Bound In Blue: Book One Of The Sword Of Elements (5 page)

I opened my eyes when the creature whimpered and everything I thought I knew about myself and my synesthesia was blown to hell. I could still see the flames that danced across my hands and their connection to the beast.

I think I can see magic.

The weight on my chest increased and I knew the Cŵn Annwn was preparing to attack. Acting on instinct again, I tightened my grip on the beast’s aura and yanked it away.

Sensation swept through me. I could smell the rich odor of wet earth, fallen leaves, and running streams. Wind slapped my cheeks and I exulted in the reckless joy of the hunt. I raced across misty moors and dove into salty seas. I tore through the skies and fell on my prey like a bolt of lightning. I felt a joy so pure I wanted to cry.

The weight disappeared and I was forced back into myself. The Cŵn Annwn was gone.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Peter skidded to his knees beside me and I thought I saw a thread of brilliant green connecting us, but my head started throbbing and I lost it.

An oval face smiling a lopsided smile swam into view.

“Anomaly,” Miko said. “Check three. I win!”

CHAPTER NINE

We sat on one side and they sat on the other—enemy camps separated by the no man’s land of the table. Tynan appeared miserable and even Daley seemed uncomfortable. I could tell Peter was angry, but Lacey was harder to read.

The only one who was perfectly relaxed was Miko. She was wolfing down an apple crisp slathered in whipped cream. I considered the bowl of chocolate mousse in front of me and picked up a spoon to shovel a generous portion into my mouth.

Lacey broke. “How can the two of you sit there eating after what just happened?”

Miko didn’t bother looking up. “Have some. You’ll feel better.”

“How is dessert going to make me feel better about being attacked by a monster?” Lacey cried, but it was a topic no one was ready to discuss.

One by one, the others began to eat what Miko had ordered for them. Even Lacey began to pick at her shortcake until she was finishing it with enthusiasm.

Fortified by chocolate, I was ready for answers. “How did you know?”

Miko didn’t blink. “Know what?”

“That chocolate mousse is my favorite and pecan pie is Peter’s?”

“Everyone likes to claim they’re into wheat grass and steamed vegetables and whatever, but I can see past the illusion of the lie they tell themselves to uncover the truth.” She grimaced. “People rarely appreciate being told what they really want.”

Tynan nudged her gently with his shoulder. “We do, Meek.”

I was sick of all the games. “So she is your sister then, and not just some chickie who works for your dad.” Tynan ducked his head and his hair fell over his eyes. His refusal to look directly at anyone for long was starting to irritate me.

The noise Miko made was a cross between a laugh and a snort. “I told you, unlike these two losers, I have a family of my own—even if I’m not on speaking terms with any of them at the moment.”

“So what did you win in this bet of yours then?”

Lacey dropped her spoon with a clatter against her plate. “What bet?”

“I think it was a bet we wouldn’t get killed, at least, not too quickly.”

Daley shook his head. “I would have stepped in if the Cŵn Annwn had attacked. Up until you did whatever it was you did, it was only curious. We search for Potentials. Miko can usually sense what category they fall into, but you three were difficult to sort out. It was her idea to try something a little bit unorthodox.”

“Potential for what?” Peter asked. “And what was that thing?”

“Not potential,” Tynan corrected from beneath the curtain of his hair, “a Potential. Someone with untapped abilities. Magic.”

“Magic,” Peter said, laughing.

“Magic,” Lacey said with wonder in her voice.

I didn’t say anything. I already knew that magic existed.

A waitress arrived with mugs of hot chocolate and we were silent as she passed them around. “The boys and I still need sugar,” Miko explained after the woman left. “Using magic depletes the body’s physical and mental resources.”

“Tynan was the one who called the Cŵn Annwn.”

“Tynan has that ability. At the moment.” Tynan flushed and looked away. “Daley was maintaining a perimeter to contain the beast. I was holding a glamour over us to make sure no one witnessed our little experiment.”

Peter laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

Daley sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but Miko has a magic device—a harp—that gives us information on where a Potential might be.”

“Oh come on!”

I put my hand on Peter’s arm. “Just listen for a minute.” His pale eyebrows shot up, but he nodded.

Daley flashed me a grateful look. “Sometimes the harp is as specific as a name and a place, but usually it’s just a general area and we have to narrow it down ourselves. The harp sent us to Ontario, but we’ve been searching cities since the spring and it’s been like chasing ghosts. Since most abilities show up in adolescence, we normally start in the schools and Eastdale was the first on the list here. Miko could sense something, but she wasn’t sure what. Since there were three of you in one place—which is unprecedented—it was probably messing with her abilities.”

Miko perked up. “I was being blocked!”

“Maybe,” Daley conceded.

“But then there was the weird thing in the bathroom,” Miko interrupted.

Lacey wrinkled her nose. “What weird thing?”

