“I do believe that is none of your business.”
Needing him to make a mistake, I poked at him. “I’m making it my business, brat.”
A snarl escaped him, giving more evidence to what I believed. He had a temper and didn’t like people thinking he was too young.
“My lover wants to speak with her.” He spat the words out as though they cost him.
“You mean Cassava, don’t you?”
Blackbird lifted his hands and the wind around us picked up, a gust slamming into me and flipping me backward before I could anchor myself into the ground. I flew through the air, catching glimpses of the scene around me. Peta clawing the ground to hold Giselle firm. Cactus out of sight.
The ground rushed up and I hit it hard, landing on my hip and shoulder. Rolling, I was on my hands and knees in a flash. Forty feet away, Peta’s fur rippled as the wind hammered her. Giselle screamed as she slipped, her arms wrapped around Peta’s neck.
“Don’t let him take me!”
Propelled by the need to protect them both, I ran straight for Blackbird. He saw me coming and I watched the power lines climb his arms. At the last possible second I arced my arm back and threw my spear at him. It flew true straight for his heart.
He threw himself to the side, catching the blade in his shoulder. Crying out, he touched his arm and twisted his hand over it.
With a pop of air, he was gone, my spear buried in the ground behind where he’d been. The wind eased immediately, and I stood there, panting with adrenaline as much as exertion.
“He’s got a Traveling band,” Peta said as I approached them.
“Yes. Why would he use it now? Not that I wish he’d stayed, but it makes no sense.”
“Perhaps, he is a coward?” Giselle said softly. “My mentor told me cowards always run when they are first injured.”
Though her words were true, I doubted that was the case. I didn’t know what the reason was and that bothered me.
“What’s a Traveling band?” Giselle asked as she sat up. Her tawny hair was in disarray and her pale blue eyes seemed almost transparent as she took me in.
“Wait.” I crouched in front of her. “Did you hear Peta?”
“Yes. I’m a Reader. The rules don’t apply to me.” She gave me a tentative smile.
I held my hand out. “My name is Larkspur. And I am an elemental.”
She put her hand in mine. “My name is Giselle. I knew you were coming. You have a big job ahead of you. Maybe bigger than you even realize. But . . . the boy in the black cloak. Do you know him?”
Cactus jogged up beside us, panting. He had blood running down the side of his face. “That bastard threw me against the wall.” The wall was a good three hundred feet away.
“We were lucky this time.” I looked around, knowing I was right. We were in an open space, with humans on the fringes. Even now a few watched us. Blackbird wasn’t stupid, even if he was young. He was waiting for me to be weak and alone before he took me on.
“He will fight you soon. You will do something that will enrage him and it will push him over the edge. You’ll hurt someone he loves,” Giselle whispered, her eyes unfocused. “He knows you, though, Lark. He knows you better than you know him.”
Helping her to her feet, I chose not to say anything. Silence was often a virtue overlooked by those in a hurry to get their answers. Something I’d learned from my mother.
Peta shifted to her housecat form and I scooped her up. Cactus grabbed my spear from the ground where it had lodged and cleaned the tip off before handing it to me. “Where to now?”
I looked at Giselle. “Do you have somewhere we could talk?”
Giselle looked from me to Cactus and back again. “Yes, I think so.”
Without another word, she walked toward the trees backing the green space.
I put myself beside her, wondering how such a small supernatural would survive in a world with so much violence and death. “You were trained by an elemental, correct?”
She blushed. “Yes. Since I was ten.”
Five years.
Most banished elementals didn’t last long outside of their home before they lost their minds. During the second year the longing for home overrode any other need.
I glanced at Cactus, wanting to ask him who he knew who had been banished in the last five years. He shook his head, already knowing the question. “None I can think of.”
None, there had been none. I knew it; I’d wanted him to confirm for me, though. But that meant it was someone before. Yet . . . that was impossible.
