Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series) (29 page)

“Are you Lisabelle’s roommate?”
The girl, taller even than Lisabelle, gave Sip a questioning look.

“That depends,” said the
werewolf, looking the girl up and down. “On a scale of zero to atrocious, how
badly did she offend you?”

“Oh, she didn’t offend me,” said
the girl, looking relieved. “She’s my tutor and she told me she locked you in a
closet when you annoyed her. She threatened to do the same to me. I’m glad
you’re not in a closet. If you were I was going to tell President Oliva.”

Sip crossed her arms over her
chest and said, “Uh huh. Suddenly I have this urge to chat with my roommate.”
Then she grinned. The girl looked confused and wandered off.

Sip and I laughed. It didn’t take
long for Lisabelle to rejoin us, carrying a cup of blue liquid.

“Blueberry juice,” she explained.
“Yum. Lough’s coming. He just wanted more food first.”

“There’s a lot of space between
the paranormal types tonight,” Sip commented, looking around with disgust. The
rifts between the paranormals had not mended, and given the problems with the
Nocturns, our divisions were growing even more hostile. The pixies were
endlessly smug about one of their type being appointed president, while the fallen
angels made a show of staying above it all.

“I wish we could all get along,”
I murmured. “It would make the Power of Five so much easier.”

“
Let’s see,” Sip mused, “the pixies
are on the side of the Nocturns. Mostly. Although to their credit, they haven’t
tried to make off with Charlotte this semester.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“The vampires have too much
darkness,” Sip continued, ticking that type off her fingers as she glanced at a
group of vampire students standing in the far corner, separate from everyone
and as far away from the food as possible.

“The fallen angels are too pure for
everyone’s own good, Airlee isn’t strong enough to fight much of anyone, and
Astra barely exists. But other than that, we’re just fine,” Sip finished.

“Excellent,” I muttered. “Glad we’re
at a party.”

“Is Caid here yet?” Lisabelle asked.
“I was going to propose that we sneak into his quarters while he’s here and get
the Mirror back, but I didn’t think Sip would want to miss her own party.”

“It isn’t my party,” said Sip, blushing.

“Nonsense,” said Lisabelle. “This is
all you.”

“Ladies,” said Nolan, materializing
in front of us. His braids were pulled back into something that closely
resembled a ponytail, and his dark eyes danced. “You all look lovely tonight.
I’m glad I got to be here for this.”

“We are too,” said Sip, beaming at
her fellow werewolf. He smiled at her.

“I hoped that Charlotte would dance
with me.” The NYC werewolf extended his hand, but I just stared at it. I wanted
my first dance to be with Keller.

“Um, no thank you,” I said. “Maybe
later.” Or maybe not.

Nolan shrugged, appearing to take my
rejection in stride.

“I’ll dance with you,” said Sip,
stepping forward. “If you’ll have me.”

Nolan took Sip’s hand and bowed.
“Lady, I would be honored.” Sip grinned and let Nolan lead her onto the dance
floor. Lisabelle stood next to me and watched the two of them walk away.

“I like that guy,” she said.

“He’s alright,” I said. “I liked
Dobrov too, though, and look what happened.”

“Looks are sometimes deceiving,” said
Lisabelle. “For example, I spent a short period of my life looking like I might
actually be a kind-hearted paranormal.”

“Then what happened?” I asked,
laughing.

Lisabelle gave me a sidelong look. “I
discovered black clothing dye, obviously.”

“Lisabelle, want to dance?” Trafton
had appeared in front of us. “Where’s Sip? I was hoping to tell her what a
great party this is.”

Lisabelle pointed to the dance floor,
where Nolan had just finished twirling Sip around. Trafton grinned. “I’ll have
to tell her later, then.”

Trafton always looked good, but
he looked especially good tonight. Like Lough, he wore the light blues,
silvers, and grays of the dream givers, but unlike Lough he was in a gray suit
instead of a tunic, with black shoes and a blue button down shirt.

Lisabelle shrugged. “Charlotte,
do you mind? I think you’ll have your own dance partner soon enough.” She
nodded in the direction of the tent flap opening. I spun on my heel and smiled.

Behind me, I vaguely heard
Lisabelle say, “Let’s go, the elemental’s in la-la land now.”

Keller stood in the doorway, and
boy oh boy did he look splendid. He wore a white shirt and white slacks, with a
white tie and a white jacket. It was a lot of white, but he looked delicious. I
grinned and headed over.

His blue eyes were searching the
space, but they stopped when they met mine. I was delighted to see them light
up, linger on my face, and travel down to take in my dress. I was about to
fling my arms around his neck in greeting when I small figure cut in front of
me.

Vanni.

I wanted to stop and yell, but I
contained myself. She hadn’t even seen me coming. Keller looked wryly amused as
he bent down to listen to something she was saying.

“Hi, Vanni,” I gritted out as I
reached the pair. She turned to look at me, wide-eyed.

“Hello, Charlotte,” said the
younger girl cheerfully. Then, after an awkward pause in which she looked
nervously between Keller and me while neither of us could quite decide what to
do, she said, “Well, I should get going.”

She flitted off as I glared at
her back. Keller didn’t watch her hurry away, he just stepped up to me, pulled
me close, and gently turned my chin away from the fleeing fallen angel until we
were eye to eye and only inches apart. Being this close to him still left me
breathless.

“Charlotte,” he said softly.

“What?” I demanded a little more
gruffly than I meant to.

He raised his eyebrows. “Is
something wrong?”

“She’s always talking to you,” I
said in frustration. “Even at the gala, which is OUR special night.”

“You look beautiful.”

“And what is her problem anyway?
She’s gorgeous and wealthy. She could have loads of paranormals.”

