Lost Causes

by Mia Marshall

  Tricia hesitated. “I think I’ll stay.”

  I knew her expression well. I’d seen it in the mirror too many times to count. It was the look of someone who believed she was past redemption.

  “What do you think that will accomplish? You can stay here and become Eila’s only food source, or you can come with us and try to actually help these people. It’s your decision, and I won’t make it for you, but I should point out that you’ve already made enough bad choices for a lifetime. Maybe try something different.” I spoke for both of us, and I believed every word.

  She nodded once and followed the others. Maybe she only needed to hear one person say she’d be welcome.

  When I arrived at the beach, the islanders were already being hauled over the railing. The boat was less than a hundred feet from shore.

  Except boat wasn’t the best word. It was a yacht worthy of a starring role in a 90s rap video. I half expected to see scantily-clad women drinking Cristal and dancing to a thumping beat.

  Instead, I saw Grams.

  “Aidan!” It was difficult to hear her at this distance and with all the surrounding noise, but every word was precious. “It’s about time you got here,” she said. “It’s quite mean of you to make an old woman do all the work.”

  This day was just full of surprises. My face broke into a grin so wide they could view it from space.

  Grams had transformed the ocean surface into a solid path that the islanders could walk on almost as easily as they could walk on land. While she might technically be old, she looked more like a well-maintained New York socialite than someone in her tenth century of life.

  I cupped a hand around my mouth to amplify the sound and yelled to her. “I’ve been a little busy. Aren’t you supposed to be in prison?”

  “It was dull. I made other plans.”

  I urged Tricia ahead of me. She was the last person to cross, and Grams allowed the water to soften behind her, the pathway disappearing.

  “Your turn, dear.”

  I didn’t need to reach for my magic. It was just there, humming under my skin, more a part of me than ever before. I spread my arms wide and asked the water to push me forward. My heels skimmed across the surface, body flying to rejoin my friends and family.

  “We’ve got to make a pickup,” I told Grams, already pointing the yacht north. Working together, it took us five seconds to move two miles. Sera and Ani were already on the shore.

  The freed elementals huddled behind them. They squinted at the approaching boat, unable to believe rescue had arrived.

  “Get us as close as you can.” I helped Grams create another path for Luke and Mac, and the three of us ran across the ocean.

  We worked together with very few words. Mac took the stone and ice, throwing them over his shoulders in a fireman’s hold. Luke grabbed a couple more. Only two were left. Sera supported the beach’s left side and Ani did the same on the right, though she watched Sera the entire time. The water was easy. I told the sea to treat its child well, and it did the rest. The woman floated to the yacht, passing the others on the way.

  We were done.

  I wanted to do a victory dance, but that could wait. I signaled Grams to start moving toward open water. She knew I’d catch up.

  I was fifteen feet from the boat when an invisible tether wrapped around my waist and hauled me backwards.

  It was like being punched in the gut by a giant. The magic rushed to heal me as the tether drew me relentlessly toward shore.

  Shouts came from the yacht, the words indecipherable but the panic clear. Mac dove into the ocean and began swimming, long strokes that would never reach me in time. Sera screamed, arms flailing in the universal symbol for “Turn this fucking thing around.” When the boat didn’t respond fast enough, she leapt in after Mac.

  I pushed against my restraints. It did no good. The cord wasn’t only formed of water. It was also earth and ice and sand welded together, unbreakable.

  A wall of fire erupted before me, a line of flames so immense even the Pacific Ocean couldn’t extinguish them. I could no longer see the yacht, and those on it could no longer see me. Mac and Sera were caught on the other side.

  Eila flung me onto the sand. I rolled, finding my feet. A heavy wad of earth struck my chest and I stumbled backwards. Sand wrapped around my legs, my chest, my neck.

