Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series) (3 page)

I snorted at Sigil’s name. “Silly
ghost,” I muttered.

Dacer laughed. “I still need to
meet the ghost that would dare to cross you.”

I grinned. “So, you’ve never
tested it?”

Dacer looked aghast. “A lot of my
work with the masks is to keep the magic fresh and usable. This one obviously
did not need that. I don’t know whether Queen Ashray put some of her own powers
into it, so that its power comes ultimately from her, but it obviously doesn’t
need any help from me to thrive. It doesn’t need yours either, but I just
thought it would be best to have it in the possession of someone with whom it
would feel at home.”

I stared at the mask in wonder,
realizing that there was a very easy way for me to discover what it did. Acting
on that impulse, I started to put it on, and the brightening mask immediately
turned into a flame in my hands. Dacer cried out and lunged for it, yanking it
away from me before it could touch my skin.

I gasped and stumbled forward.

“What did you do that for?” I was
staring at him, my fingers warm from the touch of Queen Ashray’s legacy.

Dacer’s eyes were bright and a
little wild. White showed all the way around his pupils as he stared at me.

“Masks don’t react like that,” he
said, with a tone of exasperation. “Have I taught you nothing? Under no
circumstances are you to put this on unless it’s absolutely necessary.” He took
the mask back to the cloth he had wrapped it in and turned his back on me. I
felt the loss of it from my vision keenly, but I tried to ignore the feeling as
I straightened my shoulders and glared at my professor.

“So, if I’m in trouble you just
want me to use a mask whose properties I know nothing about, and hope
everything goes okay? Really, Dacer, that doesn’t sound like the best plan.”

Dacer shrugged his broad
shoulders, once again looking as cool and collected as ever. I had wondered all
summer how it was that the vampire never sweated, even though it was hot in
Harring, sometimes swelteringly so. While I had spent a lot of time changing my
shirt and wiping my brow, Dacer never perspired, not one drop. He said it had
something to do with his vampire constitution, but I didn’t believe him.

“Yes,” said Dacer, nodding as he
handed the bundle back to me. “That’s exactly what I want.”

I hesitated for a split second,
then closed my fingers around the bundle, my eyes never leaving Dacer. “That’s
risky,” I murmured.

He nodded. “Maybe you’ve lost
trust in many elementals. I can see how you would have after the revelations
about your mother’s death.”

“Murder,” I corrected, setting my
jaw.

Dacer gave a slight shake of his
head, but he didn’t argue. “Fine, her murder, but you must always trust Queen
Ashray. She is above reproach.”

I looked at the mask in my hand,
now safely bundled out of view, then back at Dacer. “I’m just not sure I can,”
I said honestly, my voice low. “Every time I think I can be loyal to a
paranormal, or a group of paranormals, I end up disappointed.”

Dacer’s eyes were sad as he
looked at me, and his shoulders drooped slightly.

“I hope that is not always the
case,” he said softly. “For all our sakes.” He lifted his arms slightly, as if
he wanted to give me a hug, but then he appeared to think better of it.

I ignored the gesture and turned
away, sighing. “I do too. I do too.”

Instead of going straight back to
Public, we were scheduled to stop at President Caid’s house on the way. The
president was a short but imposing man with a warm smile and eyes that lit up
when they looked at you, but his expression was very hard to read.

When he had snuck into Astra to
visit me last semester, during that awful time when we were under the charge of
Ms. Vale, I could see immediately why he was so beloved among the paranormals.
When he walked into a room the atmosphere changed, because it felt like he was
there just to pay attention to you alone.

He was old friends with Dacer.
Other than acknowledging that friendship, Dacer had had barely ever mentioned
any of his friends, and I had never heard a word about his family. Being at
close quarters with him over the summer had made it even clearer to me just how
little I knew of my mentor. Sometimes he would disappear for hours down the
winding dirt trails that led into the leafy green woods, taking his Contact
Stone with him, but I had no idea who he might be calling.

President Caid was on a short
end-of-summer holiday before he returned to work, and since Dacer had been
issued a standing invitation to visit, he said he thought a little stay at a
summer house by a lake, in the company of other paranormals, would be a vast
improvement over the summer of judgment, as he called it, that he had just
experienced in Harring.

“I can wear water lilies in my
shirt to my heart’s content. Really, who hasn’t heard of such a thing?” he
muttered several times as we drove away from Harring.

“Or daisies,” I added helpfully.

We could have waited until
evening and tried to fly to Caid’s, especially since Dacer, as a vampire, was
remarkably good at floating, and Lisabelle had made a half-hearted attempt to
teach me how to use a broom. But with all our (i.e. Dacer’s) luggage, it really
didn’t make any sense.

“President Caid was very taken
with Ms. Lisabelle and Ms. Sip,” said Dacer when we were getting very close to
the lake, “so they’ll be joining us.” He chuckled when I perked up. I had
written letters to my friends all summer, but with Lisabelle on the coast of
Maine practicing advanced darkness techniques and Sip interning at the Museum
of Unnatural History in L.A. (come on, where else would you build such a
thing!), I hadn’t seen either of my friends in months.

Lisabelle had checked on Ricky
once, but when we found out Cale was there she stopped making the trip. From
the coast of Maine to Ricky was several hours of flying time, and she was
pre-occupied with her magic.

I also hadn’t seen Ricky except
for my midnight visit, and I wasn’t sure when I would get to. He had been
furious when I told him I didn’t have time to come home. He had accused me of
all sorts of things that had stung my heart, saying I was a bad sister and
didn’t love him and that I’d rather be spending time with my boyfriend than my
brother. I had tried to tell him that none of those things was true, but he
just didn’t buy that I was working all summer on some boring-sounding project
like researching the migration habits of birds in the northern Vermont
woodland.