Miko ignored her and looked at me. “You were doing some kind of magic I’d never felt before.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Daley frowned. “You said you were Viviane Lynne’s daughter. Our father has been looking for her, but she’s been missing for years. Everyone thought she was dead.” He paused when he saw the look on my face. “Sorry. We didn’t realize it was true, or how recently it happened, until you told Tynan. Anyway, at the time, our father thought the name was maybe just a coincidence, but it was worth checking out. The three of you seemed connected so we watched you all, or at least, we tried to. You were always difficult to find. I’d track you down and then something would catch my attention and you’d be gone. You being able to hear the harp was another red flag. Miko had the idea of putting you in a stress situation to see what would happen and I agreed.”

“And what’s the harm of a few wagers on the side, right
Meek
?” I glared at the girl, but she was inspecting the polish on her nails and looking bored.

Daley made an impatient gesture. “If you want to be angry with someone, be angry with me.”

“So what was the bet then,
Day
?”

A muscle jumped in Daley’s cheek and his eyes narrowed. I was right—he didn’t like the nickname. “Miko’s bet was that within three minutes of facing a threat, she could confirm exactly what you were.”

“What are we then?”

Miko answered with three black-tipped fingers raised as she ticked the points off. “A Protector, a Mongrel and an Anomaly.” She smiled sweetly at Lacey. “You’re the Mongrel, in case you were wondering.” Lacey’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

Miko pointed at Peter. “Protector. You’ve inherited the ability from a relative or an ancestor. We can check with Taliesin and see if we can find out who it was, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Protector magic is one of the few abilities not diluted by breeding and you can never predict which generation it’ll pop up in.”

The finger turned to Lacey. “Mongrel. One of your ancestors mated with a lorelei or something. The hint of those abilities is what makes you more popular than you deserve. In ancient times, you might have had enough natural talent to become a witch, but now you’ll probably become a weather girl on regional TV. National, if you’re lucky.” Cruel, but basically what I would have predicted for Lacey too.

The finger moved to me. “Anomaly. Do you even realize that sometimes you’re almost invisible? That’s a witches’ trick, but I’m mostly immune to those. That day in the bathroom, I saw you fade before my eyes and then come back, though not as strong as before. It was like you were still out of focus.”

Tynan pushed the hair out of his eyes. “We asked around and no one could remember what you looked like or if you were in any of their classes. Except Lacey. She definitely . . . knew you,” he finished diplomatically. Lacey fidgeted beside me but remained silent. “She seems to be unaffected by whatever it is you do.”

Miko thumped the table with a tiny fist. “The point is, I can smell the spells a witch casts from a mile away and I couldn’t detect siren or lorelei on you either.” She smirked at Lacey. “They both have a distinctly fishy scent, paranormally speaking.” She pointed at me again. “You couldn’t really be
the
Viviane Lynne’s daughter—that was ridiculous—but you’re not like any other Greylander we’ve encountered. Daley refused to even consider you might be an earth magician. . .”

“That’s not true.”

“. . . but he was right, you’re not. There isn’t an earth magician on record who could do what you did to the Cŵn Annwn. We just wanted to see how you would react and then Ty would have sent the hound back. Somehow you pulled the Cŵn Annwn’s power out and left something different behind. So, Anomaly!” she said as if that was proof of everything.

A faint vibration passed through the table and I glanced outside the window to see if a storm was coming. The sky was clear. When I looked back, Daley had placed his hands flat on the table and was staring at me with a frown. I had the strange impression that the vibration was coming from him. “The three of you could use some time to process this. Peter can take you home. I’ll call for someone to pick us up. Come to the house at noon tomorrow and our father will explain everything.” It was a command, not an invitation “Go on. I’ll take care of the bill.” We were dismissed. Peter slid out of the booth and Lacey and I followed him.

I stopped. Daley might be completely hot in an authoritarian sort of way, but I had to ignore that because there was something I needed to know. “Since you seem to have all the answers, who was my mother? Who was Viviane Lynne?”

He considered me with stormy eyes that didn’t trust me at all. “She was the Lady of the Lake.  Viviane was a goddess.”

Lightning streaked across the cloudless sky.

CHAPTER TEN

I woke early the next morning feeling agitated and restless. My night had been filled with dreams of being chased by the Cŵn Annwn through twisted trees while lightning hit the ground around me.

I decided to go for a quick run across the property to clear my head. Even though it was early, the farm hand everyone called Old Tom had already let the horses out. Two of them were munching on the grass near the fence in the back paddock. Doll and Galileo were chestnut-colored siblings and direct descendants of the farm’s most famous horse, Northern Dancer. As I approached the fence, Doll cantered over to see if I’d brought a treat.

“Sorry, girl.” I kept my distance. The horses sensed my fear and reacted to it with their teeth. Every attempt to learn to ride had ended one of two ways: on my backside in the dirt or begging Peter to get me down.

