Elemental Fire (Paranormal Public Series)

by Edwards, Maddy

  “I’m sorry you can’t sleep,” he said, giving me a squeeze. “I wish I could help.”

  My back straightened. “You can help,” I encouraged, getting excited. “Come back to me.”

  He stared into my eyes and shook his head. “I want to make one thing very clear,” he said, his voice low and urgent. He paused, looking around. “We don’t have a lot of time, but I want to make one thing very clear. I never left.” He held my gaze with his. “The sweet smell on the wind, the warmth of the sun on your face, the spark in a friend’s eyes, those are me, telling you I love you. I will always love you, and as long as you have those things I will never leave you.”

  He pressed his lips to mine. I clung to him as if it was the last thing I would ever do. I clung to him as I was pulled away. The shadows had lengthened and stretched. Our time in the sunny place had come to a close.

  I woke up still in chains, roused by daylight. I felt my wrists clink together. I was lying on my side in mud, the wet earth pressing into my hip and shoulder. Carefully I raised my head. I was alone, but where? I raised it a little more and realized that I was outside Astra, of all places. Dimly I could see the lights from the camp in the distance.

  I glanced at the sky, but it was one hazy gray cloud. The air was cool and my wet body shivered from a night spent outside. Astra looked dead and the thud of my heart was the only sound I could hear. The Mirror Arcane was inside. If that was truly what Ms. Vale was looking for, she was very close. I wondered if she really had multiple agendas or if she had said all that nonsense about the greater good to cover up her tracks as she kept looking for the map.

  I was so used to waking up to Sip and Lisabelle’s racket, or even Ricky’s, that waking up to silence made me feel utterly alone. Keller and I had started sleeping, emphasis on the sleeping, together last semester, but that was when I had been safe in Astra, not when I was in danger. It was strange to wake up, groggy, bleary-eyed, and not knowing whether my loved ones where alive.

  I glanced back at my dorm, desperately wanting to go inside. When I tried to take a step, I heard the chink of metal. Looking down, I saw that Zervos’s black chains had been replaced by a thicker pair of red ones, the color of cakey blood.

  “Great,” I muttered, tugging uselessly. I squinted up at where I thought the sun should be, but I could get no clear what time it was. I wanted to yell out but decided against it, hoping that maybe I could figure out a way out of this mess before any of the Fire Whips came to check on me.

  I looked around and calculated that I was about ten feet from the Astra wall, lying on the ground in the front of the house. Between me and the house were the flower beds, now just brown dirt, that Mrs. Swan had planted and helped grow. I followed the snaking red chain to the house, where it was firmly attacked to a ring sticking out of the wall. The ring was also red, which meant that it was new. There definitely had not been anything like that when I was last here. Astra still looked inviting, but I could easily see that Ms. Vale had placed me far enough away from the front door that my chain would not stretch to reach it.

  What am I doing here? I wondered. Why wasn’t I just placed in one of the pens like the rest of the students? And where were my friends? Especially Trafton, who was injured, and that first Airlee who had come to my defense. Last night? Two nights ago? How long! In frustration I yanked against the chain, and yanked again, then I yelped. Heat shot through my wrists and up my arms at the same time it shot through my ankles.

  “I wouldn’t struggle if I were you,” said a cold voice behind me. I turned my back on my home. Standing in front of me was Professor Erikson, Keller’s aunt and one of the committee members of Public. Originally she had come to help choose a new President when the old one, President Malle, had turned out to be a murderer who wanted to rule the darkness, and everything else. The committee members had very quickly decided, however, that Public would be better served if they ran it until they could find a truly capable replacement for Malle. I had tried to like Professor Erikson, but she had made it impossible. She had hated the fact that Keller and I were together from the start, and it would have been an understatement to say that she had never made any secret of that fact.

  “Clearly,” I said, holding my wrists in front of me. “Where are my friends? Where is everyone else? What happened? What’s happening?” I couldn’t keep the pleading from my voice.