The real truth was that I
couldn’t face him. All these years since Mom died I had vowed vengeance; I had
promised redemption against those who had taken her from Ricky and me. But I
had always had these evil shadows in mind, these horrible harbingers of doom
who did not know right from wrong. Instead I’d been told that it was my own
kind, those who should have protected and cared for her, who had senselessly
murdered her.

Ricky would see the truth of it
in my eyes, I was sure of it. He had always been the more perceptive of the two
of us, and I was sure he would see my fury and pain. He would ask me what was
wrong and I would break down in tears, and I couldn’t stand the thought of
doing that. I didn’t want Ricky to carry the burden too. He was young. He
should enjoy himself for a little while longer before the darkness closed
around him as it had closed around me. I had always thought I’d be able to
protect him from it, but now I was sure that that’s what Mom had been doing
when she took us to live among humans with my stepfather . And look how badly
that had failed her.

I closed my mind and tried to
stop the thoughts from tumbling one on top of the other. I just hoped Ricky
could forgive me, even if I didn’t think I could ever forgive myself.

“We’re almost there,” said Dacer,
breaking me out of my reverie. I had felt the car bump when we left the
pavement and headed down a dirt road. This wasn’t surprising, since most of the
lakes in the area had summer houses around them that were accessed by dirt
roads, but it was still a jolt for a moment.

I looked around. Surrounded by
trees, I could have been anywhere. It reminded me a lot of Public, except that
here I didn’t feel like the trees were reaching out and trying to maim me. We
passed several houses, each more secluded than the last. They weren’t grand,
but I could see that the owners would want privacy. President Caid’s was the
last house on the road, which continued to a short dead end after that. I
imagined that Caid’s bodyguards had fits every time a car drove too far down
the road, looking for a house they had accidentally already passed.

Up ahead I could see a two-story
house, not very large, painted a light green, with white shutters and all the
windows blazing with light. There were several black cars parked out front.

Before our car had even stopped,
a stream of paranormals came around the house. They must have been sitting
outside, enjoying the late summer evening.

I didn’t recognize the first
couple of people who came up to the car, but they looked like bodyguards. They
were dressed plainly, all in black. I had heard vampires predominated at the
Police Academy, with the odd pixie or Airlee or fallen angel thrown in.
Obviously, when you thought of violent tendencies, vampires were at the top of
the list because of their darkness, and although it required many other
attributes to make a good bodyguard, a willingness to do violence was certainly
required.

I felt an overwhelming sense of
happiness when I saw my friends come around the corner, not just Sip and
Lisabelle, but Lough too. Lough was grinning from ear to ear, his cheeks a
familiar flaming red. I wasn’t sure if it was from the warm weather or
happiness, and I didn’t care. Dacer’s car had barely rolled to a stop on the
gravel driveway when I flung the door open so hard it nearly bounced back and
slammed into my leg. Ignoring Dacer’s cautions, I jumped out and ran to my
friends.

Laughing, I reached them and
flung my arms around Sip. Lough came to hug both of us, while Lisabelle stood
to the side. As usual, she was more reserved.

“How’s it going?” Sip murmured
into my ear. “The summer has felt so long without you around!”

My smile widened as I took in
Sip’s unique scent. There was always a hint of the animal about her, as if she
had just changed from werewolf. There was also at the moment the smell of wood
smoke and a hint of lavender. Because of her own purple eyes, Sip liked
everything purple almost as much as she liked everything neon and tea and
orderly.

From the corner of my eye I could
tell that Lough looked a little bigger than when I’d seen him last. He wasn’t
taller, we had all probably finished getting taller, much to Sip’s dismay, but
he was wider and stronger.

We’re all growing up, I thought,
with only a hint of sadness. I didn’t feel like I was any more mature than when
I had started at Public, but I certainly might have been a bit angrier.

“Welcome,” said a voice behind
me. Even though I had only met the president of the paranormals once, I
recognized his voice and pulled away from my friends to greet him. Lisabelle
was still standing with her arms crossed over her chest, watching us and not
saying much.

“Thank you,” I said, as Dacer
walked up behind me. He had taken the time to park the car before getting out
of it, unlike me in my mad rush to see my friends. Now he walked up to us in a
leisurely manner as I tried to get my bearings.

“Dacer, my old friend, good to
see you,” said Caid. His voice was unassuming but thick and strong. He
commanded attention when he used it.

Dacer walked quickly toward his
old friend and wrapped him in an enveloping hug. Dacer never hugged me. Despite
our close relationship, he never broke the professor/student barrier. I sighed;
after this summer I was beginning to see him more as a father figure than as a
professor, and with only two years left to go at Public I knew he would be in
my life forever . . . however long forever lasted.

“Is this place safe?” Dacer
asked, pulling away from Caid and looking around at the tall trees and the
lake, which was just visible, glimmering through the branches.

Caid chuckled. He had a great
belly laugh that shook his whole body. “No demons in this area, although there
may well be the same ancient paranormals that go bump in the night as there
have always been.” By the way his eyes twinkled as he looked at Dacer, I could
tell that he was teasing the Paranormal Public professor and enjoying every
minute of it.

Dacer didn’t take the bait, he
just rolled his eyes and smiled. “You can never be too careful; that’s the
motto Ms. Rollins and I adopted this summer.” I gave a small start when he
referenced me, in part because it was strange to hear him use my last name. All
summer he had just called me Charlotte. With a jolt that Sip could feel,
because she still had her arms wrapped tightly around my stomach, I realized
that I didn’t even know Dacer’s first name.

Sip raised her eyebrows at me,
but I just shook my head.

“Come on,” said Lough. “Can we
get back to the fire? I have a marshmallow cooking.”