“Well, I’ll guess you’ll have to come to the future and find out, Magnet Queen. Your Match needs you. We all do.” With that, Daphne jumped, vanishing like she’d never been there at all.
Maybe she hadn’t been.
With her last bit of strength, Mara’s hand came up to touch the pendant Daphne had looped around her neck. What did Daphne think Mara could possibly do that would affect the future? Mara had never done anything important.
She couldn’t even pick out her own wallpaper.
Even hazy from a fever and rapidly sinking into a coma, Mara knew there was something terribly wrong with this situation, beyond her own eminent death. Mara was popular, but no Time Phase would travel back to save her. Not without some huge and probably dishonest reason. The Council never would have sanctioned such a trip, no matter what the time period.
The necklace felt was like an anchor around Mara’s throat and she wanted to rip it off.
But, she didn’t.
Daphne said that Chason needed her.
Chason had never needed her. She was a superfluous queen and Match. Chason could run the Magnet Kingdom and his life just fine without her around. Probably better. Chason was perfect. Self-sufficient and noble, he’d survive just fine no matter what the future held.
Chason didn’t need anything.
Right?
Mara slowly lowered her hand away from her throat.
This whole thing was probably a hallucination or a dream. But, if Chason needed her –if there was even a chance that he might-- then, Mara would do anything to help him. Anything at all. Even wear a weird pendant. What difference would it really make at this point? It wasn’t like it could kill her.
Mara loved Chason with every bit of her heart and soul. Even the piece that she tried so hard to keep separate yearned to be closer to him. Chason was her other half.
Mara’s eyes drifted shut.
In her misfiring mind, I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time began playing, again. It was her Phazing Day. Fireworks lit the night sky and music played. All her cousins were alive and there for her. Even her irascible father-in-law looked pleased. It was the happiest day of her life. Mara laughed, her purple robes spinning around her. And Chason smiled down at her as they danced.
Mara’s mouth curved as the darkness claimed her. She fell into a long, bottomless sleep, still listening to music play in her head.
Chapter One
Two Years Later
She's dead; and all which die
To their first elements resolve;
And we were mutual elements to us,
And made of one another.
John Donne- “The Dissolution”
On what should have been his and Mara’s seventieth anniversary, Chason woke-up on the floor of a jail cell. Actually, he didn’t “wake-up” so much as “regain consciousness.” And being conscious was the last thing he wanted.
“Oh… fuck.”
He always hated that first moment in the morning when his dreams faded and he found himself right back in the shit pile of his daily existence. In the two seconds that it took him to open his eyes, everything would come crushing back.
Mara dying… His life careening into nothingness and bloodshed and an anguish so deep that it consumed his soul… Endless days without her that slowly drove him insane… Her body being stolen right out of her crypt when the barriers between the kingdoms fell… The terror of knowing that she was out there somewhere in the hands of grave robbers…
Not saying good-bye to her before he left her alone for the final time.
No, Chason was never eager to greet the day when it would have been so much simpler to just go back to sleep and dream of his Match. She still lived in his dreams. Still smiled. Still played music and wrote in those notebooks she always carried.
She was still with him.
Waking up and discovering all over again that Mara was gone from the world was torture every single day. And this morning was even worse than usual.
Christ, his head felt like it was going to explode.
Chason squeezed his eyes shut against the glare of the light and groaned. What he remembered about the previous twelve hours was pretty much a blur. Most of his life for the past two years had been a blur, actually, but copious amounts of alcohol were adding a whole new layer of blurriness to the usual blur of despair and pain.
Chason had never tried getting drunk before. He hadn’t believed it was possible. But, staring at the date on the calendar --knowing that he no longer even had his Match’s body-- made him want to spend their anniversary completely intoxicated and preferably out cold. And when the King of the Magnet House set his mind to something, he did it better than anyone.
It turned out fifteen bottles of vodka blacked a Phase out nicely. All those judgmental biology textbooks telling students that Elementals couldn’t get drunk, so there was no use in even trying, were obviously full of horseshit.
He wasn’t surprised. So many of the things he’d once believed had turned out to be lies.
They told him that if he worked hard and helped people, he’d be rewarded: Lie.
They told him that honor was important and that justice would always triumph: Lie.
They told him that Gaia or God or whatever you wanted to call that big magical being in the sky looked out for all the good people: Total. Fucking. Lie.
Mara had the purest soul of anyone he’d ever met. She’d brought nothing but kindness and love to the world. She harmed no one. Followed all the rules. Selflessly gave everything to others. Why would she not be spared? What was the bigger purpose in killing a woman who’d done nothing wrong? What could possibly be the reason for Chason to remain and Mara to go?
Answer: There wasn’t a reason.
The duties and responsibilities Chason had been taught for centuries –the foundation of his very self-- were complete and utter lies.
There was no order to this world. No Gaia. No merit badges for good citizenship. No reason behind the random events that struck down innocent women and allowed murderers to live. Nothing meant a goddamn thing.
It was no wonder he was going crazy.
Going crazy…? Hell he’d actually arrived.
