Elemental Damage: Confessions of a Summoner Book 2
Page 15
“There’s goblins and Druids and Decanters,” she continued. “Oh, those goblins in the apartment. You know how much I pay them?”
I shook my head.
“Nothing. They pay me.”
“Sounds like slavery.”
“That’s what I thought too, until I realized that it’s what they want to do. Goblins want to work, and when they don’t, they get depressed like you wouldn’t believe. For some, the drive to work is so severe that they’ll turn their cloaks faster than you can turn your head.”
“Where do they get the money to pay you, if they work for free?” I asked.
“They’re goblins,” she said, like I knew what that was supposed to mean. “Treasure hunters by trade. They can find money faster than the government can print it. I don’t keep the payments, even though they think I do.”
“What do you do with it, the money, I mean?”
“Whatever, really. Some gets donated. Most I give to people who need it. The Fae knows I don’t need it.”
“These goblins look pretty satisfied,” I said.
“Yeah, I keep them happy. Hard to find enough work for them though. They do it so fast that I can’t keep up. My goal is to keep them happy, so if they’re working, they’re happy. But every paranormal has their quirks. Vampires have their hunger. Werewolves have chronic pains. Osteoporosis is rampant in the werewolf packs.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because,” she shrugged, “they aren’t built like Druids and Decanters. Druids can heal their bones when they shapeshift. Decanters don’t shapeshift at all.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad to hear you say that.”
“It’s true,” she admitted. “Your body mimics information that you’ve registered in your mind. So, it’s like you undergo instant evolution, one cell changing to mimic another cell. Werewolves don’t have that advantage. Their bones break.” She demonstrated snapping a rod in two. “And when they break, werewolves feel it.”
“Can’t werewolves heal?”
“What rock have you been sleeping under?” she asked. “When you see a werewolf heal, he’s pulling from somewhere else in his body, tearing flesh from flesh to heal flesh. That’s not healing, that’s patching. Very different. They do replenish quickly, which is why they’re so difficult to kill.”
“What other types of quirks have you seen?”
“Fairies aren’t any different. We live in a world full of problems. And guess whose job it is to fix them?” She pointed at herself with both hands. “Fairies. But it’s what we do. You don’t know how liberating it was when I realized that problems don’t exist to be solved.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Doesn’t seem like much of a revelation.”
“Not to you. Not to a Decanter, it doesn’t. But to a fairy, that’s a breath of life.”
“But you’re a paranormal advisor,” I said. “People come to you with problems every day. Problems that I’m sure you can’t fix.”
“I sure can’t,” she said proudly. “But every paranormal I see is worth the effort. Some get it, some don’t. The ones who don’t, it’s never because I didn’t give my all. I had these two Geminis once. The brother had no sense of self-worth, because he wasn’t his own person, because none of his thoughts were his own, because he had to share them with his brother.”
“What did you say to him?” I asked, looking behind me as another car passed.
“I laid it out to him plain and simple.” She chopped one hand into the other. “You will never be your own person, not like you want to be. But—and I told him as clearly as I’m telling you—what you don’t realize is that you are smarter than any man alive. You have two brains always working as one. You know what he does now?”
I shook my head.
“He and his brother have developed technology to interpret whale sounds into English.”
“What? Really?”
Umara nodded. “The technology’s not out yet, but they’re working on it. I haven’t dealt with any Shamans, and I’ve only advised one Summoner.”
We both knew she was referring to Rebekah.
“I’m sure you want to ask me about Druids,” she said.
I nodded.
“Well, I can assure you, most of them are not like Stephanie. You won’t see most Druids eating foods that aren’t grown. What they put in, they get out. She’s a different breed, but probably one of the most emotionally stable Druids I’ve ever met.”
“You think?”
“Definitely,” she said. “Druids flip out about everything that’s not natural. Concrete. Buildings. Cars. Smoke. Blah, b-blah, b-blah. It just goes on and on. And here’s what’s interesting, they even go so far as to not get tattoos, because they don’t want to damage their bodies! What they don’t realize, is that their power is enhanced when Empyrean can flow through a lattice as intricate as the ones Stephanie has.”
A few cars rumbled by, and we were coming up on an interaction before I asked, “What about Decanters? What’s our quirk?” I wasn’t sure wanted to hear it.
She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Decanters aren’t like Druids who can shift forms and never think twice about the previous form. Decanters take on a form, and you embrace it, you feel it, even to the point that when you shift out, some of the previous form still lingers.”
Hearing someone validate my decanting…it felt good. It made me feel like I mattered, like someone cared, like someone understood. And she was right. Every time I decanted, the past form still lingered with me, which was why I just couldn’t bring myself to share a laugh with Rebekah when she was taunting Dr. Ubala about her book, The Elemental Mind. The book felt like it was mine, and I just couldn’t shake it at the time.
