Elemental Fire (11 page)

Dear Charlotte,

School just started back up again
after winter break, but I’m finding it hard to concentrate. Dad is busy and
gone most of the time and I feel like sometimes when he looks at me he
flinches. He used to play catch with me. He stopped. I miss you. I would like
to meet more of your friends from college. Is that Lisabelle girl really what
most college girls are like? I can’t wait for college. Anyway, I was thinking
over April break I could come see you. At the very least you should come home.
It is lonely here without my big sister.

Ricky

Lisabelle,

My sister informs me that I am
not to meet any more of her friends any time soon. Since you are the only part
of her college life that she has let me in on - although I get the idea that my
sister couldn’t tell you what to do if she tried - I thought I’d send along a
note. It’s not very complicated. It’s only to say that I want my sister to come
home over April break, which involves her staying out of trouble until then. I
think writing out the implications of what I am implying would be insulting to
both of us. More you than me, but I do not like to insult myself. All of that
is to say, please take care of my sister and yourself.

Ricky.

Ricky,

Next time you tell me what to do
I’ll singe your hair. Clear? Charlotte would tell me not to talk that way to
her little brother, but poor Charlotte isn’t reading this and I’m sure you are
perfectly capable of reading between the lines to understand that when I say,
“Singe your hair” what I really mean is tie you up by your feet and burn it all
off.

Lisabelle.

Ricky,

I hear Lisabelle e-mailed you.
I’ve given her a talking to. She has no business corresponding with you, but
then she told me that you were the one who initiated it. Whatever are you doing
writing to one of my friends? I hope she didn’t say anything too rude and
please ignore the swear words. Or at least don’t tell your dad. I’m pretty sure
he would stop letting me come home if he decided I was a bad influence on you.

Charlotte

Charlotte,

Lisabelle and I are pen pals. I
don’t see what your problem is. Peace and love.

Ricky

Ricky,

Leave Lisabelle alone! You have
no idea what you’re doing. My poor friend has better things to do.

Charlotte

Lisabelle,

Charlotte’s mad at me. What did
you go telling her for?

Ricky

Ricky,

Peace and love.

Lisabelle.

Charlotte,

Stop being such an old fusspot.

*
 
Sent separately by both Ricky and
Lisabelle. Charlotte received both and subsequently threw them across the room.

Unfortunately, that was not much
of a bright spot. By the end of the first weak conditions had deteriorated so
badly that I wondered if most of us would make it through the semester. Some
would die from beatings, but, as what happened on Friday night illustrated,
some would die from rebellion.

Chapter Ten

I sat alone in my room in Astra.
I had never felt so lonely in my life. Not only was Mrs. Swan MIA, possibly
even dead, but the first week of this, my fourth semester at Paranormal Public,
could not have gone worse. I shook my head. At least the Mirror Arcane was
safe. I had tried to play it cool - Lisabelle would have scoffed at the notion
that I was attempting coolness - but when I was allowed back into Astra after
Ms. Vale made her awful announcement, I had wandered through every room, trying
to act casually just in case I was being watched.

Ms. Vale had explained that we as
“young adults” were struggling to find ourselves, to find our identify, and the
current climate of Public, the climate of collaboration and of hunting out
demons, wasn’t doing us any favors. Change was required. Change was necessary.
In order for us to learn and grow, the cord must be cut. Senior paranormals
could no longer coddle us and they had to stop acting like nothing was wrong.
She had continued in that vein, telling us that what was going to happen this
semester was entirely for our own good.

At one point Lisabelle leaned
over to Sip and whispered, “That means there’s going to be bloodshed. Not
Vale’s, of course, at least, that’s not her plan.”

Sip, her purple eyes two hard
crystals said, “Who knows. Plans change.”

The memory of Vale’s words was
branded in my mind. The ways in which evil-doers justified their actions were
just as crazy as the actions themselves.

That first time back into Astra I
hadn’t touched anything as I wandered around, I just kept moving.

The ballroom was one of my last
stops, and I stayed well away from the glass case, examining the paintings instead.
A vivid image of a Fire Whip cracking down on the pristine glass and breaking
it kept flashing through my mind.

I shuddered at the thought. The
Mirror Arcane, one of the six objects on the Paranormal Wheel, was in my
possession. It had been left in the ballroom of Astra, since it was the object
that held elemental magic best. Of course, at one point it must have been the
centerpiece of a great collection of elemental powers, but since the elementals
had not planned on every last elemental being murdered, and their secret thus
being lost, the artifact had been left sitting unguarded in the Astra ballroom
for anyone to come along and see.

But now I knew it was there, and
I would protect it until the day I died.

I got up again. I knew I
shouldn’t, but I needed to return to the ballroom. It was the first place I had
truly spent any time in at Astra, and I still felt closest to my kinfolk, the
elementals who had gone, when I was there.

Quietly I padded downstairs. I
felt sure I was being watched. At Locke, Lisabelle had performed a spell that
destroyed listening devices. I still remembered her smug smile when about
twenty devices blew up that had been scattered throughout our apartment.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have Lisabelle at hand to perform that spell here and
now.

Reaching the Astra Ballroom, I
craned my neck to look at the cathedral ceiling, then glanced at the windows
that stretched from the floor all the way to the top of the ceiling, revealing
Public’s grounds. Interspersed between the windows were sconces that lighted my
way in the dark. Silver-edged mirrors hung along the walls, side by side with
massive tapestries that depicted elemental successes in battles against the
demons and other enemies. I felt better just walking into this room. On top of everything
else it reminded me of Keller, and that gave me some comfort.