Ever since the Fall, Chason had been slowly losing his mind. Literally. He was nuts, in the “seeing things and talking to himself” sense of the word. He’d halfway hoped that becoming an inebriate might make things a little clearer, but unfortunately the liquor wore off much too quickly and now he was back to normal.
Such as it was.
He no longer trusted anything in “reality.” He was so close to the steep drop off into madness that he could feel the ground growing thinner under his feet. It was trying to trick him into falling. Sometime he actually saw the skeletal grin of his own insanity from the corner of his eye.
And since he’d killed Parald, its beckoning smile looked… inviting.
There was so little reason for Chason to stay in this place now that he’d accomplished his main goal and destroyed Mara’s murderer. He got by --hour by hour, minute by minute-- on a pure effort of will. But, the darkness was closing in.
It was getting so hard to resist the freedom it promised.
A few months before, he’d only sporadically heard the music Mara loved filling his head. Perhaps, not a completely sane occurrence, but compared to where he was today, pretty fucking normal. At the time, the phantom melody had cut into him like physical blows. He hadn’t been able to stand the reminder of his lost life and bride. He’d thought even the occasional sound of it was torture.
Now, it played constantly. Everywhere he went, that song went with him, repeating on an eternal loop. And Chason found that he… liked it.
The Andrews Sisters spoke to him.
They lured him with a world of apple blossoms and dancing with his Match under fireworks. As soon as he found Mara’s body, he could go there. He could be with her, again. He had to find her soon… before he got so bad that he wasn’t able to.
He couldn’t rest if she was out there alone.
Chason squinted over at the Plexiglas walls of his cell. Where was he? A prison? He had to get out, so he could continue looking for his Match. It definitely wasn’t the Magnet Kingdom, but he had no idea how he’d gotten here. It was hard to remember what he did, day to day, even without the alcoholic fog. Time drifted together and there was very little to help him keep track of it.
Had he left his home last night? Had even been home last night?
It was impossible to know for sure.
Chason closed his eyes, again. The fortress was such a cold and empty shell. Ever since Mara died the Magnetland had been decaying around him and now even his soldiers had left.
The Reprisal had splintered after Chason killed Parald. Some of them were following Lansing, of the Dust House, now. Chason’s former second-in-command had led them away to continue the endless fight. Some of them had gone back to their homelands. Some of them were… wherever. Someplace far better than the dying Magnet Kingdom, no doubt.
Chason wished them well on their new paths. His own road had ended. He couldn’t go any further. He simply wanted to find his Match and… stop.
“Are you listening to me, Mr. Hickok? I can see you’re awake.”
Chason’s eyes popped open, darting around suspiciously. The fake name on his fake ID was Hickok, wasn’t it? The Wood Phases had started stealing names from Earth history for the Elementals’ secret “human” identities. They were especially fixated on the American West. How had the voice in his head known that?
“Hey, your highness!”
Chason glanced over at the door to his cell. Oh. The voice appeared “real.” A human stood there, peering in at him. Sullivan Pryce, the grandson of Parson, of the Wood House. He recognized the scar on his face. Chason must be in the human realm, then. Mayport Beach, Florida.
Unless this was another hallucination. He’d never hallucinated about Sullivan Pryce before, though. How very odd.
“Someone’s here to bail you out, king-y.” The human said snidely, seeing that he had Chason’s attention. “No need to thank me for cutting corners to get you outta here faster. It was my pleasure.”
“You’ve imprisoned me and now you’re just going to let me go?”
It was no wonder that the humans were so backwards with that kind of strategic thinking. There were countless Elementals who would have kept Chason locked up until his body withered into dust. Chason was a dangerous man with nothing in the universe left to lose.
“Of course I want you gone, ya moron.” Sullivan snapped, too stupid to even be wary. “But first, do you remember anything about last night?”
“Which one of them?” Chason asked seriously. He was beginning to recall at least three.
The human sighed as if he was the one losing his mind.
Ever since the Uriel, of the Wood House had Matched with Sullivan’s cousin Melanie, Phases had been stalking Sullivan day and night. The only other known half human/half Elemental in existence, Sullivan was now the most eligible bachelor in the universe. Every single woman who’d given up finding her Match after the Fall saw him as a magical gift.
In return, Sullivan saw them as criminals.
To him, the Elementals were all part of a cult that was determined to take over his town. No one had explained the Phases’ real identities or his own heritage to him yet, for reasons that were beyond Chason’s fractured understanding. Possibly because the human wouldn’t want to hear it. As much as Sullivan frustrated the Elementals with his stubbornly human mindset and tendency to arrest them, it was clear that they annoyed him more.
“Fucking Cult will be the end of me, I swear to Christ.” Sullivan lamented. “Look, during one of the last nights, your buddy Isaac Oakley says you threw a Land Rover at him in the parking lot of the Wastin’ Away Bar and Grill. He’s pressing charges.”
“Oh.” That’s what this was about? Isaacs was such a pussy.
Sullivan arched a brow. “Of course, he also misspelled his own name on the complaint, so I wasn’t exactly taking ‘Isaacs, of the Oaklees’ word for it until you confessed. Loudly.”
