Water: The Elementals Book Three

by L. B. Gilbert

  After a few minutes, Daniel asked for the phone.

  “What?” Ray asked blankly.

  “It’s in your pocket. You brought it from the office. The techs were running something down on it for me.”

  Ray glanced down at in the bulge in his pocket. Removing the object, he frowned at the cell phone with the cracked screen in the evidence baggie.

  “I didn’t put this in here…”

  “I asked for it, remember? You were probably so busy this morning that you threw it in your pocket and forgot about it.”

  Ray wrinkled his nose, but handed it over. “Does it relate to your top-secret case?”

  “It’s a long shot, but the powers-that-be think it’s worth checking out.”

  Ray shrugged, and they sipped their beers, both lapsing into silence.

  “Is the new job exciting at least?” Ray hoped the move had been worth it. There wasn’t enough money on this earth to convince him to live in the capital. Office politics were bad enough, but they must be ten times worse in a place like D.C. Then factor in the cost of living…forget it. He’d rather have a slower-paced office and a bigger apartment, but then he’d never been as ambitious as Romero.

  “There’s something I didn’t mention about the new job,” Daniel said.

  “What is it?” Ray asked, scratching his stomach and belching quietly.

  Romero fiddled with his glass. “It involved a change of agency.”

  “What?” He sipped his beer, raising an eyebrow in question.

  “I’m CIA now.”

  Ray laughed. “You asshole! I can’t believe you defected.”

  His ex-partner shrugged. “I just wanted you to know in case you don’t hear from me that often what with the overseas assignments and everything…”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course,” he said, wondering why Romero was making a big deal about it. An email once or twice a year would suffice. “I get it, man—you’ll be busy playing James Bond, chatting up dusky femme fatales. I am so jealous,” he lied.

  He glanced at his watch again, wondering when he could politely excuse himself.

  “You don’t have to stay,” Daniel said, nodding toward the road. “I’ve got to head back to the airport in a few minutes anyway.”

  “Do you want a ride?” Ray asked, feeling generous.

  “I’m set, thank you,” Daniel said, polishing off his beer a little too fast. He coughed, then smiled stiffly. “Say hi to Bette for me.”

  Had Ray’s ex-partner met his girlfriend? He couldn’t remember introducing them. “I’ll do that,” he said, standing up and dropping a few bills on the table.

  Ray walked off with a whistle, deciding to surprise Bette by picking up Chinese on the way home. He was starving.

  Daniel watched his partner go, but the weight in his gut didn’t budge.

  “It was for the best,” Serin said, reaching for the phone from the seat Ray had just occupied.

  He leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, that worked…exactly the way it was supposed to,” he said slowly, as if the words were weighted down by sandbags.

  Serin’s ocean-blue eyes darkened in sympathy. “My mother’s very talented with memory charms. Her spells have never failed…with one notable exception.”

  He nodded, waving over the waitress. The girl approached with narrowed eyes, trying to place him. Daniel ordered another beer, paying in advance and throwing another twenty on top with a murmur of apology for not paying the last time he was here. Finally recognizing him, she pocketed the twenty and stalked off with a swish of her ponytail.

  “I don’t suppose we can use one on the waitress.” He should have asked for a bottled beer and not a draft. “She looks ready to spit in our drinks.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He smiled at Serin, well aware she wasn’t referring to the waitstaff, injected reassurance into his voice. “I’m fine.”

  Raising a dark eyebrow, she waited.

  He sighed. “All right. If you’d asked me a few weeks ago if I’d ever keep something from my partner, I’d have said there was no way. Now, I’ve rearranged his brain and implanted new memories.”

  “It was your idea,” Serin reminded him gently.

  “I know, I know. But this is harder than I thought it would be. “

  He hadn’t erased himself from Ray’s head entirely. Dalasini had explained that would be difficult because their partnership was too established and known to so many others.

