Elemental Havoc (Paranormal Public Book 11) (6 page)

Well, almost everyone.

In the last second before she crashed into the far wall, a current of air shot out, scooped her up in a cradling motion, and gently deposited her on a window seat just below the wide bank of windows that let a view of the sky into the dining room.

The vampire who had thrown her gaped, his mouth falling open like a trap and staying that way. For one brief moment, bewilderment swept his features. Then, slowly, his expression turned to anger as his eyes found mine. My ring hummed. I didn’t watch the girl soar or land; I didn’t need to anymore, not after what had happened at Camilla’s trial. I simply made sure I didn’t hear the crash of a hard landing. The vampire’s eyes fired and a couple of other vampires turned to look where Nose Ring was looking.

By then I had nearly reached them. Most of the students had turned their attention away from the girl and toward me and the vampire group I had just angered. I stopped and stood my ground, my hands still in my pockets.

“Are you really going to fight, too, tree sprite?” spit out one of the nasty-looking vampires.

I turned my head far enough to see that Keegan was standing to my right and slightly behind me, his hands comfortably in his pockets. He was staring at the vampires, his face alert but otherwise expressionless. I hadn’t heard him follow me, but I smiled a little when I saw him.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Keegan said. “You’re just a vampire.”

Nose Ring smirked. “That’s just because you haven’t fought me yet.” His smile grew wider, and I started to wonder if Keegan and I really shouldn’t be doing this. But the vision of the girl flying through the air gave me my answer.

Sure, Charlotte had begged me to stay under the radar, but she had also acknowledged that as the second elemental I was going to find anonymity nearly impossible, no matter what she or I really wanted. I sighed. I had the best intentions of doing what she asked, but I hadn’t gotten through the first night without an opportunity for trouble.

Then Dobrov rescued all of us. “Alright, enough,” he called, his voice cutting effortlessly through the crowd. I had nearly forgotten he was there, and at least one of the pixies who’d been preparing to fight apparently didn’t care. He lazily threw a handful of dust at the feet of one of the vampires, who sprang forward. It looked like there was going to be a fight after all.

One second Dobrov was standing on the podium. The next he was slamming the young pixie backward. The other Volans students looked shocked, but they made no move to help their friend. I wouldn’t have either. Hybrids like Dobrov were a particular kind of scary.

“I said, that’s enough.” Though Dobrov didn’t speak loudly, I was sure he could be heard in every part of the hall. I thought particularly of the blue-eyed girl, and when I looked in her direction I saw that she was making her way back toward the front of the room. Her eyes were on me, and I waited for them to shift to our president and the action, but they didn’t. They stayed on me.

Meanwhile, the vampires and the other pixies were dispersing, a smart move. Dobrov did not look like he was going to tolerate another second of insubordination. The pixie who had thrown the dust looked pale and had already sat down. The girl reached me and smiled.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Hi,” I said, unsure of what she expected to happen next. Keegan turned around to stare at her, his eyes going wide. I saw him swallow hard.

Before I could say anything else to the girl, her right foot swung backward so that she was balancing on her left. Still not understanding what was happening, I was wholly taken by surprise by the sharp kick she aimed at my shin.

Without a word, the blond girl flipped her hair and walked away. Keegan raced up to me and said, “Wow, I didn’t know girls were like that.”

I rubbed my shin. I didn’t either.

President Quest Makes Concessions . . . Fallen Angels to Arrive at Public.

The next morning at breakfast, President Valedication presented the student body with more information about the semester by releasing an official letter.

All the students bent over their letters with excitement. There had been a lot of tension over the question of what it meant to attend Paranormal Public in this era, and this was going to be another big clue. The arrival of a group of smug-looking fallen angels hadn’t helped.

Another bit of excitement for me personally was that the blond girl was in my group. This morning she was, in fact, sitting next to Keegan. He appeared terrified when she first sat down, but when she pretended not to recognize him he calmed down slightly.

“Can I have the salt?” asked the girl after we had been eating for a few minutes.

The salt was right next to Keegan’s place, but the request for some reason made his shoulders shoot up to his ears. He looked petrified. When he made no move to hand it to her she asked, “Well?”

Keegan reached over and pushed the salt toward her without looking at her.

“I’m Eighellie,” she said, seemingly to the table at large.

“Ricky,” I told her. She sniffed at me.