  The humanoid shape Eila assumed expanded and blurred, the edges fuzzy with crackling magic. She soared above me, inconceivable power stretching into the sky. When I was nothing but a bug before her, she crashed to the earth, shaking it so hard my head swung in every direction and my jaw snapped shut. Whiplash, I thought distantly. Chipped teeth. Blood ran from my mouth and trickled down my chin.

  I spared no more energy for healing. I yanked a wave over my body, needing the ocean to draw the sand away.

  I summoned every bit of strength I’d ever known, then searched for more. Now that I was healed, I was free to use all the power I possessed.

  Luke thought creation magic was more powerful than destruction. It was time to test that theory.

  The water spun and condensed as I shaped it into arms and legs, then built a torso and head. Its hair grew long and straight. Cheekbones emerged from its soft face. The hips narrowed and the limbs lengthened.

  Fire slid inside the being and gave it life, making it glow with energy. Like the first, it was a creature of pure magic.

  Eila swatted at it. I created another, and another, and soon a small army of my doppelgängers swarmed her. They ripped at her with greedy hands, grabbing small pieces and feeding the power back to me.

  Eila’s cry wasn’t human or animal. It came from a place of fear so primal I thought it might be the first terror the world had ever known. A fear of an oblivion so absolute that magic had created our world to escape its emptiness.

  It was an oblivion to which Eila refused to return. She vibrated, a movement so quick there seemed to be two of her. My army fell from her body. She turned each one to ice, and they splintered as they hit the ground.

  I tried building another, but something was wrong. Even surrounded by my elements, I couldn’t maintain my strength. My army grew smaller and weaker. Months of exposure to a drug that weakened me was taking its toll.

  Eila shrank to her former size, solidifying into the humanoid shape I knew and loathed. When she reached into me, I realized her earlier touches had been gentle. She burned me with anger and froze me with malice. It didn’t matter how strong I was. It didn’t even matter if I was the strongest elemental in the world. To her, I was a mouse battling a lion. “You are not whole. You cannot defeat me.”

  Eila grabbed that tiny thread, the loose fire that could undo me and send me spiraling into permanent darkness.

  “Mine,” she whispered. She tugged.

  Then she vanished.

  Sera’s dark curls were plastered against her skull, and she’d kicked off her pants during her swim. They would have weighed her down.

  “Who puts up a wall of flames to block a fire?” she asked. “These firsts may be all-powerful and such, but they aren’t that bright, are they?”

  She dropped the casing of the final dart. “Let’s move.”

  Then again, I remembered, the mouse had outwitted the lion.

  When running from a creature intent on your death, with dozens of refugees and several fugitives along for the ride, it’s best to lie low for a bit. Fortunately, staying hidden is one thing at which elementals excelled.

  Fires raised the practice of concealment to an art form. While the rest of us lived on isolated islands and glaciers or deep in unmapped forests and deserts, they preferred to make like a Bond villain and live underneath a volcano.

  The Blais family compound had been built so long ago no one knew whether the elementals had built their homes into the volcanoes or the volcanoes had formed around their children. The entrances were concealed, and once inside there was no sign of common construction materials like plaster or brick. There definitely wasn�
��t any wood. Instead, the compound was a maze of curving tunnels. Some had been formed by the flow of magma, while others had been helped along by its inhabitants, but none were flat and orderly. Navigating the ups and downs of a single path would cover your thigh workout for the day.

  Some of the tunnels opened up into immense caverns. Others shrank until my head brushed the ceiling. A generous person would say the Blais family was average height. I preferred calling Sera a short-ass. Whatever the case, she was able to slide through the corridors as easily as I navigated the ocean. Mac, Luke, and I, on the other hand, kept bumping our heads and cursing.

  All the rooms had windows, but they didn’t reveal the world above us. They showed only rivers of lava running past. Sometimes it was thick and sluggish, and sometimes it flowed as easily as water. It all depended on the mood of the fire in the room and how much elemental blood they possessed. I had no idea what building material could possibly withstand that heat, but Josiah had built it. If Josiah needed to travel to a distant galaxy to obtain an indestructible glass, he’d have found a way.

