Chapter Ten
My first impression when we got back to Public was that a bomb had gone off and my friends and I were the only ones who noticed. The hellhounds outside Astra had given me a sort of mystique among my fellow students during finals week. I would have thought that the awe would have dissipated by now, but it hadn’t. Given that classes hadn’t started yet, there weren’t as many students as usual on campus, but the ones who saw me averted their eyes.
I didn’t mind; I felt like I knew a secret that the rest of them would benefit from if only they could see it. Then again, trying to convince anyone that the problem was not Lisabelle Verlans, that it was actually the Hunters, was clearly a lost cause, all the more so because Sip could die at any moment and Lisabelle was nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, returning to Astra felt very strange. Keegan and Eighellie got to walk off to Airlee together, because they had decided that giving the appearance of living in their own dorm was a good idea. I had to walk to Astra alone.
Given that I was the only one living in Astra and it had been empty over the winter break, it was quiet and cold when I walked in. I had only been gone three weeks, but the rooms still smelled of emptiness, which I imagined would have been called dust by the non-dramatic.
As I walked past the windows that overlooked Charlotte’s cottage, my chest tightened. The last time I had seen that cottage, it had not been a pretty sight. I was suddenly overtaken by a desperate urge to talk to Lisabelle.
Given that she wasn’t there and I knew she wouldn’t want to talk to the likes of me, I bottled my frustration and went to sit in the middle of the empty Astra ballroom. I had once thought of the ballroom as Charlotte’s space, but since moving into Astra in the fall I had increasingly treated it as a haven. I often sat alone in that cavernous room, fingering the black ring on my finger and wondering about my essence. Somehow I felt closer to my power in the Astra ballroom.
Today was no exception. As I sat, I told myself that I was being ridiculous. I should stop brooding and go talk to my friends before dinner, not to mention that classes started tomorrow and I needed to unpack. But none of that seemed to matter, and still I sat. Fading light streamed in through the grand ballroom windows, and from the floor all I could see was a field and some trees.
The hellhounds hadn’t damaged the lawn at all, for which I figured Martha, the personification of Public’s power, would be grateful.
I wondered how Sip doing. I wondered whether Lisabelle was just going to let the paranormal world think she was evil. I supposed she was. She had never cared about such things before, so why would she start defending her reputation now?
I sighed and rubbed my ring, barely paying any attention to what I was doing.
Then everything shifted. The darkness that I had only felt a couple of times, but that I had thought was evil instead of essence, rolled over me and behind my eyelids. I took a shocked gulp of air and felt power sliding all around me. The essence of Astra was awake and had come to greet me. I took a deep breath – and felt power.
The darkness that was not darkness didn’t overwhelm me as it had on the night when Astra was attacked. Now that I knew what it was, I was better able to handle what it meant. I felt traces of fire, and drops of water, and specks of dirt, and wisps of air slide together like butter on a hot breakfast pan. Something powerful was bringing them together, and I didn’t feel so alone anymore.
I opened my eyes, already knowing what I would see.
I was in the place again that wasn’t Astra, but just sheer power. My own sheer power. The place where Lisabelle had come and gotten me before, so that I wouldn’t stay there forever.
Now I knew how good of her it had been to do that. She didn’t want to fight my magic, and I didn’t know how to keep my magic from fighting her. Taking me out of the power until I understood it better had been her only option. But to do that, she had been forced to expose herself to vicious attacks. She had left quickly once we were back out in the open, but the damage had been done.
I took a deep breath and pulled more essence out of Astra. At first I ordered it to surround me, but I quickly learned that that didn’t work. Next I asked the power to come together, to fill the Astra ballroom, just not so much that the glass windows exploded outward.
This my power did gladly. More and more magic poured out of the depths of Astra, waking up and coming to my command. My ring felt hot and powerful as it funneled ever more magic around me, but I didn’t have the impression that there could ever be too much. All I saw was darkness. I waited.
And waited.
I kept waiting, hoping that Lisabelle would sense all the power I was releasing in Astra and come to me. I felt sure that Charlotte would also know what I was doing. Strong protections shielded Astra, and Charlotte paid close attention to the wellbeing of her baby brother.
The fire bird had said that Lisabelle could not exist forever. At least, that was how I had understood it. If that meant she was in danger and was going to die, I had to warn her. But to do that I had to be able to talk to her.
Time passed, and my essence was growing restless. Unlike the fire I used or the water I moved, essence had more of a mind of its own. At the moment it was wondering what I wanted and why I was sitting in the middle of the ballroom alone, playing with magic.
The essence was starting to close in on me, asserting more independence than I had thought it would now that I was back in Astra. The next time I started to take a deep breath, it wouldn’t come. The power had started to pour through me and around me, knocking me breathless, and worse. I felt no air and no heat. There was no water and no earth. Another attempted breath ended in my choking, and now the power just poured all around me. My ring suddenly went from hot to cold to hot again, but it wasn’t the heat of a fire, it was a strange sort of heat, like friction from so much moving magic that I couldn’t keep up with it.
