Broken Elements (Elements, Book 1)

by Mia Marshall

  That was the moment I knew, beyond any doubt, that I had made the right decision. The right decision coming here to help. The right decision telling the agents and getting us both out of prison, no matter the cost. The right decision forgiving her.

  Before my thoughts could dip further into sentimentality, Brian threw his hand of cards to the floor in exaggerated disgust. “If I’m going to keep losing to you, my wounded pride is going to need the sweet salve of vodka. I fear we have a mere inch left in the bottle.” He draped an arm over his forehead, the very image of a distressed maiden.

  I stood, eager for an excuse to get out of the house. The direction my thoughts were taking was not unexpected, but neither was it entirely welcome. If I was really accepting Sera back in my life, and it seemed I was, it raised all kinds of questions about my quiet future in a quiet house somewhere in the middle of Nowhere, Oregon. I wasn’t even ready to think about those questions, let alone answer them.

  “I think we drained it last night. I’ll make a run.” I snagged Sera’s keys and was out the door before anyone could offer to join me, grabbing whatever solitude I could find while there was still some to be had.

  Chapter 19

  I was so lost in my thoughts that the trip back passed in a daze. I had no memory of my drive other than a vague impression of a curving mountain road lined with snow. Perhaps, if I’d been paying more attention, I would have been prepared for the black cat that came flying onto the car’s hood as I slowed to turn onto the road that led to the cabin.

  I swore loudly and swerved before righting the car. The small black body swayed with the car’s erratic movement, and the green eyes staring through the window looked decidedly annoyed. Muttering a slew of insults under my breath, I pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in park. While I willed my heart to resume a normal rhythm, the cause of my distress leaped delicately to the ground. A moment later, a naked human was sliding into the car.

  “Was that really necessary?” I said, eyes facing determinedly forward.

  Simon settled into the back seat, making himself comfortable. “It seemed unreasonable to expect you to stop for a small cat on the road, and it seemed equally unreasonable not to expect strangers to stop for a naked man. I thought this the best solution.”

  “What, clothes weren’t an option?”

  “The shift was not planned. The agents are at the house, and we decided to leave before their interest in your secret developed into an interest in our secret.”

  “You couldn’t walk away?”

  “This was faster. And less obvious. For me, at least. Have you ever watched a black bear try to be sneaky?”

  I tried to picture Bear Mac tip-toeing through the forest and managed not to giggle. Just. “There’s a blanket in the back seat. Feel free to cover yourself with it.” He made no move to pick it up. “No, really. Feel free.”

  “I do not know why my lack of clothing makes you nervous. I look good naked. Besides, I suspect Mac will want it. Turn here, please.”

  Following his directions, I turned onto a narrow dirt road and followed it deep into the trees. Simon didn’t need to tell me when to stop. The naked arm and leg sticking out from behind a tree trunk clued me in. Though he was definitely attempting to hide, the trunk simply wasn’t wide enough, and I had an unobstructed view of the entire right side of his body. One long muscled leg led to a naked hip, and my eyes roamed past the hip to tight oblique muscles and a chest and shoulders that should have been enshrined in marble. A really, really big piece of marble.

  “Would you like me to go get him, or would you prefer to stare a little longer?” Although Mac kept his head behind the tree and hadn’t noticed my enthusiastic perusal of his form, Simon had clearly witnessed it all.

  “Oh, shut up.” Sometimes, all we have is the grade school comeback. My lust-addled brain didn’t seem capable of much else. “And definitely take the blanket.” I feared that having a naked Mac sitting anywhere near me would prove detrimental to my ability to think and breathe, let alone to drive.

  Simon smiled, but thankfully refrained from comment. A moment later, he had collected Mac. The two returned to the car. Simon was as unabashedly naked as ever, but Mac had wrapped the blanket firmly around his waist. This still left his entire torso on display, and it took a concentrated effort of will not to stare at the spot where his tanned skin met the fabric and think about what was hidden underneath. Or think about how salty his skin would taste, or how it would feel when I ran my hand down the long muscles of his chest.

