Elemental Shining (Paranormal Public Series) (13 page)

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something dangerous. Hopefully Risper won’t let her get hurt.”

“I’m not sure he cares,” Trafton yelled back. “He probably thinks it builds character.”

“I think she has plenty of character,” I yelled back.

But in the end, right when Lisabelle hit the end of the bleachers, the siblings pulled their hands out of the ground. Instantly, the air calmed itself. The wind stopped, debris that had been pulled into the air fell to the ground and I watched Daisy stumble and fall. Her brother didn’t even move to catch her, he just stood there looking lost in thought. His face was pale, and even from far above I could see the sheen of sweat dripping down his face. The second he had joined his sister, the power they were exerting had amplified ten times. But now he looked spent.

It was over, but a cold lingered in the air.

The deans let the other Demonstrations go forward, but the air had changed. Everyone watched as if in a trance, and no one spoke. I felt like an explosion had taken place and we were still sitting on the blast site. Daisy looked ridiculously smug and her eyes kept darting up toward the bleachers where Lisabelle sat, white-faced and tight-lipped. Sip’s purple eyes shone with concern every time she looked at her roommate.

After that, Vanni’s Demonstration was the only other one I even tried to concentrate on. She did something fairly routine for a fallen angel: she healed. It was something I had seen before, but of course Vanni did it more flawlessly than anyone else. She searched the other Starters until she found a pixie with a bandaged wrist. After a brief explanation of how the pixie, named Ulrik, had fallen from a tree and fractured his wrist—surprisingly clumsy for a pixie—Vanni proceeded to heal the injury without so much as batting an eyelash. I couldn’t help but notice that once she had completed her Demonstration she smiled prettily at Keller, who nodded in encouragement.

“Down, girl,” said Trafton, who I had forgotten was still sitting next to me. His eyes, as blue as the ocean that he liked to surf, were fixed on my face, while his blond hair swept charmingly into his eyes.

“I just don’t think she should be simpering over someone else’s. . . .” What? Keller and I had never really made it official. I thought of him as my boyfriend, but it wasn’t something we had talked about. What did he think? I knew college was the time to do all kinds of things with people that weren’t your boyfriend, but that wasn’t what I wanted. My mom said that my dad, my real dad, was her first, and if he hadn’t—what?—he would have been her only. I wanted that. I just wanted one. Definitely not college style at all.

“Keller is the second best catch on this campus,” said Trafton. “Girls have been making eyes at him since he got here. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Sure you are,” said Trafton, standing up. He stretched his arms over his head, ignoring the row of students behind us who were still trying to see. “Take comfort in the fact that he only looks at you.” Trafton made his way down the stairs, leaving me with a lot to think about.

“We all have our job studies now, right?” said Sip, returning to the businesslike girl I knew instead of the scared out of her mind girl who had watched the twins’ Demonstration.

“I have tutoring,” said Lisabelle. “I’ll see you guys at our second meal.” That’s what we had taken to calling it, because it was technically too late to be lunch, but we still had another meal later.

“I’ll walk you,” said Lough, rising as well. His red cheeks were redder than usual and his hands trembled slightly. He was nervous at the prospect of being alone with Lisabelle.

“No, that’s fine,” said Lisabelle. “I know how to get there. I’ll see you all later.”

“I hope you’re a good tutor,” Sip called after her, as Lough looked crestfallen. “Someday I’m going to come watch you ‘work.’”

“Attention, students,” Risper’s voice rang out. Any students who had been moving to leave took their seats once more. “As you all know, the demon presence is growing stronger. They now have a name: the Knights of Darkness, the first sign in their history that they are forming a cohesive unit that they will use to attack. In response, we paranormals must become more vigilant and capable. On top of that, the Map Silver has been discovered, as you will have seen in the news. That provides yet another artifact in the possession of the paranormals that the demons would kill to get. To that end, we, as deans, have decided that all the paranormals on this campus must take a turn spending a night outside the protections of Public, and be ready fight off whatever comes their way.”

An uproar like a swarm of angry wasps went around the bleachers. Daisy and her brother’s performance was forgotten in the spark of anger that Risper’s words brought.

“What is the point of that?” demanded Nate, a fallen angel and a friend of Keller’s. He stood up and asked, “Are we to be alone?”

Risper turned cold eyes on the speaker, who instantly quieted but ignored his friends’ efforts to pull him back into his seat.

“No, you will go with your Tactical team and there will be other teams out as well,” said Risper. “Demons will come. That is a given. Maybe they don’t wait at the edge of the protections like they did last semester, because Ms. Rollins’s reckless attack took care of that, but they still wait.”

“This is madness.” This time it was a vampire who spoke. It turned out to be Rake, the one who had almost run over Sip. “It’s suicide.”

“No, it’s a way to prepare you. Even here you act like children. But you are
not
children. You are young adults who in a very short time will be expected to take care of yourselves, something that I am confident at the moment that hardly any of you could do. Others’ lives will be in your hands. They already have been. It was just a little less than a year ago that President Malle, now President of the Knights of Darkness, was here trying to kill every single one of you. If not for some quick thinking, she would have succeeded.”

