Elemental Havoc (Paranormal Public Book 11) (9 page)

The darkness that had curled inside me popped up in my mind, but I ruthlessly pushed that thought away. She couldn’t know about that.

“Fire is very powerful,” I countered. I had felt it when I was saving Charlotte. I didn’t mind if the fire was taking over, because it was something that I understood and related to, while the other powers felt different. When I soared down the precipice to the lake under Dacer’s castle, I felt strange; I had nearly forgotten what else I could do besides fire. Burning was easier, but I had suspected for a while that the ease was just my deep held angers and nothing more. This was more complicated.

“Why do you think fire attacked the other elemental parts of me?” I asked, feeling scared. This was far beyond anything I understood, and though it was the first time I had phrased whatever was going on as destruction, that was exactly what it had felt like in that classroom.

“Probably because destruction is easier than building something up,” she said. “It takes years to lay proper foundations and minutes to destroy them. Subconsciously you’re letting the magic win. Fire feels like smashing, and instead of telling it what’s what, you’re turning your back on earth, air, and water. But to repeat myself – which I rarely feel the need to do – it’s not
really
destruction. The other elemental parts of you are
not
going away. Something else is happening.”

“Your powers aren’t sinking, they’re angry. We need to find out why,” said Dobrov. I took a deep breath. They were angry because of the darkness, that much was obvious, but what else was happening I didn’t know.

When Lisabelle finished talking, she came around to stand at the side of Dobrov’s table. I could sense that the vampire hybrid had remained impassive while she spoke, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him directly. I was sure that at any moment he was going to stop her and tell me that I just wasn’t worth the trouble, and that Paranormal Public was having a hard enough time reopening as it was. Many paranormals still hadn’t accepted the fact, especially the ones who thought that Public should be a shrine or memorial to the war, and that it should have been left entirely alone in its half-ruined state.

Those paranormals didn’t believe that Public should ever have become a working university again. But Dobrov and his allies had won, for the time being, and here we were.

I swallowed hard. “Don’t sugar coat it or anything.”

Lisabelle shrugged. “It’s just my guess. It’ll be fine. We can always use more fire elementals. There are other elementals . . . Oh, no, there aren’t.”

“Maybe I have enough on my plate without having to deal with a war going on inside me as well,” I said. As in, starting college was hard enough for anyone, let alone having to deal with my magic fighting.

“Maybe it’s just a Rollins-arriving-at-Public issue,” said Dobrov. “Something similar happened when your sister came here, and now you.” He smiled at his own joke, but I wasn’t amused.

“If you don’t want to think about your fire power, then think about this,” said Lisabelle. “Charlotte also has enough on her plate, what with having a baby and all, so maybe instead of adding to it and worrying her, we can figure this out without involving her. She was a mess when you disappeared, and your coming here was supposed to be a signal that you wouldn’t do that again.”

“Great, because I don’t feel guilty enough as it is. Besides, I don’t think it’s such a good idea to keep this from her,” I said. “Isn’t she the elemental expert and all that? Didn’t she do all kinds of reading?”

“Books won’t teach you anything in days of reading that action can’t teach you in hours,” said Lisabelle.

I shifted. My sister was a book lover. She thought that all problems could be solved if you just bought the right book. I had developed some of that same respect for knowledge gleaned from the printed page.

“You could always talk to Sigil,” she offered. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to help. Nervous and scared and he’d rant, but still delighted.”

The Public president brightened at the mention of the ghost. “He could prove very helpful,” Dobrov agreed.

Sigil was the Astra library ghost. He had proven invaluable to Charlotte over the years.

“Alright, I’ll go talk to him,” I said. “What do I ask?” Talking to a ghost would be much better than being expelled.

“Maybe ask him what’s wrong with you,” said Lisabelle. “But only if you think you can stand the answer.”