My nose twitched as I caught the scent of something funny underneath the usual horse and hay smell. I’d never been to the ocean, but it was what I imagined it smelled like: salty, sharp, and wet. Doll shook her head and backed away in a funny sideways movement. Galileo trotted towards us, snorting and huffing through his nostrils. They both seemed to be staring at something over my head.

I turned around. Windfield was set up on a grid with tree-lined laneways branching off from the main road that led to the front gate. My house was about twenty feet down the second of those laneways. The two closest guesthouses were on the third and not too far from where I stood. The buildings were neglected and sinister; the perfect place for an intruder to hide. Northern Dancer’s bloodline was valuable property and even though the barns were locked down at night with a state of the art security system, Old Tom was always on the lookout for anyone trying to break in and get at one of the horses.

Mauve shot with grey prickled on the edges of my vision as it occurred to me that security systems might not be too useful against someone—or something—with magic.

I glanced back at the horses. Doll’s eyes had widened until the whites showed. Peter had taught me the signs; Galileo was anxious, but Doll was afraid. Maybe they’d been spooked by a rabbit and were acting up to get attention.

Yeah, cuz thoroughbred racehorses are just neurotic that way.

I jogged over to the first house and tried the doorknob, but it was locked. The place was in pretty bad shape. These two guesthouses had always been hardly better than shacks and were used as accommodation for temporary workers back when things were thriving. The houses closer in quality to mine were on the far side of the property and had already been torn down to make way for the new subdivision.

Flaking paint dug into my palms as I leaned on the window sill to get a better look inside. A kitchenette ran along one wall and a table with one missing leg leaned against the other. There was no other furniture. Two closed doors led to a bedroom and a bathroom. The house was as deserted as it should be.

I decided to check on the second one, just in case. From the outside, it was identical to the first except for a triangle-shaped window set in the door a little above my eye level. Rising on my toes to look through, I leaned on the doorknob to prop myself up. When the knob twisted unexpectedly, I fell forward through the doorway and onto the wet carpet. Scrambling up, I started to gag at the smell, and then froze—all thoughts of mildew and mold and rotting things forgotten. Cold white veined in dank blue the color of a thrashing sea passed over my eyes.

Beside the imprints of my hands in the soggy carpet, and all around the room, were the distinct marks of paw prints.

The smell of the carpet didn’t seem to bother Peter at all. Years of mucking out the horse stalls had probably burned off the first layer of cells in his nose. 

“Why’d you come in here anyway?” he called through the open door.

“I told you, the horses were acting weird.”

Peter came out onto the porch and looked down the path to where Doll and Galileo were again happily munching grass. He snorted, but didn’t comment.

“There was a weird smell too,” I added. He cocked an eyebrow at me and I amended the statement. “Weirder than that.”

Peter crossed his arms and ran the thumbnail of his right hand up and down the groove between his bottom middle teeth, something he did when he was thinking and a habit both his mother and his dentist hated. Coming to a decision, he walked back into the house and kneeled down in the muck to measure one of the prints against his hand.

I stayed on the porch. “Should we tell your Dad or Old Tom?”

Peter shook his head as he stood and wiped his hands off on his jeans. “I don’t want to pull them into this.”

“What do you mean?”

“It might be something like that thing you killed, the Coowinanoon.”

“Cŵn Annwn,” I corrected, “and I’m not sure I killed it.”

“Well it isn’t a coyote or a stray dog; the prints are too big.” He pointed to some smaller marks. “And it has six claws on each paw.”

Breathing through my mouth to keep out the smell, I took a step inside. “That’s weird, right?”

“Yup.” Peter walked over to the kitchenette and opened a bottom cupboard, then quickly slammed it shut.

“What is it?”

“I think I found its lunch.”

“What?”

“Raccoon.”

“Recent?”

“From the amount of maggots in it, yeah. But something was chewing on it first.”

We both turned and looked at the first closed door. Mrs. Larsen was a huge X-Files fan and used to say Peter and I were proof ESP really existed, but we just knew each other so well that sometimes saying things out loud wasn’t necessary.

Peter stepped lightly across the soggy carpet and I squished after him. Twisting the doorknob carefully, he opened the door to a bedroom. It was empty. I caught the smell again—a whiff of salt air—and pointed to the bathroom door. Peter nodded and padded over to push it open. He stood there, staring.

“What? What is it?” As I approached, I tried to ignore the disgusting slip and slide of my running shoes on the carpet; it was like walking through sewage.

When I was ten, I went through a major Little Mermaid period—the original story, not the sappy cartoon. I collected all the storybook versions I could find and one of my favorites had an illustration of the Little Mermaid diving through waving kelp with her hair streaming out behind her. So I knew what I was looking at. Peter reached into the tub and pulled out something wet and slimy.

A long strand of rotting seaweed.