Dark Waters (Elemental Book 1) (5 page)

I wouldn’t panic. Nothing ever came from panicking.
This was a school; someone had to find me eventually. Maybe after I was dead,
but someone would
eventually
find me… unless I got eaten.

Shit. Five thousand a week isn’t enough.

Then I smelled something odd, which I instantly
recognized as seaweed. It wasn’t a bad scent, just unexpected, so I followed it
to one of the side doors. I opened it and found an office. The fragrance of
seaweed was gone and although I saw nobody in the room, I heard something.

This was what I thought an alchemist’s study would
look like. Every inch of every wall was taken up by bookshelves, which
contained not only thick volumes of heavy, old books, but also beakers, vials,
and cases. There were three solid tables, all piled high with similar items. In
one table was a built-in sink. It looked like a mad scientist’s secret lair.

The noise I heard was made by a small glass ball,
only about six inches wide, filled with what appeared to be dirt, ash, and
herbs. That in itself wouldn’t have caused me to look twice at it, except the
damn thing was rolling around on the ground in a perfect circle with a diameter
of about five feet.

After a few minutes of gawking at it, my instincts
told me to stop it. Cautiously, as if it would explode, I reached out my foot
and stepped lightly on it, forcing it to halt. In that instant, a man appeared
in front of me, which startled me into stepping back. The ball resumed its path
and the man vanished.

I circled around it, looking for mirrors or strings,
but never stepped inside the ring.
This is what I get for dealing with
magic.
I stopped the ball with my foot again, and again, the man appeared.

“Please don’t let it go!” the man rushed to say. He
had a slight German accent.

He was a scruffy looking man; six-foot, thin, ginger,
with too much facial hair. His hair was unkempt, but his facial hair was
somewhere between, “haven’t been out of the house for a month,” and “lost in
the forest for who knows how long.” He wore a robe, like the other teachers,
but his was steel-gray and thicker. Beneath it, he had on a black sweater and
pants.

“Where did you just appear from?”

“I’ve been right here since I was trapped. I don’t
know when, I don’t know by who. Please, just don’t let it go.”

“I have class in less than five minutes and I can’t
show up kicking a ball around.”

He breathed heavily with desperation. “Pick it up and
set it somewhere.”

Although I had absolutely no reason to trust him, I
picked up the sphere. It was very light. When I set it in the sink so that it
couldn’t roll out, the man rushed forward and hugged me. I tried not to gag at
the cloud of odor around him that was a strange mixture of cat and vinegar.
Once he let me go, he dashed around the room and fussed over the clutter. He
wasn’t cleaning anything; he would just pick something up and set it back down.

“How long have you been trapped in here?”

“Oh… um… what day is it?”

“September first.”

“Then… three days.”

“September first, 2014.”

“Oh… then more than three days.”

“Do you need me to call someone for you? A therapist
maybe?” He wasn’t listening anymore, so I opened the door to leave.

I was now in a crowded hall. I closed the door
cautiously behind me, pulled the map out of my bag, and asked the nearest
student where we were. “Right here,” he said, pointing out a hallway very close
to my next class. I looked behind me…

The door was gone.

*          *          *

I checked my watch and rolled my eyes.
History of
North American Magic
was a two-hour class and forty-five minutes into it,
there was no teacher in sight. Unlike in my last class, I had thirty-seven
classmates, all of who made idle chitchat, drew, or read to pass the time. I
was growing increasingly impatient, as it irritated me when people were not
where they said they would be when they said they would be there. Furthermore,
I was not here to attend classes but to do my job.

Just as I stood to leave, April Nightshade entered.
“Why are you late?” I asked as she went to the front of the room. Whereas the
other professors all wore dress clothes under their wizard robes, she had on a
bright blue button-up blouse over a black leather, pleated skirt. 

“To see who would put up with it.” She looked around
the room in obvious disbelief of having any students left.

“You were going to flunk anyone who left?” one
student asked.

“No. I was going to flunk anyone who stuck around,
but since you all stayed, I’ll have to settle for calling you all morons.”

Class dragged on slowly. Professor Nightshade
reluctantly explained every detail of the syllabus and what we would need for
class. Our required textbook was written in a foreign language and in her
words, ridiculously boring, so she said not to get it. When it was finally
over, most of my classmates looked as drained as I felt.

At dusk, I made my way to the lake, because I knew
Remington wasn’t going to give me a break. I could see the scowl on her face
from the castle. She was still beautiful, even seething, which made no sense to
me. If a woman’s scowl was meant to display her displeasure, it should have
made her hideous enough to scare any man away.

At least Regina’s scowl could. Of course, Regina’s
smile
would scare any sane man away. Not me, though; I married her.

“Are you always late?” Remington asked.

I looked pointedly at the sun peeking over the
horizon. “Define ‘dusk’ for me.”

“You realize I can flunk you, right?”

“I do.”

“What is your job, Devon Sanders? I have not seen a
single sign of any kind of talent out of you that would have called for my
father letting you in this school.”

“I guess I’m just lucky. Speaking of your father, I
need to know where his office is.”

“It doesn’t matter where his office is; you will find
him if he wants you to find him. Now, you will spend every spare moment of your
time outside of class to study the correspondence of water. I will check the
libraries randomly and I had better see you there. We will meet back here this
time next week.”

*          *          *

I made it to the dining room just in time to grab a
tray of food before they shut down for the night. The only students left were
four young women who were studying over their food. I ate quickly and put up my
tray.

Work was my job; I did it because I was good at it
and I was paid well. Being an investigator wasn’t my life, but I really didn’t
have a life outside of work. After divorcing Regina, I had little choice but to
cut out everyone as well as most of my preferred hangout spots. My close
friends had all been chased away by Regina when I married her and all I had
left were “our” friends, who demanded I forgive her for cheating on me.

