Elemental Darkness (Paranormal Public Series) (12 page)

“If you ever come near my brother again,” I said, “I’ll stop pretending like I don’t know how to aim that lightning.”

Nicole started to sneer, but Nick pulled her away. I watched them run down the lamp lit street until I couldn’t see them anymore.

“You okay?” Cale asked, staggering up to me and putting his hand on my shoulder.

“Yeah,” I said. “My stepfather’s going to be so mad.”

“Sorry about the banister,” said Cale ruefully.

“Oh,” I waved my hand, “that will be an awkward conversation, but I was thinking he’s going to be mad that I don’t have a summer job anymore.”

Cale chuckled. “You don’t have a summer job anymore, and it’s time for you to get back to Public.”

Instantly I brightened, but then I thought of Ricky. Cale could read the worry on my face like an open book, and he tried to reassure me. “We’re doubling his security. After tonight we have no choice. We’re worried that they’re going to send Lisabelle after him.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “She would find a way to protect him.”

Cale didn’t look so sure.

“Hey,” I said, “this is my best friend we’re talking about. She’ll always be on our side.”

Cale shrugged. “I don’t mean to say anything bad about your friend,” he said, “but she willingly went to darkness. Arguably they never could have gotten her unless she was willing.”

“She did it to save Sip,” I said, throwing up my hands. “That’s hardly willing.”

“Either way, she’s now taken all her power to the Nocturns, and we have to fight her. It’s a fight that we all know we can’t win.”

“If it comes to that,” I said. “But it won’t.”

Light was starting to burst over the tree tops as the sun came up. The rain had stopped long ago, leaving the world drenched in bright colors. It promised to be another beautiful summer day.

“Cale,” I asked tiredly, “how exactly does the Paranormal Police Academy train you?”

“They optimize our natural abilities,” Cale explained. “The Academy doesn’t try to teach us to do anything we weren’t already learning. We learn to use what we have.”

“So you were about to use your pixie dust to . . . what?” I asked.

“It reacts with darkness,” he said. “They’re Nocturns, and all the power around them is dark. My pixie dust would have created little balls of fire.”

“When it touched them?”

“Yeah, or their magic,” said Cale. “I just didn’t get the chance, because you control the sky.”

I smiled. “I’m surprised they didn’t hear the story from Golden Falls about what happened when the demons attacked us.”

“They may not have believed it,” said Cale. “I didn’t. Anyway, the real reason I came here is that Caid called a Conclave. All paranormals - except a skeleton force assigned to protect vital paranormal interests, like Ricky - are required to attend.”

At first I didn’t understand what he was saying, but when he continued to look at me it finally sank in. “I’m leaving?” I asked.

Cale nodded. “Summer’s over.”

I left Ricky a note. I felt sick about it, but I didn’t know what else to do. Cale had planned to tell me earlier, but when he realized that Nick and Nicole were darkness mages he hadn’t had a chance. I demanded to know why he hadn’t shared that little bit of information with me, and he said that he had wanted to deal with it on his own. I told him that was entirely unacceptable.

He shrugged. I was starting to wonder if the Police Academy was really a good thing or not. But either way, I had to leave for the Conclave immediately.

Most paranormals, including the unusual and rare Strange, were being required to attend. Mound would be there. Sip’s parents, Lough’s parents. Probably not Lisabelle’s parents, because no one was sure where they were. Sip had also sent me a message to say that she was on her way. The thought that we would finally be together again was inexpressibly comforting. I couldn’t wait.

Typically a paranormal Conclave would have taken place at Vampire Locke, but since that was now impossible, we were meeting in Sip’s parents’ town, in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire. I thought of the barren fields and Sip’s house and wondered where exactly all of us would stay.

Instead of flying I took a human route: I hopped on a bus. Sip would have thought I was crazy, but as I explained to her later, the less attention I drew to myself the fewer problems we would have.

I reached Sip’s home town in early afternoon. Several times I’d tried to sleep on the bus without success, so I was tired. Since Sip was already there, she was able to meet me at the bus station. We hugged, but we didn’t say a word to each other until we were safely at Sip’s parents’ home.

“Where are Hyder and Helen?” I asked.

“They’re out to dinner with a few other senior paranormals,” Sip explained. “My brothers are with them.”

Sip was the youngest of six. She had five older brothers. Poor girl.

“I think they wanted to give us come privacy since we haven’t seen each other all summer,” she said. I was relieved that she sounded just as bitter as I felt.

“Any news of Lisabelle?” I asked.

Sip shook her head. “Caid told my parents he’s been getting reports of a very strong darkness mage fighting with paranormals, pixies mostly. He thinks it’s Lisabelle.”

“They’re setting her up to be blamed,” I said, fear gripping my heart.

“Yup,” said Sip, nodding grimly. “They sure are.”

I didn’t want to think about what that meant. Obviously Lisabelle would never go over to darkness; she was only there because she had to be.
We
knew that, but no one else seemed to believe it.

“You know,” said Sip thoughtfully, “Lisabelle once said that the only way she could live with me was because I was more pleasant when I was sleeping.” She gave me a half-hearted smile.

“That sounds like Lisabelle,” I said softly. Sip nodded, her eyes bright.

We both let a few minutes of silence pass. Then, knowing it was better to get our minds off our friend, I started talking again. Anything to forget, if only temporarily.

“What about the secret messages you’ve been putting in Tabble?” I asked. “Any response from that?”

Sip shook her head again. Sadness was like a weight on her shoulders. “No,” she whispered. “I keep hoping. I keep signing them neon, but there’s nothing. She might not be able to write.” She paused, then brightened a little. “Have you dreamed her?”

