Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series) (6 page)

A howl of warning was all we had.
At the sound of the shrill noise the four of us closed ranks, our backs to each
other and our shoulders touching. Lisabelle had already pushed up her sleeve,
and I felt Sip trembling next to me, an indication that she was ready to shift
into wolf form. Then I saw a dart of white speed past us and head for another
tree, disappearing behind the thick bark. It was Bartholem, letting us know we
were in trouble, and he was none too soon: we were in fact already surrounded.
If I had learned to be quiet from hanging out with a werewolf, I wondered where
all the hellhounds that now circled us had learned it from. I looked toward the
house. I could just see it through the trees and over the backs of the two
hellhounds that stood between me and safety. It was still early in the morning,
and I was sure that none of the other residents of the house would be up yet.

We were trapped, with no chance
of escape. Hellhounds surrounded us, at least twice as many demon beasts as
there were paranormals.

“Can’t even have a morning walk,”
Lough griped.

“Without hellhounds attacking
us?” I said, sparing my friend a quick glance before quickly returning my eyes
to the growling black beasts.

“Without that stupid cat butting
in,” said Lough. Bartholem was still nowhere to be seen.

“So, now’s not the time to tell
you that he’s coming to Public with us and living in Airlee?” Lisabelle said.
Normally so composed, even she was trying hard not to laugh at the dismayed
noise Lough made.

Dismay turned to fear when a
hellhound lunged. Lisabelle and I were back to back, and it came right at me.
Without thinking, I held up my ring, delighted to feel the power coursing
through me. I hit the hellhound right on the nose with an icy blast of wind.
Hellhounds had red eyes and were powerful, but they hated cold, probably that
whole thing about how they lived in the dark world, where it was close and hot.

“The hellhound whimpered and
backed away,” I told Lisabelle, who hadn’t turned around to look.

“They must be under orders not to
attack,” said Lisabelle. “Curious.”

“If they’re here defending Malle,
that makes sense,” Sip growled. A hellhound growled in response and I felt Sip
bristle.

She transformed into werewolf
before I knew what was happening.

Sip was small, even as a
werewolf; the bodies in human and animal form usually mirrored each other, and
Sip’s was no exception. She still had intense purple eyes and light-colored fur
that was now standing on end as she bared her fangs at the hellhounds.

“Enough,” called a voice I knew
instantly as Caid’s. “You will leave. He wasn’t talking to us. He was talking
to the monsters.”

I watched in shock and dismay as
the hellhounds slowly backed away, never turning their backs to us as they
disappeared from sight.

“Aren’t you going to go after
them?” Lisabelle demanded. I knew she must be facing Caid, so when the
hellhounds were almost out of view I allowed myself to turn my head around
slightly.

Caid was coming through the woods
with Saferous. For a second I almost asked where Malle was, but I caught myself
just in time. There was no way in the world I was going to admit that I’d been
spying on the president of the paranormals.

“No,” said Caid, shaking his
head. There were dark circles under his eyes, and the area around his mouth was
tight. “Now is not the time for fighting.”

“Clearly you need to spend more
time with Lisabelle,” Lough muttered.

“Or she with me,” said Caid
quietly. He shook his thick head. “They should not have been here.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“What were you four doing out
here anyway?” Saferous asked. I had first met Saferous at Vampire Locke,
Lanca’s mountain stronghold for the Rapier vampires. He was a friend of
Keller’s parents and a powerful paranormal. He was tall and thin, with a shock
of white hair.

“Going for a morning walk,” said
Lough, giving a long stretch. “It’s good for you.”

Saferous met Lough’s eyes. I felt
sure that if Lisabelle had said the same thing Saferous would have thought she
was mocking him, but Lough was harder to read.

“I see,” he said, his face
unreadable.

“Are you going to tell us it’s
not safe?” I said. “That’s kind of obvious.”

Saferous’s eyes hardened. “It is
safe here, elemental,” he said coldly. “Believe me.”

I looked at the two paranormals
who, until this morning, I had thought were at the forefront of our protection.
Now I had no idea.

Caid gave a jovial laugh, but we
could all tell it was forced. “Ms. Quest, please join us again,” he said,
extending a hand to the Airlee, who was still in wolf form. Sip instantly
transformed. She even did a good job of hiding of how angry she was.

“Alright,” he said. “We have a
lot to do to get ready for tonight. Come. Others should be arriving, and Dacer
should be awake by now.” He glanced at the sun. “And it’s definitely time for
breakfast.”

“It’s always time to eat,” said
Lough, rubbing his stomach.

“Didn’t you already have
breakfast?” I asked him.

“Yes, but it was just cereal,” he
said. “I think President Caid has more up his sleeve.”

“You’ve come to the right summer
house,” said Caid jovially, slinging an arm over Lough’s shoulders. I was
impressed by my dream giver friend’s ability to pretend that everything was
fine. I would have been hard-pressed not to yell if I had had to talk much, but
luckily no one was focusing particularly on me.

As we trailed inside one at a
time, Lisabelle and I exchanged glances. We tried to hang back, but Caid called
to us to hurry up. I couldn’t help glancing into the trees, wondering how far
away the hellhounds had gone. I had a very bad feeling that they hadn’t gone
far at all, that just out of view past the next few trees, pairs of red eyes
waited and watched.

“Are you okay?” Lisabelle asked
me.

I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered. “I
just wonder who to be loyal to now.”

We were staying one more night on
the shores of Lake Timarity. President Caid was having a large party, to which
many of my classmates - and their parents - were invited. Even Keller would be
there.

I had missed my friends all
summer, especially Keller, and I was delighted that we would finally be
reunited. We hadn’t been together, but our time apart had given us an
appreciation for what we had when we
were
together, and what we didn’t
want to lose. As much as I valued my friends, Keller was still the only one who
knew what Sigil had said about my mother.

