Furious Flames (Elemental Book 3) (31 page)

“Tell me you love me!” she screamed at him.

“No.” His face was a picture of apathy, but there was
something much deeper in his eyes.

“Tell me you don’t want me to leave!

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter! Tell me something! Tell me you hate
me and you never want to see me again! Anything! Tell me what you want!”

“I can’t.”

“Why the hell not?!”

He opened his mouth to speak, swallowed harshly, and
closed his mouth. With a sudden revelation, I realized why. It wasn’t that he
didn’t want to speak. “His throat closed up,” I said. Both of them looked at
me. “When he’s upset, his throat closes up and he can’t breathe let alone
talk.”

Addison turned to Henry. “Is that true? You didn’t
tell me not to leave because it upset you too much?”

He nodded.

Addie surprised all of us when she started crying. “I
thought you were tired of me.” It was Henry’s turn to surprise us; he hugged
her. She grabbed his arms to keep him from pulling away and pressed her face
against his chest. “I don’t care if you’re screwed up and only like me for
three days of the month. I’ll love you for the rest of the month enough for
both of us. Just don’t get tired of me. I don’t care if I can’t hug you or kiss
you as long as I can sit next to you. I don’t care what your parents did or if
you never tell me. I don’t want you to change. I’ll take being with you for
three days if I have to. I’ll take you for one day if I have to.”

I pushed Darwin towards the door, indicating we
needed to leave to give them privacy. Right before we passed through the door,
we heard Henry speak softly.

“I love you.”

Twenty minutes later, they sat back down to eat their
dinner. Addison didn’t touch him as she ate, apparently still content to just
be with him.

“So what are you going to do?” Darwin asked.

“Headmaster Hunt doesn’t need a teacher, but he could
use a counselor. I’m going to spend the winter break and summer break doing
some training courses. It’s normally a long process, but I’m smart enough to
get it done. Hunt has a friend who will be overseeing my training and he’ll sit
in on my counseling, so I can unofficially start next semester for a sort of
internship thing.”

Not looking at her, Henry reached over with his left
hand and took hers. Her face lit up.

*          *          *

For the next few weeks, my school life settled down.
I listened in class and did all the activities even when the professors gave me
their unsure, worried frowns. Although there were the occasional spikes of pain
when I ran too hard or got stressed too much, my health improved a little each
day.

After a while, everyone seemed to realize I wasn’t
about to keel over and they moved on. For most of them, that meant talking
about the council. With Flagstone back, the wolf shifters fell back into their
old pack lineup, which didn’t mean there was no more fighting. Watson, however,
kept the position as the headmaster’s second, which seemed to satisfy Flagstone
immensely.

Even though I no longer had to go to my fire
training, I seemed to have less and less personal time. I still met with
Vincent on Saturdays for reading. Henry, Darwin, Amelia, and I would spend all
Sunday working with Darwin. At first, he tried to say he didn’t know how to
shift, but Henry threatened to get Flagstone involved, so he stopped using that
excuse. Although Darwin was still rebelling against his teachers on the matter,
he no longer fought us.

Heather never came up in my dreams to offer me a
contract again and Langril said he didn’t know how to contact her, but he
refused to take me to Dothra until I made a deal with her. I also had no more
dreams of Astrid, so I hoped that meant she was safe for the time being.
Therefore, I concentrated on learning everything I could on magic from the
school, Vincent, and everyone else. I would be ready when I finally faced
Krechea.

Almost every day I wasn’t trying to help Darwin or
study with Vincent, I was volunteering for the professors. This turned out to
be a really good way to get extra lessons, particularly in building ritual
tools, defeating unearthly opponents, and emergency medical aid with magic.

Halloween was a bloody mess that involved the
vampire’s synthetic blood in the showers, acid rain, and a murder mystery. The
murder mystery, was about as fake as one could be, however, since the students
involved in the prank thought it would have been very tasteless after the
actual murders we had.

*          *          *

“Do you really want to be a therapist here?” Darwin
asked Addison as he pushed aside the giant rubber spider on his seat. It was
dinner time and already two weeks after Halloween, but the new pranks club
couldn’t let go of the past.

Addie smiled at Henry, who was indifferent as usual.
“I’ll manage.”