  Instead, he’d diminished one of the major relationships in his life to a footnote. Whenever Ray thought of him now, Daniel would be unremarkable, just someone Ray used to work with who rarely crossed his mind.

  “I’m sorry if you’re having second thoughts, but it’s too late to change your mind. It can’t be undone. Not on Ray. He’s not like you. He’s not flexible.”

  Daniel took a big swig of his drink before nodding. Dalasini had explained that, too. “It’s for the best. It’s like I told you before—Doyle can’t handle the supernatural.”

  “No.” There was something in her voice, a little edge, as if she were wondering how capable he was of handling it.

  “I’m not having second thoughts about staying on here,” he assured her. “If I have to choose you or my old life, I will choose you and everything that comes with you every single time. I think I made that clear.”

  Serin’s shoulders dropped, but the lines around her eyes didn’t relax. “You did.”

  Rising, she pocketed the phone and held out her hand. “Let’s get moving. There’s work to do.”

  31

  Alec bent over the tiny script. He wanted to shout with joy. Instead, he allowed himself a single ‘fascinating’ as he made another note.

  The swish of robes made him turn around. “Oh, good,” he said as Ksenia, one of the junior archivists, approached with a parchment in hand.

  “Is that the updated inventory list for the amethyst room?” he asked

  Each of the vast cavern-like chambers of the archive was organized along a distinctive color spectrum, a rainbow of gemstones. When one room in the warren was filled, another magically appeared, its walls pre-embedded with the gemstone that would give it its name.

  Checking the contents of each room would have been an impossible task without the existing archival records. Nevertheless, checking those lists against the actual inventory was a daunting task for any group, so he’d broken the junior archivists and some of the retirees up into teams. They’d been working day and night in shifts while he supervised and spot-checked their work. Not that he was slacking off and making them do all the work. He was busy making sure the more dangerous artifacts weren’t replaced with fakes or forgeries.

  “I’m afraid it is still in progress,” she said, fingering the parchment nervously. “This is about Noomi.”

  Alec perked up. “Is she back?”

  Work had slowed considerably since the senior archivist had left. When he learned she’d taken it upon herself to escort the Loki back to the mainland, he realized she was going to be away for a while. Things had a habit of getting off course around a Loki. But this Loki was Serin’s friend, so he wasn’t worried about Noomi. Not yet, anyway…

  “No, she hasn’t returned, but the elders wanted an update on our progress.” Ksenia cleared her throat gently. “They decreed that no sensitive volumes could be checked out by the island’s inhabitants, so they sent some of us out to collect them from people’s homes.”

  “Damn and blast. No wonder everything has been taking so bloody long.” The junior archivists were running all over the island, collecting overdue books. “What does this have to do with Noomi?”

  Ksenia gripped the paper in her hand tighter. “Well…the volumes Noomi checked out just before her departure are all of a very sensitive nature.”

  With a frown, Alec plucked the parchment from her hand and scanned the list. “Waddell’s Advanced Spellcraft, Coriander’s Practical Magic, the Shadow Codex…”

  The list went on and on. Damn
, he hadn’t realized the archive had a copy of the Branium Vivitae.

  Though it mainly contained defensive spells, a talented practitioner could do a lot of damage with that text.

  “Hmm, I can see how they would have a problem with these going missing,” he observed.

  Ksenia’s eyes flared in alarm. “They’re not missing. Noomi is only borrowing them. She will return them when she gets back.”

  “Of course she will,” he said bracingly.

  That didn’t seem to calm her. Ksenia stared at him as if waiting for him to do something else.

  “Tell you what,” he said, rolling up the parchment. “Why don’t you and I keep this list to ourselves for now?”

  Her breath escaped in a whoosh. “Oh…I don’t think that’s wise. The elders told me to report anything of note to them right away.”

