Elemental Shining (Paranormal Public Series) (10 page)

“Sip’s the best,” said Lough. “Of course she’s strong.”

“Thank you, Lough,” said Sip. “At least someone else in Airlee appreciates me.”

Airlee was as busy as ever, but other students cleared a path for Lisabelle. For me it was strange just stepping through the doors of the place where I had lived when I first came to Public. The wood floor looked freshly polished and there was a forest green carpet laid out. The walls were white and I noticed that there were new pictures on the walls of Airlee students who were out and about in the world doing good. The pictures included a portrait of a werewolf who had spent years in Spain training Spanish werewolves in how to change, and another of a mage named Trix who traveled around making house calls with healing potions brewed by the finest fallen angel healers. I paused at the wall, thinking of all the good being done in the world.

“You see all that? It’s possible because of you, you know,” said Lough. “My sister says so. You gave everyone hope that the Power of Five spells will stay in place.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything. How could I? Trix doing good had nothing at all to do with me. She was goodhearted and strong, she saw a need and filled it. Simple as that.

“Come on,” said Lisabelle, sliding an arm around my shoulders. “I want you to see what Sip has done to our bedroom.”

“I’ve decorated it,” said Sip defensively. “Someone had to.”

“But did you have to do it in those colors?” Lisabelle demanded as we made our way to the top of Airlee. Usually the higher floors were reserved for seniors, but Sip and Lisabelle had somehow managed to get themselves installed there as well. I had a sneaking suspicion that Risper had had something to do with it, because he realized that his niece wasn’t good company for most of the other students.

Lisabelle hadn’t lied. Her room was a study in neon. At least Sip had branched out beyond just yellow; there was also blue, green, and pink. All neon.

“Lisabelle, why do you only get a third of the room?” I asked as we all found seats on the beds and desk chairs.

“Good question,” said Lisabelle with a disgruntled look on her face.

“I’m really glad to have some privacy,” said Lough, sighing. He suddenly looked tired, much less like his jovial self. “It’s so hard being pleasant.”

“Yeah, you really struggle with that,” muttered Lisabelle. “What’s wrong, anyway?”

Lough scraped his hand through his hair, the dark circles standing out prominently against his red cheeks.

“It’s my sister,” he said. “She didn’t just talk about her boyfriend this summer. She talked about a lot of stuff.”

“Like?” Sip asked, her ears perking up. She loved government gossip.

Lough looked off into the distance, seeing something far away that only he could see. “My sister, she talked a lot all summer. She’s really worried.” My chest tightened as the dream giver’s eyes flicked to me. “She said that they’ve been catching demons in packs. Senior paranormals who work for the government and are tasked with protecting the other paranormals are constantly busy. All summer she would get reports about fights and demon eliminations. I was with her a couple of times when she got messages like that, and she always went white as a sheet and had trouble talking and finishing sentences for hours afterwards. It was scary. The demons are hunting now, much like the hellhounds always have. The demons are learning from the dogs of fire. That’s what she always mutters. Then there’s the Map Silver causing everyone stress. It’s a mess.” He looked around, his kind eyes filled with worry.

“And that’s so bad, why?” I asked, confused. “We knew the demons and the hellhounds were working together. That’s why they attacked us first semester. And the government has the Map.”

“Because they’ve never organized before,” said Sip. “They’ve always gone after paranormals, sure, but it was random attacks and they are such stupid beasts that they were never really a threat to our races. President Malle changed all that. Decimating the Power of Five was smart. Too smart. She and a small group of darkness mages are using the whole demon/hellhound kinds as their own personal army in a fight against the paranormals, a fight that they started. What else did your sister say?” she ended, turning toward Lough.

Lough glanced nervously at me.

“Lough, stop staring at me like I’m about to keel over and die,” I said hotly. “I’m not, unless it’s from boredom.”

I gave him my best ferocious glare, but Sip ruined it when she said, “You probably shouldn’t contort your face like that. It looks strange.”

Ignoring us, Lough continued, “According to my sister, the takeover was perfectly planned and executed. The first step, obviously, was to remove the Power of Five from the equation. The demons set about doing that with a ruthless intensity, as we all know since we’ve seen the results. The orchestration was flawless. None of the senior paranormals saw the attack on the elementals coming.”

I felt like a million tiny stab wounds were ramming into me, like someone had thrown me against a wall of needles and I had stuck there. My whole body tingled with pain.

“The paranormals, including any remaining elementals, were blindsided when they realized there was only a few elementals left. My sister was still in school at Public then, and she’d call home and worry about her elemental classmates.

“My brothers were the same way,” said Sip. She had five older brothers, which according to her meant that she was lucky to have ever had a date in her life, and when she did manage to find a guy who would brave all those brothers she had to keep him away from them for as long as possible, because they would terrorize him. I never said it to her, but I thought she was lucky to have so many family members looking out for her.

“Yeah, our siblings went to school together,” confirmed Lough with a nod. “Your parents probably took one look at you and stopped at one, huh?” Lough said to Lisabelle. When he was met by nothing but a stony expression, he turned back to Sip.