I opened my eyes as I started to feel faint from lack of air. The essence showed no signs of stopping as the power danced in front of my eyes.
Then a dark shape loomed and power rolled, immense amounts of it, more than I had ever seen, including the night the Nocturn War ended. My essence shrank away, no longer filling my mouth it rushed to the relative safety of my ring. I blinked once and Lisabelle came into focus. Her face was cloudy and her skin was very pale, but that could have been from the haze of darkness that surrounded her. She had turned the air black.
“Oh, hello,” she said, “having a bit of trouble?” Her dry tone surprised me given how upset I knew she was about Sip, but then again that was Lisabelle through and through, and in times of trial, don’t we revert to who we really are?
I tried to nod, but my neck screamed in protest. She shook her head.
“When will you stop doing foolish things?” She didn’t look like she expected a response, and since I still couldn’t talk, I didn’t give her one. Instead, amazingly, she started to whistle as she swept her arm, covered in the tattoos of her magic, forward and back. She wasn’t looking at me as she did this, but the methodical motion seemed to suck air back into the space around me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded once she was confident I could speak.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said.
“So you try to get your own power to kill you?”
“That wasn’t what I wanted,” I said.
“It just happened? News flash, Ricky, this isn’t a game or a joke. You control your power and not the other way around. When you’re ready to understand that and use it properly, you can call me again.”
“And you’ll tell me how Sip’s doing?” I whispered, staring at her. The paranormal world was in chaos and Lisabelle had to understand how much of the rest of our futures hinged on a werewolf and a darkness mage pulling through.
“I can’t tell you that,” she said, her eyes sparking with a cross between anger and regret. “Do me a favor, don’t you get yourself killed too.”
I woke up the next mor
ning in a terrible mood. Lisabelle didn’t want my help. She didn’t even want to talk to me. What was I supposed to do with that? If I was supposed to support Charlotte in being an elemental and all the work that entailed, how was it going to happen if Lisabelle wanted nothing to do with me?
All roads led to the darkness mage and Sip. Given what had happened to Sip, at the moment that meant that all roads led to Lisabelle.
“Granted, usually you could take paranormal problems to Sip, but since you can’t now, you’ll have to fix them yourself,” Eighellie advised.
She had met up with me, taken one look at my expression, and asked what was wrong. I had mumbled some complaint to which she had offered a rational and even response.
“Why isn’t Keegan ready to go yet?” she asked, looking over my shoulder at the empty dorm. I frowned. “He’s not here,” I said. “Neither of you wanted to stay here last night.”
“He’s not here?” she said. “That’s strange. I don’t think he stayed in Airlee last night.”
“He must have,” I said.
“Let’s get to breakfast. I want my class schedule,” she said. “How am I supposed to be prepared when I don’t have my schedule?”
“I don’t know, Eighellie,” I said. “It’s a real problem.”
We walked to breakfast, both wondering where Keegan was. When we got to the hall, it was already nearly filled with bleary-eyed students.
“So many students excited for their class schedules,” said Eighellie in wonder. “How impressive.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it,” I said.
“Oh, there’s Keegan,” I said, pointing. The tree sprite was in his normal spot in the dining room, shoveling food into his mouth and looking left and right as if he expected a fellow student to lean over the table and take it from him.
“Where were you this morning? I thought we were walking here together,” said Eighellie, sliding into the seat across from him.
I nodded to Greek, who had apparently decided he knew us, and waved to Averett, who was sitting next to fellow vampire Mathew. Averett didn’t wave back, but I thought her cheeks might have turned the very slightest pink. She was a vampire, after all, so I was surprised there was any blushing at all. Greek gave a friendly hello, a fact that neither escaped nor impressed Keegan.
“What are you, my mother?” Keegan demanded. He sounded as disgruntled as I felt.
“Just a concerned friend,” said Eighellie in a huff.
“I was doing something. When I finish I’ll let you in on the secret, which is more than you did for us,” he said.
“Oh, you were doing something,” Eighellie repeated. “Now everything is clear. We’ll just have to follow you to none of our business in the dead of night and see what you’re up to.”
“Where I go you can’t follow, trust me,” said Keegan, shoveling another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. “Where are our class schedules?”
“Do you have a vigil location set up in memory of Ms. Cernal?” Eighellie asked.
“It’s not nice to make fun of the dead,” said Keegan. “And no, I don’t.” The darkness mage shrugged as if to say that truly surprised her.
The Tabble appeared before our class schedules, and the news of the day turned out to be truly surprising. An exposé on the paranormal thief Elam accounted for the rapt expressions and early attendance on the part of many of the students at breakfast.
Excited myself, I leaned over the Tabble and started to read. Keegan must have already read the article, because he eyed me curiously but didn’t comment. We had talked about Elam, but it was mostly the way kids talk about comic book superheroes, with reverence and shock and a steadfast belief that the most amazing stuff they did was real.
Risper unveiled
We have it on good authority, an anonymous source of the highest quality and caliber, in fact, that Risper, who used to be on the committee that was to choose a new Paranormal Public university president, is the world-renowned mastermind thief Elam.