Although Amelia’s power had helped him temporarily,
Henry’s emotions were still very much repressed and displaying any outward sign
of emotion was awkward at best. He did start doing things like holding
Addison’s hand, despite the fact that he was obviously uncomfortable.

“I’m going to have supervision for the first few
years anyway.” Her smile dropped when she saw who was walking up to our table.
I turned to see Jackson.

“Did you really have to save the brown-nosed prat?”
Darwin asked.

“I heard that,” Jackson said. “Devon, Professor
Langril wants to see you in the headmaster’s office.”

“I’ll be back,” I said, standing.

“Be careful, bro,” Darwin said. “The pranks club has
been putting cling film over the doorways.”

“Will do. Hey, Addie, teach Darwin to say aluminum,”
I said, teasing him. I thought he said the word wrong the first time I heard it
until Henry told me the rest of the world said it differently than North
America. Even knowing that, it was fun to watch him and Addie argue about it.

“It’s aluminium,” Darwin said.

Ten minutes later, I stood in front of Hunt’s office.
My instincts alerted me that something big was about to happen, but I wasn’t in
danger at that moment.

I raised my hand to knock on the door. “Come in,
Devon,” Hunt said before I could.

I opened the door to find Hunt, Flagstone, Vincent,
and Langril. I entered and shut the door behind me. “You wanted to see me?”

“Please sit,” Hunt said. He was in his chair behind
his desk, Flagstone stood beside him as if guarding him, Vincent sat in the
chair by the fireplace, and Langril leaned against the bookshelf beside the
fireplace. I sat on the couch.

“I know about the keys and the tower,” I said.

“Before you say anything, you must know that Krechea
can sometimes hear us. Our secrets have been leaked.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that the fourth key is out there.
Either someone in this room right now betrayed the others, or he can hear us.”

I looked at Vincent, remembering the warning of
betrayal in his note. He shook his head very slightly. I didn’t know whether he
was trying to tell me no one would betray us or that he didn’t want me to mention
the letter, so I didn’t say anything.

“So now that you know what the tower is, are you
going after the key?”

“I promised the fire elementals that I would destroy
the tower in exchange for the sword. Then Langril went and locked Astrid in
Dothra.” From Hunt’s expression, I surmised that he already knew what Langril
did. “My first priority is getting Astrid back. My second priority will be
getting the key so I can destroy the tower and keep Krechea from getting out.
His goal is to get out, right?”

“If he gets even one key, he will have the power to
overrun this world,” Langril said. “The longer the key is missing, the weaker
the boundaries between the worlds will be and the better chance he has of
breaking through even without a key. Possession is just a stepping stone.”

“I believe Gale was Krechea’s familiar. Like Ghost
and Vincent.”

“It could have been a contract,” Vincent said.

Langril shook his head. “You can’t make a contract
with more than one of us. The familiar idea makes sense; it would have given
Krechea the connection he needed to Earth and Gale the power to kill whoever he
wanted.”

“If so, then you weakened Krechea when you killed
Gale, but he will recover quickly,” Hunt said. “We cannot be sure what he will
try next or when.”

“We decided to work together to help you get the
fourth key,” Vincent said.

Langril shrugged when I looked at him. “I would
rather you have it than Krechea.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t choose Alpha Flagstone to
get it.”

“I don’t want that responsibility,” the shifter said.
“I’ve already paid my dues.”

“Yeah, that’s not cryptic or anything. If I get the
key, I’ll be Krechea’s target, right?” I asked.

“He is after any key right now, but he will
prioritize killing you if you get it because you are the least experienced,”
Hunt said. “Most likely, he will try to convince you to work for him first. He
will probably offer to return Astrid to you.”

“He’s a bigger conman than me,” Langril added.

“Before you agree to this, you need to know that in order
to get the key, you will have to sacrifice what is most important to you,”
Vincent said regretfully.

I nodded, remembering Hunt’s wife and my mother.
“What did you sacrifice?” I asked Langril as he pulled the red ball out of his
pocket.

“My favorite pair of reading glasses,” he lied.

“What happens to the key when I die?”

“We don’t know,” Vincent answered. “We also suggest
that you do not call your familiar next year.”

He lost Star as well as his wife. “I think Henry is
my familiar.”

