Elemental Havoc (Paranormal Public Book 11) (17 page)

As the end of the semester neared, my routine was down to a science, varied only by the occasional middle of the night attack when I found out things like my relationship to the elemental essence.

For a good while we heard no news about Dobrov, or artifacts, or Public closing, and that period of calm made me feel better than I had in a while. In that calmer state of mind, I headed one evening in early December to one of the last student group meetings before finals.

Somehow, Fallgrabber had been convinced not to expel the entire student body for insubordination and behavior not befitting a paranormal, we were still having our gatherings.

Professor Penny was still our group leader, and Keegan still hated his guts. He was a worse professor than he was a group leader, mostly because as a teacher it seemed like he should teach, while as a group leader it seemed more normal that he doze off for an hour while the rest of us worked.

I walked into the meeting a few minutes late. I hadn’t hurried, because these groups were yet another thing that I rather thought had failed this semester. First, we all hated each other. I mean, I didn’t hate the students in my group, but the rest did. The pixies glared at the vampires, while the fallen angels sat around looking bored. Greek Harrison tried stoutly to get us to perform tasks together, but with all the mayhem of the semester not even that had happened.

We mostly met to discuss homework, but in the end even that always turned into a conversation about current events, or a fight.

I walked in that evening just as someone was saying, “If we keep misbehaving, President Valedication will be fired.”

“So?” one of the vampires demanded. “He’s a hybrid. He didn’t deserve the post in the first place. Besides, his sister was a crazy murderer. He’ll probably turn out to be one as well. Good riddance to him. We’ll be lucky if he’s not back next semester.”

“Actually, if we’re lucky Public won’t even be open next semester,” said another voice that I recognized as Wanda’s. “Maybe the Hunters will get the objects on the Counter Wheel and solve the problem that way. That’d be nice.”

I’d had enough. The talk didn’t even stop when I walked in, despite the fact that everyone knew who my sister was and that she was best friends with Sip Quest.

“How dare you all sit here and hope that what we’re spending our lives on fails?” I demanded. “Paranormals’ lives are at risk!”

“Not yours, though,” muttered one of the pixies.

“Oh, no?” I rounded on that sullen group. “What about the other night in Astra? What about Professor Fussfus?”

“You should stop protecting Public! The types don’t get along and the sooner you accept it the sooner we can all move on and watch the pixies rise,” Hannah smirked, while her cronies Fog and Frances smiled and nodded approvingly. They were like pixie valley girls or something.

“If you hate Public so much, why don’t you just leave?” I demanded. I knew that wasn’t the best solution; it would lessen the chances of ever getting the types to work together. But at the moment I felt as if the pixies were hopeless, and the rest of the types might do better without them.

“And miss all the fun?” Hannah cut in. “I don’t think so.”

“What fun?” I said. But before I could go any further, I felt a hand pressing on my shoulder. It was Keegan, of course, urging me to sit down, and as his touch brought me out of my urgency, I realized that the entire group was looking at me like I was crazy. But hey, I thought, at least the fallen angels had looked up from playing with their nails for once.

“Forget it,” said Keegan. “At the start of the semester it wasn’t worth it and it’s still not worth it now.”

I glared at the pixies for another second, then turned to the vampires. “And that goes for you guys too! You should be ashamed of yourselves, just sitting there while Queen Lanca works so hard to restore to paranormals the chance to live ordinary daily lives.”

Some of the vampires shifted, and one particularly large one, Matthew, who might have been bigger than Rake and who I was pretty sure hadn’t spoken all semester, leaned forward on his arms and said, “Quiet down, little elemental. You don’t want to make us angry.”

My eyes flickered to Averett as I sank heavily into my seat. It might have been my imagination, but I thought her eyes might have been shining a little.

“Now that Astra’s been attacked and so has a visiting professor, it’s only a matter of time,” said Hannah. “Dobrov’s days as president are coming to an end. Yelling about it isn’t going to change anything and neither is this Counter Wheel.”

“I don’t even believe that’s real,” said Greek Harrison, surprising me. Not because he had spoken out, but because he even seemed to know what the Counter Wheel was.

“Of course it’s real,” said good old Eighellie, who never missed a chance to argue. “If it weren’t real, why would the Hunters be after it?”

“Maybe they aren’t,” said Greek, shrugging. “I think it’s a whole lot of nonsense, all this stuff about ultimate power. We have to work hard, study, and get good grades, and then we’ll be fine.”