“I’m just so damned charming. For
example, I tell the girl I’m crazy about that she’s beautiful, and she just
falls weeping at my feet.”

I blinked several times. Now that
I had stopped seeing red, it became clear to me that Keller was having a very
hard time not laughing.

“Are you making fun of me?” I
asked suspiciously.

“Who? Me?” he grinned, wrapping
his arms around my waist. “How could you think such a thing?”

“So, you weren’t happy about
talking to Vanni?”

I sounded like the kind of
insane, jealous girl I used to hate. Well, that was before I had a boyfriend I
was in love with, but unfortunately half the rest of campus was also in love
with him.

But he was looking at me.

“Your dress is stunning,” he
said.

“You aren’t looking at my dress,”
I replied. I was a little confused, and I could feel the heat rising in my
face.

“Nope,” he said. “But it’s
stunning.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking down
and blushing.

“I’ll have to fight off all the
other guys who’ve been checking you out,” he said. “And this is my best suit.”

I shook my head. “Don’t be
silly,” I chided. “You don’t have to fight anyone off.”

“I’m never silly,” said Keller.

“Keller,” I laughed as he darted
in to kiss me. “You’re definitely being silly tonight.”

“Happiness does that to a guy,
apparently,” he said dryly. “I’m sure Lisabelle will come around and try to put
a damper on it soon.”

I grinned. “We all have to be
good at something.”

“Want to dance?” he asked.

He started to lead to me to the
dance floor, but I held him back for a second. Keller had said he was happy.
Was that the feeling that was washing over me and making it hard for me not to
smile? Yes, I thought to myself, I think it’s actually happiness. It suffused
my body and made me giddy. And it wasn’t just Keller, although he was a big
part of it. Maybe we were in danger and maybe there were more unanswered
questions in my life than I could count, but tonight I was with my friends,
they were safe, Ricky was safe, and Keller was here.

What more could I ask for?

Keller tugged on my hand. “You
okay? You look like you’re thinking hard about something.”

I laughed. “Is it that obvious?”

Keller grinned. “I’m just very
observant.”

“You think pretty highly of
yourself,” I said, following him onto the dance floor.

“I’m just a lucky guy,” he
retorted, grinning at me.

He swung me around and I waved to
Sip, who was still dancing with Nolan. Both of them waved back at us and Keller
gave them a nod.

“What do you think of Nolan?” I
asked.

Keller shrugged. “He’s a damned
talented werewolf. Whatever he’s learning in that New York City school of his,
it’s impressive.” As he talked he stepped closer, so that we were pressed
together for the slow dance.

“I don’t want to talk about Nolan,”
he said, his voice soft. It sent a jolt right to my stomach and I bit my lip as
warmth spread throughout my body.

“Whatever you want.” I smiled up
at him.

I don’t know how long we danced,
but it was a long time. There wasn’t anything else I had wanted to do that
night anyway. Well, okay, I wanted to sample some of the delicious food that
was waiting for us, but other than that I was content.

At one point Lisabelle and Lough
came over to say hi, and we even managed to convince her to dance with the
dream giver. It turned out that she was a very good dancer. Whereas I was just
managing to follow Keller and the steps (we stopped counting how many times I
stepped on his toes at six, but he claimed he thought it was cute), Lisabelle
was excellent. Her mother had insisted that she learn the steps and practice
them endlessly. Lisabelle, not liking to be bad at anything, had done so, even
if she had never intended to use them.

I lost track of Sip for most of
the evening, but I knew the werewolf had a lot to do since she was on the
committee. I did see Dacer, who spent most of his time with Caid, Oliva, or
Zervos. Dove was nowhere to be seen, but I had heard that the vampire was on
errands for the paranormal congress now that the semester was ending. I tried
not to look at Caid, or think about my mirror, because whenever I did my
stomach twisted into knots and the happy feeling I was carrying around started
to ebb away.

Partway through the evening, Faci
and Daisy had come in and were sitting with Dobrov in a corner. Unlike her
brother, Daisy still had the burnt red appearance with which she had arrived at
Public. I wondered what her brother had done to get rid of it; whatever it was,
she must have chosen not to bother.

“What are you thinking about?”
Keller asked me. The lights had dimmed, and although I didn’t think many, or
any, of the attendees had left the party, the evening had slowed. I was sleepy
and had just stifled a yawn.

“I was thinking this is nice,” I
said. “We should have celebratory galas more often.”

Keller chuckled. “Yeah, in our
free time,” he said. “I’m just glad this semester is over.”

I nodded. “Me too, but it wasn’t
as bad as I thought it would be.”

“You mean you thought Dacer was
going to get kicked out?”

“There was a lot of suspicion on
him for a while,” I said.

Instead of responding, Keller
echoed my yawn from a moment before. “It’s getting late, huh?” he said.

“Yeah, and Oliva hasn’t even made
any sort of speech,” I said, looking to the dais.

“I think Caid’s going to do a lot
of the talking,” said Sip, coming up to my elbow.

Keller and I paused in our
dancing. I was tired, and it felt like time to regain a little energy by
sampling the food. Nolan was nowhere to be seen, and Sip had completed the
latest dance with Trafton. We decided to find Lisabelle and Lough, who had
staked a claim to a table a long time ago.

Keller and I agreed to share a
plate, but once he started piling it so high with food that orange berries were
tumbling off, I decided I should have gotten my own. Then, just as we were
about to sit down, Keller’s aunt beckoned him over with an index finger and a
glare. While Keller went to chat with her, Dacer ambled over to join us
carrying a plate of grapes and a smile.

“Ms. Quest, this place is simply
breathtaking,” he said to Sip, taking in the gala. Sip beamed, her ears turning
pink from pleasure.

“Thank you,” she gushed. “We
couldn’t have done it without you.”