  Alec could hear the incipient panic in the young woman’s voice at the thought of keeping anything from the elders. He stifled a sigh. Those tightwads were mere figureheads. It was clear the power of T’Kaieri rested with the family lines the Elemental Water talent bounced between. However, the elders had a habit of running roughshod over the young people, the junior archivists in particular.

  “Then you should,” he assured her. “Right after you finish the inventory of the amethyst room. Maybe after the tourmaline room is done, too.”

  Awareness dawned, and she coughed. “Yes, I see. The inventory has to take priority.”

  “I’m glad you agree. Noomi will surely return before we’re done. Then this small concern will be a moot point.”

  Ksenia nodded, her breathing deepening. “Yes…I should get back to it,” she said before bowing deeply and hurrying away.

  Alec watched her go before turning back to the list with a whistle. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Noomi.”

  32

  “Are you ready?” Loki asked as he crouched.

  “No!” Noomi flattened herself against the massive wooden crate, doing her best to stay below the line of sight of the men gathered across the warehouse. “How did I ever let you talk me into this?” she whisper-wailed.

  Loki peeked around the corner at the cluster of armed men. “I believe it involved lots and lots of wine.”

  He took the spell vials she’d prepared out of her hands. “Don’t worry. This is going to work. We just have to wait for the guy in the suit to step out. He’s clearly the boss. Once he’s out of sight, I’m going to glamour myself into him so we can get the drop on the remaining guards. Once they’re out, we can corner the boss and make him tell us where the amulet is.”

  The amulet was how they’d found Armand, the head arms dealer. Noomi had taken a page out of Serin’s book. There has been an amulet on the list of missing items. Alec hadn’t known the innocuous silver pendant had an overlocking bronze oval. The two pieces were never stored together because when they had been in the past, they had an unfortunate tendency to attract hordes of squirrels.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that the bronze overlay could be used to scry for the other piece until Loki mentioned it was what Serin had done for the Sai.

  “He’s going,” Loki hissed. Noomi took a deep breath before risking a peek around the corner of the crate.

  The long-haired man in aviator glasses was walking away. He was flanked by a dangerous-looking brute as they headed down a side hallway.

  “He’s taking his bodyguard with him,” she whispered. Their plan to isolate the boss was compromised.

  “We can still do this,” Loki insisted. “I’m just going to need you to hit the big guard on the back of the head with one of these knockout spells after I take out these three.”

  Reaching into the bag strapped to her side, he removed two spell vials. He pressed one into each of her hands. “You have to make sure you hit them hard enough to break the glass,” he warned.

  She gulped aloud, but took the vials. “This is a stupid idea. We should send for Serin or at least text Daniel.”

  “No,” Loki whined. “They have their hands full tracking Puck. The least we can do is mop us this little mess for them.”

  She studied the remaining three men. They were all big males, the kind with naturally grim faces that made people cross the street to avoid them.

  “You call this bunch a little mess?”

  “Sure…” He waved dismissively. “We’ve got that crackerjack protection spell you found. Even if my glamour doesn’t trick them, they won’t be able to shoot us.”

  “The spell is not going to make us bulletproof.” Noomi didn’t have the talent to create those spells. They were too difficult to sustain for any useful amount of time. “The potion I brewed is just going to confuse the men.”

  She’d spent the better part of a week getting the spell ingredients together and mixed properly, in between trying to talk Loki out of this reckless course of action.

  The bitter brew tweaked an observers’ perception. It made anyone who saw them register their bodies two feet to their right or left instead of their actual location. With luck, if any of the men managed to shoot, their aim would be off, or at least that was the idea… They hadn’t had time to fully test it.

  There were so many things that could go wrong. But Loki was determined to do this, and she couldn’t let him go it alone.

  That doesn’t mean you can’t try to make him see reason one last time. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait for Serin to get here?” Noomi had the messaging incantation memorized.

  Loki wasn’t even listening to her. The ripple of bending light passed over him, sending the wave of glamour over his body. “One…two…”

  He was gone before three. Disguised as Armand, he strutted down the middle of the warehouse through the narrow lane made by the boxes stacked in neat rows on either side. Waving at the men impatiently, he cleared his throat.