“You might be fine, but I promise you that even if you didn’t bother to study at all, you’d still be fine because you’re pretty,” sighed Wanda. Her friend kicked her in the shin and Wanda yelped.

“The fact of the matter is, none of this matters. Dobrov will fail whether he gets fired or not. It’s only a matter of time,” said Hannah.

It wasn’t until later that I realized that she had called him by his first name.

Excitement coursed through me. After a semester of feeling useless and frustrated, I might finally be able to help. Maybe Dobrov would even get to stay. He wouldn’t get blamed for the missing TPs that were causing havoc or for anything else that had happened. The objects at Public would be safe. I wasn’t sure what compelled me so strongly to want to help the hybrid, I just knew that I did.

If Paranormal Public closed, my sister would be devastated and there would be a whole lot of paranormals with nowhere else to go.

By that time, Public wasn’t as scary as it had been at first, even at night. The grounds at night were cold and still, but there were no vampires in sight. I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing, especially if Fallgrabber was prowling around, but I didn’t care. I had seen a burning in the distance, and when my fire power flared, I decided it would be better to know what was going on than to sit in the dark wondering. Besides, my power was all about fire, and no one else on campus could say that. If I could help keep Public open, I would.

Without giving it a second thought, I crept out of Astra as quietly as I could so as not to wake Keegan and Eighellie. Keegan had kept the same bedroom next to mine, the one he had been using before the attack, but Eighellie was making a point of trying every bedroom in the dorm, just because. Keegan didn’t like it, because, as he said, he would have liked to keep one eye on the darkness mage at all times, and if she was always moving around he didn’t necessarily know where she was on any given night.

Little did I realize that I was about to find out exactly why his worries were justified.

As I walked through the night, the first concrete tip I had that something was wrong was the smell of smoke. Not surprisingly, it was coming down the breeze from the direction where I thought I’d seen burning in the distance. Quickly, I started to run. At first I headed away from the center of campus, toward where I had seen the brightness from my dorm window. But then I realized that fire was flaring up in all directions. I skidded to a halt in front of the dining hall, but by then a ring of fire had encircled the whole inner campus. The grass was burning, and the flames, coming as if out of nowhere, were as tall as I was.

Another “prank,” only this time there was no one awake to see it but me.

The worst thing about the situation was that because it was fire, I let my guard down. I was so preoccupied with what I thought of as my own element that I stopped paying attention to the rest of my surroundings.

I paid for the inattention when something as hard as a rock slammed into my back, making me stumble forward. If I had just been hit once I could have kept my balance, but a second sharp attack followed the first, something that felt like a boot slamming into my back, and I felt myself falling forward and splattering on the ground. There wasn’t even time to get my hands out to break my fall.

Quickly I rolled, then rolled again. I tried to get a look at my attackers, but they had already moved. I was starting to get the feeling that all paranormals but me were exceptionally fast, which seemed a little strange. I rolled again and felt something pushing at my shoulders, so I gathered my wits and quickly called to my power. Power blazed around me, even without my ring. I didn’t have time to wonder how I had known to call or what was happening.

“That’s new,” I muttered, feeling relieved that my magic was protecting me.

“Get him! He’s getting away,” a voice called out. It was muffled, as if the speaker had tied a cloth over his mouth, or maybe it was her mouth; the voice was so altered I couldn’t even tell. I glanced around and saw four dark shapes, all wearing black robes and hoods, trying to box me in. Three of the shapes were tall and bulky, while one was smaller. I almost laughed. This must be the four Burble siblings again. If only they had better disguises. Then again, their disguises were at least good enough so that I couldn’t tell which one of them had kicked me.

“Did you start the fire?” one of them cried, pointing to the field burning all around us.

“Um, no,” I said. “Did you?” My mind raced. They thought I had done it, which implied that they hadn’t. That was bad. Whenever anything went wrong on campus, I wanted the option of blaming the Burble siblings.

“Don’t ask me questions,” the figure snapped.

“This is Ricky Rollins,” said another, as if that’s all he needed to say. “No one has told him that just because he’s an elemental, he doesn’t automatically get to run around doing whatever he wants all the time.”

“Someone should tell him it’s the time of the Hunter now,” said another voice. “Someone should also tell that friend of his, Lisabelle Verlans.”

“We know who he is,” said a third voice testily, clearly that of a female.

“I’ll ask questions if I want to,” I sputtered. “You can’t just attack a student.”

“Sure we can. Done it before, haven’t we? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are TPs missing, and no one knows what happened to them. There are no vampires in sight. We can do whatever we want, like question you for starting that fire.” She pointed an imperious hand at the flames.

