Power Revealed (The Elementers) (19 page)

“What are you doing here? Checking to make sure I’m not in the middle of some other disaster?” Raven asked as she came closer to Justin.

“I was just getting a drink.”

“Over here?”

“I was stopping by my locker too.”

“Oh,” Raven said. “So, how are your hands?” Raven gently reached out to lift Justin’s hands up from his sides, but stopped at the last moment. “Oops. I guess I’m not supposed to touch.”

Justin definitely wanted to touch. He wanted it more than he would admit even to himself, but he wouldn’t risk hurting her again. His feet took a step toward to her. He was close enough to notice she smelled like flowers, but he kept his hands at his sides. “Yeah, I guess I need to learn how to better control the amount and type of energy I access.” He could feel his heart beat pumping faster in his chest. “So that we can touch without you refusing to let go of me.” He gave her a lopsided grin.

“Very funny. You’re not as irresistible as you think.”

“I don’t know. You were holding onto me pretty tight.”

“Well, you need to work on your effect on women. You’re not supposed to cause them pass out in order to make them fall for you.”

“Yeah. I guess I need to tone down the charisma. But in the meantime, I hoped I could ask you for a favor.”

“What favor?”

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what Anya said to me about Alexei and my grandpa. She’s got to be mistaken, but I can’t ignore the feeling that I at least need to prove it. If Anya is right, then Alexei has been lying to me and I want to know why,” Justin said.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“If he’s been lying, I don’t expect him to tell me the truth, so I want to look through his stuff. I thought the safest way to do so would be to keep him busy by having dinner with him at his hotel and have someone else go through his things in his hotel room.”

Raven eyes opened wide. “You want me to break into his hotel room and rifle through his things? Are you crazy?”

“I already know you can unlock doors. You did so to steal my address. I’ll keep Alexei downstairs so that there’s no chance of him coming in on you. It’ll be easy,” Justin said.

“For you. You wouldn’t be the one sent to jail or attacked by an Elementer.”

“Raven, I wouldn’t let him hurt you. He won’t even know you’re there. But we need to find out who our attackers are and if Alexei lied about Henry, there’s a chance he’s lying about other things too. Please. You don’t want to just stand by and wait for someone to attack us again, do you?”

“Well, no. But can’t I be the one enjoying the dinner?”

“Raven, it would seem less strange for me to ask him to meet me for dinner. We’ve already met. Besides, you’re the trained criminal who knows how to pick locks. It’ll only take a few minutes and you’ll be out of there. No worries. Please. We need to find out who’s trying to hurt us.”

Raven started biting her lip causing Justin to smile. He liked her nervous habit and couldn’t take his eyes off her lips. Finally Raven sighed. “Okay, but you have to make sure he stays away from his room.”

“Absolutely. I’ll keep Alexei busy and you slip in and search his things. A few minutes, tops. What could go wrong?”

Raven just scowled at him.

Chapter 28

Raven and Justin arrived at the hotel almost an hour before the Thursday meeting to make sure they had time to identify Alexei’s room. It was easy. Raven’s talent for connecting might be forcing them to maintain their distance, but it was good for finding Elementers. Most Elementers could sense another Elementer using their powers, but Raven could usually track one down to within a few feet even if they weren’t using their energy.

Alexei was in his hotel room and she found him quickly. They snuck up to the third floor to determine his room number then slipped out through the back stairs and waited at a fast food joint down the street. Justin ordered some food for Raven to eat since she’d be playing the burglar while he ate dinner with Alexei, but she seemed too nervous to eat much. Ten minutes before the meeting, they returned to the hotel. Raven followed another guest in through one of the side doors to avoid any chance of being seen by Alexei. Justin walked around the building and waited in the lobby near the restaurant until Alexei came downstairs. They were given a table at the far corner of the restaurant upon Alexei’s request.

As the waitress turned to take Alexei’s order, Justin discreetly pulled out his phone under the table and sent a very brief text to Raven. He started the timer on his phone at 60 seconds. As the waitress walked away from their table, Justin picked up the salt shaker and started fiddling with it in his hands. After a short while he went to set it back down but purposely dropped it onto the floor. “Whoops,” Justin said as he leaned over to pick up the shaker. Salt had spilled across the floor and Justin reached out with his energy to gather the salt together and drop it in the hand he had lowered to the floor. Alexei looked at Justin and looked around to double check that no one noticed. But no other guests were near them in the restaurant.

“Sorry,” Justin said. “I can be a bit of a klutz.” Justin laid the spilled salt on the edge of the table and replaced the salt shaker. “Thanks for coming so soon.”

“It was good timing. I had to return to Seattle for business, so I simply came here a day early. But I was a little concerned about your cryptic words on the phone. Is everything okay?” Alexei said.

“Not really.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to sound paranoid. But I think someone is trying to hurt Raven and me,” Justin said.

“Why do you say that?”

Justin proceeded to explain the attacks in the parking lot and the restaurant and the white car that followed him last Thursday night. He told Alexei about his suspicion of Rex. Justin was no longer certain that Rex was the attacker, but he didn’t want Alexei to know that. Alexei seemed to want Justin to lay the blame on Rex, so Justin thought it best to play along to keep Alexei at ease.

