Elemental Series Omnibus Edition Books 1-4

by Shauna Granger

  Chapter 9

  We drove out of the parking lot just as the flashing red and blue lights hit the walls of the buildings around us. I was careful not to speed away lest a cop see and come after us, but I was anxious to get Anthony to a hospital. Steven had managed to wake Anthony while he split his attention with our fight, feeding his power to me. I knew he felt guilty for not facing those men with us, but someone needed to be with Anthony, making sure he didn’t slip into a coma or bleed to death.

  I pulled into the emergency room parking lot at the city hospital, glad it wasn’t more than a couple of miles from where we had been. Steven supported Anthony as he got out of the car and walked him to the front door while Jodi and I went to park the car.

  “That was insane,” she said, breaking the silence.

  “To say the least,” I agreed, turning into the first empty parking space I came to.

  “You know, you did it again,” she said, not moving to get out the car, making me stop my actions to do so.

  “What?”

  “An earthquake.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I sighed, closing my eyes and dropping my head back against the seat. “Believe me, I can already feel the headache coming.”

  “At least we’re at a hospital, they can give you something.” Her voice was strained with worry. I cracked an eye open and looked at her. “You lost all that power we built up, didn’t you?”

  “Oh.” I chuckled a little, lifting my head and turning the keys in the ignition to turn off the car. “No, actually I feel fine, just a headache from the backlash of an uncontrolled power surge. I think Steven and you funneling me power kept that from happening.”

  “Shay,” Jodi said skeptically, eyeing me closely.

  “Look, I’ll show you.” I reached for the handle and got out of the car, making her follow me to the patch of grass in the aisle divider. There was a patch of dead grass, crunchy and brown with neglect; not even crabgrass had taken hold to grow over it. The earth underneath was hard and dry, devoid of all nutrients. I crouched down and slipped my hands into the healthy grass just beyond that spot and closed my eyes. I could smell the scent of spring blossom around me and the grass under my fingers twined and reached with my power, slipping over the dead grass and delving into the dry ground, reaching until it could take root. When I opened my eyes again, the dead grass was gone and the rest had grown half an inch in those few moments.

  “Satisfied?” I quirked an eyebrow at Jodi, who was still looking at the ground I had mended. She nodded her head finally and looked up at me, some of the earlier worry gone from her face. “Good, let’s go find the boys.”

  I hung back by the front door while Jodi went inside. I knew Anthony wasn’t in mortal danger, so there was no real reason for me to deal with the sanity-breaking ordeal I almost always dealt with inside a hospital. At least, here at the door, there was a balance of pain and relief – both where people came through suffering in pain and fear and where they left whole and at peace. I closed my eyes as the ebb and flow of emotions washed over me and pretended I was standing in the shallows at the beach, trying not to smell the medicine and ammonia from inside.

  “Shay?” Steven’s voice pulled me back to reality. I opened my eyes and pushed away from the wall I was leaning against. He reached out for me and crushed me against him in a hug. I held my breath against his chaotic emotions, unsure if this was a hug of fear or relief.

  “Jodi?” I managed to say, looking awkwardly over Steven’s shoulder to find her behind him.

  “He’s gonna be fine,” she said. “He’s got a slight concussion and needs a couple of stitches, but that’s it. They don’t even have to shave his hair because the rock hit him just behind his ear.”

  “Good,” I said, patting Steven on the back as he clung to me. “So can he go home then?”

  “No,” Steven said, breaking the hug and wiping at his face as he stepped back. “They want to keep him to make sure he doesn’t go to sleep. I’m going to stay with him.”

  “Do you want us to stay?” I asked, hoping he couldn’t tell how much I really didn’t want to.

  “No, he’s fine, I’m fine; you two go home.” He bent down and kissed my cheek before he turned to Jodi and said goodbye to her. “I’ll call you when they let him go home.”

  “Okay,” Jodi said for the both of us before reaching out for my hand to walk back to the car together. Once in the car with the heating vents filling the interior with warm air, I pulled out onto the main road, ready to go home. Jodi had decided to just stay with me since it was one of the last days of winter break before we had to be back at school. I rolled to a stop at the intersection, the light in front of me glowing red in the fog, reaching to change the radio station. I heard another wail of sirens in the silence between stations.

  “More cops?” Jodi said, looking out her window.

  “No,” I said, turning the radio off to listen. “That’s a fire truck.” A knot formed in the pit of my stomach as I looked in the same direction as Jodi, the direction the theater was in. I hit my turn signal despite being the only car on the road and made a quick right towards downtown. In the silence, we heard the multiple sirens echoing, and as we made our way down Main Street, we could see the swirling lights of emergency vehicles illuminating the night.

  “Do you smell it?” Jodi asked.

  “Yes.” It was smoke, thick and rancid and still a mile away from us. I closed the vents, trying to shut out the smell.

  “Road block.” Jodi nodded forward and I looked to see two police cruisers blocking the way in either direction, two blocks shy of the turn to the theater. I slowed down and put on my left signal to let the officers know I saw them. As we got closer, I moved into the center median to make my turn, but one of the officers flagged me down with his flashlight. I stopped and rolled down my window to talk to him.