  Professor Erikson looked just like she had the last time I saw her. She wore white robes, and her hair was pulled back into a severe bun. She had the same gorgeous blue eyes as her nephew, a fact I had a hard time forgiving her for at the moment, when I was missing Keller so much it was hard to breathe. Her lips drew into a thin line as she eyed me with distaste. Apparently my breakup with her family member had not made her like me more.

  “Your friends are safe,” she reassured me. “We are all prisoners of the mages. They do not want too many of us together at once, in case that might allow us to plot an escape. Of course, that is a moot point now. But two days ago, when you were caught, that was the idea.”

  I gulped. Two days was a long time. Anything could have happened while I was sleeping blissfully.

  I wanted to know if Lough was alright, but I didn’t dare ask; it would surely be a mistake to draw any attention to him.

  “I’m here to take you to them,” she said simply. “We must hurry. I don’t want Ms. Vale to think you and I are plotting your escape - as if I would ever do anything in cooperation with you.”

  “I’m chained,” I said, stating the obvious as I fought to get my desperation under control.

  Professor Erikson came forward, and with a wave of one perfectly manicured hand - her nails were painted silver like her ring - my chains loosened from the wall. Just as if they were meant to, they snaked over to Professor Erikson and trailed behind her as we walked.

  “You should have stayed away,” she said icily. “That was the whole point. We were trying to save you, but you just can’t do what you’re told, can you?”

  I didn’t say anything. The answer was obvious. Her anger was perfectly justified; they had tried to protect us and we had refused to take the hint. The consequences would be dire.

  When we reached the camp at the center of campus, the fact that it was daylight let me see the setup more clearly. Sip and Lisabelle were being led from the direction of Airlee by Fire Whips, and they were both also in chains. Other than that, to my great relief my friends looked just as they had the last time I had seen them.

  The pens were still filled with students. I could see now that they each had cots and even picnic tables inside to eat on. The students were not being mistreated as badly as I had originally thought, but the Fire Whips still stood guard. All around the pens there was churned earth that a great many feet had trodden into mud. At least since it was daylight there was no sign of hellhounds. The day was briskly cold and I shivered. There was still no sign of the sun overhead, just thick gray clouds.

  Now I saw some of the professors down on one end of the rows of pens. They didn’t look tired, but judging from their tight and fearful faces they were certainly cowed. In front of them stood all the committee members except Risper, who was hopefully still “missing.” I took a bit of heart from that.

  “I have good news,” Ms. Vale announced, her voice filled with malice. “Negotiations have concluded. You are all no longer prisoners.” A very quiet, relieved murmur went up around the pens, but I still felt uneasy. This could not be right. If the students were no longer prisoners, one of the guards should be moving to open the doors toward which the students were crowding. But no Nocturn moved.

  “Of course, there are some conditions,” Ms. Vale continued. “I have spoken with the leader of the paranormal council, a very kind old fallen angel named Saferous. Our dear Professor Erikson knows him. Anyway . . .” Here she paused to wave her hand. For a darkness mage she looked very delicate, but I had a feeling that in her case looks were deceiving. She was all steel.

  Eventually s
he continued: “He has conferred with your president and I have agreed to let the students go on the condition that they continue as students of Paranormal Public this semester.” The murmurs around us grew louder. The Fire Whips didn’t move. “I am nothing if not in favor of education. Now, of course, to make sure the negotiation was handled properly, I had to make one condition. I couldn’t have done all this work to keep students safe for the past few days and not had some promises that their safety would continue on to the end of the semester.”

  Not rolling my eyes became one of the hardest things I had ever done.

  “The condition,” she said dramatically, “is that I be allowed to run Paranormal Public as its new President.”

