Elemental Fire (19 page)

“She might,” said Lisabelle,
shrugging. “Lanca knows a lot.”

“She’s queen now,” said Sip,
combing her fingers through her short hair. “Of course she does.”

“By the way, did she call us -
Lisabelle - ladies?” I needled. Lisabelle punched me in the shoulder - my
uninjured one - as Sip giggled.

“Hi,” said a cheerful voice behind
us. We turned and saw the fallen angel Vanni, who was wearing all white, a fact
I could tell shocked and disgusted Lisabelle. Vanni was with Betsy Butter, a
senior fallen angel who had been on Lisabelle’s Tactical team the previous
year. I liked Betsy well enough; she laughed easily and worked hard. But Vanni
was another matter. She was afraid of everything and had a massive crush on
Keller. Every time she saw him she would run after him and try to make friends.
Even though it drove me nuts, I tried to be nice. Vanni was a relation of the
Marks family of fallen angels, the most powerful family of all, right up there
with the Eriksons.

“Hi,” I said as the two fallen
angels joined us. “You’re going to the party too?”

“Of course,” said Betsy, her eyes
bright. “No way we get caught. Evan’s too smart and it will be my first
school-wide party.”

“It really isn’t fair that this
is your last semester,” said Vanni. “This is no way to graduate from Public.”

Betsy nodded. She was tall for a
girl, with broad shoulders and a wide mouth. She had curly blond hair that was
cut to her ears and at the moment was pulled back into a short ponytail.

“I talked to my mom about it,”
said she. “They allowed me to communicate with her as long as I didn’t divulge
anything about the semester.” She turned to me. “My mom’s dying. She doesn’t
have long, so I think they did it out of pity. I don’t know.”

“I’ve been allowed to communicate
with my brother a bit,” I said. “But he doesn’t know I’m a paranormal, so it’s
a little different.”

I had expected Cruor to look dark
and for the party to be in one of the levels below ground, but I had been very
wrong. I was stunned to see the party through the windows as we walked up to
the castle. The view rippled with glitter and color, and as we crossed into the
courtyard I could hear music playing.

“What are the odds we don’t get
caught now?” Sip asked Lisabelle.

“Slim to none,” said the darkness
mage grimly. “There are too many variables and too many students who know about
it. The party is within view of Faci’s place, for paranormal’s sake.”

Sip’s face turned stony. Vanni
and Betsy fell into an uncomfortable silence, and Vanni’s face looked pinched
and drawn.

I thought of Sigil all alone in
the Astra library, and wished I was with him. I had been avoiding him recently,
because I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of having him look after the
Mirror Arcane while I performed in Tactical. We had all expected Faci, Daisy,
and Camilla to complain that I was a member of the Tactical team, but they hadn’t
said a word. In fact, I had the uncomfortable feeling that Camilla was excited
about it.

The front gates of Cruor burst
open and Evan came staggering out. At first I thought he had been stabbed,
which served me right for spending too much time in battles, but I quickly
realized that he was just drunk, or maybe drugged.

“Double uh oh,” said Sip, her
eyes growing wide. “I seriously hope that’s drugs and not alcohol.”

Alcohol was famously bad for
paranormals. No one was really sure why, but it affected the delicate
composition of magic that went on inside most of us. The only paranormal I’d
seen drink was Risper, but we had been at dinner at Public or in his private
rooms, and there didn’t seem to be much risk to him before it wore off.

This was different.

“Evening, lovely ladies,” said
Evan, throwing his arms wide. His words were a little slurred as he gave each
of us a massive hug and a probing look. His blond hair was tied back in a
ponytail and his eyes were glassy. He wore the all-black of the Cruors, and his
red ring shone. He was using magic. Yeah, this party definitely would not last
long.

We all murmured greetings in
return, and now that the door to Cruor was open I could see that the place was
packed with students.

“Where’d you get alcohol?” Sip
asked him.