“My brothers talked about it a lot,” Sip offered. “They had friends who were elementals. Lots of them,” she explained. “All their good friends . . . died. The strange part was that no one saw it coming. The ones that no one would miss were killed first, then more just died from old age and natural causes. At least, that’s how the demons made it look. An old man is alone in a cabin and has a heart attack. Who’s going to think twice about that? Did your sister tell you anything else?”

“Just that Charlotte is the biggest target in the paranormal world. President Malle wants her dead and hates herself for failing to kill her while she was President.”

“Why didn’t she?” Lisabelle asked curiously. “I mean, Charlotte was in trouble all the time. That meant defying authority and getting stuck talking to her all alone in her house. Why not just kill her then? Or at least give her over to that hellhound she had here?”

Lisabelle’s voice dropped when she mentioned the hellhound. She had a special grudge against that hound for taking her prisoner and acting as a guard and lookout while President Malle held her captive. Several times since then, Lisabelle had ranted about how that particular hellhound wore a red jeweled collar and if she ever saw it again she would give it a piece of her mind, after she killed it, of course.

“I think because at that point she still didn’t want to get caught,” said Lough. “She wanted the hellhound to roam campus, making the lights flicker and blaming Lisabelle for murder without losing her position as President. She also didn’t think Charlotte was that big a threat. I think she assumed Charlotte was just some scared little teenage elemental.”

But that’s exactly what I am!
I didn’t want to say it out loud, because my friends had such faith in me, but I often wondered if I had what it took to be the only living elemental. Sometimes I worried that I didn’t.

“Being the President must have had so many advantages,” Sip mused. “She had the children of all the most powerful paranormals held hostage here if she needed leverage for any of her schemes. For all we know she used that tactic all the time to threaten government officials into doing her bidding.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she just had to get hold of a government employee who had a kid at Public. She wouldn’t even have to reveal her own identity. Just threaten the kid’s life to get what she wanted. There’s no way she would want to give that up, and if Charlotte went missing while visiting the President’s house everyone would have known.”

“She could have gotten me away,” I said. “It’s not like I have some special security detail.”

“It would be nice if you did,” said Lough. “We’d worry about you less.”

“Was that all your sister told you?” Sip asked.

“Mostly, yeah,” said Lough. “But there was one other thing. In honor of their newly organized group and the most powerful demons, the Demons of Knight, they’ve given themselves a name . . . the new name for the combination of demons, darkness mages, and hellhounds is the Knights of Darkness.”

There was a silence, almost as if the darkness of the name had invaded the room. Then Lisabelle broke the spell.

“So what?” she asked.

“Names have power,” Sip replied. “That’s not good. It means they’re organizing. But at least now we have something to call them, if that’s any consolation.”

“I was fine with demons,” said Lough. “In fact, I think it was an apt description.”

We talked for a while longer, but soon the topic turned back to my meeting with the deans. Lough wanted to hear all about it, so I told my story again. He sat throughout my tale with his mouth open in shock. He was always a fan of rules and deans, and he didn’t like when adults misbehaved, but he looked positively offended at my story.

“How can they tell you not to practice elemental magic?” he sputtered. “You ARE an elemental.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But they did.”

“How will they know if you practice it in secret?” Lisabelle asked. She was studiously examining her fingernails, not looking up.

“Powers can be sensed,” I said. “That’s how the demons found me in the first place, and Cale had to come and get me.”

The night Cale had shown up to walk me home, after I had been seeing a massive black dog, wasn’t something I had thought about recently, but now the terror I had felt at the hellhound attack came rushing back to me.

“Ah, so they’re worried about the Map Silver?” asked Lough knowingly.

I shrugged.

“Powers are harder to sense if you shield them,” said Lisabelle.

“Shielding powers hasn’t been explored much,” Sip warned.

“All the more reason for the only elemental to explore it,” Lisabelle argued.

“How do I shield my powers?” I asked.

“Dampening,” said Lisabelle. “The only way to do it is to cast a dampening spell, which still leaves a trace of magic, but way less than if were you doing nothing and just letting your powers course through your ring as usual.”

“No,” said Sip. “None of us know enough to do any of those spells. They’re about canceling magic, which is against everything we’ve ever learned. There needs to be a lot more studying and practice before we perform any of those spells.”

 “You can still go to class and finish the assignments,” said Lisabelle. “They just don’t want you haring off on your own performing the more sophisticated elemental stuff that’s also more dangerous. Probably because there’s a very real possibility that someday you might have to hide yourself from the wielder of the Map Silver.”

“But I need to know how to do that dangerous elemental stuff,” I said, frustrated. “How am I supposed to defend everyone if I don’t learn it?” I felt like I was sinking down a dark hole, and even as I dug my fingers into the dirt, I continued to fall.

“My idea,” said Sip through gritted teeth, “is for you to practice in the Long Building. The Museum is there now, so no one would question your spending a lot of time there. And since everyone else is almost never there I don’t think you’d get caught. Some of the rooms have magic canceling spells, so if you did it right, basically if I risked my neck to help you, I think you could get away with practicing elemental magic without the deans or the professors realizing it.”