“You’re right,” Jensen said. “If you had told me this time last year that my brother would be in jail for the attempted murder of his girlfriend because he was trying to sacrifice her to gain the powers of a demon from Hell…” He took a breath and let it out in a sound that was half a laugh and half something painful, not quite a sob. “I would have thought you were clinically insane.”
“I know. I wish it was all happy endings, but as magical as things can be, it’s still reality,” I squeezed his hand gently and sat up carefully until I could reach for him and pull him into a hug.
“Okay, well, if I’m going to try harder, then I have to stop ignoring things,” Jensen said, steeling himself with a deep breath. “When I saw what was happening earlier, I thought I saw lightning strike inside the store. What was that about?” Jensen looked at me, normal confusion on his face. I had a memory of white light flashing nearby when Jodi screamed just as Jeremy had lunged for me.
“I totally forgot about that,” I said quickly, looking at Jodi expectantly. “Did you do that?”
“Do what?” Jodi asked surprised.
“Ooooh yeah,” Steven said suddenly. “I saw that, but it was too fast for me to realize what it was. I guess it did look like lightening.”
“What are you all talking about?” Jodi asked.
“You screamed when Jeremy lunged for me, remember?” I asked and she nodded. “Well, then I saw and heard a crack of, I guess, lightening, right next to me and Jeremy, like it was aimed at him, but missed.”
“I didn’t, I mean, I don’t remember,” Jodi stuttered, shaking her head and looking at her hands as if they held some important secret there. “I’ve never…”
“Ah, my little Air Spirit, you do not know your powers yet,” Tegan chimed in with a laugh. It was strange to hear a six-inch man call someone our size “little.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What did he say?” Jensen asked.
“He said Jodi doesn’t know her powers yet.”
“She is an Air Spirit,” Tegan said, shrugging his tiny shoulders as if that explained everything.
“You know, when I look at you when I meditate, you look like you’re made out of electricity,” I said, watching Jodi carefully.
“I remember,” she said with a nod. When I had gone on so many spirit walks and into deep meditations last fall, I had learned that Jodi and Steven were the pure embodiments of their elements, as if a promise of what they could be in another life, on another plane.
“And the other day in the store Deb said I was able to do what I did to that robber because I’d lost control of my power. Maybe that’s what happened to you? Maybe you lost control.”
“Are you saying I can draw down lightening?” Jodi asked with a laugh.
“Why is that funny?” I asked, silencing her laughter. “If I try hard enough, I can cause small earthquakes around me. When I meditate on the ground, I become part of the dirt and grass. You can bring a wind on a perfectly still day. Why can’t you do something more spectacular when under extreme stress?” Jodi wasn’t really looking at me anymore; her eyes had lost focus, looking more inside herself, rather than out.
“I guess… I’ve just never done it before. I don’t even know how to do it. How could I do something if I don’t know how to do it in the first place?” Jodi asked.
“Of course you know how to do it; it is a part of you,” Tegan said, pushing off of the floor and fluttering up to be eye-level with Jodi. “Do not question it. It is part of you. You merely have to accept it.” Tegan floated ever closer to Jodi’s face until he was close enough to lean forward and place a kiss on her nose. Jodi giggled and I had to concentrate on not laughing when she did. Tegan began to grow brighter and brighter until we all had to turn our eyes away or be blinded. In the next moment, the blinding light was gone and the tree house seemed darker than normal. Tegan was gone.
The day had been stolen from us and, with a chill in the air, we realized the sun was sinking below the horizon, casting long shadows through the orchard beyond my window. Jodi and Steven climbed down the tree, deciding to walk home and leave Jensen and me alone. I needed warm comfort that went beyond what friends alone could offer with just platonic affection. I needed heat and to feel grateful to be alive.
As soon as the trapdoor was shut behind them, Jensen reached out and carefully gathered me into his arms and pulled me into his lap. It was awkward for me at first, being cradled in his crossed legs like a child in a parent’s lap. Bracing myself on his shoulders, I pulled myself up enough to wrap my legs around his waist and sit in his lap, facing him.
I laid my hands on the swell of his chest and looked into his blue, blue eyes. His fingers massaged the small of my back, careful of the bruise on one side. I breathed in the scent of him, the wonderful combination of musk, cinnamon, and something sweet I could never figure out the name of.
“I know you said dating one of you means dating all of you, but I’m glad I only get to do this with you,” Jensen whispered into my hair, breathing against my ear, sending chills up my back, over my arms and out my fingertips, making tiny sparks of light flicker between our bodies. This might not be a committed, full-blown relationship, but we were the only people we were intimate with. And thank goodness, because I don’t think I could’ve shared.
“Jensen, I’m not sure we should,” I whispered, pushing on his chest to distance myself from him, if even only a couple of inches.
“Shay, we’ve talked about this,” he said, leaning toward my neck again. “I know we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend. You’re not taking advantage of me,” his breath was hot against my skin, making me shiver again.
