Elemental Shining (Paranormal Public Series) (5 page)

I slammed my power forward again. I was more aware of my surroundings now. I knew that Keller was helping Lough stop the bleeding from the gash on his arm, instead of going for help, and I knew that Lanca, Cale, and Dirr lay prone. I wasn’t sure if they were dead or alive. At the moment I didn’t want to know. If they were dead—if even ONE of them was dead—in this moment I might kill Lisabelle. I really might.

I pulled my magic away, but I had forgotten one thing. Somehow, Lisabelle still had that damned knife. It was too late for me to go back. I had already made my mistake. Unfortunately, it was a mistake that was about to cost me my life.

In the wonderful summer night I pulled my magic back from Lisabelle, preparing to lash her with it for a third time, but what I had not anticipated was her using that force against me.

I gasped as Lisabelle let her knife go. It hurtled toward my chest, point first.

I woke up with a gasp. Sweat trickled slowly down the sides of my head, tinged with panic and fear. I felt dazed, like someone had smacked me over the head with one of Ricky’s baseball bats and I was still recovering. If Ricky had been there he would have said he’d be happy to smack me over the head. I started to smile, but the movement made my head throb.

I was in bed in Astra, where I had spent every night that summer. I was safe in my own room, drenched in more sweat than I would have thought my body could hold. Vaguely, I wondered if it had been raining inside. My head felt fuzzy and there was a dull ache in my limbs. Blearily I looked around, trying to convince myself that I was really there, that what I had just dreamed was really . . . a dream.

But something was imprinted in my mind, as surely as Ricky’s face. Darkness was coming. That’s what the dream said. Why, though, did Darkness have Lisabelle’s face?

The last thing I remembered was being stuck with a knife, like a pig. . . . Frantically, I looked down and yanked the covers lower on my body, then pulled my shirt up enough to show my tummy (that’s what my mom had always called it). There was no knife sticking out of my gut, so points for me and my sanity. My mother would have said this was one of my Worry Moments. Sometimes I would go to her, back when she was still alive, because I was freaking out about something ridiculous, something that was almost impossible, but that I was sure would happen anyway. Just my luck sort of thing. My mother would talk to me until I calmed down.    Even though she had been gone for years now, it was still hard for me to think about her without sadness overwhelming me. It was even hard to hear my friends talk about their own mothers. Lisabelle’s mom might drive her crazy, but at least she was there to do so. I couldn’t go to my mother to talk about my best friend trying to stab me to death in a dream, and there wasn’t anyone else I felt I could go to either. It was definitely not a normal thought for a college sophomore, but then again I was anything but a normal college sophomore.

“You okay?” a familiar voice called out to me.

Mrs. Swan was the best dorm mother ever, mostly because she left me alone, but I didn’t want her worrying about me. She and I lived alone in Astra, since the dorm was for elementals and I was the only one left. I had once made the mistake of telling her not to worry, and she had laughed so hard she had fallen out of her chair, while my face went as red as a cherry.

“I’m fine,” I croaked. My throat felt dry and brittle, like sandpaper, and I stared harder at my stomach in the layers of darkness, trying to reassure myself that it was okay. It would have been weird if Mrs. Swan had walked in and seen me doing that, but I couldn’t help myself. I often did odd things, but my stomach was not a part of my body to which I ever gave much scrutiny.

“Goodnight then, and don’t forget, your friends get here tomorrow,” she yelled through the door in a cheery tone. The door muffled her clear voice, but I could still hear the undertone of worry. She wanted to come in.

I lay back and listened to her walk away down the hall. It didn’t take long for her footsteps to recede on the plush carpet outside my room. She knew when to let me be, which was good, because now was definitely a time when I wanted to be left alone. I had to think.

Had I just dreamed what I thought I had? Lisabelle going crazy and trying to kill all of her loved ones? It was a strange irony that Sip was the one she always argued with and Sip was the one missing from the dream. Sip would probably say it was poetic justice. Not even in a wild Lisabelle dream would Sip die.

“It was just a dream,” I murmured to myself. Over and over and over again. The words echoed like drumbeats, oddly reassuring. I clutched my soft dark blue blanket closer to my body, looking for reassurance.

Tomorrow everyone—Keller, Lisabelle, Sip, and Lough—would arrive, and the semester would start. I wasn’t even going to pretend that it would be a normal semester, because I knew it wouldn’t.

As the only elemental, I was aware of pressures that I wouldn’t have thought possible a year ago. Demons were everywhere trying to kill me, and the word throughout the summer had been that instead of the unorganized mass of darkness that they had always been, they were now organizing into a cohesive unit, whose head was the former President Malle.

Fear pulled at my heart as I thought about it.

“Charlotte, get a grip,” I ordered myself. I scrubbed my hands across my face, willing my heart to slow down. Lack of sleep wasn’t going to do me any favors. Dacer could always tell when I hadn’t slept; it made me just a little slower than usual. And I hated letting him down.

As I lay trying to sleep again I thought over every element of the dream. It had felt so real, I could feel the early evening sun on my skin at the beginning and Lisabelle’s eyes burning into me at the end. I shivered. Even the thought of those red eyes gave me chills. I couldn’t imagine anything so crazy.