“You know what the best Decanters do though?” she asked curiously.
I shook my head.
“They know when to let go.” She halted on the sidewalk. “Decanters form the strongest bonds of any other paranormal, even stronger than the loyalty of werewolves, if you can believe it. Losing someone you care about is like a werewolf trying to heal himself. You patch it up, but then somewhere else you end up in pain.”
I swallowed hard, almost holding my breath. “What am I supposed to do about the way I’m built?”
Umara scrunched her face, the light of a passing car casting shadows across her expression. “That’s not what you want to know. What you want to know is whether or not you should let Rebekah go free, because you want to hold onto her. But that’s not a question I can answer. I advise. I don’t make demands. And because you’re a Decanter, because of who you are, you’ll figure out what to do with Stephanie, and you’ll do right by that girl in the stone.” She tapped my obelisk, then strolled back to the apartment.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Umara gave me a lot to think about—probably more than my mind could handle right then. Still, I got myself together and stepped back into the apartment, exchanging smiles with Stephanie who was on the couch until I found my place by the stove, peering at Zakhar.
“Mr. Lyle.” His head rolled to the left, eyeing me from underneath his mantled brow. “How did you enjoy your…counseling session?”
“About as must as you’d enjoy my foot down your throat.”
“Cute. You are like a puppy, barking at everything that catches your eye. Relax a little. Spread your aggression out.”
“Don’t talk to me about aggression.”
“Any luck getting him to talk?” Stephanie said, coming into the kitchen.
“Not yet,” I replied, keeping my eyes on him. “But the real interrogations don’t start until morning.”
Zakhar seemed to wise up a little, a troubled look coming on him.
Stephanie stretched. “Okay. I think I’m going to turn in for the night. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and it’s starting to catch up to me. You know, Umara said everything’s taken care of in here. You might want to go to bed yourself.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Carter’s already in his room, and Umara’s brushing her teeth. Call me if you need anything.”
I watched her leave the kitchen.
Zakhar rolled his eyes from her to me. “She is a pretty girl, wouldn’t you say?”
“What difference does it make to a dead man?”
Zakhar got a laugh out of that. “See what I mean. You go from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds. We are just talking here.”
“Right. So you can make all these connections and try and figure me out? You’re not getting out of this kitchen.”
“Maybe not, but then again, if you are so sure, then what harm is a little bit of back and forth? Besides, you said you wanted answers from me. Perhaps I could offer a few.”
“Try me.”
“You want to know why my interest lies with you, am I right?”
I perked up, bringing my knees to my chest. Was he testing me, or was he being for real this time? Or maybe he just didn’t want to know what we had planned for him if he decided not to talk. “Why come all this way for me?”
“I overheard your conversation in the living room with Stephanie about Dr. Belin Ubala.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should mind your own business.”
“Perhaps,” he shrugged, the cables lifting up slightly. “Or maybe you should learn the sacred art of talking softly. Not to boast, but I learned that when I was in kindergarten. Very useful tool later in life, you know.”
“Just get on with it.”
“Oh, my apologies. I forgot that you are Mr. Business himself. Mr. Get to the Point.” He chuckled, showing his perfectly set teeth. “You have something that the Fairy Godfather desperately wants and desperately needs.”
“Something like what?” I was annoyed that he was still being vague.
“From what I hear, apparently you decanted Dr. Ubala back in Ethiopian a few years before she died, upon the release of her book, The Elemental Mind.”
“How would you even know something like that?” I asked. “It’s not like anyone knows when they’re getting decanted. It just happens. I shook her hand, and absorbed her form.”
“News travels like the wind in the paranormal world. You should know that by now. As it turns out, Dr. Ubala was not the normal human that you assumed she was.”
“She looked pretty human to me.”
“Don’t we all,” he said. “As a Decanter, absorbing a paranormal form takes more time, more concentration, more focus than decanting a regular form, does it not?”
I nodded. “What are you getting at?”
“As it turns out, you decanted Dr. Ubala, so though you might have absorbed her human form, you did not tamper with her other form, the deeper form. Her fairy form.”
My lips parted. Had she really been a fairy? Who else knew that? Did Umara you know? Probably not. Umara hadn’t even heard of the woman before. She’d only read the book. But was it possible to absorb a human’s form without absorbing the paranormal form? I considered it for a moment, then the answer came to me clearly.
Yes. It was very possible. I recalled how I nearly decanted the werewolf back in the hospital with Rebekah—the werewolf who had shot down his partner just to get to Rebekah. When I thought about it, I remembered how I was decanting the werewolf, grabbing ahold of his thoughts, even though I never decanted the entire werewolf form.
“Decanting is like sipping from a straw,” Zakhar said. “You drink and drink and drink, until finally everything is gone. Tell me, when you decant into her form—Dr. Ubala’s form, that is—how do you feel?”