“What was the name of the one who trained you?”
She cleared her throat. “His name is Talan.”
Again I looked at Cactus, who shook his head. The name didn’t ring a bell for him either.
“Peta, any clue—”
“No.” My cat leapt from my shoulder and proceeded to trot far enough ahead that there was no way I could speak to her without hurrying. So Peta knew the name, and it obviously meant something to her.
I twisted my lips and chewed on the bottom one while I thought. “You live with your parents, then?”
The blush deepened. “No. I’m an orphan. But I have my own place, Talan helped me get it. But . . . please don’t tell the school. They would put me in a home for children and I can’t . . . I can’t do that again. It’s hell.” She looked at me, pleading with her eyes.
“I won’t tell anyone.”
Her shoulders sagged and once more the silence thickened. Yet within it were all the questions swirling. Who was Talan, how did Peta know him, and how was such a young Reader going to help me find a Tracker?
CHAPTER 7
iselle’s home was in the middle of an undeveloped area. To either side of the human house were empty lots with signs in front of them. For Sale. Sold. Sold. For Sale.
I knew the concept around buying a piece of the earth, but it made little sense to me. How did one buy a piece of a living entity and then call it theirs? Stupid humans.
Inside the house was very little furniture. A few chairs, a kitchen table, and a fur rug in the middle of the floor that Peta promptly went to and sniffed. “Smells funny.”
“Oh, it’s fake. I would never have a real fur rug,” Giselle said.
I did a slow turn, taking the home in.
There was something off about the place, and it took me a moment to peg it.
“Can you feel them too?” Giselle asked. I turned to her.
“Feel who?”
“The spirits.” She spoke simply and without fear. I raised an eyebrow and held a hand out to the air between us.
A whisper of wind ghosted between my fingers. “Yes. I wondered what that was.” Spirits of the dead, particularly those attached to a Reader because of love or responsibility, were often found in the home of the Reader they followed. Waiting for them.
Giselle smiled. “I have a book I’ve been working with. I would like to use it to help you. Talan said I need to always be stretching my abilities, trying new ways to Read what is coming so I can see clearly.”
Without waiting for me to answer she ran up the stairs, her feet clumping like a herd of buffalo on a rampage. I shook my head and Cactus laughed. “Notice how quickly she blows off the fact we were attacked?”
Peta nodded. “That is the great part of being young. You quickly forget how close you come to death time and again.”
I lowered myself onto the rug beside her, sitting cross-legged. She curled into my lap and put her chin on my thigh. I ran a hand over her head, but said nothing about Talan. Whoever he was, she wasn’t ready to tell me.
When she was, I would be ready, but I had learned to trust her judgment. She let out a contented purr. “I will tell you soon enough.”
Smiling, I looked up at the sound of the buffalo herd rushing down the stairs. The kid would never sneak up on anyone.
Giselle stepped into the doorway with a book almost as big as her torso. The leather was cracked and moldy in parts, the spine
broken away and the binding frayed. The pattern in the leather was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Like I’d seen it before, but with so much of it missing and covered in rot it was hard to decipher. More than that, though, the cover drew my eye. The heavy pentagram carved into it was still clearly visible. The hairs along the back of my neck slowly rose to attention.
“A grimoire,” I said, fighting the urge to grab the thing and toss it into the nearest flame.
Giselle smiled. “Yes, you know what it is?”
“Did Talan give it to you?”
Her face paled. “No, he . . . he left and then I found it in the attic.”
Slug slime would not be slicker than the slope she stood on. I held my hand out. “May I see it?”
Her jaw ticked and a funny light came into her eyes. “It’s mine. I found it.” She stepped back.
Peta growled under her breath. “He would not want this for her.”
The young Reader frowned. “You don’t want me to have it. It’s MINE!” She turned to run.
I leapt forward from my knees, tackling her while she writhed. The book bent backward and wrapped itself around me, the leather tightening like a python.