“And where’s Zervos?” I asked. No
way was I setting foot in Cruor if Zervos was about to storm in and yell - or
worse - at all of us.

Evan snickered. “You are all so
boring. Girls. I need a girl with adventure, but that’s okay, you five can come
in anyway. To answer your nosy questions,” he continued, “Zervos is at a
meeting on the other side of campus. At least that’s where he claimed he was
going, and I got alcohol from a secret stash. Don’t worry, I haven’t had much.
Just a glass or eleven.”

Lisabelle choked.

We followed Evan inside, where
the music was so loud I had to yell directly in Sip’s ear to make myself heard.
“We should stay by a door. This is going to get ugly.”

Sip shrugged and yelled back.
“Now that we’re here we might as well enjoy it. Maybe Zervos is at an
all-faculty meeting and they won’t get caught.”

“What about the magic? Aren’t
they going to detect it?”

“I don’t think they care,” said
Lisabelle. “You used magic against the lizard and nothing happened.”

She had a point. I had been
worrying about using my magic, but Vale didn’t seem to care, and the Baxters
only cared about what she told them to care about.

I drank in our surroundings.
Cruor’s permanent fixtures followed an entirely red and black theme, so nothing
in the massive entrance hall was any other color: the furniture, the plush
rugs, the walls, and the wall hangings with scenes of ancient vampires. Set up
under the window bank were black folding tables covered with food.

There was a table devoted to
every kind of pizza. Most of the toppings I recognized, but some I didn’t.
There was one variety that was covered with snaky-looking black things; no way
was I trying that. Other tables had more normal food - mostly. There was a
table devoted to fruit, covered with blueberries, raspberries, strawberries,
and every other kind of fruit imaginable. There were also Feyberries and
gellyjellies, both paranormal delicacies.

“We can’t eat,” said Evan, “but
we thought the rest of you should!”

My nerves fizzed. Where had Evan
gotten all the food? We had been on scant rations for the entire semester.

“This is what I imagine the end
of prohibition to have looked like,” Sip yelled to us.

“What was prohibition?” Vanni
asked. Somehow she had inched closer to me, her eyes wide and fearful. Evan
disappeared for a minute, then reappeared with a charming smile. He had a plate
stacked high with all sorts of food, from chocolate and cheese to strawberries
and grapes. He shoved the plate into Sip’s hands and disappeared again, saying
that he had more guests to greet and we should make ourselves at home.

“All I ever wanted was to make
myself at home in Cruor,” said Lisabelle dreamily. “Now my wish can come true.”

“Shut up,” said Sip, who was not
amused. She shoved the heaping plate into Lisabelle’s stomach and made a
beeline for the other end of the room. The darkness mage laughed, then we both
tried to follow Sip.

At first I couldn’t figure out
why she had taken off, and it was slow going because the place was so packed it
was hard to move. There were paranormals everywhere, and many of them were not
wearing black, they were wearing party clothes - colored dresses that sparkled
and t-shirts or button downs with ties. The decorations, as I had seen through
the window, were not just black and red as I had expected them to be, but every
color of the rainbow.

“Evan really went all out on
this,” I said to Lisabelle. “If he’s caught with that food he’ll probably be
expelled, or worse.”

“He must be taking the decorating
class,” Lisabelle drawled. Sip had plunged into the crowd ahead of us, but she
was so small she had a hard time moving quickly through the sea of paranormals.
Lisabelle didn’t have any such issues. All she had to do was stand there and
raise her eyebrows and our classmates moved out of her path. It was clear
they’d rather spill drinks on each other than stand in her way when she wanted
them gone.

Standing at the far end of the
room, with another vampire named Tat, was Rake, massive as ever. His shoulders
were above the heads of many of the other students there, but he was a gentle
giant, and there was something about Sip that terrified him. Sip, for her part,
thought that was ridiculous, but it didn’t stop her from marching right up to
him and demanding an explanation.

He looked at her, his eyes filled
with worry.

