose from her fingertips. She froze.

       Tiro scowled, gestured his long-fingered hand at the mist. “You

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