Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series) (18 page)

Lisabelle was sitting
cross-legged at her desk, poring over some black scroll, but she looked up when
I came into the room. “Are you alright?” she asked. “You look pale.”

I sat on Sip’s bed and relayed to
them what had happened. I told them about the Tabble almost as an afterthought.

“That’s not like Dacer,” said
Sip, frowning.

I nodded grimly. “I know.”

“And there are hellhounds in the
Long Building?”

“They must live in the
catacombs,” I said as confirmation. “This was one big and smelled really bad.
Or something. I have no idea.”

“Do you think there are a lot of
them?” said Lisabelle. “I’m sure the professors performed spells to get rid of
the darkness, but they might not have reached as far as the catacombs.” She
glanced at the scroll on her desk.

“What are you working on?” I
asked, pointing at the scroll.

“It’s something Risper sent me,”
she said. “It discusses unusual paranormal powers, where they come from, how
uncommon they are, and most importantly how to respond if I should run into
any. It’s fun.”

Sip scowled at Lisabelle. “You
should be doing homework.”

“I know everything I need to know
about that stupid pillow,” said Lisabelle. “Why Zervos wanted us to find
artifacts in campus buildings is beyond me.”

There was a knock on the door and
Lough came in.

“Evening,” he said, smiling.
“Wow, Charlotte, you look terrible.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

He shrugged. “At least I’m
honest.”

“You look angry,” I said, seeing
that his cheeks were redder than usual and his eyes were snapping.

His shoulders slumped. “I was
hoping to hide it. I know you like your boyfriend and all,” he said, “but his
aunt is awful.”

“Tell me about it,” I said dryly.
His aunt was a staunch paranormal supporter, but she also thought that her
nephew was too good for anyone who wasn’t from a high ranking fallen angel
family, like Vanni.

“She has Trafton and me in
advanced flying, which is already a joke, because I can’t fly, but I don’t
think she’s ever had dream givers before. She ordered both of us not to use our
powers in the class.”

“I thought you were taking it so
that you could learn to fly in dreams,” Sip wondered.

“Yeah, I am,” Lough growled.
“It’s ridiculous.”

Lough reached his arm back as if
to punch the wall, but instead of his fist impacting the plaster, an invisible
force sent him flying backward before he could so any damage. He crashed into a
chair, tipped it over, and tumbled to the floor, landing in a heap.

“Oh, Lough are you okay?” Sip
cried.

“I like that chair,” Lisabelle
protested from her desk.

“Public is acting strangely,” Sip
commented. “It’s not like these weird things are being caused by magical spells
put in place to attack supposed intruders, it the actual fabric of Public
itself. The buildings. Believe me, I’m used to strange stuff, and I still never
expected to say that a building itself was acting like anything.”

I knew what she was thinking of.
Last semester when we had tried to sneak onto the grounds, the force field had
attacked us with white knives. We had made it in alive, but barely.

I shrugged. “I’m not as worried
about that as I am about the hellhounds in the Long Building.”

Sip gave me her evil eye,
basically a very stern glare.

“You will not go in there by
yourself again,” she admonished me. “If you’re going to die, at least take
Lisabelle with you.”

The darkness mage grinned.

“Yes, I do expect an invite to
all battles,” she murmured, rolling up the parchment. “Did you look at the
messages on your Contact Stone?”

I frowned. “No, I haven’t had
time.”

“Oliva is having a night of
festivities to celebrate his elevation to the Presidency,” said Lisabelle.
“With ‘surprise’ guests.”

“No way,” said Lough in wonder.
“I bet it’s really famous people.”

He no sooner sat down on
Lisabelle’s bed than something furry and white slinked out from underneath it.
With a dismayed cry Lough sprang to his feet.

“WHY does that thing have to live
in here?” he demanded. “I can’t be here right now. I’m too angry to deal with
Bartholem too.” And with one last glare at the cat he disappeared.

There was silence for a moment,
but no one followed Lough.

“Sip is in charge of helping to
set it up,” said Lisabelle, nodding at her roommate, who was now sitting at her
own desk scribbling furiously away on a piece of paper. When Lisabelle said her
name she looked around furtively, as if she was about to be under attack and
had to protect secrets.

“You won’t tell us who he’s
inviting?” I teased. “Pretty please?”

Sip vehemently shook her head.

“She won’t even respond with
words,” said Lisabelle, laughing.

After a little more time spent
teasing our friend, I stood up. “I should go too,” I said. “It’s almost
curfew.”

I had just left Airlee when I
heard the beat of wings overhead. I looked up and grinned as Keller landed
gracefully next to me.

“There’s my heart-sweet,” he
said, smiling and instantly pulling me close. Once we had finished greeting
each other he asked if I wanted to come back to Aurum for the night. The
prospect of returning to Astra wasn’t appealing, so I nodded. Instead of
flying, we walked, my arm around his waist and his around my shoulder.

I told him all that happened that
day, because I always told him everything.

“My aunt did say something about
scouring the grounds for darkness,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m surprised they
missed some.”

I didn’t want to defend Professor
Erikson, but I said, “The catacombs are large. They probably couldn’t search
all the passages.”

Keller nodded. “I meant to ask
you about Ricky earlier. Did you have a chance to tell him about his mother?”

I sighed. “I just don’t know what
to say,” I said sadly. “I don’t feel like I really know what happened myself,
so how can I tell him?”

“Do you think Sigil knows
anything else?” Keller said.

I shrugged halfheartedly.
“Probably, but who can tell? He heard she was murdered by elementals, but where
are they? They weren’t in Astra. If there are rogue elementals running around,
don’t you think we’d know about it? Surely the demons would be after them.”