I tried to sleep again, but I didn’t manage it. Normally I would have been upset that I wasn’t getting enough sleep, but tonight I wasn’t. At least I wasn’t dreaming.

I woke the next morning to my bed bouncing violently. Beds didn’t bounce. They weren’t supposed to bounce unless stuff was going on in said bed that had certainly never gone on in mine. I opened one eye a crack. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because there in the bright shining sunlight of my room was a tiny blond head, and staring back at me were two huge purple eyes. Despite a vision blurred from sleep I knew exactly who had come to visit. Sip sat on my blue coverlet and I didn’t think I had ever been so happy to see someone sitting next to me.

I grinned. Sip lunged for me and we met somewhere in a tangle of blankets and laughter.

“Hey,” I said, pulling away. “Are you really here?”

I examined her face as she raised her eyebrows at me and said, “Yeah, I said I’d be here, so I’m here. Go figure.”

I must not have hid the worry on my face well, because she frowned and said, “What’s up?” Instead of answering her, I pushed my warm covers away and hauled myself out of bed. It felt strange to move. I must have been lying rigid from fear all night, because my muscles protested my efforts to get out of bed.

I dressed and motioned for Sip to follow me downstairs. Glancing in my mirror, which I had decorated myself with blue sea glass, I shrugged. Since I didn’t have class today, I just threw on a hoodie and jeans. Tomorrow, for the first day of classes, I’d make more of an effort. Probably. Sip was still confused, but she followed me anyway.

I was relieved that Mrs. Swan was nowhere to be seen. I loved that woman more every day, but if she had been there she would have seen the tiredness in my face, the dark circles under my wide, haunted gray eyes. I led Sip into the kitchen and rummaged around in the fridge until I had enough stuff for breakfast: wheat toast with homemade blueberry jelly, plus freshly squeezed orange juice (a reminder from Mrs. Swan that she wasn’t far away). Then I headed back upstairs. Sip followed me silently, looking more and more worried with each step.

When we got back to my room Sip couldn’t take it anymore.

“What is going on with you?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest and almost growling it out like only a tiny werewolf could. “Spill.”

Looking at my friend, I instantly felt better. I wanted to tell her, I
needed
to tell her everything. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so worried, because for all I knew Lisabelle was playing an elaborate practical joke, although that wasn’t Lisabelle’s style. Funny wasn’t her forte; she didn’t joke. So there was either something terribly wrong or she did intend to kill all of us. I just hoped it was the former. Didn’t I?

“Wow,” said Sip, sitting down after I had finished telling her everything about my dream. “That’s creepy and freakish. I’m surprised you dream about Lisabelle so accurately.”

“Yeah, you have no idea,” I said, taking another bite out of my breakfast.

“Have you ever dreamed of something like that before?”

“Nope,” I said, though it wasn’t technically true. My dreams had been getting darker over the summer months and had started to circle more around my friends, but I had assumed I was dreaming about them because I missed them, and that the content of the dreams was darker because there was a demon world that wanted to swallow me whole.

“I don’t think you should worry about it too much,” said Sip. “I have weird dreams all the time. The other day I dreamed I was a pixie. It was awful.”

I laughed. “When is everyone getting here?”

“They’re all coming together,” said Sip. “Lough, Lisabelle, and Keller will be here before dinner. They want us to meet them at the tree line.”

Relief washed over me. I didn’t want to go into the woods to meet them. It would be too similar to my dream.

“Are you going to tell Lisabelle that she’s a crazy person even in dreams?” Sip asked eagerly. “Because I would like it if you did. More importantly, I would like it if I were there to witness the telling. Please?”

“Why, so that she’d kick both our asses?” I asked.

“No, she would just kick yours. I would push you forward and then take the opportunity to get away. You’re welcome.”

“I love you too,” I said, grinning at her.

“Have you and Cale really been hanging out this summer?” Sip asked. When I gave her a questioning look she said, “Come on. Now that we have the horror out of the way we need to get to the important stuff. Boys.”

“Only a little,” I conceded. “I mean, it’s been pretty quiet around here. Not many people around.”

“Camilla would die,” said Sip with relish. “Have you thought about that?”

“Oh, I thought about it,” I muttered. “Cale doesn’t seem worried.”

“That’s because she hides her crazy from him. Women do that until they’ve ensnared the man they want, and then they unleash it like whoa.” Sip made a motion with her hands to imitate wind. “Okay, not exactly like that, but you get the idea.”

“Yeah, Sip. Sure,” I said, feeling a little better. “What’s been happening with you?”

I had been stuck at Public all summer, but my friends had been off doing weird, wonderful, and cool things. We had written back and forth, but we had all been so busy the summer had just flown by.

Sip got up to pace. As she moved she straightened everything in the room. Two of the couch cushions—yes, as the only known elemental I had a couch in my dorm room—were crooked, slightly, and she moved them around until they were perfect. She moved on to the computer, reordering the mouse and the cords.

“We had fun. I was in New York. All kinds of stuff goes on there. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“I would love to visit,” I said wistfully. “Can’t imagine my stepdad would get behind that.”

“No,” said Sip. “Probably not. Neither would the Committee.”

“Because the demons are trying to kill me?”