  “Get over here,” he ordered in a surprisingly decent imitation of the arms dealer’s voice.

  One of the men frowned, but the other two shrugged and began to approach him obediently.

  Noomi’s held her breath as they came closer to her hiding spot. Clutching the two spell vials, she waited, sweat trickling down her back.

  Her heart began to race as the men closed the distance. You don’t have to do anything. This part of Loki’s plan was bound to work. The trio got closer and closer. Loki waited until they were almost six feet away.

  The fae man pulled his arm back, launching two of the spell vials as hard as he could. One vial broke as intended, and the man went down, falling to the floor unconscious.

  The second vial hit the shorter guard in the middle. His belly fat acted as a cushion. The glass bounced off, landing on the floor and cracking open.

  “Shite…” Loki reached down, trying to scoop up the liquid with his hand.

  “Boss, what are you doing?” the slowest of the three asked as his partner scowled at the fallen man, still not putting two and two together.

  “Hold this,” Loki-slash-Armand said, slapping the liquid onto the retreating man’s cheek. He dropped like a stone.

  There was only one man left standing. Noomi squeaked aloud, her terror escaping at a higher pitch than her normal voice. She hurried around the safety of her corner, stumbling a bit as the goon stood gaping at the man he believed to be his boss.

  Loki reached into his pocket for another vial. That was when the mouth-breathing bruiser finally came up with four. He slapped at Loki, his meaty paw knocking him to the ground.

  Whimpering, Noomi ran forward, throwing one of the vials in her hand out in a wild arc. Her aim was terrible. Instead of striking the man in the chest, it hit him in the ankle and wedged there, unbroken.

  She and Loki locked eyes, trading panic back and forth like an invisible hot potato.

  Loki crouched as if he were going to leap on the man. Gulping, Noomi rushed forward, slamming her foot down on the vial. It broke open on the goon’s thick leather boot just next to the lacings.

  “Ow! You bitch.” He flu
ng his arm out, knocking her against the crates with a backhanded slap.

  “Don’t you fucking touch her,” Loki yelled, launching himself at the guy. Both fell to the floor, the guard twisting so Loki ended up on the bottom, Armand’s wiry compact form completely engulfed by the other guy’s massive bulk.

  Noomi darted forward again, prepared to break a second vial over the man’s head, but she soon realized he wasn’t moving.

  “Oh, he’s out.” She had knocked him out after all. “The potion must have soaked through his shoe.”

  “Great,” Loki grunted, straining. “Can you get him off me?”

  “Sorry!” She reached down and tugged a thick arm, but it was like trying to lift a tree trunk.

  Loki heaved, trying to squirm out from under the weight. “You would have picked the tallest one.”

  Noomi tsked, changing tactics. Instead of pulling, she started pushing until the top half of the man rolled off Loki’s chest.

  Taking a deep breath, he held up a finger. “When we tell Serin and Daniel what we did, we’re going to leave this part out.”

  She laughed a touch hysterically as Loki popped up, getting to his feet as if nothing had happened. “Let’s hide them.”

  “How?” The original plan was to hide them out of sight, but they’d severely underestimated how heavy their adversaries would be.

  Loki glanced around. “What if we assemble a crate over them instead?”

  She hesitated. “Don’t you think the real Armand would find it strange, a big box like this appearing suddenly in the middle of the walkway?”

  Loki shrugged. “Good help is hard to find.”

  Her lips compressed.

  “All right.” He spun around. “Maybe there’s a trolley or a cart around here.”

  In the end, the only thing they could find was a tarp. Loki pushed the bodies close together and Noomi threw it over them, wiping the oily residue from the canvas on her pants.

  She turned around to meet two pairs of eyes. Armand—the real one—and his guard were watching them.

  They’d been caught.