  The place wasn’t just hot. The surface of Venus might be a relaxing vacation spot compared to most of the compound. Lava marbled the floors, living crimson lines decorating each room. Luke and I felt comfortable. Sera moved through the halls at an easy jog. Everyone else wondered if it would be rude to lie on the ground and die of heat exposure for a bit.

  At least Josiah hadn’t been the sort to avoid either technological advances or other elementals. The entire place was wired for electricity, which meant the guest quarters and meeting rooms were air-conditioned. When he was shown to his room, Simon headed straight for the shower to wash off the sweat he’d accumulated on the short walk to the guest wing.

  Vivian went for the high-speed internet connection.

  “Will you tell them we’re safe?” I said. “Miriam first.”

  Our otter friend hadn’t joined us. Someone needed to stay in Tahoe, and she’d put the need to protect shifters ahead of her desire to kick some elemental ass. I knew that couldn’t have been easy for her.

  “Oh, and tell her I can create an army of mini-mes now.”

  Vivian looked horrified. It was probably the correct response.

  The compound didn’t have enough guest suites for all the camp residents. The fires were moved to the family side, since they could handle the heat, and the stones were placed on the lowest basement level. The rest bunked four or five to a room while they made arrangements to return to their families—those who had families to which they could return. People they weren’t too ashamed to face.

  Sera and I wandered into a small library filled with old leather books while the others settled in. The two of us needed to debrief.

  “Have you spoken to her yet?” I asked, settling into a soft red armchair.

  Sera made a face and perched on the edge of the desk. “I’m waiting to have something to say that doesn’t involve screaming.”

  “That’s fair.”

  “She left me, Aidan. She left me for that thing, and she didn’t say goodbye. Not even a fucking note.”

  “That was awful. I don’t deny it.”

  Sera spoke faster, spilling all the words she’d been holding in for days. “And the way she acted on the island? That was cruel. There’s no other word for it, and I don’t want to hear some crap about protection. She could have come and talked to me. Warned me like a goddamn grownup. Even when Mac arranged our hour together, she kept repeating that I didn’t belong on the island, then she walked away. Again.”

  “Yeah, she screwed that up, too.”

  Sera heard what I didn’t say. “But?”

  “But you forgave me. You forgave me for everything.” I tried not to push too hard. With parents, we all had to find our own way.

  “That’s cause you’re you. You’re my sister, and you always have been. I don’t even know who that woman is.” Her voice rose on the final sentence. She hopped off the desk and began wearing a hole in the carpet.

  “You could ask her.”

  “I won’t do it,” Sera insisted.

  I leaned forward in the chair, bracing my elbows on my knees. “Yes, you will. Because even if she is a giant asshole, she’s your mother, and we both know that matters to you. You may never like her, but you won’t give up on her. It’s not your style.”

  “Maybe. Someday. In the distant future. Damn it. I hate when you make sense.” Sera flung herself into the armchair next to mine.

  “I always make sense. You struggle to understand.”

  The corners of Sera’s mouth quirked, but the humor didn’t last long. “Is this really it, Ade? It’s over?”

  I suspected I’d be answering that question a lot, and it would probably require many sane years before everyone believed it. “Yeah. I mean, the council’s still out there, and my mother’s in prison, but I’m okay. I really am. It may take a while for the effects of the drug to wear off, if they ever do, but I can live with that.”

  “Good.” There was a suspicious wetness in her eyes.

  I’d have given her hell if I wasn’t fighting the same ailment.

  “You know, even with my magic dulled by the drug, I’m still a gazillion times stronger than you, right?”

  “Just for that, I’m not sharing my inheritance with you. You weren’t in the will.”

  I did what any big sister would do. I flipped her off.