“I’m Keegan,” said the tree sprite, still not looking at her. A couple of the other members of our group, who had ignored us so far, gave us curious looks but didn’t say anything. It was as if they thought that the idea of introducing yourself to someone you were going to spend a lot of time with was insane. The girl who had just introduced herself didn’t seem to have anything further to say either. I waited for some follow-up to the introduction, which she had instigated, after all, but all she did was bend her head down to read President Valedication’s letter.

Printed on Dobrov’s official stationery, the letter started, “Each group is to devise its own year-end test, a sort of capstone project, if you will. This project is intended to foster fundamental skills such as team building and working together to achieve goals and overcome obstacles. It will force teams to think critically about what they really want.”

“Imagine any of us actually knowing what we really want,” said Keegan, shaking his head.

“Don’t you?” Eighellie sounded amazed. “I have a list.”

Keegan twitched.

The notice continued, “Once that’s taken care of, your next step will be to submit the plan to the president for approval.

“That’s just crazy,” Keegan said, looking horrified. “It’s the worst idea in the world.”

“To get President Valedication’s approval?” Eighellie asked.

Ignoring her, Keegan looked at me with shock and wonder and said, “To work together!”

“Tree sprites are famously difficult to get along with,” Eighellie observed.

“No we aren’t!” Keegan shot back. “And anyhow, who says?”

“‘The History of Tree Sprites’ is who says,” said Eighellie, rolling her eyes.

The letter seemed like no big deal to me, but other students were also sputtering and complaining as they absorbed its contents. Most of the anger was directed at the requirement for working closely with other paranormal types. It had been clear from the first night’s dinner that none of the vampires, pixies, fallen angels, or the like intended to cooperate with one another.

Keegan put the feeling into words. “This is dumb, and awful,” he said. “Awful, and also dumb.”

“Hey, what do you think of this idea?” I said.

“Why do you think this is such an awful idea?” Eighellie asked, gazing at Keegan and ignoring my sarcasm. “Just because you don’t work well with others?”

“I work fine with others,” said Keegan. “Just because Ricky hasn’t had a good idea since we met doesn’t mean that he won’t.”

“I’m sure his time will come,” said Eighellie, blinking at Keegan. She was still waiting for an actual response to her question.

Keegan gave a gusty sigh. “The biggest problem I see,” he said, “is that teammates can use the assignment against each other. Instead of working together, they can just as easily work to tear each other down. We don’t get along. There’s no cooperation. It’s us against them and that’s not going to change anytime soon. It doesn’t matter that Rake is nice to us or that Sip comes to visit. Cooperation among paranormal types is dead.”

“That was a big paragraph for you to say all at once,” said Eighellie, “but President Valedication is never going to let that happen. The letter says he has to approve the plans, so I’m sure it will all be fine.”

Keegan leaned forward so that his weight was braced on his elbows. He had clearly forgotten that he didn’t want to talk to this girl. “I highly doubt it,” he said flatly.

“To be fair,” I said, “paranormals are already designing tests to get rid of each other. It’s not like that’s news or that Dobrov doesn’t know. He made a conscious choice to do this, so I’m sure he has a way to protect the paranormals that other students want to get rid of.”

I swallowed hard. My words were brave and optimistic, but if Keegan was right – and now that he had said it, I had to admit I wouldn’t be surprised – I was in big trouble. Vampires might squabble amongst themselves, but they would always unite against a common enemy – or an elemental.

My pessimistic reverie was interrupted by the sight of Eighellie frantically searching through the papers in her backpack. “What are you doing?” I asked, mystified. How could she have accumulated so many papers already, when the semester hadn’t even started yet?

“I’m researching,” she said, looking up. “The best thing to do when you don’t know something is research.”

“I bet that’s your answer for everything,” said Keegan. “You’ve made your own little notebook and a key that points to all kinds of cool facts, so you’ll have the answer to absolutely everything whenever you want it, even non-academic slash life-threatening kinds of questions. Like, your mind probably goes something like this: Want an apple? Research! Think a table is pretty? Research!”

“But the semester hasn’t started . . .” I muttered.

Eighellie shook her head, her hands still stuffed full of papers. “That doesn’t even make sense,” she said, rolling her eyes again.

