by Mia Marshall
I hesitated. Her libido aside, there was truth to Miriam’s words.
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t shake the memory of that mass grave. The image had woven itself into the tapestry of my nightmares. When I’d slept the night before, I dreamed of bodies rising from the pit, begging me to help them even as I smothered them with flames.
If anything like that waited for us on the island, my friends needed to stay behind. I couldn’t risk their lives, not if there was another option.
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see, didn’t feel…” I struggled to express the terror that had overcome me at the first’s touch. I didn’t think there were words in our language that could capture such fear. “We were her puppets, her fuel, her playthings, and if I hadn’t figured out a new way to use my power, Mac and I would be dead.”
Vivian lifted her chin. I’d forgotten how stubborn earths could be once they’d made up their minds. “It’s my choice.”
Sera grabbed Vivian’s bag from the bus and chucked it to her. “I arranged your passage, Viv. You’re coming.”
Vivian and I wore matching surprised expressions.
“She has to,” Sera reminded me. “The council has seen her with us. She’s an elemental and subject to our rules, including the one where she gets locked up for a hundred years for helping you. You want her to share a cell with your mom and grandma?”
Sera understood exactly what button to push. It was horrible enough that I could do nothing to free my family. I wouldn’t allow Vivian to suffer the same fate.
My earth friend swung the bag onto her shoulder. “I’m defenseless on my own. I wouldn’t have a chance if they came for me.” She sounded almost happy about that.
I grumbled something that might be interpreted as acknowledgement of Sera’s point. Vivian had thrown her lot in with us, and we needed to protect her—though taking her toward a homicidal creature seemed an odd way to do that.
“Besides,” Sera added, “if they catch Vivian, you’ll have another reason to feel guilty. I’m already bored of your martyr complex.” Her expression was bland, daring me to take offense. “You need a new schtick.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my schtick,” I muttered.
“That’s what he said.” Miriam waggled her eyebrows. “Now, if we’re done being serious, let’s get our asses on that boat.”
“You and Simon aren’t going. That’s final.” I said. “Before you all accuse me of being stubborn, well, shut up. More people at risk means more I need to worry about—and more chances for me to lose control. You’d be in danger if you went, but so would I, because I’d flip out if anything happened to you. Also, you’re needed in Tahoe. The council is threatening our friends. We can’t leave them to fend for themselves, not when we caused this mess. And you know the agents will be lucky if even one shifter takes them seriously.”
They wanted to argue, but for once I’d used actual logic.
“Good.” I felt the weight of responsibility lift. “Simon, contact the bears and mountain lions when you get home. Carmen is stubborn, but Will should listen. They’re going to want to fight the elementals, so remind them how powerful the old ones are. Anything weird happens, make a note and fill us in later. There probably won’t be cell reception on the island, so we’ll be out of touch for a while.”
No one spoke. They were too busy looking really depressed.
“We’ll see each other soon,” I insisted.
“What about me?” Luke stood apart from us, leaning against the hood of the school bus with his thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his worn jeans. The pose should have appeared studied, but it had the opposite effect. It made me think that every man who’d ever posed as a cowboy for a book cover or beefcake calendar had taken his inspiration from Luke.
Sera fixed him with her trademark glare, the one that told him she might tolerate his presence, but she didn’t plan to make it easy for him. “You’re coming with us so you can teach Aidan everything you know. If she makes it to the island with all her gray matter working, maybe I’ll forgive you for that whole Utah debacle.”
Mac’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue.
The last of the shipping containers was lifted onto the vessel by the metal monsters lining the docks.
We said goodbye, and the words carried more than a hint of desperation. Sera handed Miriam the last hundred dollars to cover their fuel costs.
Simon rubbed his cheek against my shoulder. “Come back. I am quite fond of you.”
I blinked away the tears that came with Simon’s version of unconditional love.
Miriam wrapped all of us in enthusiastic hugs, including Luke. She managed not to grab his ass, though the wicked smile told me she considered it.
Sera’s face was impassive, but she swallowed several times. “One last thing. Friends don’t let friends ride in a Sunday school bus.” She pulled three cans of spray paint from underneath a seat. “Don’t worry, I didn’t spend money. I stole them.”
Vivian protested. Miriam nodded her approval.
“I’m keeping track of all my thievery, Viv. I’ll pay them back when people aren’t trying to kill my sister, okay?”
As she spoke, she coated the side of the bus in thick black paint, obliterating the stenciled letters proclaiming the bus transportation for the faithful. Over the black, she used orange paint to create crackling flames. As a final touch, she grabbed the red can to write, in strong block letters, “Hell on wheels.”
“That,” she said, stepping back to admire her work, “is an improvement.”
I stood next to her, welcoming the brief moment of normalcy. Whatever doubts and questions she had about her mother, they weren’t consuming her, not yet. And I hadn’t gone mad, not yet. Things could be worse.
“Much less conspicuous,” I said.
Sera chucked the empty cans onto the bus. “Once they’re far from us, they won’t matter to the council. Making any effort to capture them would require acknowledging shifters even exist. They’ll leave them alone.”