I stopped in front of one of the
beautiful old gilded mirrors and stared at my reflection. My skin was pale at
the best of times, but in the dead of winter I had barely any color at all. My
brown hair hung lankly over my shoulders, and my big gray eyes, the eyes that
both Ricky and I had gotten from Mom, stared back at me, as wide open as they
could be.

The image of myself essentially
imprisoned at Public didn’t help my mood, so I moved on. This time I walked
right up to the glass case that held the Mirror Arcane. I needed to see it,
touch it, and know that it was real.

I had been protecting the Mirror
since my first semester at Public without even knowing its real importance in
the beginning. Keller had brought me into the ballroom to clean the case that
held elemental artifacts, and I had lovingly dusted the Mirror along with
everything else. But the Mirror had been special from the start, with its
silver etching and perfectly reflective glass.

Now I was reassured that the
Mirror Arcane was still safe. I stared at it for only a moment, knowing I must
move. I did. I left the ballroom.

Astra had a small library high in
the center tower that made up the bulk of the building. I headed there now. At
least there was one good thing about being alone in Astra: it gave me time to
think about my mother in peace.

I didn’t know much about her, but
I knew some things. Her name was Grace Lancing. I wasn’t sure if Lancing was
her maiden name or my father’s last name, but although I knew that in the
depths of the library there was a record of every elemental birth, until now I
had been too afraid to check those records. Now I knew I had held off long
enough. It was time to find out.

I smiled as I passed the entrance
to the Astra attic. Keller and I had spent some time there as well. But I had
only come up to the library once. It had been too difficult to smell the books,
all filled with elemental history.
We should have a living history too
,
I thought,
carried along through the stories of the generations that came in
their turn over the years.

Carefully I climbed the stairs.
They got thinner, narrower, and more dusty with each flight. The stone walls
were a dark gray, but they gave way to a creaky wood right before I got to the
library. Sometimes when I was returning home to Astra in the evening I would
stare up at the small windows of the library and think that I should spend some
time in there.

Now was my chance.

I carefully pushed the door open.
I knew Mrs. Swan never cleaned in the library. She couldn’t have even if she
had wanted to, because you could only open the door if you were elemental, so
strong were the protections on this room. Risper had once told me that no one
had entered the room since the house had been deserted years before.

Slowly I pushed the door open. I
didn’t know what I was afraid of, but I opened it only enough to get through,
then quickly shut it behind me. Instead of feeling scared, I felt like I was
home. I shuffled my feet to turn around, but at this late hour in the evening I
needed light, which I couldn’t get, because we weren’t allowed to use our magic
outside class. I looked sadly down at my ring and sighed. Feeling my way to the
wall I groped around for a sconce and hoped that there were matches. After only
a couple of steps my hand ran into a bookcase, which meant I had gone too far.
I decided there must be a light by the door and slowly turned around and inched
my way back along the wall.

Sure enough, I found not only a sconce
but also an old set of matches that came to life under my touch, not even
needing to be commanded. I just had to hope that it was a small enough amount
of magic so that the Fire Whips monitoring our every move wouldn’t notice.

The fire flared to life and I
blinked several times, clearing the spots from my eyes. The Astra library
stretched in front of me as far as my eye could see. Rows and rows of old
leather bound books lined musty shelves. Every step I took brought up a fresh
cloud of dust.

I sighed happily.

“Hello, history,” I murmured.
“Maybe you can help me.”

“Maybe we can and maybe we
can’t,” said a metallic-sounding voice somewhere in front of me. “Maybe we
don’t want to.”

I yelped and fled back to the
door, staring wildly around. I grabbed the handle and tried to leave, yanking
as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Oh, no,” said the voice, a
little louder now. “You visit what is mine, you stay and talk as long as I wish
it. Thus is the way of things.”

“The way of things is
complicated,” I muttered, tugging with all my might. It was no use. “Lots of
paranormals think they have the right way of things.”

“Either no paranormal has the
right way of things or they all do,” said the voice. I stared wildly over my
shoulder, but it was no use. The door would not budge. I was trapped in my own
attic.

Chapter Eleven

“Fine,” I said, turning around. I
could only hope that if the thing I was talking to had been inclined to hurt
me, it would have done so by now.

“I will light the other lamps,”
said the voice. Before I could protest that I didn’t want the Nocturns who were
running Public to see where I was, the lights flicked on.

“Don’t worry,” said the voice.
“The windows have long since been covered.” I did remember seeing heavy velvet
drapes over the windows, but since they had been there when I arrived at Public
for my first year, I hadn’t thought much about them.

“Who are you?” I demanded, trying
to keep the fear out of my voice. “What are you doing here? How dare you enter
my library?”

There was a soft laugh, and
something I couldn’t make out came toward me from down one of the rows of books
that spiraled endlessly in front of me.

I tried to focus my eyes, but
there was nothing wrong with my eyes. The problem was that whatever I was
looking at was not entirely solid.

Coming toward me was a white,
wispy figure, small, as small as a child and much smaller than my little
brother. He wore white robes and a large hat. He basically looked like the
mages in stories, only on a smaller scale. He had a large nose and spectacles
and gave me a bright smile. If he had been green I would have thought he was a
pixie.