  “Blame the council,” Sera said. “They kept your secret so well no one knows you’re Josiah’s daughter. It would be too risky to give you anything now. Tell you what. It’ll be secretly half yours,” she told me. “But to keep the secret, I get the master suite. The yacht’s mine. I should have the private jet, just to be on the safe side. The Tahoe hotel, that’s definitely mine. You and Mac can bunk in the Airstream.”

  Nothing sounded better.

  Before I could go in search of him, Grams poked her head into the library. She beamed when she saw me. “I’ve been looking everywhere, dear. I break out of prison to rescue my own granddaughter and I don’t even get a hug?”

  I remedied that quickly. “How did you know I needed rescuing?”

  “It was a council facility run by council guards. Bored council guards who liked to talk.”

  I raised my eyebrows, uncertain I wanted to learn the methods she’d used to get that information. “And they were so bored of their duties they let you go?”

  “Psshh. It was barely a prison.” She waved off the idea of incarceration. “A locked door. Maybe two. And the guards were very handsome.” She arched her eyebrows.

  I definitely didn’t want to know what methods she’d used.

  “And my mother?”

  Grams’ smile dropped. “That, my dear, will require more work, but she is being treated well, as was I. She broke the law, and she is receiving her punishment. To harm her in any way beyond her incarceration would only break a different law. In this case, Deborah’s strict adherence to rules works in our favor. We’ll free her. I’m certain of it. If you discovered a cure, I do believe anything is possible.”

  “Why are you so sure I’m cured? Everyone else asks for confirmation.”

  “It’s obvious to any fool with eyes.” Grams shook her head at the others’ blindness. “Have you ever gazed through a streaked window into a lovely garden? The flowers are beautiful, but they are dull and flawed when seen through the streaks. That was you, and I didn’t even realize it. It’s like you’ve been washed clean, and now I see you as you truly are. You bloom, my dear.”

  Only Grams could compare me to a flower and get away with it. She got a second hug before she left.

  One person had been noticeably absent since we arrived at the compound. “Where is Mac staying?”

  Sera pointed in the general direction. “The last door on the right. It’s the room with the biggest bed, the thickest walls, and Barry White on the stereo.”

  I didn’t offer even a token protest. “Thanks. I mean, not the Barry White, but the
rest sounds pretty good.” I stood, stretching until my fingers brushed against the low ceiling.

  “He’s not there,” Sera said. “He went to the solarium a while ago.”

  She gave me directions I’d have no trouble following. This wasn’t my home, but I felt a kinship with its intricate maze of black and red corridors. The compound was the path I didn’t take, the life I didn’t get to live. Separate, but still part of me.

  “Keep in mind there are security cameras up there.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I wasn’t planning on ravishing him immediately.”

  When I tried to step past her, Sera blocked my way. “After you shower.” She wrinkled her nose in illustration.

  I headed to my room, grumbling about interfering little sisters.

  “Ade?” she called. “I’ll make sure the cameras are turned off.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Sera was right. I needed to rinse off not only the dirt, but the desperate days I’d spent under the cairn. I probably needed to wash off months of pain and fear, but that would take a while. For now, I started with a twenty-minute shower.

  Someone had left fresh clothes on the bed. I unfolded a knee-length pale blue sundress covered in a white hibiscus pattern, the kind found in tourist shops across the islands. It wasn’t the sort of thing I’d buy for myself, but it beat walking naked through the compound. I combed the tangles from my hair until the blond waves lay smooth against my back.

  I didn’t have the patience for anything else. As soon as I was dressed and presentable, I went in search of Mac. I kept a little dignity and didn’t run toward him. I walked very fast, however.

  The solarium was on the top floor. It had been built for visitors who didn’t adapt well to the underground lifestyle, though the fires used it when they desired a break from their day-to-day life as crazy mole people. Tucked into an area tourists rarely visited, the room was cleverly designed to feel, as much as possible, like the outside world. Concealed vents fed in fresh air, and the floor was made of living grass and ferns atop rich soil. Discreet sprinklers kept them healthy and green. A few rocks of various sizes were scattered on the ground.