“As much as they’re leaving any of our shifter friends alone,” I reminded her. We both grimaced, but sending them away was our best choice. “I know most elementals don’t believe in the Christian god, but maybe we should hedge our bets.”
“Pfft. Sometimes, you need to remind the universe to relax and enjoy the joke.”
I grabbed her hand for a quick squeeze.
And then we were done. Miriam and Simon waited till we boarded the ship, then they waited while it left the harbor. I stood at the railing and watched until they were nothing but tiny specks on the shore. Even then I didn’t move. I fixed the land and my friends in my mind and imagined I was leaving a piece of myself behind, an anchor that would draw me back when our task was complete.
We spent the first night exploring as much of the ship as we were allowed to access.
Until that point, I thought I knew all about boats. When you’re raised on an island by a bunch of strong waters, it’s inevitable that you learn your way around every kind of yacht, sailboat, and canoe.
The cargo ship was something different altogether. Unlike a cruise ship, which felt like a glamorous floating city, this was block after block of industrial neighborhoods, nothing but metal and sharp edges. It wasn’t dirty, but it was far from pristine. The containers were all faded shades of orange, gray, and brown, dull against the vibrant blue of the ocean.
We ate dinner with the crew. Somehow, I’d expected a bunch of surly longshoreman who resented our presence, but instead we found a gregarious bunch from enough different countries to hold their own international summit.
It was full dark before we made our way to the cabins. I’d pictured large rooms strung with hammocks, but it turned out that didn’t exist in this century. The cabins were small and plain, but they were clean and provided all the basic necessities.
Sera had only been able to bargain for a couple of rooms. Both had two single beds too small for any of us to share comfortably. V
ivian had the second cabin to herself, mainly because Sera and Mac wouldn’t leave either me or Luke unsupervised.
The men claimed the floor, either because they were gentlemen or because they didn’t want the other guy to look tougher. Sera and I didn’t argue. Mac lay on the ground next to my bed. I suspect he would have done so even if there’d been enough beds to go around.
Luke lay down a few feet from Mac. Within minutes, his breathing deepened.
After months of sleeping either in a cramped trailer or on the ground, it was a luxury to have a soft mattress beneath me. My body was desperate for sleep, and for once I didn’t fight it as I slid into unconsciousness.
Even without Mac’s arms around me, I slept more soundly than I had for weeks. Being surrounded by the soothing whispers of my element after weeks in the desert helped. I woke once in the middle of the night, but the nightmare images faded quickly. I was able to sleep again, and my eyes remained closed until the dawn light peeked through the small cabin window.
The others slept, and I was in no hurry to get up. For a moment, I felt safe. In the middle of the ocean, we were free from the pursuing elementals and not yet facing the terror that awaited us. So long as we were on the ship, nothing could harm us.
My magic took greedy gulps from the feast surrounding us. For a few minutes, I pretended I was just a water. For the next week, I would keep that side of myself so sated it drowned out the fire.
An hour later, the others woke up. Sera filled the small coffee maker, looking somewhat disgusted by its inadequate size.
The room was too small for four people to shower and dress with any privacy, so we took turns, then joined the crew for breakfast. Once they began their work day, we were more or less left on our own. They likely expected us to read or play cards.
Instead, Luke decided it was a good opportunity to learn how to control my power.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Vivian perched atop a container. While the ship was capable of stacking ten containers—five above deck and five below—it didn’t have a full load, and the final row had singles on either end. Sera and Vivian had climbed on top of one, mainly to get out of my and Luke’s way.
The good thing about cargo ships, compared to most other vessels, was how small a crew worked on the enormous boat. Once the containers were loaded, the ship required little supervision. Only a dozen men were needed to keep us moving in the right direction, which meant no humans would happen upon some elementals flinging magic around the stern.
There was a narrow passageway between the rows. Luke and I stood there, with a container on either side. We hoped the metal would resist any accidental fires.
Mac, of course, was behind me, glaring at Luke. “You ever done this before?”
“Have I ever trained a dual, even though I only met one, and that before I knew what I was?”
“So you could make it worse.”
Luke hesitated. That didn’t fill me with confidence. “I suppose it’s possible. We could wait, but that means Aidan will face the next first with no new information about her power. I’ve only got what I picked up before, during, and after my cure. I know how using both magics causes the separation, those two selves that make it so, eventually, she can’t come back. It ain’t much, but I’m offering it. You want me to share it or not?”
Mac grumbled. Sera held up one of the last syringes, reminding him of the stakes, and at last he acceded. “Please be careful,” he said.
I’d have felt better if Luke had needled Mac a bit more. Instead, he was sincere when he said, “I’ll do my best.”
I took a deep breath and shook myself out like a sprinter before a race.
When I was ready, Luke began. “How’s the sanity doing? Give it to me between one and ten, ten being destroy the world.”
“A four?” I guessed.
Sera scoffed. “Even before this started, you were a three on a good day.” Now that we were making progress toward our destination, to both my cure and information about her mother, she was relaxed enough to mock me. It was oddly comforting.