Python, that was the skin the cover was made of. Tighter and tighter it squeezed while I fought for breath. Blackbird I could fight, but this? The book let out a long low hiss as it slowly crushed my body.
Cactus dropped to my side and put his hands on the book. I stared at his fingers as they lit up, the heat crisping the leather. The book reacted, jerking off me. Gasping for air, I reached for it, but Cactus beat me to it.
“I got this one,” he said. As soon as he had a hold on the book it tried to turn on him, lengthening and flattening out as it attempted to wrap around him. The lines of power ran up his arms and the flames that erupted from his hands were a deep blue. The book flipped over backward and Giselle let out a scream, her hands going to her face. “NO, no, I don’t want to be alone!”
The wind in the house picked up, fanning the flames Cactus set, urging them forward. So the spirits in the house were not the same as the ones in the book.
“She is ours, she is ours.” A warbling voice snaked out of the book. Cactus held onto the leather and the flames raced up and down his arms as he battled.
Stepping around him, I reached for Giselle. I pulled her into my arms, protecting her with my body. “She is not yours. No child belongs to the spirit of evil.”
My own connection with Spirit flared and I shrank from it. The last time I’d actively used it, I wiped out my own sister’s mind.
But I could see the lines of Spirit in Giselle already made, road maps through her mind and heart created by another elemental. I followed them, allowing Spirit to calm her heart, and show her she was loved. Show her I would do my best to protect her.
Around us, the air crackled with static electricity, sharp against my skin and hair. The light dimmed until there was nothing but a pinprick around Giselle and me.
“Lark! I can’t see you!” Cactus sounded far off in the distance, even though he was not even on the other side of the room.
I ignored him as the air pressed in tightly, squeezing us as though it were now a constrictor. Giselle gasped, her thin arms clinging to me.
“Peta, help me!” I could barely get the words out, the crushing darkness forced me to my knees. Giselle trembled as I tried to keep her from whatever was attacking us.
My familiar put her nose tight against my ear and even then her voice was tinny and small. “Use Spirit, you have to. Your heart against the darkness here, it is the only thing that will protect her.”
“I don’t want to hurt her.” I couldn’t control Spirit, I had no idea what I was doing. There had to be another way around this.
Giselle cried out and was yanked from my hands, her body sucked into the shadows that encompassed us. I shot to my feet. No choice. There was no choice if I were to save her. I opened myself to Spirit and it flared inside my heart, pulsing like it had a life of its own.
I held my arms out to the side and the darkness shrank from my fingertips. Two steps forward and Giselle was there, huddled on the floor at the foot of the stairs. The shadows writhed around her, diving into her body and back out as she jerked and moaned.
“Please.” Her mouth made the word but there was no sound. Cactus may have burned the grimoire, but the spirits that resided in it . . . they needed to be burned as surely as the pages they encompassed.
“You have to let them into you, Lark,” Peta said. “I saw my other charge do this once. Let them in, then destroy them with Spirit.”
The spirits laughed and slowly pulled away from Giselle. Giselle flung herself back, away from the spinning sparkles that gathered into a pulsating orb. How bad could a bunch of fae-looking sparkles be?
“YEs. LeT Us iN. HAhahAHa.” They called out as tendrils of the spirits lashed at me, their voices rising and falling in a spine-tingling cadence.
Well, that was reassuring. I let go of my hold on my element and tipped my head back. “Come on, then, let’s see if you like tangling with someone your own size.”
The innocuous sparkling orb slammed into me so hard it picked me up off the floor. A hair-raising screech exploded out of Peta. I closed my eyes as my body was spun around. This was not a fight of the flesh, I didn’t need to see where I was going.
My feet touched the floor again and I went to my knees. The darkness . . . it blinked up at me from inside my head, like we were standing face to face. A child not much older than Giselle grinned with sharpened teeth and eyes of solid black like a night of no moon. “You should never have let me in. The girl fought me and you saw how she did as I wanted. She would even fight you, though she had no desire to do so. And here you are, letting me in. You are not stronger than me. You are useless.”