Instead of taking his turn to retort, Keegan suddenly gave a cry. The paper in his hands had burst into flames, and he was forced to drop it to avoid being badly burned. All around the dining hall, other students were having the same experience. The papers they’d been reading so avidly were now burning to nothing, leaving an acrid smoke in the air. Then the smoke was itself was swirled by a wind that seemed to be carrying it away. I would have thought it was an elemental wind, except that I wasn’t the one generating it.

Cries and confusion filled the room.

“What’s happening?” Eighellie cried, while Keegan examined his singed hands. Dobrov was on his feet, staring at the condensing smoke. Whatever was happening, I was sure it was not his doing.

In bloated gray air floating above us, the smoke was shaping itself into a picture.

Emerging from the swirl was the new Power of Five logo. It was burning.

Opposition Strikes Back! High Level Hunter thought to be imprisoned and questioned. Artifact Count: One hundred nine.

“Dobrov Valedication does NOT belong in the role of president of Public!” the woman’s voice had yelled.

It had been an early morning during the summer, earlier than I was usually out of bed. Even though the summer sun had long since sailed up into the sky for the day, that didn’t mean I should be upright. Except that I was now responsible for taking care of Crumple, and he had run away the night before. I’d found him, but I wanted to check on him before I rolled over for my last couple hours of sleep.

It’s a strange sort of shock when you realize that just because you do something, not everyone does. True, I wasn’t usually awake so early, but Dacer and Zellie were. Once the sleep had worn out of my foggy brain, I recognized Dacer’s cousin as the source of the anger I was hearing.

She didn’t want Dobrov to be president of Public? I hurried to listen in outside the living room door.

“He’s the best option,” insisted Dacer. “He isn’t one paranormal type, so no one can accuse Sip of favoritism. He knows exactly what happened during the Nocturn war and is okay with it. He’s been through a lot and he’s seen the other side. There’s no one better.”

“THERE ARE LOTS OF BETTER OPTIONS! YOU’D BE A BETTER OPTION AND YOU DON’T EVEN LIKE STUDENTS! If not you, then what about Risper?” Zellie continued to yell.

Dacer’s voice was a low hum that I couldn’t quite make out, except that he was saying something to the effect that Risper wasn’t suitable, and Zellie knew quite well why not.

“You know what Dobrov did! You know what his family is capable of,” Zellie spat out. I could hear her clearly, her anger carrying through walls.

“The sins of one family member are not the sins of all!” Dacer was clearly losing patience. “Dobrov is capable! I want to hear nothing more about it.”

In my haste to deal with Crumple and get back to bed I had put the exchange out of my mind so thoroughly that I hadn’t even told Keegan about it. But after what happened in the dining hall that first morning, I resolved to tell him as soon as I got a chance.

One other such event stuck out in my mind, one that didn’t involve listening in on conversations that clearly weren’t meant for my ears. It was something I had read in the Tabble, and in the paper that brought the news to Dacer’s castle. The vampire Duke got a mass of newspapers, papers, and correspondence every day, so much stuff that the mailman used to grumble, until – as Dacer explained to me with a sly smile – the Duke just happened to have a spare little cottage on his grounds that he couldn’t dream of charging rent for. Now the mailman made a special trip to Dacer’s when he had deliveries, and he made the Duke his first stop each day.

Sometimes Dacer would rush out to meet whatever letter he was waiting for, other times he was far too busy to bother with such trivialities as vampire dental coverage. Then the mail would pile up until Zellie would stand for it no more, at which point the cousins would have a fight.

The Tabble was different; it was always anticipated eagerly. I scanned it most days, looking for any sign of the pixie who had killed my friend. Usually I found nothing. In fact, what it was most concerned about that summer was a certain hybrid’s appointment to Public. Unbeknownst to me, opinion had become very much split on whether “President Valedication” should ever be etched onto the plaque outside the top administrator’s office at Public.

Every day brought a new opinion piece. Some praised Dobrov as effusively as they could. Maybe they had met him and he had been kind, or they believed that he’d single-handedly won the Nocturn war, or they thought that young blood was needed to run the office. Dobrov could be praised, in other words, from a variety of viewpoints.

His detractors took no prisoners. They were unforgiving in their hatred of him, and most of that bad feeling stemmed from what his sister had done.