“Then you definitely shouldn’t call him,” Flagstone said.
“Even if he isn’t what’s most important to you, and even if he doesn’t die
defending you from Krechea, his magic will be tied to yours if you call him.
Your familiar will almost certainly die when you do.”

And my life was just shortened because of my heart. I
would be shortening my familiar’s life. Even if it wasn’t Henry, I couldn’t do
that. “But what about Ghost?”

“He is the only familiar any of us know to have
survived the death of their wizard. That is why Vincent named him Ghost. The familiar’s
old wizard always called him ‘cat.’”

“Also, I inherited him directly, so he was never
without. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. None of us will force
you to get the key or blame you if you don’t want to. We’ll destroy the tower,
so you would not be breaking your promise to the fire elementals. One of us can
get it.”

“If you get the key, will you have to sacrifice
something again?” I asked. He nodded. “It’s not like I have a long life ahead
of me anymore anyway.”

Even as I said it, I didn’t believe it. I had fifteen
to twenty years to figure out how to break the curse Gale inflicted on me. The
best way to do that was to kill Krechea and take his power. Since that was also
the best way to save Astrid, it seemed pretty obvious what I had to do. I was
pretty sure knew what was most precious to me, but I would take a page from
Langril’s book and manipulate the outcome to my benefit.

“I will get the key, save Astrid, and destroy the
tower.”

“I saw what happened between you and my mother,” I
said. Vincent sighed.

For the rest of the semester, nobody died and the
council didn’t try anything else. Of course, they were preparing for their new
rules and Krechea was probably licking his wounds, so I knew the peace wouldn’t
last.

Vincent showed me much deeper magic than what I
learned in class, especially magic I could use for protection. We continued my
practice with visions and he taught me to protect my mind, even in the visions.
What was odd was that since defeating Gale, I had no visions without inducing
them using my ring.

Henry and I still had a long way to go with Darwin.
He spoke as if his wolf was going to kill everyone, but he was willing to shift
when we were in the middle of the forest. The first few times, he attacked
Henry. After the fourth time, the wolf seemed to realize he wasn’t under
attack. Addison suggested that Darwin try talking to the wolf inside him, and
that helped tremendously. Sometimes, the wolf would just sit there and glare at
us, while other times, he wanted to play.

Because the wolf’s nature was so different from
Darwin’s, we all agreed he should never shift without both Henry and me with
him. The true test would come in January, when he found out he was being
enrolled in some of Flagstone’s classes. While the man was goofy and laid-back,
his wolf was not going to settle for being at the bottom of the pack.

It was my first night back in my apartment after the
end of the semester when Vincent dropped by to make sure I wasn’t stressing my
heart. I had kept the knowledge that he was married to my mother to myself at
school. Part of me hoped he would tell me about it. Then, in my own apartment,
I had to know for sure.

“How long exactly did John ‘lend’ her to you before
she had me?” I asked.

He sat on the couch with a sigh. “It isn’t what you
think, Devon.”

“How long?”

“You are so stubborn. It was nine months.”

“Then…” I hesitated, not sure I could even get the
question out.

“I wasn’t the only one John made her spend the night
with.”

“They don’t matter. My psychic magic narrows it down
to you or John. How do you know that evil bastard was my father? If you have
any doubt at all, you need to tell me.”

His expression was disheartening. “John was your
father.”

I sat down on my coffee table as the small glimmer of
hope I had since I saw the vision started to die. “How do you know you’re not
my father?”

Vincent finished his tea and set the cup down next to
me, his eyes focusing on the mug rather than me. “Because then I would have
lost you instead of your mother.” He stood up, walked into the dark kitchen,
and let the shadows swallow him. My mother always wanted to talk things through
with Joseph Sanders. Apparently, Vincent’s response was to walk away.

I stood up, pulled my phone out its harness on my
belt, and called a number I had memorized.

“Hello, this is Hailey! You missed me, so leave a
message.” The voice was overly girlish, which always made me laugh. I headed
for the kitchen to grab a large ziplock bag.

“Sorry, wrong number,” I said when I heard the beep.
Seconds after hanging up, my phone rang. If it wasn’t so necessary, I would
have teased my friend about his over-the-top security measures.

“What’s up, brother?” Marcus asked as I returned to
the living room.

I put the plastic bag around Vincent’s mug. “I need a
paternity test, and I need it to be untraceable.”