He chuckled quietly and lowered his lips to my collarbone, kissing lightly. I tilted my chin up and felt the shift in energy around us; it was suddenly alive and swirling, playing with the locks of my hair, caressing my skin just as he laid feather light kisses on my shoulder and neck. I felt the sap trapped beneath the bark of the tree that broke the line of the walls run faster, in time with my pulse, as if the faster and hotter my blood ran, so did the life in the tree.
I felt a warm summer breeze come to life outside and rush in around us, heavy with the scents of grass, salt, and moist earth. I caught my breath just as Jensen’s teeth found the muscle in my neck and bit down, just hard enough, and the wind paused in time with me. When I exhaled, the wind rushed around us again. My skin was alive with nerves and energy waiting to be released. Jensen’s fingers pressed harder into my back, as if he would claw into my skin and I would have welcomed it. My back arched, pressing me against him, and I felt him catch his breath, his chest trembling under the pressure of my fingers as I clung to him. My thighs tightened around his waist, bringing a small sound from his parted lips. I felt his body swelling in answer to my body pressing against him.
He turned his face up to mine and I found his lips, pressing them gently into a kiss that grew almost immediately into something fiercer, almost desperate, as if the very air we breathed was locked in the other’s mouth. The energy around me built subtly and I felt it press against us. One of his hands slid up my back, tracing a tingling line of power dancing on my skin, until he found the back of my head and twined his fingers into the richness of my hair. He held it tightly against the base of my skull, just this side of painful, causing me to whimper against his mouth.
The energy that was building around us was almost too much for me to ignore as it became like a second pressure on my body, separate from his arms and chest, making it difficult to breathe. I broke from our kiss, gasping in a deep breath. Before I could exhale, I was suddenly moving, Jensen lifting me and turning our bodies until I was pressed into the floor with the weight of him above me. I had a moment to realize that it should have hurt and didn’t and that I could see lovely white flowers, huge and in bloom on the branches of the tree outside the window that had never before been there before. He pressed me back into a kiss and his hands found their way to my skin.
The next hour was lost in a blur of skin, raking fingers, and heavy breathing. Not until we were laying back, me curled into Jensen’s side, resting my head in the hollow where chest and shoulder meet, did I remember that I wasn’t in pain anymore. I was lying on my left side and the bruising had been on my right, but even my breathing was easier. I lifted my head and looked down the line of our bodies, raising my arm up above my head to look at my side. The violently colored bruise was still there, but the pain was gone, like a week old bruise you’ve forgotten about and only the dark mark on your skin reminded you that it was there.
“What’s up?” Jensen asked, his voice gone slow and deep with physical satisfaction.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” I said, rolling away from him enough to touch my side to be sure, but no matter how hard I pressed, it just didn’t hurt.
“But it’s still bruised?” Jensen asked, reaching out to touch my skin gently.
“I know, but it’s like it’s healed or healing, at least,” I said and looked up, remembering the flowers blooming in the tree outside my window. Sure enough, in the fading light of the last few rays of the sunset I saw the large white flowers decorating the tree. I didn’t know what kind of flower they were because I had never seen them before, but their perfume was as thick and heady as magnolias. Jensen followed my gaze until he saw the flowers.
“Where did those come from?”
“Us…I think,” I said as I sat up, gathering my clothes and putting myself back in order before I went to the window and leaned out to reach for one. The closer to the flower I got, the bigger I realized they were. One flower was the size of both of my hands completely outstretched. Caressing the silky petal, I suddenly didn’t have the heart to pluck one from the branches, as if I could feel the tree brace around me, expecting the pain in the same way I would brace for the prick of a needle when getting a shot. I pulled my hand back to me, clutching it to my chest, and turned back to Jensen, who was putting himself back together, getting dressed and running a hand through his hair.
“Well, you are an Earth Elemental and this has been your refuge for how long?” Jensen asked and made me think a lot more of him in that one question.
“Over ten years now,” I said quietly, remembering the build and press of energy as we became closer and more intimate. Jensen walked over to me, placing his hands on my upper arms, making me raise my face up to look at him.
“You are at your most amazing when you let your guards down.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “It’s one of the reasons why you scare the hell out of me.” He smiled when he said it, keeping me from reacting. “Sometimes I’m afraid your energy, or your magic, or power, whatever it is, is going to rip me apart when it gets like that.”
“It’s never been like that before…”
“Not as obvious, you’re right, but remember, just like you can feel wild emotions easier than everyday ones, I can feel magic and energy, kind of like a warning system.” He raised a hand up and stroked my cheek with his thumb, leaving a thin line of heat on the skin that he touched. “It almost always feels like that to me, but because it’s part of you, it’s easier for you not to notice. I’m not sure why this was different.”
“Long, stressful weekend. My defenses are low,” I said, more to myself than to him.
“Probably,” he said and just then the world went silent and the tree rocked with the backlash of a power strike, trembling the leaves and cracking the earth around the roots. Only Jensen’s grip on my arms kept me from falling over. “What the hell was that?” Jensen asked, looking around frantically, but my eyes were all for the window behind him and the sound of a thousand tiny wings growing louder in the distance.