  Right, I was making the official call: ten years of celibacy was too damn long.

  Once again, Simon folded himself neatly into the back seat, leaving the larger front seat to Mac. I met his eyes in the rearview mirror, and I was fairly certain he was still laughing at me. Glancing at Mac’s impromptu skirt, I asked Simon, “So, can I assume your tendency toward nudism isn’t a general shifter trait? Are you just an exhibitionist, then?”

  It was Mac who answered. “He spends a lot more time in animal form than I do, so he’s bound to be more comfortable without clothes. It’s practically second nature for him.”

  “Why don’t you shift more?”

  “Because a small black cat is considerably less conspicuous than a large black bear.” Unbidden, the image of Mac in animal form came into my mind.

  I realized I’d stopped thinking of him as anything but a man. The memory of his animal rage that first morning had long been replaced by images of the man I’d seen every day since, the one with an easy smile and an attitude of such utter competence that it made everything around him seem a little more bearable, no pun intended. Because I did not understand the beast that lived within him, I had chosen to forget about it, and the man I was lusting after was, really, only half of the complete package.

  “Do you…” I began hesitantly, unsure if I was committing some sort of shifter faux pas. “Do you ever shift in front of others, the way Simon does?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He did not offer any explanation, or elaborate in any way, and I let the matter drop.

  When we pulled up to the cabin, the agents’ car was still in the driveway, and several people were grouped on the front porch. Loud voices suggested that this meeting wasn’t going particularly well.

  “If you still don’t want to answer any questions, you better get down,” I said.

  Simon immediately lay across the back seat. Mac had considerably less room to maneuver, and his efforts to hide placed his head directly in my lap. I could feel his warm breath through my jeans, and I kept my hands firmly on the wheel, resisting the urge to push his brown hair back from his forehead. I parked far away from the other car.

  “I’ll let you know when it’s clear,” I said, and reluctantly disengaged from Mac, moving to join the others on the porch. As I drew closer, I realized that most people were staying out of the fight. Brian, Vivian, and Johnson stood to the side, witnessing the argument rather than participating.

  The cause of the conflict was quickly apparent. It seemed Carmichael’s easy acceptance of elementals was still a work in progress. “You’re friends with people who control earth and ice,” Carmichael was saying, his voice far more accusatory than I was comfortable with. “You didn’t think it was important to mention that?”

  If I was uncomfortable with his tone, Sera was enraged. They were both standing on the porch steps, and she deliberately moved a step higher, making herself the same height as Carmichael. She didn’t raise her voice, but she didn’t need to. She leaned in until less than a foot separated their faces. “No, I knew it wasn’t important to mention that, because I actually know a whole hell of a lot more than you do on this subject. There are a lot of us, and we aren’t all the same. There are a lot of us just in these mountains. You know nothing but what we have told you, so back the fuck off.”

  “It is a valid question…”

  “And if you had asked it as a question, instead of stating it like an accusation, maybe
I would have answered. But no one comes into my house and starts accusing my friends. I don’t care what sort of badge they carry. If you’re so sure they’re guilty, arrest them, but have fun explaining your so-called evidence down at the station.”

  “How can you be so sure they’re innocent?”

  “If you saw a white man with blond hair leaving a crime scene, would you go around accusing every blond white dude? Because that’s what you’re doing.”

  “This is not racial profiling!” I was fairly certain he was ready to explode. I was actually a little impressed. By now, I’d spent quite a bit of time with Carmichael and had come to think of him as a clever, reasonable man. One afternoon with Sera, and veins were popping on his forehead and his neck muscles were bulging in a way that couldn’t be healthy.

  “How long has this been going on?” I whispered to Vivian.

  “Ever since he saw Brian form an ice cube for his drink.” She didn’t take her eyes off Carmichael and Sera, who appeared to have moved even closer to each other. She didn’t look worried. She looked like she wanted a tub of popcorn.

  “Of course it was Brian. I should have guessed.” He heard me, as I’d meant him to, and grinned my way.