Lisabelle and Sip weren’t around much, unsurprisingly. I guess I’d had this idea that because Charlotte was at Public, I would see a lot of them as well, but so far I hadn’t even seen Charlotte. Some of that was her fault, but most of it was mine. From the minute I had arrived on campus, I hadn’t had any time to see my big sister. Far from getting better, as the days wore on it was only getting worse. Besides, what was I supposed to do, tell her that my magic was consumed in darkness? I had already become absorbed by a feeling of quiet desperation at Public, with a quiet surface masking the frantic movement that was going on beneath it, and paranormals walking around afraid. Of what, it would have been hard to say exactly.

President Dobrov clearly wanted to speak to Lisabelle privately, so I was dismissed in fairly short order. I wasn’t sure what the conclusion of our conversation was, other than that there were secrets I wasn’t supposed to tell, and despite the fact that something was terribly wrong and dangerous with my power, under no circumstances was I expelled from Public.

As I left the office I turned to Lisabelle and asked, “So, you secretly visit campus from time to time?”

“How else am I supposed to come and talk to important paranormals without all of my admirers and fans getting in the way?”

Several reports of mysterious attacks are surfacing. One went so far as to say the attackers’ eyes were blacked out.

The next day, the main objective was our first group meeting. This was important on a number of levels, not least of which was getting a clearer understanding of the level of animosity the paranormal types now felt for each other. Blaming fights were not uncommon. Most of the Nocturn War had been the pixies’ fault, or so many paranormals thought, and here they were at school with the rest of us.

The pixies blamed the government. They thought that if darkness had been handled better, there wouldn’t have been such a problem to begin with.

In short, it was a recipe for disaster.

Keegan had said he would drop by so we could walk to the library together, and I was waiting for him in one of the elemental sitting rooms, thinking about magic and wondering what had suddenly gone wrong with mine. The fire lounge was a good place to get lost in for the purpose of thinking things through; it was large, supposedly – according to Charlotte – because the fire elementals were the most overtly terrifying of the elemental types.

In the middle of my reverie, Keegan stormed into Astra with his eyes flashing. “She told me to write down my goals, like, ah, like, ah . . .” He didn’t finish, he just looked at me with a confused expression.

“Like a goal-oriented paranormal?” I asked gingerly.

“Yeah!” Keegan was indignant, his face puffing out with heavy breathing.

I shrugged and pointed out, “She has yet to say something that hasn’t annoyed you. I don’t understand why you let it get to you.”

“I can’t help it,” he said. “Why can’t she bug off somewhere? I still don’t understand why she feels the need to be friends with us! What’s so great about us! Nothing, I say! We suck!”

“Someone should tell her,” I agreed, trying to hide my amusement.

“Yeah,” Keegan said again, staring at the fire darkly. Then his face cleared a bit and he asked, “Made any headway with your power problem?”

“No,” I said, “but I didn’t get expelled. If it gets any worse I’ll have to tell Charlotte, though, and she’s going to be really mad when she finds out that I didn’t tell her right away. I feel like not wanting to upset her is justified, under the circumstances, but I’m not looking forward to that conversation if we ever do need to have it.”

“Yeah, she’ll love hearing that,” said Keegan. “I don’t know much, but I do see that it’s going to be a problem.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Very helpful.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” said Keegan, looking back at the door. “We should get going. Hopefully Eighellie has gotten herself to the group meeting. If she hasn’t, I might have to cry.”

“Grown tree sprite crying, whoever heard of such a thing?” I asked, finally letting a little smile show through.

“There’s a first time for everything. Pretty sure anyone grown who had to deal with her would do the same.” Keegan shook his head sadly as he made his way out of Astra. I followed. I didn’t look back at the flames.

Vital’s younger cousin Averett looked at me with bemusement. I rarely saw girls with muscles, but Averett made a point of showing hers off. Since it wasn’t cold enough for long sleeves, she wore a short-sleeved black sweater. She leaned against the wall, her eyes snapping as she gazed around the room.

Because it was the first required meeting, all the group’s members were there and looking wary; no one was sitting with anyone of another paranormal type. Averett was perched up higher than any of the other vampires, not that she needed the height to be intimidating.

Our advisor turned out to be Professor Penny. Keegan nearly pulled out his own hair when he realized who he’d have to be spending the semester with.