Useless. The word wrapped around my throat like a noose, cutting off my life as surely as a woven rope. She grinned at me, her sharpened teeth flashing. “Words. They have such power over those weak of heart.”
No. I would not let this happen.
I lurched forward, tackling her to the ground. She screeched and flailed at me, the darkness tightening further over my entire body. I clung to her. We would all die if I didn’t do something—fast. I opened myself to Spirit and the girl stiffened under me.
“No. He was to be the last! There was not supposed to be more!” She slapped at me as I drove Spirit into her, pushing hard to fill her with its deadly, pulsating light.
“You will not end me! Astrid cannot die!”
Her body began to glow, fissures and cracks breaking along her face and skin. Her fingers dug into mine as she tried to pry them off. I tucked my head down and hunched my back.
“You will not beat me,” she snarled. My fingers slipped, and Astrid skittered from me, her black eyes wide. “Bitch. I will destroy your soul.”
Every breath I took felt like fire in my lungs and sweat dripped from every part of me. Spirit flickered on the edges of me. I was running out of juice.
Astrid took a step toward me, and held a hand out. Those miniscule sparkles surrounded her fingers. If I couldn’t get my hands on her, I wasn’t sure I could fight her off.
A single tear escaped me and I blinked it away. “Then I’m taking you with me.”
I opened to both Spirit and Earth. The power of the earth flooded through me, and Spirit tangled with it, like lovers long parted.
Astrid snarled, “No. You won’t.”
With a burst of speed, I leapt at her. She dodged to the left, her black eyes narrowed as she glared, the sparkling lights darkening to shadows that thrived and danced. I snaked a hand out and grabbed her shoulder. I dug my fingers in until she screamed.
Last chance. We tumbled to the ground and I wrapped my legs and arms around her and held her tightly to my chest.
She clawed and screamed, writhed and fought. The shadows drove through my body, filling my nose and mouth until I couldn’t breathe. Spirit and Earth, that was all I
had left. I released myself to them, let them pour through me into her.
She stiffened in my arms. “No. NO!”
I opened my eyes. Face to face, I saw her eyes fade, the black shadows retreating until there was a pair of everyday normal green eyes looking at me.
“No,” she whispered.
Once more her face cracked, tiny fissures running under the skin. They opened, and light poured out of her in rays as though she’d swallowed the sun. Sorrow flowed from her to me. A pain so intense, I couldn’t help but grieve for what I was doing to her.
That I was the one causing her pain even though I had to. Her green eyes blinked once. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as I ripped her essence apart. Astrid’s soul, and the darkness that had been in her scattered, first through my mind, and then into the world once more. Only this time she was so small, so miniscule there would be no infection of another grimoire, or person.
Panting, I realized I was on my hands and knees. Across from me, Giselle sat on the edge of the stairs, her eyes wide. “What happened?”
“I . . . pulled her apart. Broke her into tiny pieces.”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Neither did I.” My voice cracked as though I’d been running in the desert.
Cactus.
I turned my head to see him staring at me with eyes nearly as wide as the kid’s. “I didn’t know you could do that either.”
With a shrug, I pushed to my feet. I shouldn’t have felt embarrassed, yet I did. Like being strong was a sin. Giselle wobbled to me and touched the back of my hand.
“You feel like him.”
I felt like him. Like Talan, the one who’d taught her to use her abilities.
Understanding flowed over me. He had to be a Spirit Elemental. Or maybe a half-breed like me. “Mother goddess, I am not alone.” The words escaped before I could catch them.
In front of us, Cactus stood over the ashes of the book, his hands still flickering with firelight. “You got a dust pan?” Yeah, those were not the heroic words I’d expected out of him. Yet that was Cactus for you.
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