  “If looking innocent in their eyes means drinking warm vodka, then lock me up. I have standards.”

  I considered dumping water on their heads to break up the fight, but decided that as fun as it might be, it probably wouldn’t lessen the tension. Instead, I settled for asking Brian to let out a piercing whistle. They stopped mid-word and turned toward us.

  “Hi there. They’re innocent because Brian barely has more elemental magic than Johnson here, and Vivian is so squeamish that she can’t watch a gruesome death in some horror movie, let alone cause one herself. I know you’re used to being the authority, but you seriously have no idea what you’re talking about, so stop acting like you do. Now, I need to head back into town to pick up some dinner. Give me a ride, and I’ll attempt to correct your ignorance.”

  I had no idea if we needed food or not, but I wanted to get them out of the way long enough for Mac and Simon to dress. “Sera, your engine was making noises like an angry cat. I’d rather not drive it right now.” She nodded, understanding, and backed away from Carmichael. He glanced at me, then back at Sera, weighing his options. Finally, he decided to go with the one that seemed less likely to keep his balls as a souvenir if the fight continued.

  “Fine,” he said, his voice terse. I didn’t think he was used to backing down from anything. He and Johnson headed to their car, and I followed.

  I didn’t really have anything new to tell the agents, though I did repeat Sera’s key points, assuming they were more likely to be heard when spoken by a quiet, non-confrontational voice. Idly, I wondered if one of the reasons I’d initially been drawn to Sera was the way she made me feel level-headed in comparison. Growing up surrounded by so many relaxed and easy-going waters, I was constantly aware that I was a little different, a little volatile. With her around, I felt a little more balanced. “She completes me,” I muttered.

  “What?” Johnson asked, his eyes on me in the rearview mirror.

  “I’m depleted. We’ve been driving for ages, and I’m starving. Do you have any more questions for me? Because there’s a pizza sign up there that looks like a beacon lit by god.”

  Johnson moved the sedan across the yellow lines into the middle lane and waited for an opening in the oncoming traffic. “Do elementals believe in a god, then?”

  “It was a figure of speech.” He kept his eyes in the rearview mirror, and my answer didn’t appear to satisfy him. I shrugged. “We believe in magic, and we believe in life. That sounds an awful lot like some definitions I’ve heard of god. But we don’t have special elemental churches and holy books, no.” I waved vaguely around me, indicating the trees that surrounded us on all sides, the mountain peaks visible miles down the road, the lake somewhere southeast of us. “We don’t need them.”

  He nodded. It occurred to me that Johnson wasn’t simply asking out of curiosity. He wanted to be part of our world. It seemed that the knowledge of our existence had stirred his latent earth blood, and it wasn’t enough just to understand. He wanted to convert.

  The sedan pulled into a parking lot surrounded by a bunch of single story businesses. Squished between a bait and tackle shop and a dry cleaners was a hole in the wall pizza joint. After my unproductive day, few things sounded better than a big chunk of bread covered with a pile of cheese. I assured the agents I could get a taxi home, but they both utterly ignored me.

  Carmichael and Johnson at least waited outside while I placed the order for two vegetarian pizzas and one carnivore’s delight. Watching them lean patiently against the car, I added an order of wings and breadsticks. It was thanks to these men’s open minds that I was currently walking free, unconcerned about being committed to an asylum, and it seemed right to thank them with a deep-fried foodstuff.

  For the first time since my visit, I let myself wonder about Lana’s brother, committed to that asylum in Eureka. Had he been in a similar position, but with no understanding human to hear his story? No, it couldn’t be that. Lana had specified that he was in a facility run by elementals. Mental illness wasn’t discussed openly by our race, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist.

  There were whispers, always, about those who had simply lived too long, whose bodies had outlived the mind’s desire for sanity. I had never seen it, however, and had come to think of the whispers as nothing more than a cautionary tale for those of us who would live to see many centuries pass, a warning to remain connected to this world.