We were required to meet once a week, and as of now we couldn’t even set a regular time to do that. I kept looking to Professor Penny to restore some order, but he didn’t. While we waited for the meeting to get going, Keegan and I were having a whispered conversation in our corner of the room.

“As if we weren’t seeing enough of him,” Keegan said softly, shaking his head in disbelief.

“He speaks so slowly, we’ll need to have two meetings a week just to keep up with the other groups whose advisers talk at a normal rate.”

“Tonight’s just for an initial check-in,” said Greek Harrison, an All-American captain of the football team type fallen angel. I imagined he was my generation’s Keller Erikson, only without the cool girlfriend. He had blond hair and green eyes, broad shoulders and a white smile. All the girls swooned, especially the girls in our group. Right now, he was trying to keep order and appease some of the arguers, an effort that precious few fallen angels had made recently, but only the girls were listening to him.

Naturally, Keegan was barely civil about it. “He’s perfectly nice so far, but I can’t trust anyone whose teeth are that white,” the tree sprite said, as if that explained everything. “It’s just not natural.” Then he pitched his voice for the whole room, talking right over Greek. “Give a brief example of your powers and we’ll go from there. We can pick a time to meet after that,” said Keegan.

Everyone stopped and stared at Keegan, surprising Keegan himself. He wasn’t used to being listened to. Then again, he didn’t usually try talking.

“Who died and left you in charge?” Averett asked, but she looked more amused than anything. In fact, from what I had noticed, she’d been looking at Keegan a lot since we had all arrived on campus.

“Um, um . . .” said Keegan.

“Little Keegan here is right,” Greek boomed out, coming to the tree sprite’s defense. He clapped my friend on the back, sending the tree sprite flying. The other students in the room, amused by the exchange, actually decided to listen.

One girl, a pixie in a collared shirt, stood up and said, “Alright, I’ll go first.” She wasn’t Frances, Fog, or Hannah, all the ones I already seriously disliked, but I wouldn’t exactly have called her pleasant-looking, either. She started to walk in the direction of the vampires, but when she caught sight of Averett with her crossed arms and her sinewy muscles, she quickly changed direction.

The pixie was wearing a white, flowy shirt thing. It was so long that she had to push it back to free up her hands enough to pull a bag of glamour out of her back jeans pocket. Why couldn’t girls wear practical clothing!

“My name is Wanda,” she said. “I’m a freshman here at Paranormal Public. My parents didn’t want to send me here, but the town would have thought we were on the side of darkness if I hadn’t attended, so lucky me, here I am.” She didn’t really look like she thought of herself as that lucky, and I saw a lot of pixies nodding in agreement with her words, as if they and their families had had similar experiences.

“Gosh, if I didn’t hate pixies so much I would wonder if we weren’t all here under threat,” Keegan muttered. I kind of agreed with him. The vampires looked bored, while the fallen angels had schooled their faces into polite indifference.

Wanda tossed the glitter packet into the air. As it fell to the floor it burst apart, the entire thing turning into pixie dust. Wanda smiled slightly as the contents sprinkled down in a shower of green-shaded sparkles. Then, through the sparkles, I saw her face break into a wide grin. Suddenly, I desperately wanted to take out all the money I had in my pockets, which wasn’t much, and put it on one of the tables in front of us.

The urge was so strong that my fingers had already closed around the coins when I felt an icy grip on my wrist. Keegan was glaring daggers at Wanda.

“Don’t you dare,” he said through gritted teeth. I thought he was speaking to me, but I couldn’t be sure. Tree sprites were clearly immune to at least some of the pixies’ basic glamour tactics, as evinced by Keegan’s angry expression and continued possession of money.

I blinked several times, fighting to come out of my stupor.

Other students were having the same problem. Glitter hung in the air, and everyone’s attention was focused on handing over as much of what they were carrying as possible. Heaps of possessions, some looking more valuable than others, appeared on the table. The vampires looked angry about what they were doing, but they still did it. The same could be said for the fallen angels.

“Alright, enough,” Averett cried. She didn’t move, but her black eyes snapped around the room. Wanda’s smile melted away to something more like anger and fear. She glanced furtively at the vampires.