  “Kinda late to be out, isn’t it? County curfew is ten o’clock,” he said, placing one hand on the roof of the car and bending over to look in my window, flashing the light in our faces.

  “Do you mind?” Jodi and I said in unison, our hands blocking the light from our eyes. He lowered the flashlight, but I could see he didn’t take kindly to being talked back to by two teenagers.

  “We’re eighteen,” Jodi said, her voice edging towards angry, but she closed her mouth then. We weren’t breaking curfew since we were legally adults now.

  “We were just on our way home,” I said quickly, putting the proper note of submission into my voice. “We were at the concert earlier and wanted to make sure our friends got home and weren’t still there.”

  “No one’s at the theater anymore, unless your friends were some of the ones causing the riot.” He let his words trail off, quirking an eyebrow at me.

  “Oh, I don’t think Jenny and Tiff would get into a riot,” I lied, sounding concerned.

  “Mmmm,” he muttered with a nod, “no, these were all males.”

  “Oh good,” I sighed, and when he looked at me again, I flashed a bright smile, disarming him easily enough. I caught his stare and held it with mine, linking to him effortlessly with the excess energy still running through me. I delved into his short term memory and saw the orange and red glow of flames that lit the trees and bushes in the parking lot we’d been in earlier and the sight of the three men we’d been accosted by sitting on the curb, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Charged with drunk and disorderly and arson. I pulled out of the officer’s mind, blinking my eyes to break his trance.

  “Okay, well, you better be on your way. Drive safely.” He pushed away from the car without another look and walked back to his vehicle.

  “They’re being charged with the fire?” Jodi asked, making me remember she and Steven could sometimes see what I saw now that our connection was so strong and constant anymore.

  “Yeah,” I nodded, the word barely a whisper as I pulled on the steering wheel, making my way back to our own neighborhood.

  “Is it bad that I don’t feel bad
about that?” she asked me.

  “No.” I shook my head, my voice starting to find strength again.

  “Do you feel bad?”

  “No, there wouldn’t have been a fire if they’d just let us leave any one of the times I asked them to.”

  “True.” She nodded, picking at a spot on my door like she did whenever she was a little nervous. My eye twitched as I tried to ignore it.

  “So if you think about it, they did start the fire.”

  “I guess.”

  “At the very least they’re getting their threefold.”

  “Yeah,” she nodded, “I guess they are.” In the magical world, it was generally believed that whatever you put out into the world – for good or bad – you got back threefold. These guys had hit our friend in the head with a rock when his back was turned and then tried to engage two smaller women in a physical fight. Yeah, I’d say this was proper retribution.

  “And after all, they were drunk and disorderly, so that’s on them,” I added as I turned onto my block.

  “Good point,” Jodi snorted, finally letting her hand fall away from the door. I felt the annoying eye twitch stop. I pulled to the far right of the road and turned the car, making a U-turn in the street to park in front of my house at the curb. We made our way quietly into the dark house. My parents were already in bed, trusting that I’d call if something was wrong, so we made it to my room without any trouble, shutting the door and getting quickly changed for bed. If my parents caught us up, but in our pajamas, they wouldn’t know how late it was when we finally came in.

  I pulled a brush through the gnarly tangles in my hair before I twisted it up into a bun, tucking the end in on itself. Comfortable in baggy sweats and oversized shirts, we left my room, heading for the kitchen. Working magic always seemed to speed up our metabolisms, leaving us hungry and thirsty.

  Jodi slid into the kitchen on stocking feet, bracing herself on the edge of the counter before jumping up and back, sliding to sit on it with her legs dangling. I opened the fridge and ducked my head inside to look around.

  “Not to beat a dead horse,” Jodi began as I grabbed two cans of Coke, handing her one before opening mine.

  “Yes?” I prompted, sipping at the cold soda, knowing I didn’t want her to go on.

  “What’s up with the freak earthquake? It’s been a while since that’s happened.”

  I’d grabbed a pint of ice cream out of the freezer and was pulling out two spoons from the drawer as she let her words hang in the air between us. I handed Jodi a spoon and leaned against the counter, my hip touching the outside of her knee as we each took a spoonful of the chocolate fudge goodness. I waited to respond until after I savored that first bite.

  “Well, if you saw that fist coming at you, I doubt you could control your instincts either.” I took another large spoonful of ice cream, trying hard not to sound too defensive.

  “Right, but wasn’t that the point of your lessons with Deb? So you could control your instincts in situations like that?” Jodi took the carton from me, digging around for a chunk of cookie dough. I walked back over to the fridge, looking for another distraction.

  “You gonna tattle on me?” I asked, pushing Tupperware containers left and right in my search, finally finding the left over pizza and garlic bread.

  “No,” she said, setting the empty carton on the counter before reaching for a piece of pizza while I took a large bite of cold garlic bread.

  “So then what?” I managed, none too ladylike.

  “I don’t know, just seemed like we should talk about it. You didn’t lose it like that when Steven nearly burned down the forest, why do it this time?”