  A massive outcry went up from all the students and the Fire Whips broke into action. They stung paranormals indiscriminately as my classmates flung themselves against the bars. The only ones spared were the pixies, who sat placidly eating a breakfast that looked a lot better than the one the rest of us were going to get. The cries of rebellion soon turned into screams of pain as the whips hit their targets. All the while Ms. Vale stood there and smiled.

  “We will be rolling out a new set of classes,” Ms. Vale explained. “I hope you will all enjoy them. Thoroughly.”

  That was the beginning of a very long semester. After one week I was ready to mutiny, and so was everyone else.

  The entire school had the same class schedule. The professors’ usual topics were disregarded in favor of the topics assigned by Ms. Vale. The classes were on topics like “Inter-demon cooperation” and “How to spot a traitor paranormal” and “Magical murders that go undetected but should not” and “Paranormal decorating 101.”

  Lisabelle was so incensed when she heard the class list that she had to be restrained. “They’re stripping of us all our power,” she gritted out, furious. “They don’t want us to learn anything useful.”

  “You usually complain about all the homework,” Sip pointed out reasonably.

  “Now’s not the time for logic,” Lisabelle sputtered. “They’re weakening the youngest and brightest paranormals. How could the government agree to this?”

  “They don’t really have a choice,” Trafton pointed out. It was late afternoon, and we were all in the basement of the library, where the dining hall still was. It was the only place outside our classrooms where we were allowed to be together. Meals lasted for fifteen minutes. It was a feast I had not yet mastered to scarf down all my food in that small amount of time and still catch up with my friends. The rest of the time we were forced to be in our bedrooms, which was worse for me than for everyone else because I lived alone. There was no sign of Mrs. Swan. I had tried to ask, but all it had earned me was a cuff over the ear. For all I knew she was dead.

  Every evening when I returned to my quiet dorm I felt sick, but there was nothing I could do. I just had to hope that Astra’s caretaker would reappear in one piece.

  “They must be fighting this, for us,” Trafton said. Classes started the next day and I was dreading it. “They don’t even have the proper professors with the proper training to teach stuff like Decorating 101. And there are still students who aren’t here, and whom Vale isn’t allowing onto the campus. What about their education?”

  “There’s Dacer,” I said, trying to lighten the mood a little. “I’m sure he knows all about magical decorating.”

  “He’s still outside,” said Sip. “If he has any sense at all he’ll stay there until they can sort this mess out.”

  “They better get us out of here,” said Lisabelle. “A hostage education is not an education at all.”

  “Why don’t they just kill us?” I asked. “What are they doing pretending that this is anything other than a hostage situation?”

  “Two reasons,” said Sip. “One, they’re not sure they can win an out and out war, yet. Two, they need time to find the objects on the Wheel. Jenkins tried to do it last semester by sneaking around, and as you know he failed miserably. Now Ms. Vale is not going to bother trying to cover her tracks. She is causing this massive distraction of holding the school hostage, so she has all the time and free rein she needs to find the objects. At least, that’s my theory.”

  “You know what else?” said Lisabelle thoughtfully. “Your perfect plan was not so perfect after all, was it, Sip? That’s my fact.”

  The werewolf glared at her roommate. “Don’t you dare insult my plan. It was perfect. There were just too many unaccountable variables.”

  “Uh huh,” said Lisabelle, stretching her arms over her head. “Next time we need to break into somewhere, I’ll do the planning.”

  “Sure thing, then we won’t just be kidnapped, we’ll be killed,” Sip fumed.

  “So, you’re both in agreement that there will be a next time?” Trafton asked softly. All the cuts were closed on his arms, but some were still red and painful-looking. He also tried very hard not to laugh at anything, and that didn’t turn out to be hard.

  “Of course,” my friends chorused. I admired their confidence.

  “We’ve been through so much at this point,” said Sip, waving her fork, “what’s a little old siege?”