“Of course, I confessed. I would never lie about my actions.” Chason straightened his grey Reprisal uniform. He still wore it, because it was easier than finding something different to put on. “It would be degrading.”
“Yeah, if only all the criminals in the drunk tank had your kind of dignity.”
Chason ignored that. He did sort of remember Isaacs, of the Air House arriving, looking to try and get drunk at the same place Chason was already trying to get drunk. Tension was inevitable given the number of times they’d tried to kill each other over the years.
Job, of the Earth House, the Elementals’ de facto leader, had made it very clear that there was to be no violence in front of the humans, but he might as well have made it a law that everyone had to walk on their hands. It was just unnatural for some groups of Phases to not attack each other on sight.
Either Elementals visiting the human realm needed to expand their territory to new towns or Mayport Beach needed to build more bars. They were a group with a lot of internal tensions and the humans didn’t seem to know enough to stay out of the middle of their conflicts.
Chason sighed and rubbed at his pounding temples. “I don’t remember all the details of what happened, but I assure you Isaacs started it.”
Ever since the Air Phase went blind he’d been an even bigger pain in the ass than usual. Chason vaguely recalled Isaacs sitting next to him at the bar and popping a pretzel into his mouth.
The bastard had said something like, “So this is how you’re celebrating Mara’s anniversary, huh, Lancelot?” Then, the juke box had started playing a song Isaacs had clearly deliberately chosen as his own funeral dirge. There could be no other explanation.
Everything after that was a homicidal blackout.
If the Air Phase wanted to die, who was Chason to question it? He understood the feeling, all too well. And killing Isaacs would have been a rewarding final chapter to his life. Instead, Chason was stuck in this dingy jail cell thanks to the pesky humes and their un-aerodynamic Jeeps.
“The guy seems like an ass wipe.” Sullivan agreed. “Even more so than you. What did he do to make you throw a car at him? Wait. Better question. How did you throw a car at him?” He sounded like he still highly doubted that part of the report.
“My powers allow me to control magnetism and automobiles are made of metal.” It seemed obvious. Chason slowly sat up and cringed as the world spun around him.
“Uh-huh.” Sullivan didn’t look convinced by Chason’s blunt confession. “Well, Magneto, he was pissed. So was the Jeep’s owner. You’re looking at a one huge ass fine and a court date in a couple weeks.”
Hopefully, he wouldn’t even be alive in a few weeks. “My name is Chason, King of the Magnet House.” That he was sure of. The very last thing he knew with an absolute certainty.
He was Chason: Mara’s Match.
Or the shell of him, anyway.
“Yeah, you told me about your royal lineage last night, Mr. Hickok. You’d also have a psych evaluation lined-up, if it wasn’t for Ty Waterhouse vouching for you when she came to get Oakley.”
That actually broke through Chason’s foggy thoughts. “Ty came to pick that jackass up?”
“Yep. Gion seemed thrilled with the idea of you both getting the gas chamber, but Ty was very conciliatory towards your buddy.” Rumors of the human’s grudging fondness for the Water Phases must be true, because Sullivan’s tone was less sneering when he mentioned Ty. “Since Oakley didn’t actually break any laws, I let her take him home.”
Unbelievable.
“That son-of-a-
bitch has broken more laws, in more realms, than you can imagine. You should have kept him imprisoned for the good of the universe.” Air Phases were criminals of the worst sort and yet Chason was the one in a cell.
The injustices of the world were staggering. He’d be glad to leave it all behind.
“Ty promised she’d look after Ray Charles.” Sullivan said as if that was good enough for him. “She was a little upset that you tried to crush a blind guy, by the way. Muttered something about how she’d hoped you’d be getting better by now.”
There was no “better” for him. It was naive of Ty to even consider that there might be. But then, she knew about Raiden’s prophesy and the Water Phases were such optimistic little things. Mara would have held out hope for him, too.
Chason knew better.
“Ty was really upset.” Sullivan reiterated like he personally blamed Chason for that.
“Ever since I kidnapped her, Ty and I have lost some of our former closeness.” Chason regretted that. But, shit, Isaacs had abducted the girl, too, and now he was living in the Water Palace. Even someone not crazy would see that was crazy.
“Funny you should mention that.” Sullivan crossed his arms over his chest. “See, I have this security footage of you and Gion rampaging around a Home Depot…”
“Oh Lord… Am I being charged with that, too?” This would take all day.
“Not at the moment. But, Ty says you started that fight with Gion… right before you kidnapped her.”
“The two incidents were not connected. I kidnapped her for reasons unconnected to Gion.”
“I asked and she’s declining to press charges.”
That didn’t surprise him. The Water House had loved Mara too much to ever hate Chason. It made him feel ashamed.
Sullivan kept talking. “However the Home Depot fight went down, I saw you appear in the middle of the store. I’ve seen that trick live and in person, too, with a couple of you guys, now.” He hesitated like he wasn’t really sure he wanted to know what he was about to ask. “How is it possible that you people can do that?”
Queen of the Magnetland (The Elemental Phases Book 5) Page 3