“Doesn’t he mean quick thinking by his own flesh and blood?” someone muttered behind me. I didn’t turn to see who was speaking. Lisabelle had been kidnapped by Malle and freed by Lough and me.

“It is time you learned something about your abilities,” Risper continued, ignoring the murmurs. “And about yourselves.” With that, he swept past the other deans and away.

I wondered if they were really going to stick me outside the wall I had almost died to create and let the demons have their chance at me. It sounded insane, but Dove might be just that evil. I wasn’t sure anymore.

One thing Risper said did ring true. It was time to gather information and take my life into my own hands. If they were going to stick me outside the protections of Public, then they didn’t care what happened to me and I couldn’t rely on anyone else to take care of me anymore. All the more reason to hurry to the Long Building and start practicing.

A cold penetrated my bones that I knew not even the warmest fire would get rid of.

We all left the field in silence. Instead of walking Lisabelle to her tutoring, Lough and Sip went off to find a house that both of their classes happened to be in. It was very strange without the Tower, and everything was more scattered, but I was glad to be headed to the Long Building. I really needed time to think. It was an eclectic building, so big that it was difficult to find your way around or run across the same thing twice. I loved it, and I was glad that only two classes were taking place there. What’s more, they were for seniors and on the opposite end from the new Museum, so I never saw anyone except Dacer when I went there. The Museum still wasn’t open for viewing.

I entered the Long Building in the middle of the long side. The building was low, only one story, and made of stone, and the grass around it had grown so high that in some places it touched the windows, creating the illusion that the building was disappearing into the ground. For as far as I could see in either direction, the only thing in sight was the walls of the building. It was a strange view. At different points along the roof were things sticking up: a large metal contraption here, a cupola there, and what it was all for I had no idea.

 The entryway was covered in cobwebs, since not even the Public staff tried to keep up with such a big building. Dacer had guessed that it had been at least ten years since anyone had cleaned there, and since the building was mostly used for storage and experiments there weren’t even a lot of paranormals passing through the door.

The thick carpet had a heavy film of gray dust over what must once have been a beautiful blue oriental rug. Since it was still daylight and there were no lights on, the whole place had a creepy feeling.

In fact, the Long Building was famous for wild stories about antics perpetrated by students and professor alike. The most memorable, at least that I had heard, went down as famous legend, but I had no idea if it was really true.

A few students, mostly fallen angels, had snuck out of the dorms to watch an experiment by a renowned professor who had tried to harness and control magic without the knowledge of the mages. His ultimate aim was to keep magic from happening at all; basically he wanted to stamp out the mages’ magic, the lifeblood of the paranormals.

He had nearly succeeded.

What he had been trying to do was similar to what had happened to me during my first semester at Public when I wore an Airlee ring, not knowing—because no one did yet—that I was supposed to wear an Astra one.

The result had been that I could use my magic, but only in fits and starts. Part of the problem was that I didn’t know what I was doing, but the difficulty was mostly caused by my wearing the wrong ring.

The professor in the legend, known as Artle, had been trying to do the same thing. He thought that if he could harness this dampening power he could keep darkness mages in check. Unfortunately, he created a horrible and explosive reaction instead.

Legend had it that a group of fallen angels knew Professor Artle, who was in Airlee, and had realized that his experiment was nearing completion; many people now believed that he had been trying to invest the powers he was trying to harness in a necklace, working away like a madman in the basement of the Long Building. Periodically students would see different colors of smoke, some days blue and some days reds and greens and yellows, curling quickly out of the top of the building. Other days they would hear explosions as they walked to class through the snow.

Professor Artle worked day and night, allowing his student teachers to teach his classes for him. It got so bad that the President of that era had to intervene, telling Professor Artle that he was neglecting his real work and that he must stop and eat, if nothing else. But Professor Artle ignored him.

He continued to work feverishly until it got so bad that he was relieved of his teaching duties, but still he soldiered on. It had been clear to everyone that what had happened last year with me and my ring was an accident, but Artle wanted to be able to stop magic on purpose. He was searching for more than just a shielding spell that would protect one thing from attack by another; he dreamed of creating an elimination spell that would stop magic in its tracks. It had never been done before.

For good reason.

Finally, the night came when he was ready to test the experiment.

Artle had spent time not only on the quest itself, but also on fortifying the whole building against disaster. Spells were in place to protect brick and mortar and to contain explosions, protections that had never been needed at Public before. Artle didn’t want to take any chances with his experiment.

Rumors said that Artle by this time looked like a mad scientist, small and hunched, with crazy white hair flying off in every direction. He wore glasses that were too large for his face and that he constantly had to push up his nose.

Some people also said that if Artle had had a family, if he had ever married, none of the mess that followed would have happened. But the truth is, who can ever say?

By the time the group of fallen angels arrived, it was too late. They were all seniors, used to seeing crazy things at Paranormal Public, but nothing had ever compared to this.