“Just for the record,” I said, “you don’t know anything about being an elemental. Besides, if I had started the fire, why would I stick around and examine my handiwork? Just so I can run into you fine folks?” I couldn’t help it. I went to sarcasm when I was angry, and my back was throbbing. I’d have to ask a fallen angel for help, which would be difficult. For the most part they were pretty determined to stay away from me, given the general fallen angel disapproval of Keller’s life choices, and my connection to them.

“Put that shield down like a real paranormal,” said the biggest of the three brothers. “Then we can talk about who did and did not start that fire.”

“Oh, do real paranormals attack each other from behind and without warning?” I said.

“It’s not our fault you weren’t paying attention. I expected better from someone who has spent so much time with darkness,” said the girl.

I took a deep breath. There was obviously no reasoning with them. What was more, I had to get out of there.

It was also plenty clear that the four siblings hadn’t learned anything from that night at Astra.

“Whatever,” I said, and dropped my shield, at the same moment tackling one of the big ones. The other two cried out, but I had restored my shield so quickly that they couldn’t get through it. The fourth sibling circled the edge, keeping an eye out, or maybe trying to keep me from running if I tried to get away.

“Tell your friend Lisabelle to stop getting in the way of the Hunters,” said the Burble girl. “It’s the only way she’ll survive.”

“Lisabelle has a very specific description of her friends,” I gritted out, even as my airway was cutoff by a large arm being wrapped around my neck. The fourth sibling had come at me from behind. “It’s blond, short,” cough, “purple eyes.” Then I saw spots before my eyes as the dark shadows blended and rubbed together in front of me. Somehow, one of the attackers had gotten through my shield from behind.

So much for helping with anything. As I lost consciousness I heard yelling that sounded a lot like Fallgrabber, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe he had his clipboard with him and would write up the Burble siblings.

Paranormal Police have arrested a member believed to be high in the Hunter organization. Many groups want to question him, including the reporters.

Groggily, I opened my eyes.

For as far as I could see, the mountains punched upward into a golden sky, gray and green with flecks of black rock. Drifting clouds formed a ring around the highest rocks, shining against the stunning yellow backdrop.

I was lying in a bed, looking through a picture window at a view that stretched for miles. Where in the paranormal world was I, I wondered, and what had happened? Gingerly I touched my neck, but it felt fine. The room I was in was spacious, furnished in pine with bright decorations scattered here and there. My bed was also huge, but instead of continuing the theme of bright colors, the coverlet was simple and white.

I had a passing thought that maybe, just maybe, if I closed my eyes again I’d wake up in my room at Astra. But I was pretty sure I was already awake, so I told myself to get serious about figuring out where I was and what had happened.

Just then I became aware of a big white cat with purple eyes sitting calmly on a table in the middle of the room.

Ah, I thought: he looked familiar. Well, he looked like Bartholem, Lisabelle Verlans’s cat. But that didn’t make any sense, because if Lisabelle owned a house like this . . . well, she wouldn’t own a house like this.

I looked down. I was still wearing the same clothes I’d had on when I had gone to see what the burning was, and had been attacked. It was the same jeans and the same long-sleeved shirt, but the weird thing was that they were clean. Given the scuffle I’d had, they shouldn’t have been clean.

Thoroughly confused but feeling better for seeing Bartholem, I threw off the covers and climbed out of bed. Feeling my back, neck, and head for injuries, I didn’t find the painful spots I would have expected after the blows I had received.

Bartholem jumped off the table and trotted toward the door. The fact that he didn’t look back made me take heart; it meant that he didn’t assume I was a total dunce. I knew, and he knew I knew, to follow the cat.

The house was modest and very tidy. The floors were of beautiful old oak, and everything was clean and organized. In what seemed to be the living room hung a large splatter painting, all in neon colors. I was getting less confused by the minute, but I was still massively confused. Orders of magnitude of confusion, I supposed.

Bartholem led me through the kitchen, where a small wooden table by the window held a generous fruit basket. I was so busy looking around the kitchen that it took me a split second too long to realize that the big white body had stopped moving. Bartholem gave me a look that was almost a glare before I realized that I was supposed to open the screen door he was now sitting in front of.

“Sorry, took me a second to catch on,” I muttered, as if he could understand me. I opened the door and quickly followed him through it. I wondered what he’d think of Dacer’s pack of dogs.