At first this might sound too shocking to be believed. Fear not! How did such a famous and accomplished bounty hunter fall so far from grace as to become a thief? What was his motivation? Where are all the artifacts now? It is of course believed that the paranormal police will look into all these claims, and should Risper be found guilty he would be expected to stand trial in a court of law so that he may answer for his awful crimes.
To say that Elam is famous and successful beyond all measure is child’s play. The entire paranormal world knows of Elam. They know that the list of stolen artifacts of his alone is far longer than the list of all the Hunters’ artifacts combined. This publication has to wonder where Risper, or Elam, has kept the artifacts all these years. Where were they hidden, and why? Did he sell them at crude black markets before real black markets existed? Did Risper, as a high-level member of the paranormal community, really think he could get away with such behavior? We think not. He knew his days were numbered. He knew he would be caught eventually.
In part his lack of prosecution probably has to do with the Nocturn War. Without the war, more paranormals would have been able to devote more time to catching the scoundrel. It remains to be seen whether he had any accomplices. The source swears that he did not.
For all we know he bought government officials over the years to keep them quiet or make them back off when they got too close to his true, SHOCKING identity.
Which is of course a hard claim to believe, but the thefts were just too miraculous to comprehend.
Also, to carry that theory further, he was at the apex of power in the paranormal world. He is the uncle of the premier of all darkness and has been privy to secrets for years that the rest of us can only imagine. He is even, as of recently, on the list of sought-after paranormals. Well, of course he is, his ability to steal is beyond measure.
This publication would like to call on all paranormals who may have knowledge of artifacts to let us know if you have heard anything of Elam as Risper, if you have seen him in the following locations, or if any of the artifacts are missing from the list of what should be there.
The list of artifacts looked like it was a mile long and I nearly went cross-eyed looking at it.
Golliar Gillardin
My mind churned. Risper was Elam and Charlotte had known. Where was Risper now? Seeking revenge on whoever had betrayed him? He must have kept his true Elam identity a closely guarded secret, so who had told? Was he still in the country? I had seen him leaving Dacer’s and smiling, and I had had no clue as to the truth.
Keegan and Eighellie, both of whom had also seen Risper at Dacer’s, were looking at the Tabble with open mouths.
“I bet Risper’s freaking pissed,” said Keegan, his mouth full of cereal.
“Now he has to go on the run,” I mused, wondering where he was now.
“I wonder who outed him,” said Keegan. He was staring at the Tabble with shock in his eyes, as if the idea of angering Risper was too ridiculous to contemplate, and yet someone had in fact done it.
“I have a feeling it was someone who wanted to get back at him for taking all the artifacts,” said Greek Harrison. As a member of our group he was supposed to sit with us every morning at breakfast, but we didn’t actually sit near him, because, well, all the seats around him were occupied by fawning girls.
“You think it’s revenge?” Keegan asked.
“There’s a lot of revenge going on around here,” said Greek, glancing to the girl on his left. Candace was another fallen angel; neither Greek nor any of the fallen angels sitting around him had made it to Dacer’s for the party.
Candace shrugged. “He’s broken the law and should be punished. What else is there to it, really?”
“Oh, maybe because he broke the law to protect the paranormals,” said Keegan.
“Maybe he thought he was protecting the paranormals and maybe sometimes he did, but sometimes he just stole artifacts when it wasn’t helping anyone but himself. If there hadn’t been a war
he should have been in prison a long time ago. He shouldn’t be walking free,” said Candace, picking up her breakfast tray and walking away. She had gray eyes and blond hair, the most common color among fallen angels, and she was delicate-looking. But clearly she had a steely interior.
“Don’t mind her,” said Greek. “She means well.”
“No, she doesn’t,” said Keegan, picking up his tray as well and stomping away.
Greek and I looked at each other and I cleared my throat awkwardly. Greek had no enemies at Public, an impressive feat given the overflow of hostility on campus.
“Sorry for interrupting your conversation,” he said. “Wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. I’ll just be pretty interested how this all shakes out.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Will Risper get caught?”
“Yeah,” said Greek, “that and, I mean, who tipped off the Tabble in the first place? They must have been pretty confident that Risper would get arrested if they went ahead and printed that article. I’ve seen him work and I’ve seen his niece work. He’s not a paranormal to cross.” He stopped, then shrugged. It was as if he was watching a TV drama that had no bearing on real paranormal life, but I wasn’t so sure about that.
Greek grabbed his tray and headed out. We had our first group meeting soon, and this semester we had to get serious about our year-end project. Not looking forward to that prospect at all, I glanced at Eighellie. She had been quiet during the conversation about Risper, and now she raised her eyebrows at me. But before either of us could think of anything to say, our schedules appeared in front of us. Eighellie made a grab for hers, while simultaneously glaring at me.
“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” she said. “I’m not thinking about anything.” Without so much as a see you later, she too grabbed up her tray and walked away.
Elemental Fate (Paranormal Public Book 12) Page 8