Even if the magic was fascinating and the teachers
were insane, I had a job to do. I wandered the halls and concentrated on
finding Hunt.
Really? I’m hunting for Hunt.
Distracted by the
interesting structure of the building, I almost missed the soft sound of
talking. I opened the heavy door to my right and found myself in an office.

I called it an office because there was a large desk
with a few chairs and a black leather couch. To the right of the desk was a
huge fireplace. Across from the fireplace were two bookshelves that were split
by a doorway. This was where the sound was coming from, so I went to the
doorway.

It was a smaller, private library, with wall-to-wall,
floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a single table in the center. Logan Hunt stood
at the table, facing away from me, and was talking into a large iron bowl. He
wasn’t speaking English, but exactly what it was or what he said, I had no
idea. After a moment, the headmaster stopped his foreign speech and set the
bowl down.

“Come on in, Devon,” he said, not looking at me. He
waved his hand slowly over the bowl and the contents were engulfed in a strange
blue fire.

Even without consulting my
Deciphering Creepy
Wizard Magic for Dummies
handbook, I knew blue fire wasn’t a good thing.
Maybe
he is just burning ethanol.

With a gesture of one arm, he indicated the books
surrounding us. “What do you think of my little collection?”

I took a moment to study the books as he left the room.
Next to massive volumes of physics and mathematics were occult classics and
ancient, leather bound grimoires. He was gone only a couple of minutes before
returning with a decanter and two glasses on a tray. The stuff he poured into
my glass was quite close to scotch, but wasn’t; though it was strong and good.

“You have alcohol on school premises, Headmaster
Hunt?”

“This is a university, not a preschool. Any books you
recognize?”

“Only a few names. It’s a bibliophile’s dream,” I
said. “Quite a range of topics, too; works on mathematics and physics next to a
book on how to hex your enemies with a dead chicken. With a little bit of
everything else in between.”

“Ah. Then you put your faith in the arms of science,
not in the arts of magic?”

“Of course. I mean, I’ve picked up enough about
religion and magic to be able to appreciate the philosophical and psychological
meaning behind it, but physical reality relates to what is physically real.
That’s where science comes in.”

The headmaster smiled. “The difference between the
objective and the subjective? Which is reality?”

He sat his half empty glass aside. Not on anything.
Just aside. In the air. About four inches above the surface of the table. Four
inches. Above.

“Eef!” I said, setting my glass down carefully on the
table.

“Simple,” he said. “Reality is objective, but the way
we perceive it is subjective.”

I made a sort of choking sound. After an entire day
of seeing everyone around me do magic, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but
this felt more real. I thought I understood and accepted the paranormal world.
This was different. This wasn’t a game.

“No, not a trick. A certain flexibility in reality,
if you will. A compromise between the objective and the subjective. Now, to
business. The records of our students and faculty are entirely confidential.
From the time we hear of their names to the time they leave our school, their
association with the school is absolutely private. Not even the wizard council
knows who our students are.”

“How big is the wizard council?” I asked.

He understood what I meant. “Unfortunately, they have
the final say in every matter in this country when it comes to us. If a wizard
comes into his power unknowingly and threatens our secrecy, the council hears
about it and kills him. My schools are my attempt to get to them first. The
child of a wizard is likely going to be one, so if I can keep tabs on my
students after their graduation, I can watch for those children who end up in
dire situations.”

“And you let other paranormals in to promote harmony
between the different races? I get that. Why am I here?”

He picked up a yellow folder from the table and I did
a double take. The bowl was gone and the folder was in its place. “These are
police reports and school records of five people,” he said, handing it to me.
“Four of them were wizards and one was fae.”

I opened the folder to find the death reports, along
with pictures, of two women and three men. All of them had twin punctures in
their throats. All of them were drained of blood. All of them were found in
their own homes.

My instincts pushed at me. I had seen this before.

“All five people were on our list of expected top ten
graduating students this semester. All had perfect scores, loving families, and
incredibly promising futures.”

“Time of deaths?” I asked. When he didn’t immediately
answer, I looked up at him. He looked so regretful, as if this was his own
fault. I knew the type. He was headmaster and mysterious as any wizard could
be, but he thought of his students as his children.

“All within a week from today.”

“The fang marks and lack of blood makes this look
like a classic vampire attack.”

“I do not believe vampires have gotten in here. It is
possible that vampires have somehow convinced, or enchanted, one of the
teachers to steal records.”

“Why are you sure vampires weren’t in here?”

“I am not, but I have never met a vampire who knew
his way around a cell phone, let alone any modern type of monitoring device.”
He pulled something from his robe pocket and handed it to me. The three little
black tags, each no larger than a shirt button, were audio bugs. Someone who
could use electronics had tried to wire the headmaster’s office.

“Are you sure these are dead?”

“Yes. Even if there are others, I have destroyed them
all with a simple burst of energy.”

“Okay, so vampires probably didn’t do this, but
they’re definitely involved. I don’t do cases involving vampires.”

“Apparently, you do.” I said nothing, so he went on.
“John Cross hired you to find his daughter, who was killed by vampires.”

“That’s why I’m in this whole mess in the first
place. How did you even find out about him? People come to me for my
discretion.”

“When it comes to humans, yes. However, the
paranormal community, including the wizard council, is starting to come to know
you better than you would like. John Cross is a highly respected member of the
wizard council. He is also a major advocate of war between wizards and
vampires.”

“Then I can see why his daughter was killed. I can’t
see why I was involved.”

“Unfortunately, I do not know that myself. I want to
avoid war between anyone, so I chose not to take this case to the wizard
council. For the sake of my students, I cannot afford to go after this opponent
myself without more information, either. Therefore, I went to one of my very
old friends.