Being surrounded by my element meant it took almost no effort to douse an annoying friend. Sera sputtered as a gallon of ocean water landed on her head.
“Four,” I insisted.
Luke’s pose was as relaxed as ever, but his eyes were serious. “How’d you come up with that number?”
“Well, I haven’t tried to kill anyone in days, so that’s a good sign, right?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw as he studied me. I got the feeling I wasn’t his ideal student.
“Let’s try again, without murderous intent being the litmus test. How much control do you have?”
“I…” I stopped. I couldn’t bullshit my way out of this, not with Sera watching. She’d been the one to drug me whenever I lost control, and she knew exactly how often that had happened since we escaped my family’s island. “Not enough,” I conceded.
“What’s your mind doing these days?” His voice was quiet, the words meant just for me.
I turned my focus inward, searching for the blackness I usually tried to avoid. It was there, as it always was, dormant but watching. Waiting.
I sometimes thought it was embedded so deeply within me that, even if I did learn how to remove it, I’d cut out large swathes of myself in the process.
“It’s there,” I said, the queen of understatement.
Luke didn’t need more information. He understood.
“What happened when you lost it? Your dark part?” I asked.
His laugh held sympathy but little humor. “Oh, it’s still there. Always will be, but it’s a lot quieter these days. It belongs to me, not the other way round.”
“That sounds okay.” Even if there was a complete, irrevocable cure, I thought parts of my magic would always be covered in black from the lives it took, and I wasn’t sure that was wrong.
Luke’s amber eyes missed nothing. More than anyone ever would, he understood the ongoing horror of living with power that was both gift and traitor.
My friends inched toward me, concerned. The silence had stretched a minute too long for comfort.
When in doubt, make a bad joke. “So, how do you channel the darkness now? Do you listen to more Nine Inch Nails?”
“Only Johnny Cash’s versions,” he said, feigning offense.
Damn. A man who listened to country music, who had a dimple in his chin and eyes that crinkled when he smiled. If Mac didn’t already hold my heart in his hands, I might have been tempted.
“It’s kinda like driving an old car with a big hole in the passenger side footwell,” Luke said. “It all runs fine, but it’s a little broken, a little ugly, and sometimes it’s louder than you want it to be. And we never get to trade it in for something new and shiny.” He dropped the metaphor. “You and me, we get to live with our past for the rest of our lives.”
“As it should be.”
“Yep.”
Before I could worry about the future, I needed to make sure I had one. “So, what do I need to do?”
“I can’t say I’ve been a professor before. Feel like I need a pipe and tweed jacket. I’ll try to keep it short. So, you’ve got the two magics. Based on those blond locks, I’d say you discovered the fire second.”
I confirmed this.
“When did you find out? Five years ago?”
I blinked at him, too stunned to speak for several seconds. “Five months.”
His eyebrows reached for the sky. “That’s some accelerated crazy you’ve got there.”
“Well, there’s been some stress this year,” I said, upgrading myself to the empress of understatement.
“Considering what we’re heading into, we can’t count on that changing, so let’s do what we can. When you first learned the risks of being a dual, you kept them apart, right? Did whatever you could to stop the fire from interfering with the other side.”
Again, I felt the thrill of speaking to someone who understood exactly what I’d gone thro
ugh. A single conversation with Luke was better than years of therapy.
“Exactly. At first, I lost control whenever I deliberately called the fire, but then the water started joining in on its own. The first time I used both, it was okay. You know waters can heal, right? I was curing someone, and I got through it without incident.”
“What she’s failing to mention is he was dead and she ended up leaving some of her magic behind.”
I’d almost forgotten Sera was there.
“Wait, what? Where is it now?”
Mac growled.
Luke rolled his eyes. “Of course.”
I rushed to change the subject before Mac could respond. “So, yeah. When I was healing him, it was okay, even when I boosted the water with the fire. But once I figured out how that worked, I couldn’t seem to stop.”
“It’s hard to put power back once you find it.”
Not long ago, I’d intertwined both magics. They’d strengthened each other, and in that instant I’d believed I was the most powerful elemental alive. Sometimes, in my weakest moments, I missed that feeling.
I needed to derail that train of thought. “Anyway, that’s where it is now. I was told using both would eventually create a schism, a split self. First I’d lose control, then I’d lose my sanity, and then I’d lose myself. That’s pretty much been the path. I mean, there’s normal me…”
Sera snorted. I was glad to see her sense of humor was as inappropriate as ever.
“And batshit crazy me is showing up more and more, but…”
“But for now, you know who you are, most of the time.” Luke finished for me. “You weren’t given bad information, but you weren’t given the whole story, either. Damn good thing I’m here, isn’t it?”
That carefree grin slid across his face, the dimple appearing. I couldn’t help returning the smile.
My neck grew cold as the sun that had warmed me was blocked by a very large shifter moving even closer. I knew Mac misinterpreted my connection to Luke, but right then, soothing his ego fell lower on my priority list than “be less crazy.” He could deal.
Luke didn’t even glance at him. “It helps to think in chemistry terms. Sometimes a couple of things can be entirely harmless on their own, but put them together and you’ve got a toxic mixture.”