“Maybe he’s making it up, then,”
said Keller. “Maybe it’s a dream. Either way, you need to find out more. If no
one can tell you, then you need to dream it. Or maybe the masks can help,” he
ended thoughtfully.

“I just think Sigil is a crazy
old ghost who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Why would the elementals
murder their own? Why would they stay in hiding? None of it makes sense. If
there were other elementals out there and they just sat back and watched
paranormals die because the Power of Five couldn’t be invoked, that’s
unforgivable. It’s a lot more likely that Sigil is confused and that the demons
got my mom.”

At breakfast the next morning,
Lisabelle was sitting alone when I arrived. Keller had gone to train with his
friends and I was avoiding Astra, so I had gone straight to the dining hall.

“Where’s Sip?” I said, sitting
down.

Lisabelle was buttering toast.
“In some big, important meeting about Oliva’s gala,” she said. “She wouldn’t
tell me anything about it. I had to harass her for ten minutes just to find out
where she was going.”

“Did you hear there’s going to be
a gala?” Vanni said, nearly stumbling up to us in her excitement.

“Uh huh,” said Lisabelle, not
even looking at the younger fallen angel. “Sweet.”

“And I heard both of you were
invited to President Caid’s summer bash,” she gushed. “Super cool. Sorry I
didn’t have a chance to talk to you there. I was just so busy!”

Sure she is and sure she was, I
thought.

Vanni had surely hoped that when
she saw me at breakfast Keller would be with me, but he liked to practice
flying tricks before he ate. He had said something vague about spinning around
and around in the air not being good for the digestion.

“He’s good,” I said, trying to
smile. My teeth hurt.

After a pause where no further
conversation seemed to happen, Vanni went off to get some food and didn’t come
back to our table. Once she had left, Lisabelle said, “That looked painful for
you.”

“Why were we invited to Caid’s?”
I asked thoughtfully, ignoring her comment. “We aren’t important.”

Lisabelle snorted. “Speak for
yourself.”

“Okay, you’re important. You’re
the most powerful darkness mage in generations, including Malle, and your uncle
is a committee member.” I paused, and Lisabelle knew that I was pausing because
I didn’t know what I could say about my own importance in Caid’s hierarchy.

“You,” Lisabelle said helpfully,
“are the only chance we have of the Power of Five surviving. That doesn’t make
you more important than me, obviously, because survival and evil go
hand-in-hand, but you’ll do.”

“You aren’t evil,” I said.

Lisabelle just shrugged.

But meanwhile, one of the
visiting werewolves, Cyi, waved to us. She was short with black hair and a
small nose. I barely knew her, but she seemed to know me, or us.

“Why so many visitors this
semester?” I asked. “I don’t remember them from before.”

“We’re famous,” said Lisabelle.
“Public is respected far and wide for standing up to the demons, and you’re
here.” When I gave her a puzzled look she just shook her head.

“When will you understand how
important you are?” she demanded. “Caid invited you to his party because as the
only elemental, you hold an enormous amount of influence.”

“Then why do I still have classes
with Zervos?” I asked bitterly.

Lisabelle laughed. “I wonder the
same thing about myself.”

“Speaking of classes, we should
go. We’re going to be late to ours.”

That morning we had Korba’s
Paranormal Defenses, and Lough joined Lisabelle and me as we hurried to class.
“I thought Tactical took care of this,” he said, falling into step next to me.

“Trust me, after my run-in with
the hellhound last night it definitely does not,” I muttered.

The first thing I noticed when we
walked into Professor Korba’s class was that Faci and Daisy were sitting
together and Camilla was sitting behind them. As far from them as possible, in
the front on the other side, Sip waited. She looked a little frazzled, but she
gave us a cheery wave.

Lisabelle saw Daisy and flinched.
Daisy was the only other student I ever saw Lisabelle shy away from. My friend
hid it well, but she was afraid of the hybrid. Crazy was unpredictable and that
was dangerous, she told me once, late at night when she was feeling as
confessional as she ever did, which wasn’t much.

“How was breakfast?” she asked.
But it was a purely rhetorical question, and no one bothered to answer.

We sat down on either side of her
and I watched the other students trickle in. The two visiting werewolves, Cyi
and Nolan, came in together and sat in the back, keeping their heads close
together and talking quietly. Korba spared them a stray glance, but didn’t say
anything.

“First the Faeries at Caid’s
party and now werewolves from NYC,” Lisabelle muttered, glancing back. “I don’t
like new things.”

“Or old things. . . .” said Sip.

Lisabelle grinned.

Korba climbed up on his desk and
waved his hands. “Excuse me,” he called. “If I could have your attention?”

The classroom quieted instantly.

“We are going to do something
different from what I’m used to,” he explained. “I am going to teach you all I
can about defensive magics. These are magics that you can employ against any
foe. I believe we have spent too much time simply teaching our students how to
fight demons, or how to fight hellhounds. What we really need to teach our
students is how to fight back in the face of threats from any kind of enemy.
Once we have that mastered, we can truly begin to push against the forces of
darkness.”

It was as strong a declaration as
I had heard from a senior paranormal, except Dacer, that we were in danger from
any number of sides. Korba had also just skirted the issue of paranormals
trying to kill each other, but at least he had finally said out loud that we
needed to defend not only against darkness, but against any adversary that
might come along.

“To that end,” Korba continued,
“I am going to review basic fighting principles. For example, I have seen an
increase in the use of blast magic, meaning explosions. Although that is well
and good, it is not all there is. Some of you have training in physical combat,
but I am not going to worry about that bit.” He said it with a small smile, and
I knew it was because he was too tiny to think of engaging any paranormal in a
physical battle.