“You look pretty,” he said,
taking in Sip’s black clothing. Sip waved him off. She had no use for
compliments.

“How could you let this happen?”
she yelled. “Evan’s going to get himself killed. Not only is he having a party,
but he’s totally drunk.”

Rake raised his eyebrows. “I
know. What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed
this,” said Sip, “But you’re a rather large vampire. STOP HIM.”

Rake was looking like he was
about to panic when Tat said, “Sip, can’t you just enjoy the evening? Maybe
Evan knows what he’s doing.”

Sip slammed her fists onto her
hips and turned her considerable glare on Tat. The vampire flinched a little
under her angry eyes. “Do not talk down to me. He can’t possibly know what he’s
doing if he’s DRUNK.”

Before Rake could reply, the
lights went out.

Chapter Seventeen

The blackness gave way to a
disco-type red light and a roar went up from the crowd. I saw Evan hanging from
a chandelier, waving his arms wildly and grinning. “Enjoy the party,” he cried,
throwing silver confetti down on all of us as groups of students raised their
hands up to grab at it.

I glanced at Sip. When the lights
had gone off Rake had moved into a protective position in front of the
werewolf, but now that it was clear that there was no threat, he backed off.
Sip was giving no quarter. Her purple eyes still blazed.

“Just enjoy yourself,” he
suggested. “It won’t be so bad.”

As it turned out, Vale didn’t
catch us. Apparently they were, in fact, all occupied on the other side of
campus. What actually did happen, though, might have been worse. Camilla,
Daisy, and Faci threw open the front doors and everything came to a stop. The
music blared for a moment longer, but some paranormal quickly raced over and
shut it off and the hall was silent.

Daisy stood in front, Camilla and
Faci flanking her. I wondered what had happened to Faci’s face to make him so
ugly.

Daisy was dressed in black, but
her clothes looked fine: a sweater and a long skirt, with black clogs. She
appeared to be the perfect little school-girl except for the crazy look that
seeped out of her eyes. Camilla was dressed in a green and white dress, with
green tights. It was cold outside, but the dress looked on the warmer side, so
I was sure she wasn’t cold. Faci, as usual, was dressed in robes, more like the
clothing senior vampires would wear. Once, when we were on the road, Lisabelle
had called him the little politician, because he acted like he thought he was
an adult already.

This wasn’t entirely unexpected.
I had been waiting for this confrontation, I just hadn’t imagined that it would
happen at a Cruor party, of all the unlikely places.

I wondered where Dobrov was. I
had not seen him at the party, even though last I knew he had been living in
Cruor.

Evan staggered forward. Lisabelle
stood with her back razor straight, her eyes scanning the room. I wasn’t sure
if she was looking for a fight or a way out, but knowing Lisabelle it was
probably the former. For one thing, there had to be more pixies nearby. Faci,
Daisy, and Camilla wouldn’t challenge the entire school by themselves.

“Welcome,” said Evan, spreading
his arms wide. The sleeves of his button down were casually rolled up and there
was a red liquid stain on his shirt, probably from one of the drinks he had
enjoyed. “This is Cruor dorm. I know you’re not usually welcome in Cruor - ever
- given that you killed my queen’s sister and all, but I’m willing to make an
exception tonight.” His eyes were hard and I wondered just how drunk he was, or
if he had actually planned to have the three of them come alone to this party
so that he could teach them a lesson, no matter what the cost later.

Daisy’s lip curled in disgust,
and the movement pulled at her scarred face. “I don’t need to be invited. I
will come if I want.”

“What’s the pixie’s excuse?” Evan
asked, gesturing with his glass at Camilla.

The pixie in question folded her
arms over her chest. “I go where Daisy goes,” she sneered. “I don’t need an
invitation either.”

“What about you?” Evan asked
Faci. The young vampire was standing with his feet apart, his hands hanging
loosely at his sides. I was struck by the idea that these two had probably
grown up together. Evan was a couple of years older, but they were both
Rapiers.