Chapter 10
“Jeremy,” I whispered angrily, feeling my hands ball up into tight fists until my fingernails dug into the skin of my palms. The sound of furious wings were so close now, I was sure they were just outside of my shields and wards on the tree house.
“Jeremy? He did that?” Jensen asked, his voice a little frantic.
“Either him or those things that seem to be doing his bidding,” I said, looking out the window at nothing since I still couldn’t see them. “Can you hear it?” I turned and looked at Jensen when I asked, wanting to watch his face.
“I hear something,” he said, shaking his head in confusion.
“What does it sound like?”
“Static maybe? I’m not sure, but it’s annoying, like the buzzing of a lot of bees.”
“Not like wings then?”
“No…” he said, furrowing his brow at me with a small shake of his head.
“Hmmm… well, you couldn’t see Tegan or hear him clearly either. I was hoping if you could understand these better, maybe that would rule them out as faeries, but I guess not,” I sighed, looking back out the window into the distance. The sound grew louder and then began to drift away and I had the mental image of a thousand tiny birds swirling away only to circle back and make a dive straight for my window. I had the momentary urge to grab Jensen and duck, but I steeled myself and found my center to reach down my line of power into the tree I was standing in and draw the energy of the earth below through the roots and trunk of the tree and into me. I pushed the power out and fed my shields and reinforced the wards and braced myself. Just as I sealed the last little bit of extra power into the outer most shield, another strike hit, rocking us back and making the tree tremble around us, but the shields held and the things were still outside unable to reach us.
“What the hell is happening, Shayna?” Jensen asked from behind me.
“Jeremy must’ve sent these things to punish me for pressing charges, but I don’t think they can get through. So long as my shields hold, we should be safe.” I was careful not to turn my attention away from the window, as if if they broke through my shields, I would be able to physically see it happen.
“Why aren’t your parents coming out to see what’s going on?” Jensen asked, looking out the window and down into my backyard. The backdoor was still shut as if no one could hear the battering ram that was hitting the tree.
“Maybe because it’s magic?” I said, scanning the sky. The sound had faded again, but I could still hear it in the not too far distance.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Magic is all around us every day. People learn not to see it, so maybe no one can see or hear what’s happening right now. Or maybe it’s only happening for us; maybe it’s not loud outside my shields…” I stopped then, letting the thought run to completion in my head.
“Shay? What is it?” Jensen asked, leaning in to get a closer look at my face.
“It’s not real, it’s a glamour,” I said, my voice just above a whisper.
“What do you mean it’s a glamour? Isn’t that for changing your looks?”
“More like other people’s perceptions,” I said quickly and went to the window, looking down at the ground with my new knowledge and, sure enough, the ground around the tree roots was no longer cracked and crumbling. “It’s a glamour, a spell; this isn’t real,” I said the last a little louder and felt the energy in the air shift, as if hesitating. “They’re trying to find a crack in my shields, so they’re trying to scare me into thinking they’re doing something violent, but they’re not!” I yelled the last out into the air and, like the flipping of a switch, the sound stopped and the air stilled. They were gone.
“How did you do that?” Jensen asked from my side.
“I broke the spell,” I said simply.
“How though?”
“With glamour magic, once you know it’s glamour, the caster can’t keep the illusion in place. It depends on who ever you’re casting against believing in the spell. I saw it for what it was and didn’t believe in it anymore,” I explained.
“That seems kinda simple,” he said skeptically.
“You’re right, that’s because it is simple,” I said, spreading my hands wide in front of me with a s
hrug of my shoulders. “I really can’t give you a better, more complicated answer. It is what it is.” He was still looking at me like I keeping something from him. “Okay, look, you know what I look like right?”
“Right,” he said slowly.
“You know my hair is auburn and I have green eyes and fair skin, so say I wanted to change one or all of those so you wouldn’t recognize me, but then I said something and you recognized my voice. You’d know it was me right away and then you’d realize I had altered my looks and the spell would break,” I explained, shrugging. “So long as you don’t realize it’s a spell, it holds, but once you know you can’t unknow it, get it?”
“I think so. I guess it just seems too easy,” Jensen said.
“That’s the thing with magic; it is easy. It used to be part of our everyday lives, even if all someone did was ward their house or bless their garden. All of it was everyday for people.” I turned and looked at him then. “Then all of a sudden, you get different religions wanting to control people and the first thing they do is adopt some of the basic beliefs and High Holy days of the people and eventually you tell them their beliefs and practices are heresy and bad so people stop doing them. Eventually, they forget how to do it and finally it’s all fairytales.”
“Okay, well, back to the situation at hand,” Jensen said. “If this couldn’t do anything to you, why do it at all? It seems pointless.”
“Not if he thought it would scare me. He may not be able to really do anything powerful enough to actually hurt me, so he tried to scare me instead,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Jensen said looking out the window in the direction the sounds had come from.
“What is it? What are you thinking?” I asked him.
“Well, you said those things were strong enough to pick you up at the store right?”
“Yeah…”
Elemental Series Omnibus Edition Books 1-4 Page 40