  “Probably because I knew what to do with that fire; an earthquake wouldn’t have helped anything. But it threw that guy off balance so his blow didn’t land,” I explained, picking a piece of pepperoni off of one of the slices and popping it into my mouth.

  “But you had the fire magic ready,” Jodi argued.

  “Yeah, but if I had just done that, he would’ve still hit me and I’d probably be unconscious with Anthony right now, losing my mind in the hospital.” I grabbed my soda and took a large gulp, the sugar and carbonation stinging my throat as it went down. I couldn’t help the burp that came up after it.

  “Lovely,” Jodi said flatly.

  “Look,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, “why are you riding me about this?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “Fine, maybe I am, but you’re not supposed to let stuff like that happen!”

  “Would you rather I’d let that asshole hit me?” I demanded, barely keeping myself from stomping my foot.

  “No, of course not!” Jodi gave me the appropriately shocked look for the ridiculous question before going on. “If you had meant to cause the earthquake, I wouldn’t even be bringing this up, but we both know you didn’t and that’s dangerous, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said, lowering my voice because I didn’t want to argue with her or wake up my parents. “But I’m not going to apologize for letting my power save my ass. I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  I held up my hand, stalling her from arguing her point further, and said, “I know it’s dangerous to let these earthquakes burst out with my emotions. I have been controlling them, but it may happen once in a blue moon and there may be nothing I can do about it, okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said after a few tense moments where she wouldn’t even look at me as she munched on a second piece of cold pizza.

  “Good, can we please talk about something else then?”

  “Sure,” she said a little too quickly for my liking, but I had already opened the floodgate. “You want to tell me where you were for those fifteen minutes you weren’t at the bar?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me, letting a smile curl her lips, waiting for me to lie to her. I blinked slowly at her for a moment, deciding if I wanted to share it, but then again, how often do I have totally girly moments to share with my best girlfriend?

  “Weeeelll,” I said, unable to stop the smile as I turned my back on her, reaching for the chips on top of the fridge.

  “You were with that bartender, weren’t you!” she demanded excitedly, blindly sinking her hand into the open bag I held out in front of her.

  “Maybe,” I said, munching on a salty chip, laughing when she huffed at me, jumping off of the counter to cross her arms over her chest, waiting.

  “Shayna!”

  “Okay, okay,” I laughed, putting up a hand in surrender. We spent the next hour dishing about the ten minute make out session and all the flirting leading up to it. It felt so good to talk about normal teenage stuff that I didn’t tell her about my encounter with Liam the vampire. I wasn’t keeping his existence from her, as a matter of fact, she knew about the vampire I met when she moved away, but I honestly forgot about him as we dished about Giovanni. I didn’t even remember running into Liam until after we had put the leftovers away and were back in my room, tucked into bed. Jodi was already breathing slow and deep when I closed my eyes and his face came to the front of my memory. I shuddered remembering his tempting offers, pushing the thoughts away. I would tell Jodi and Steven about him, just not tonight.

  Jodi and I finally fell asleep near four in the morning, each of us curled on our sides, one arm tucked under a pillow facing each other. I could already feel the pull of the sun as dawn approached. Being so closely tied to the Earth, I responded to both the sun and the moon. Part of me wanted to turn towards the East and wait for it to rise, and when the moon drifted into the sky, I could feel the change in the tides in my very center. I was lucky it had been such an eventful night that had taken a lot of energy out of me; otherwise, the temptation of the sun might’ve kept me awake.

  Hours later, after the coffee had grown cold, we started to wake. I rolled over to reach out blindly for my phone, clearing a message from Steven. They had let Anthony go home about two hours ago and S
teven was staying with him.

  “Oh man,” I groaned, double-checking the digital display on my phone.

  “Mmmm?” Jodi’s voice was muffled against the pillow she’d buried her face in.

  “It’s one o’clock already.” I tossed my phone back on the nightstand, letting my arm fall over my eyes.

  “Crap!” Jodi pulled herself free of the pillows. “I gotta call my mom before she has a shit fit.” She leaned across my stomach, reaching for her purse on the floor.

  “Gah! Seriously?” I complained, trying to tighten my abs against her weight.

  “Got it.” She pushed her upper body half away from the floor and off of me to fall back against the pillows and punched her mother’s speed dial button.

  “Dude, you’re eighteen,” I said, glancing at her from under my arm.

  “I know that, and you know that,” she said, “but my mom doesn’t know that. Hey, mom.” She turned her face away from me and started talking to her mother. I scrubbed the back of my hand over my eyes and then forced myself to roll out of bed.

  I left the room, wandering down the hall to the kitchen, wanting coffee even though I knew my parents had let the automatic timer turn off the pot and whatever was left would be cold and stale.

  “She’s alive!” my dad called from the living room as I passed. I waved a hand at him, not bothering to respond. He’d been telling the same joke since Saturday morning cartoons lost their appeal and I started sleeping in later than them.

  “Coffee’s cold,” my mom offered from her desk as she clicked through a website on her computer. I nodded even though they weren’t looking at me. I grabbed the carafe and dumped the left over coffee into the sink before I filled it half way with fresh water and started to make half a pot for Jodi and me.