Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series)
Read Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series) Online
Authors: Maddy Edwards
Elemental Air
(
Paranormal Public, Book VI)
by
Maddy Edwards
Copyright © 2013 by
Maddy Edwards
Cover Design © K.C.
Designs
This novel is a work of fiction in which names, characters,
places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is completely
coincidental.
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner without the written consent of the author.
My
blog:
http://maddyedwards.blogspot.com/
My goodreads
page:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5288585.Maddy_Edwards
Prologue
The message
I had always dreaded.
Ricky’s in trouble. Come
quickly.
It came from Cale, and it made me
realize that I hadn’t heard anything from or about him all summer.
I had to find out what was going
on.
Quickly I packed my bags and got
the first available bus back to Maine. Dacer would just have to deal with my
absence for a day or two. I wasn’t worried about demons, because my protections
were strong against them. I was, however, worried about other paranormals.
Malle still had a price on my head.
It was the middle of the night
when I got home. Our house was small, and in a wooded area. I had texted ahead
to let my stepdad know I’d be coming, but I knew better than to expect him to
be waiting up for me. We didn’t have the best relationship.
Before I went inside I checked
for signs of darkness. Lisabelle was teaching me how, though she had explained
dryly that it was a questionable decision on her part, since she was
essentially teaching me how I could track her whenever I wanted. Finding
nothing out of the ordinary in the woods and fields around the house, I fetched
the spare key that we kept hidden under the mat on the back porch and let
myself in. Carefully, I crept upstairs.
“Stop right there, hands in the
air!” a young voice ordered, beaming a light right into my eyes.
Raising my right hand to shield
my face I said, “Ricky, put that light down.”
“Charlotte?” came my brother’s
surprised voice. “Where’d that ring come from?”
I frowned. I had left my Astra
ring on in case Ricky was in trouble, which he obviously wasn’t.
“Um. . .” I started.
“Oh, you’re going to do that girl
thing again where you chatter a lot about nothing and totally miss the point
and never answer the question?” He rolled his eyes as he said it.
“Why are you so negative?” I
demanded. “Girls aren’t like that. I was going to tell you something about the
ring, but you didn’t give me a chance.”
“You were going to lie,” he
insisted. “To me.” He pointed at his chest, pretending to be offended.
“I just can’t tell you I got it,”
I said. “Admitting that much is better than lying, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” said Ricky. “I just
thought maybe Mom gave it to you.”
My senses sharpened.
“Why do you think Mom would have
given it to me?” I asked carefully.
After my talk with Sigil last
semester and everything that had happened since then, I was very careful when I
mentioned Mom around Ricky. She had told me herself that she had magic, which
of course had sounded absurd at the time, all the more so because she obviously
had nothing to do with the magical community. I owed Ricky the same honestly,
but I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him what he didn’t yet know. I had
thought, though, that it would already have been done for me when I got a
message that Ricky was in trouble.
“Never mind the ring,” I
sputtered. “Are you alright?”
Ricky stared at me like I was
going crazy.
“I’m f-i-n-e.” He said it slowly,
as if I was stupid. “Obviously.”
And it
was
obvious. He was standing in
front of me in his pajamas looking bleary-eyed, as he always did when he was
awakened.
“Right,” I said. “Sorry. I just
thought I’d come home and surprise you.”
“Oh, it’s a surprise,” he said.
“A big surprise. Proven by my thinking you were an intruder and almost
walloping you over the head with a baseball bat.”
“You’d never,” I said, grinning.
“Oh, I would,” he said. “See
here?” He reached around the corner and pulled out one of his Little League
bats.
“Oh, and Ricky?” I said, still
grinning. “You would TRY to wallop me over the head.”
Ricky snorted. “Try - and
succeed. Girls -” he started to say, but I interrupted him.
“Don’t start in on the
differences between men and women,” I said, holding up my hand. “You have no
idea.”
Ricky closed his mouth, but only
for a second.
“So, what are you doing here?”
“Can’t I come see my favorite
brother?” I asked, bracing my hands on my hips and trying to appear casual.
Ricky’s face told me I was
failing miserably.
“I just wanted to see you,” I
said. “It’s been a while.”
“You know, a good way to see
someone you care about is to let them know you’re coming,” he suggested. Then,
relenting, he darted forward, wrapped his arms around my waist, and squeezed.
“I missed you,” he said, his voice muffled in my shoulder.
I wrapped my arms around his thin
shoulders. “You’ve gotten so tall,” I murmured. “When did that happen?”
“Dad thinks I’m going to end up
taller than he is,” said Ricky, his eyes shining.
We only chatted for a minute
longer, then I went into my room and collapsed onto my bed. But no sooner had I
turned the lights out and heard Ricky go into his own room than I realized I
needed to ask him a question. I groaned and jumped out of bed.