“It was supposed to be a demonstration, not outright theft,” said Averett. “Idiot.”

I would have thought name-calling was frowned upon, but Professor Penny was busy picking some of his breakfast off his ancient coat. He didn’t say anything, or even bother to look up at what was going on.

In light of what had just happened, the next several demonstrations were much tamer. In fact, they soon took on a quality of sameness. For each pixie who took a turn, the next one tried to find something different to do, but eventually they all started to look alike. When I felt a yawn coming on, I scrubbed my face to stay awake

“This is boring,” cried one of the vampires. “Let’s let the elemental and the tree sprite demonstrate and be done with it.”

Keegan and I exchanged wary expressions. Neither of us liked the attention, especially Keegan, who had spent a lot of his life being hunted and living outside the walls of protection that my sister’s friendship with the great Lisabelle Verlans had always offered me.

“Tree sprites aren’t that interesting,” he explained. “Just a bunch of glitter and noise.”

“Well, we’ve seen plenty of glitter,” said Averett, giving the pixies a nasty look, “how about some noise?”

Keegan took a deep breath and fished around in his pocket. He came out with what I thought was dirt.

“Don’t you know how to do laundry?” I muttered to him. Even my clothes were cleaner. Keegan ignored me and stood up. Then he grabbed a great basin that was clearly there for decoration, and tipped the contents over. A bunch of pretty beads cascaded to the floor and scattered all over the place.

Keegan did not appear to be fazed. He gently sprinkled a bit of the dirt from his pocket into the now empty bowl and glanced out a window at the swaying trees. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then another. All the students were so fascinated by what he was doing that not even the pixies were complaining. Instead, many of them leaned forward to get a better look.

Suddenly there was a great eruption, and Keegan’s hands lighted up like stars in the night sky. He continued to keep his eyes closed, but I saw his face break out into a smile.

When he opened his eyes, a small tree had taken shape in the bowl and other students were clapping. Keegan smiled, and even Professor Penny nodded his approval.

“Very good,” said Penny, “exactly what we want. Non-destructive magic.”

Averett hopped off her perch behind the other vampires. For a second I thought she was going to grab the bowl and chuck it against the wall; that shows you what a positive opinion I have of vampires. But instead of doing anything with Keegan’s tree, she grabbed Professor Penny’s coffee mug out of his hand and dumped out the contents, eliciting some bluster from the professor. Then she went over to a water fountain on one side of the room, stuck the mug under it, and returned to water Keegan’s tree.

Without a word she returned and handed the mug back to Professor Penny, whose hand hadn’t yet moved. Then she went back and resumed her perch behind the other vampires.

“I guess you could have watered it, elemental, but I hear you’re having a bit of trouble with your power,” said Averett, looking at me intently.

“I’m sure Ricky just needs a little time to get his game face on,” said Greek.

“Do you want to go next, Ricky?” Averett asked. “Or can we skip that little disaster?”

“I’m fine,” I said. I had been getting strange looks from a lot of the students since I arrived, and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair under the scrutiny of my group-mates. I didn’t like feeling as if I had failed at something, and I had failed at keeping my magic under control.

“I’d say do something with earth, but I’d rather you stay away from my plant,” said Keegan apologetically. So – air it was.

I took a couple of deep breaths and searched the power inside me. I felt the air there and the air all around me. I knew that trying to color the winds would be safe, so very carefully, that’s what I did. Deep inside myself I pulled power out, being more deliberate about it than I had ever been in the past. The magic came slowly, and whenever I felt any fire at all, I ruthlessly pushed it down.

The use of my ring was required for this effort, otherwise I couldn’t have managed it. I decided to turn the air purple. It was a little trick of elementals that we could control such things, as long as there was a mirrored color in our rings. I picked out one of the blues in my ring and looked around the room. The air became thick as I filled it with color, until the students were gasping in awe. I added a bit of the rose gold, an even fancier and little-known trick, to make the color more subtle and violet-tinted. Smiling to myself, I looked around at my fellow students, who now had a purple tint.

“It’s like he added fog to the room,” someone whispered. In fact, I had done nothing of the kind, but the world
was
sort of hazy now.