  It was possible that Trent Pond’s mind had not been adaptable enough to age alongside his body. I didn’t know how old Lana was, and he was her older brother by centuries. Maybe his illness had nothing to do with being half human. I had no proof that it did, and I very much wanted to believe that there was no connection.

  My reverie was interrupted by an unfamiliar voice. “Hey, you’re Brian’s friend, aren’t you?” I looked at the man speaking to me, certain I’d never seen him before. I thought he was human, though I couldn’t be sure. He looked like your typical snowboarder, average height but with a strong and nimble physique, bleached blond hair and ear plugs, and a slightly stoned grin. I nodded. “I thought so. I’m really good with faces.”

  “How do you know Brian?” I didn’t care, not really, but I saw no reason not to make polite conversation, especially with ten more minutes to kill before the pizza was ready.

  “Oh, Brian and I go way back. He’d hook me up at the bar, I’d hook him up with a slice. You know, that kind of thing. I’m Rob. He must have mentioned me. So, how do you know him?”

  I nodded and smiled vaguely, wondering if I should wait in the car, after all. I was feeling overloaded by people already, and this conversation showed no sign of tapering off. “We go way back, too.”

  “Oh, yeah? Awesome. Hey, how did you like that prank we pulled?”

  I was edging toward the door, trying to be subtle. “What prank?” I asked. I was still a couple feet from the door.

  “Oh, man, I forgot. You never saw my face, did you?”

  I froze, all thoughts of making a graceful exit evaporating. “What are you talking about?” I tried to keep a conversational tone, but my words sounded as if they were covered in rocks, gritty and heavy.

  “He didn’t tell you?” He started laughing. “Seriously? He pulls off the perfect prank and doesn’t even take credit for it? That doesn’t sound like the Brian I know. He’s not exactly known for his modesty, is he?”

  I spoke deliberately, making sure every word was clear. “I need to know exactly what you are talking about.”

  “You know, in that campsite on the lake.” He looked confused. “That was you, wasn’t it? I mean, I’m really good with faces, I am, but sometimes, when I’ve been, you know…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the marijuana leaf emblazoned proudly on his t-shirt left little room for misinterpr
etation. “Well, sometimes I’m a little more forgetful than other times. But I was certain it was you.” He stared at my face intently, as if willing it to come into greater focus.

  “It might have been me, but again, I’m not clear what you’re talking about.”

  “Brian said you guys had a bet, who could scare the other one more. He told me those camper slasher films terrified you—bit of a wimp, there, I gotta say—but yeah, he asked me to pretend to be some creep in the forest. He said I just had to show up in all black and he’d do the rest. I didn’t even have to say nothin’. He did it all. He texted me that night, told me where to go. And it worked, didn’t it? I saw your face, and man, you were shitting bricks, weren’t you?”

  He started to laugh, but something in my face must have clued him in that I wasn’t finding this the least bit funny. “But, dude, he said he would tell you immediately, that it was just a quick bit of fun. And I owed him, because he’d gotten me… um, stuff. I didn’t think it was a big deal. But you really didn’t know?”

  I shook my head. It was the only movement of which I was capable. Speaking was impossible.

  “Oh, man. Well, shit. I’m sorry, really. I wasn’t trying to scare you for real or anything. He said he would tell you right away,” he repeated, seeming utterly confused by Brian’s silence in the matter.

  There was only one way Brian’s silence made any sense, and the possibility was too horrible to consider. It simply wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

  This was Brian. Brian. Things might not make sense, but I couldn’t condemn him on the word of some local pothead. There was an explanation. Rob was remembering a different person, or a different night. There had to be an explanation, I told myself, even as the weight of my friend’s deception pressed upon me. I walked to the door slowly, trying to contort my features into an expression that gave no indication that my world was crumbling.

  “Hey, that night?” I looked back at Rob, who suddenly seemed a bit uncertain. “There weren’t like, ice cubes flying around, were there? I just figured someone had doctored my medicine that night and I wasn’t all there, you know. But you’re here, and I remember you clear enough. So, did you see any giant floating ice cubes, by any chance?”