“Ricky,” I called through his
closed door.
“Go away,” he called back.
“Occupant is sleeping.”
“Ricky, this is important,” I
said. “Can I come in?”
I heard grumbling on the other
side of the door, but eventually Ricky opened it.
“What? You want to know about
Mom’s necklace? Okay, she had a locket. I just thought your ring looked like
it. Are you going to tell me where it’s from? No, okay, I’m going to bed. We
can talk more about it when I wake up.”
He closed the door.
“Do you know where the locket is,
Ricky?” I asked softly, with my mouth next to the edge of his door.
He opened the door again.
“No,” he said. “I thought you had
it. Maybe dad does.”
I flinched. That was a terrible thought.
My stepfather and I barely spoke, so that wasn’t a promising theory.
But Ricky’s question suggested
that there was an Astra locket that went with this ring, and that at some point
it had been in the possession of my mother. I didn’t remember it at all, and I
wondered if Ricky was just wrong. But surely he hadn’t gotten the idea out of
thin air.
“Why didn’t you bring Lisabelle?”
he asked, his eyes lighting up when he said her name. Lisabelle had come to get
me when we’d been wanted at Vampire Locke for Lanca’s coronation. She had met
Ricky, and the two of them had instantly started a long-running banter battle.
“She was busy,” I said evasively.
The truth was that I hadn’t told Lisabelle I was heading home. She would
probably be furious with me for racing off without her and Sip.
“Doing?” Ricky prompted.
“You act like my parent,” I
informed him. “You aren’t.”
“Just tell me,” he said
stubbornly, his foot tapping against the floor.
“She’s at summer camp,” I fibbed.
“And she can’t get away, because she’s in charge of a bunch of girls.”
“Have you NO respect for my
intelligence?” Ricky demanded, appalled. “And you’re a terrible liar. Good
night.”
With that he stomped back into
his room and shut the door behind him. I had a feeling he would have liked to
slam it, but he couldn’t because it would have awakened Dad.
I crawled back into bed, glad
that he was fine. My Contact Stone was flashing, probably because Dacer was
furious at me for leaving without saying good-bye, but I ignored it. Tomorrow I
would talk to Cale and see what he was playing at, making me think my brother
was in trouble. But right now, all I could do was sleep.
I woke up a couple of hours later
and checked my Contact Stone. To my surprise, Cale had left me a message.
Apparently he had spent the summer in Maine and had been keeping an unofficial
watch over Ricky all summer. He explained that he thought he had seen
hellhounds around the house and had become worried. I shook my head. The first
thing I did whenever I came home was to walk around the house and search for
signs: large paw prints, leaves scorched from where they had come into contact
with hellhound fur, and a stench were all signs that hellhounds were nearby.
But I had seen none of those this time or on previous trips home.
I had no idea what time it was,
but it was still dark outside, and I couldn’t shake my sense of unease, the
feeling that something horrible was going to happen. I wondered about Ricky and
the locket, but knew I’d never be able to find it. When I had first gone to college
he had sent me some of Mom’s things, and a locket was definitely not part of
the package. The next best option was that my stepdad had it and had just never
told us, and that would do me no good whatsoever.
For a second I had the horrible,
and painful, thought that it was buried with her, but I knew it couldn’t have
been. She had never been a big fan of jewelry, especially rings, and we hadn’t
buried her with any. My stepdad would probably have said it was a waste of
money anyway, which would have made me hate him more if that were possible.
Unable to sleep, I threw back my
covers and headed outside, frowning with worry. It was now closer to morning
than midnight, and I could see the sky starting to turn from black to gray.
Cale had thought something was
wrong and I needed to find out what it was.
Somehow I wasn’t surprised to see
Cale sitting in a rocking chair on the porch. My stepdad had made that chair
for my mom, one of the few nice things he had ever done for her. It made me
wonder if he hadn’t secretly cared more for her than he had let on. Cale had
rested his head against the back of the chair and was rocking slowly. He had
obviously been waiting for me, because he sprang to his feet when I opened the
front door.
“Hi,” he said breathlessly. “Sorry.”
“For what?” I said, carefully
closing the door behind me.
“Calling you here,” he said. “I
thought Ricky was in danger.”
“He’s always in danger,” I said
quietly. “Can’t hurt to be careful. I didn’t realize you were keeping an eye on
him.”
Cale shrugged. “I was here for
the summer. I thought another pair of eyes couldn’t hurt.”
Even in darkness Cale looked
good. His hair was messy from resting it against the chair, but his eyes
sparkled out at me.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate
it. Did he know you were there?”
“No,” said Cale. “I just got a
job at his summer camp, so he really didn’t know I was keeping an eye on him.
Kid’s smart, though. He always won the mind games.”
“Not the physical games, though?”
I asked, laughing. My family wasn’t really known for being good at athletics.