Sigil was the ghost of Astra, as
I had started to call him in my own mind. He lived in the library, which I had
not gone into for the first year and a half I had been at Public. When I
finally did he appeared immediately, and we struck up a friendship of sorts. He
was a former professor at Public and had died, but he had steadfastly refused
to tell me how or why he was waiting there in ghost form. All he would say was
that he had promised to do something. I had spent all of last spring semester
trying to get more information out of him about my mother and about the
elemental she had married. Finally, right before we left for the summer, he had
come to me and explained that she had in fact been murdered, but not by anyone
I knew as an enemy. She had been murdered by elementals.

Ever since I had found out that I
was an elemental and that Malle was evil, I had felt sure that Malle, or some
other darkness mages, had killed my mother in an effort to do away with the
last elemental. Sigil had thrown that theory into chaos with the sparse bit of
information he had given me.

Keller had been sleeping next to
me when Sigil had made this revelation, and after Sigil left the room I
instantly shook Keller awake.

“Charlotte,” he muttered groggily
as I poked him repeatedly in the shoulder. “We just need one night off before
there’s another disaster. Tell the demons to come back tomorrow.”

“There are no demons,” I said,
sitting up in bed and flicking on the light. It cast a soft glow around the
room, though the room was so large that the walls and the door were still in
shadow. Keller, realizing that he wasn’t getting back to sleep, rolled toward
me.

“What just happened?” he asked,
carefully looking at me through one eye. “And you look blurry.”

“That’s because you’re tired,” I
told him warmly.

“Whatever you say, heart-sweet,”
he agreed. “I’m glad you realize it too.” But he was smiling a little as he
said it.

After I apologized again for
waking him up I said, “This is important!”

“Okay,” he said. He sat up next
to me and scrubbed his face, giving a long sigh.

“What’s happening?”

“Sigil was just here,” I said
hoarsely. Now that Keller was more awake and looking at me, he could see how
upset I was. My eyes felt large and I could feel a bit of sweat on my brow.

“What did he want?” my boyfriend
asked, frowning. Keller usually slept with a shirt on, because, as he said,
there was less temptation, but sometimes I wished he didn’t.

“He wanted to tell me about my
mother,” I said quietly. This was too big, and I couldn’t look straight at
Keller while I said it, so I looked at my intertwined hands instead. They felt
hot and clammy, but even so, Keller covered my smaller hands with one of his
large ones and slung an arm around my shoulder to pull me close.

“What did Sigil say?” he murmured
in my ear.

I took a deep breath. I felt safe
and warm here in Astra with Keller holding me; it was probably the only place
where I could have told him this story.

When I finished, Keller didn’t
say anything for a long time. When I finally dared to look at him he was gazing
off into the distance, but when my eyes caught his he smiled and gave me a kiss
on the head.

“Do you believe him?” he asked
quietly.

“You think he’s untrustworthy?” I
murmured, a glimmer of hope sparking in my despair.

Keller blinked twice, frowning.
“He did steal the Mirror Arcane.”

I nodded. “I know he did, which I
have to think about. I just don’t see why he would lie about this.”

“Paranormals lie for all kinds of
reasons,” he said. “He’s a ghost, and he won’t tell you what he’s doing here.”

“So, you think he’s lying?” I
pressed.

Keller shook his head. “There’s
no way to know. Did he have any proof?”

“Not that he offered,” I said, my
eyes pleading. “I don’t know how he would know.”

“Maybe he overhead a
conversation,” said Keller, turning his intensely bright blue eyes right toward
mine. “Maybe he misunderstood a conversation. There are all kinds of ways he
could have gotten that idea.”

“And been wrong,” I said, sitting
up straighter, but not enough to dislodge Keller’s arm.

“I don’t know,” said Keller. “But
I’m sorry.”

His voice and eyes were serious.
“I do think . . . .” He paused and looked away again, but I knew what he wanted
to say.

“You think it’s something I have
to keep in mind,” I whispered, all my glee at the idea of Sigil being wrong
draining away.

“Yes,” said Keller. “I think
there’s a chance he isn’t lying. You don’t know what happened. She was
obviously in hiding, and without more information. . . .”

I nodded. It wasn’t what I wanted
to hear, but Keller wasn’t just going to tell me what I wanted to hear, he was
going to tell me the truth. It was one of the things I loved about him.

“I’m sorry,” he said again,
rubbing my shoulder comfortingly. He kissed my cheek.

I nodded. “So am I,” I murmured.

“We can figure it out together,”
he said, holding me close. “I promise we will.”

Sip, Lisabelle, Lough, and I were
kept so busy for the rest of the day at Caid’s summer house that I almost
wondered if it was intentional. I hadn’t realized how many paranormals were
staying there until we got to the main house, where Dacer was “supervising” a
large breakfast. The vampire didn’t actually cook, clean, or decorate, he just
ordered everyone around to his liking so that they did it for him, and somehow
they all seemed to love it.

“Ah, there are my ducklings,” he
said, throwing up his hands when the six of us came in the large double doors
at the back of the house. We had walked in silence. I didn’t know what to say,
since all I wanted to do was talk to my friends about whether or not Caid was
in the pocket of the Nocturns, even if the answer already seemed clear.

Dacer had an apron on over what
was for him a remarkably plain white shirt and light khaki pants. He also
didn’t have any makeup on, and his longish hair was pulled into a ponytail at
the back of his head. His apron spoke for itself, though. It was covered in
tiny little cookware utensils in every color, with the background a shockingly
bright blue. There was a pink spatula, and here was an orange frying pan. On
the left was a purple spoon surrounded by a green bowl.