Dobrov and his dead twin sister Daisy had been close when they arrived at Public, and many paranormals believed they had stayed that way even after Daisy went over to darkness. Dobrov’s allegiances were questioned from the start, but in the end he had turned his back on his sister and laid his life on the line for light. This was enough for my sister and her friends, but other paranormals hadn’t had such an up close view of what he had done. Because most paranormals didn’t have that close-up knowledge of Dobrov, the crushing weight of the evil and death his sister had brought about was perpetually laid at his feet. If Daisy could be so evil as to let darkness overwhelm any good in her, then the same must be true for her twin brother Dobrov. Or so went the thinking.

I wondered if Dobrov was reading any of the debate that stretched out over the summer in the Tabble. Most paranormals were vehemently opposed to his appointment, so much so that they had taken over most of the paper’s daily coverage. In the face of all that vocal opposition, I could only surmise that Sip and Lisabelle were big reasons why Dobrov had the job in the first place. Talk about favoritism. One of the headlines even stated that Sip was just giving her friends cushy jobs everywhere, even if they weren’t capable of carrying out their duties.

Keegan, who also read the articles but didn’t know Dobrov, thought it was all very strange.

“Isn’t he too young?” he asked.

“His appointment makes a lot of sense,” I said.

“You have to earn honors, Ricky, and being so young he couldn’t have earned much, could he?” Keegan demanded. We’d had that conversation in front of Dacer, who had suddenly come down with a coughing fit. Keegan had dropped the subject, and so had I.

After the smoke incident we were instantly dismissed and ordered to return to our dorms to “prepare for classes tomorrow,” which of course we all did with a fair amount of grumbling. I spent the day frantic and irritated at times, knowing that all the other paranormal types had each other to talk to and would therefore be able to discuss the threat against the president to their hearts’ content, while my best hope was that Martha would show up and want to bake something (she didn’t).

At dinner that night it was clear that I wasn’t the only one who followed the daily news on lazy summer days. Having presumably had the entire day to talk about it, they still hadn’t dropped the subject of the message in the smoke when they filed in to the dining hall. “How could Dobrov be so lax as to let darkness in?” was the most common cry. From long before we had arrived on campus it had been clear that Dobrov’s appointment was a dicey one, and now I could see that students were looking for any excuse to get up in arms about the hybrid. The message in the smoke had been the perfect opportunity.

“Lisabelle Verlans is a determined opponent,” was one asinine thing I heard.

“It wasn’t his fault,” argued another student.

“It was his piece of paper that burned!” said the first.

“It wasn’t darkness that did this,” said Keegan, frustrated. The other students looked at him with wonder, as if he was saying something truly shocking and idiotic. Keegan, who had pledged his undying love to Lisabelle Verlans, couldn’t think that she would ever do anything to go against her best friends. Although he kept it in check, I felt sure that one of the big reasons Keegan continued to be my friend was that through me he expected, sooner or later, to get to meet Lisabelle. She’d kill him, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t mind dying if it was Lisabelle who brought it about.

“What are you talking about? He’s a hybrid! He doesn’t know what he’s doing! He doesn’t have any relevant experience!” Those were all arguments I had heard before. Dobrov was still in his early twenties, and many paranormals thought that the president of the most renowned paranormal university in the world should be older, read more experienced.

“Dobrov fought in the Nocturn War,” I said. “He has just as much experience in real battle as many paranormals who are a lot older than he is.”

The students, all of whom wanted Dobrov’s head except for Keegan and me, rounded on me.

“What do you know anyway, elemental? Just because your big sister has introduced you to all these weirdo paranormals, you think you know something! You don’t, though! All you do is put the rest of us in danger! We would be just fine if it weren’t for you.”

“You’re just fine anyway,” Keegan scoffed. “And Ricky saved all our lives a few years ago at the Battle of Public. None of you were there, but it happened.”

“That’s just a myth,” scoffed one pixie. “He did no such thing. He isn’t that powerful, and if he did try to use that much power, he’d be dead. What do you know anyway, tree sprite?”

Keegan got to his feet, looking ready to fight. I grabbed his shoulder and held him in place.

“It’s not worth it,” I said. “They aren’t worth it.”

“Dobrov will be a fine president. If old people can say age is just a number, so can the young,” was all Keegan managed to say. The pixie just rolled her eyes and smirked.

As we walked away I heard someone yell, “Yeah, you run away elemental. Doesn’t surprise me at all.” Several voices rose in agreement with the first one. I turned my head away from Keegan, and suddenly it was Keegan pulling me away.

“If I don’t get to fight ‘em, neither do you,” said Keegan. “Fair’s fair.”