The cat was leading me into an extensive and stunningly beautiful garden. The path was paved with pebbles and lined with wooden edges that had been set deeply into the ground. I could hear a brook giggling as it danced around a bed of rocks. The pebbles under my feet were gray and smooth, looking as if they had been brought from the ocean.

“How far does this thing go?” I muttered. I had lost track of the mountains I had seen from my window, because many of the plantings reached my eye level. There were flowers everywhere, mostly bright pinks and yellows and blues with a few whites, purples, and reds thrown in here and there. I had never seen anything more beautiful.

Quickly I hurried after the cat, who had gotten ahead of me again.

“I hear someone coming,” said a familiar voice. My feet had crunched on the gravel, and I hadn’t tried to quiet the sound. I came around a turn in the path, and there sat Sip at an iron table as if in the middle of an oasis. Across from her was Lisabelle. Unlike Sip, Lisabelle did not have a cup of tea or a collection of papers strewn in front of her. In fact, she looked as if she had just sat down and was about to run off again at any moment. Bartholem hopped on her lap, and she seemed to quiet a little. The table was on a tiny island surrounded by water so clear that I only knew it was there because a small breeze was rippling its surface.

“This is the life,” said Sip, coming out of a reverie. She looked different. Squinting, I realized that the difference from my usual experience of her was that she looked like she was happy and relaxed. That was most definitely not how she looked when she was acting in her official capacity as president of the paranormals. It was as if she was now staying at some fancy spa for women, and that made everything different. When she was working, she was serious. The office made a weight on her shoulders that changed the way she walked and the way she moved, and she didn’t move through her official day easily. That was all gone now. She nearly floated, sort of like a vampire, only not all creepy and depressing. The werewolf seemed as though she was practically skipping, even though she was actually sitting down. She wore a long flowing belted jacket over her robe. And of course, she tended to her own tea trey.

“You’ll know I have a problem when I think someone else should be carrying my tea tray,” she said.

“I’ll just think you’ve finally come to your senses and realized that tea isn’t that important,” said Lisabelle.

I blinked several times, as if blinking would change what I saw when I looked again.

But it didn’t. Sip stood up, eyeing me. I did a quick mental check of myself, but I felt fine. I suppose that shouldn’t have surprised me either. If I was with Sip and Lisabelle, I was being well taken care of.

We were alone in paradise, and I felt lighter than I had at any time since I had arrived at Paranormal Public and everything started to go wrong.

In what I thought was a very sweet gesture, Bartholem jumped down from Lisabelle’s lap, curled around my legs, and trotted off.

“What?” I muttered. “Where am I? Is this a dream? Is it created by a very good dream giver?” Not to put too fine a point on it, but I never dreamed about Sip and Lisabelle. That would have been just weird.

The notion that it was a dream was far-fetched anyhow. Though there were very few dream givers, their magic was strictly regulated. Still, if Lough – Sip, Lisabelle, and Charlotte’s dream giver friend – had wanted, he could have caused rather a lot of trouble. There would always be consequences for using your powers against other paranormals, but I was sure he would have loved to do something to Trafton. Except that since Trafton was also a dream giver, and a very capable one, Lough would have had a hard time beating him at his own game.

Sip frowned at me. “No, this is real life. Don’t be silly. You’re fine. I mean, barely, you nearly died, but we got you here in time. That fire was just a lot of nonsense. Keller spent the night, but he had to get back right away in the morning. He’s been saving you a lot recently, though. Too much. I’m pretty sure Charlotte’s going to kill him. Slowly. We kept her updated, but still, her travel restriction is making her angry.”

Sip shook her head sadly, and I thought I knew why. I was seeing more of Charlotte’s friends than I was of my own sister, but she had a husband and a family to start. Sip and Lisabelle might both be very powerful, but for their own reasons they had both sworn off boyfriends. I had once overheard Lanca saying that she did in fact see Sip getting married one day, but Lisabelle, well, Lisabelle. “Charlotte was my last calm friend, and now even she is gone,” said Sip.

“Aren’t you going to be late for work?” Lisabelle asked.

The werewolf took a last gulp of tea before setting her cup down and bolting from her chair.

“Yes, must get going! See you both tonight, though! Don’t let Lisabelle do anything foolish, Ricky,” Sip called over her shoulder as she disappeared.

“Foolishness is a matter of perspective. Some would call being friends with a neon-loving werewolf foolish. Luckily, I never judge,” said Lisabelle, speaking to the paper she held in front of her nose. Then she got up, folded it carefully and left.