“Not since that first night,” I said. “I wondered if the darkness premier or Malle might have figured out what was happening.”

“It’s possible,” said Sip. “But come on. Let’s go outside. Lough said he’d be arriving with Bartholem soon.”

“He’s bringing the cat?” I asked, startled. Sip grinned.

“He tried to leave him, but I guess Bartholem had a fit and Lough had to bring him along after all.”

“Sounds about right,” I said, grinning back.

It was now early evening, and Sip and I had a ton of catching up to do. For one thing, I wanted to talk to her about Keller, because I couldn’t not talk about Keller. And that was only the first topic on a long list. In true Sip form, she prepared us a pot of tea, sliced some cheese and put it on a plate with crackers, and grabbed a blanket. We went outside and spread the blanket on her front lawn, sitting on the grass to wait for Lough.

“At least we’ll be on our way back to Public soon,” I said, biting into a slice of cheddar.

“Everything feels better when we’re there,” said Sip. “It wasn’t the same this summer without the other students.”

“How’s the research coming?” I asked. Sip had spent the summer researching ways to get Lisabelle back, even if that isn’t what she told Oliva.

“Not well,” said Sip grimly. “Lisabelle probably had to sign a Blood Kept, a type of agreement that’s almost impossible to break.”

“She took an oath to darkness?” I asked, shocked. Somehow I still felt like this was all a bad dream, like I’d been hit in the head at Golden Falls, and any minute now we’d all wake up safe and back at Public. But I was slowly facing the fact that going back for the semester and regular classes without Lisabelle there would be a big wakeup call.

“I’ve found out a couple of things,” said Sip, “but before I tell you about them, you need to read this.”

She handed me a Tabble and my relief was palpable. Until I saw the news wire, I hadn’t fully realized how lost I’d felt all summer without any links to the paranormal world.

“It’s an article by Mound,” I groaned. “This is bad.”

Sip nodded. “You have no idea. He’s advocating arresting Lisabelle’s parents.”

I stared at Sip wide-eyed. “No wonder they’ve gone to ground.”

It has come to my attention, in my esteemed position as a pixie, that Lisabelle Verlans is in contact with her mother and father. Do we not find it suspicious that they blithely continued to live their lives until suddenly disappearing? What could this mean other than their direct involvement in their daughter’s illegal activities? I advocate doing the only thing we paranormals can to protect ourselves. I advocate arresting the Verlans traitors.

I have two more orders of business. The first concerns Charlotte Rollins, the elemental who, in all honesty, started this whole mess in the first place. I advocate laying the blame at her feet, where it should have been from the beginning. All of this madness and carnage can be stopped, and it can be stopped simply. Just turn the elemental over to darkness. If we are on good terms with the demons, as we should be, we do not need the Power of Five, because we do not need protection. I would also like to point out, in the same vein, that if we truly had the Power of Five, if Charlotte Rollins was truly a good paranormal, so many of us would not already have died for nothing.

Lastly, I would like to commend Cy
nthia Malle on her continued talks with the paranormals. She is truly doing everything that she can to stop this madness. I also commend her on Keller Erikson, who is truly a talented fallen angel. He will fly far.

I made a face at Sip. “He’s talking about Keller as if he knows him,” I said bitterly. “He doesn’t.”

Sip nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. Have you talked to him at all?”

I sighed and told her I hadn’t. We talked about Keller for a bit and wondered just how he was doing and where he was. I had a feeling he was at Vampire Locke, surrounded by demons, but the thought made me sick.

“I can’t believe his parents just gave him over to her,” I said, shaking my head.

“I know,” Sip whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re at war and they gave him over to the enemy,” I said, tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, as they tended to do now when I thought of Keller. I missed him. I missed him with a deep ache I was sure would never go away, and there didn’t seem to be a thing I could do about it.

Sip reached out and patted my hand. “We’ll get them back,” she assured me. “We will.”

“I hear a car,” I said, watching Sip’s long driveway.

“Probably Lough,” said Sip with amusement. “He and Bartholem were having trouble figuring out how to travel.”

I looked at Sip’s gleeful face.

“So, they aren’t getting along any better?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Bartholem loves Lough’s family.”

“And Lough wanted to take care of him because he loves Lisabelle, of course,” I said thoughtfully.

Sip nodded. “We all do.”

The taxi pulled up and Lough nearly tumbled out.

He walked briskly toward us, ignoring the driver in his haste to get away from the vehicle. The driver quietly moved to get Lough’s luggage out of the trunk.

“He’s in the back seat,” he said to me. “Can you get him?”

I got up to do as he asked.

“Oh, cheese!” Lough could always be diverted by food, no matter what was going wrong.

I laughed and grabbed one more cracker before I went to get the cat.

Bartholem was in a carrier in the back seat. He started to purr happily once his purple eyes landed on me.

I grabbed the carrier, thanked the driver as Lough came back to take his suitcase, then returned to Sip, who had sprawled on the blanket and was reading the Tabble.

“Hi Bartholem,” she said, when I let him out of the carrier. He ignored her and darted off into the woods, prompting Sip to glare at Lough.

“What if he’s running away?” she demanded. “You scared him off!”

“Good riddance,” said Lough, sitting down heavily and piling three pieces of cheese on one cracker. “He’s just doing his business. I’m sure he’ll be back. Lucky us.”

Sip sniffed disdainfully. “He’d better be, or Lisabelle will be mad when she comes back.”

Lough didn’t answer her, he just sank into a dark silence.

We talked for most of the evening. Lough’s parents, who ran a farm, were almost as out of the loop as I was, so he was eager to hear the latest news from Sip, and Sip was only too happy to rant about Mound and Caid. In the midst of all the bad news, though, she was at least happy with the progress of the Sign of Six.