I didn’t want to answer him, but how could I disagree? Some of the woman’s fairy form must have bled into me, not that I could fix complex problems and solve advanced algorithms, but I did feel an unnatural closeness to Dr. Ubala’s work, even though I hadn’t studied any of it for myself.
Even thinking back to the officer who was a werewolf, I couldn’t transform into a werewolf, nor did I have a werewolf form within me, but I could still make out a few of the officer’s memories, though most of them were foggy to the point where I wasn’t completely sure that they weren’t my own.
But with Dr. Ubala, I knew her work. I could see the pages all through the book, and I could feel the loss she felt and the depression she felt and the joy and the happiness that she felt as well. And had I known she was a fairy, I might have held onto her hand a bit longer to absorb that part of her also.
“When I decant into Dr. Ubala’s form, I feel…fine,” I said, finally answering Zakhar’s question, still not willing to give him anything.
“Sure. Pretend like you have it all together, but I am not fooled. I know what you feel, what you have faced. It is not unique to you. It is common with all Decanters, quite frankly.”
“Just tell me what you’re looking for.” I stretched out both legs, crossing one over the other.
“Of course. The Elemental Mind was published, as we all know. I could go online today and purchase a copy. I even have a copy in my house back in Los Angeles. But that won’t do me any good.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because, there are several pages in her publication that were not released. She was told to edit those out, or else her findings would not be published.”
“And you think I have those pages memorized? I think you overestimate Decanters.”
“Not those pages in totality. One page in particular. Actually, one formula.” He shrugged, but the cables held him in place.
I was about to refute him, but a blue highlighted box on a white page came to mind. I looked up at him. “The Focus Formula.”
“Precisely. And please, the moment I met you, I knew you remembered it. However—and here is where I can be frank with you—though people believe that Shamans can read minds, they are actually incorrect about that.”
“You knew all the places that I go to. The woods where I bike and run, the grocery store in Apex. Sounds like reading minds to me.”
“I can see how you might be mistaken,” he said. “But trust me, if we could read minds, then I would already be on a plane back to California, once I got my ankh back from your friend, that is. No, but it is different for me. It is not precise, more like extremely accurate approximations. Only, trying to determine to the Focus Formula, I cannot approximate.”
“What do you need the formula for?” I asked.
“Sorry, but that was not part of the agreement. I was only to tell you why I needed you. As far as why I need the formula, that is something different entirely.”
“If you know you’re not getting out, then why the heart change? Why wait all this time to tell me what you need with me?”
“You promised me that you would go easy on me, remember?” He laughed when he said it, but I wasn’t falling for it. He was up to something. He wanted something else.
“How did you know about the formula if it was never published?” I asked.
“My boss follows fairies very closely. He is a fairy himself, after all. And remember, I told you that Dr. Ubala submitted the book for publication, but was nearly denied due to that formula and its explanations.”
“And your boss has people in publishing?”
“Precisely,” he said.
“And they didn’t think to write down the Focus Formula when they had the copies on hand?”
Zakhar shrugged, rolling his tongue around in his mouth. “Why would they? It was not important at the time. So, now that I have revealed my purpose to you, I now have a proposition for you.”
I laughed at that. “Are you serious? What could you possibly offer me in your current position?”
“Your life.”
“My life?” I pointed to myself with two fingers, not believing Zakhar’s audacity.
“Yes. You can twist off the connectors to these cables and unscrew the wires to the scanners that Umara set up on the counter.”
“You want me to set you free? And this is how you planned
to escape? By asking me to release you?”
“How else would I leave? You have the most to lose, do you not? Two parents still alive in Reidsville, not far from here. What is your mother’s name? Jessica? And your father? Lucius, just like you, right? Oh, and how is his electrical contractor business coming along? Has he been able to find a reputable supplier for all of the wire and conduit that he purchases from year to year?”
I bit my lip as he divulged the details of my father’s business.
“And what about your mother? You know they are planning to separate, do you not?” His eyes grew dramatically large, his way of taunting me. “Oh wait…they have not told you yet. Sorry. Pretend that I did not say a word.”
“You keep your mouth shut, you hear me?” I was speaking through my teeth.
“I just know that you are the key to keeping them together. They miss you very much, and Jessica feels like your father’s commitment to his work is what pushed you away to Raleigh in the first place.”
“That’s not why I came here,” I said, feeling my anger rising.
“They do not know that. Or, should I say, they do not believe that. I mean, after all, you have told them of your reasons time and time again, have you not?”
“I’m done talking to you.” I got up and started into the living room.
“Of course you are. But if you decide to leave me here for the morning, please remember two things.” He leaned his head towards me, whispering. “Jessica and Lucius.”
The very sound of him laughing infuriated me as I went to step out the front door. I couldn’t even look at him, not after all that. Did he really expect me to set him free? Was he out of his mind? And how did bringing up my parents help in that?