  Unfortunately, none of us really realized what being held captive by a power-hungry darkness mage would mean. First, the food served in the dining hall changed. None of us knew if it was because it was rationed or they were trying to starve us, but we were given nothing but grits and rice and porridge. Every meal. Every day. It only took a week for me to be dizzy from hunger. Sip reached that threshold in a day.

  “What about Lough and Keller?” I asked. “They didn’t find Lough? No demons got him?”

  “There are no demons anywhere near here,” said Trafton wearily. He looked pale and drawn, not like his usual self at all. “That was one of the conditions the government set. They claimed it was a show of good faith to call off the demons, then their children would not be in danger.”

  I looked around the basement of the library. Most tables at in silence. The only animation came from the pixies, who were obviously set apart in all of this. They laughed and talked. They also were not eating only white rice for dinner.

  Stationed at every corner and at the base of the stairs were Fire Whips. At the head table Ms. Vale sat with two more Fire Whips. One was a man, short and balding, with a black mustache. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. The other was a pixie I had never seen before.

  Anyway, siege was the wrong term, despite what Sip had said. Since the paranormals had technically agreed to this situation, there was no battle. Yes, there were some paranormals waiting outside the gates, but it was unofficial. Officially, everything was fine. Officially, I had been born with three heads.

  The one bright spot in those days was a correspondence that sprung up between Lisabelle, me, and Ricky. We managed correspondence, I was pretty sure, because it was with a human, or at least a paranormal whose powers had yet to manifest, and if Nocturns were reading the messages they found nothing amiss in any of them.

  Dear Charlotte,

  School just started back up again after winter break, but I’m finding it hard to concentrate. Dad is busy and gone most of the time and I feel like sometimes when he looks at me he flinches. He used to play catch with me. He stopped. I miss you. I would like to meet more of your friends from college. Is that Lisabelle girl really what most college girls are like? I can’t wait for college. Anyway, I was thinking over April break I could come see you. At the very least you should come home. It is lonely here without my big sister.

  Ricky

  Lisabelle,

  My sister informs me that I am not to meet any more of her friends any time soon. Since you are the only part of her college life that she has let me in on - although I get the idea that my sister couldn’t tell you what to do if she tried - I thought I’d send along a note. It’s not very complicated. It’s only to say that I want my sister to come home over April break, which involves her staying out of trouble until then. I think writing out
the implications of what I am implying would be insulting to both of us. More you than me, but I do not like to insult myself. All of that is to say, please take care of my sister and yourself.

  Ricky.

  Ricky,

  Next time you tell me what to do I’ll singe your hair. Clear? Charlotte would tell me not to talk that way to her little brother, but poor Charlotte isn’t reading this and I’m sure you are perfectly capable of reading between the lines to understand that when I say, “Singe your hair” what I really mean is tie you up by your feet and burn it all off.

  Lisabelle.

  Ricky,

  I hear Lisabelle e-mailed you. I’ve given her a talking to. She has no business corresponding with you, but then she told me that you were the one who initiated it. Whatever are you doing writing to one of my friends? I hope she didn’t say anything too rude and please ignore the swear words. Or at least don’t tell your dad. I’m pretty sure he would stop letting me come home if he decided I was a bad influence on you.

  Charlotte

  Charlotte,

  Lisabelle and I are pen pals. I don’t see what your problem is. Peace and love.

  Ricky

  Ricky,

  Leave Lisabelle alone! You have no idea what you’re doing. My poor friend has better things to do.

  Charlotte

  Lisabelle,

  Charlotte’s mad at me. What did you go telling her for?

  Ricky

  Ricky,

  Peace and love.

  Lisabelle.

  Charlotte,

  Stop being such an old fusspot.

  * Sent separately by both Ricky and Lisabelle. Charlotte received both and subsequently threw them across the room.

  Unfortunately, that was not much of a bright spot. By the end of the first weak conditions had deteriorated so badly that I wondered if most of us would make it through the semester. Some would die from beatings, but, as what happened on Friday night illustrated, some would die from rebellion.