“So you think Rex is behind the attacks?” Alexei asked.

“You said so yourself that he was working against Henry. If he killed a Council member like Henry, I doubt he would hesitate to kill Raven and me. But why would he want to hurt us?”

“I don’t know,” Alexei said. “He’s a vengeful, determined man. I’m beginning to think there’s nothing he wouldn’t do.”

“But why would he kill Henry? You said a vote was coming up. What was it about?”

“They were voting about the limits on Elementers and what we can and cannot do with our powers. Henry and some others on the Council believe that the Council is too restrictive and controlling. Henry wanted to give Elementers more freedom, but Rex is determined to restrict us all.”

“What do you think should be done? Who do you agree with?”

“I come from a country that lacked freedom for too long. America is supposedly the land of the free, but even here people like Rex try to control everyone. We won’t stand by and let him continue to oppress us. It looks like he’s killing anyone who stands against him. He must be stopped.”

“But why is he attacking Raven and I? We haven’t done anything,” Justin said.

“He probably sees the power you have and is concerned that once you gain better control of your powers, you’ll be the one Elementer he can’t control. He...” Alexei paused in response to his phone ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. “Just a moment. I need to take this call.”

“This is Alexei,” Alexei said and listened to the caller. “What? Just a minute.” Alexei pulled the phone from his ear. “Justin, I need to talk to this person. I can’t take it here with non-Elementers nearby. I’ll be back in just a moment.” With that, Alexei stood up and walked toward the exit of the restaurant by the lobby.

Justin’s heart started pumping faster. He picked up his phone that he’d been hiding under his napkin and typed a swift text to Raven.
Alexei may be coming back to room. Get out.
He hit the send button and wondered what he could do to help Raven. He didn’t dare Earth Talk to her because Alexei would sense the energy they both used and might become suspicious. Alexei might hear her if she was talking on the phone. Justin couldn’t sit there not knowing whether Alexei had returned to his room and Raven got out in time. Justin needed to be there to help her if Alexei found her. Justin could just say he was looking for the bathroom if Alexei saw him. As Justin neared the lobby, he passed his waitress and explained that he’d be right back.

Justin had a small hope Alexei would go outside to talk, but with the weather beginning to lightly mist, Justin wasn’t surprised to see Alexei head toward the elevator. Justin crossed the lobby and peeked around the corner to see Alexei press the button to the elevator. Justin stood there trying to determine options while Alexei talked on the phone waiting for the doors to open. Alexei talked too quietly for Justin to hear him. Finally, Alexei lost patience for the elevator to arrive and walked further down the hall to the stairs. Justin checked his phone again. He hadn’t received a return text from Raven. He had no way to get to Alexei’s room before Alexei without being seen. What was happening with Raven?

Chapter 29

Raven hid around the corner at the end of the hallway when her phone vibrated causing her to jump. She nervously laughed at herself and pulled out her phone. Justin’s text message said,
1 min to go.
She hit the timer app on her phone to count down to sixty seconds and peeked around the corner relieved to find the hallway empty. She took a couple deep breaths and walked down the hallway toward Alexei’s room.

At the door, she looked again at her phone and while she waited for the timer to reach zero, she tried to keep her hands from shaking. At least she wouldn’t be using her hands to unlock the door. She had insisted to Justin that they come to the hotel the day before so she’d have time to practice on the hotel locks. Because the hotel doors used key cards, she wasn’t sure she could unlock them without breaking the lock thus making Alexei suspicious. Thankfully, she discovered that the locks had a regular, metal manual override key so they proved to be easier to open than she expected.

The real trick was timing things precisely with Justin. Alexei would sense Raven using her energy to unlock the door just a few floors above him so Justin needed to mask her energy use. If he accessed the Earth energy downstairs at exactly the same time Raven used hers, Alexei probably wouldn’t realize someone else was also using Earth energy. Raven looked again at her phone.
4-3-2-1-0
. Raven prayed that Justin was ready. She placed her hands on the door knob to make things look normal to anyone coming down the hallway and reached out with the energy. Despite having practiced at least ten times yesterday, her nervousness made it difficult to control the energy. After two failures, she finally succeeded in unlocking the door. She pushed it open and looked both ways down the hallway before walking into the room.

As the door closed, she leaned her back against it and looked at the room. She noticed a suitcase on the luggage rack, a laptop on the desk, and a computer bag hanging on the back of the desk chair. She hurried over to the desk and lifted the lid on the computer. It was off so she hit the power button. It might be password protected, but she figured it was worth a shot.

While the laptop booted, she laid the computer bag on the desk and began looking through it. The front pocket was filled with various business supplies and power cables. She tried to snap the flap closed but she struggled to maintain control over her fingers. She clenched her hands into fists for a moment to try to stop them from shaking and attacked the snap again with success. Next, she opened the main compartment. Behind the laptop section sat a few folder compartments. She pulled the papers out of the first section and flipped through the documents, but they were just travel papers including a few plane itineraries from NYC to Bellingham, Seattle to NYC, and one even from NYC to Paris. The other pages also seemed to be nothing of importance.