Elemental Fire (2 page)

“Solid point,” said Lough,
covering a grin. “Well, I hope you three can get in there by yourself, because
I’m not helping.” With that he laced his fingers behind his head and leaned
back. “Anyway, someone should stay out here in case any other paranormals show
up.”

“Lough, you have to come with
us,” Sip insisted, but Lough was no longer listening. He had pulled his jacket
hood over his forehead to cover his eyes and was ignoring us.

“I’m not getting into any more
trouble this week,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I need a break. Talk to me
next week.”

I watched Lisabelle
intently, unsure what she was thinking. Then again, maybe I did
n’t
want to know. The wind continued
to blow st
r
ands of her hair
around
, which she
ignored. It
gave her a lonely, confident look, to stand there by herself and contemplate
disobeying the direct orders of the committee.

Lisabelle, for her
part, watched Sip.

The little werewolf
raised her eyeb
ro
ws at each of us in
turn. “So, w
ha
t’s the plan?”

Lisabelle shook her
head, a bemused look lighting her shadowed features. “You and
your
love of plans. We are looking at
you,” she pointed out when Sip did
n’t
respond.

My blond friend rubbed
her hands together and grinned. “As a matter
of
fact, I do have an idea.” She
looked happier than I had seen her in days, maybe even since the night
Lisabelle and I had shown up at her house over Christmas break
so that we could travel together
to
Lanca’s
coronation. Even then the times
had
been
dark
-
Lanca’s father
had been
murdered,
after all -
but now I felt like
the sun had been entirely blotted out
,
and Christmas
seemed like
a long time ago. With
Malle’s
explicit
order to have me
killed (which as far as I knew still stood) and Dirr’s death, the landscape of
our fight against the Nocturns had changed and become more layered and complex.
I now did
n’t
know who
m
to trust
,
and the simple days of visiting
Ricky while I was on a break from school
,
and introducing him
to friends like Lisabelle
,
felt entirely too
mundane and normal
compared
to
what
my days were like now.

What I would
n’t have given
to see Ricky again
, in safety!
But
I also knew that
the closer I was to
him
,
the more danger he
was in.

Lisabelle’s voice
brought me back to the present. She was telling Sip that it
had been entirely
obvious
to her that
Sip would have a
plan.

The darkness mage
turned to me as Sip got to work. The werewolf set her pack down and started to
tear through the contents, pulling out odds and ends. From one pocket she drew
something that looked remark
ab
ly like a neon
-
colored han
d
kerchief, from another
she took
a book
that was
the color of moldy
F
rench fries and floated
in the air
on its own.

Lisabelle watched
briefly, then rolled her eyes. “Remember first semester? This was the girl
who
did
n’t
want us sneaking around campus at
night?” Lisabelle jerked her thumb at Sip, who now held
in her hand
a bear claw painted
pink. “Oh
,
how the mighty have
fallen.”

“Does she keep that
stuff in your room?” I murmured to Lisabelle, ey
e
ing
our friend.

“You don’t want to
know,” Lisabelle
said,
shaking
her head sadly.

“If you must know,”
said Sip, giving us a sharp look,
“
a
ll of this is for academic
research. Obviously. Really, you’d think you two never studied.”

“In fact I don’t,”
said Lisabelle, her mouth in a mulish line.

“She’s not lying,”
said Lough. “I’ve never seen her crack a book.”

“Nope, I keep my
cracking to heads,” said Lisabelle, pleased at her own joke.

“Anyway,” said Sip,
tossing the bear claw back into a pocket
,
“
t
his break
-
in is different
.
I’m sneaking INTO campus now.
Not around it. I just want to return to my studies. You don’t think this mold
will identify itself, do you?” She waved the gross
-
looking book around in the air
before tossing it back in
to
the bag as well.

“I was seriously
hoping she did
n’t
keep that thing in her
backpack,” I murmured, a little grossed out.

“Too bad for you,”
said Lisabelle, grinning at what could only
have been
a quea
s
y expression on my
face. Mold made me nau
seated
.

“
S
o our break-in is all for the
greater good of academia?” Lisabelle asked Sip.

“Exactly,” said Sip tr
i
umphantly.

“Would Dove buy that
argument?” Lough asked.

“The whole point of my
doing the planning
i
s so that we do
n’t
have to explain our reasoning to
him,” Sip sniffed. “We will not get caught.”

“Lough?” Sip gently
pushed against our friend’s boot with her own as he lay on the ground. “We
can’t leave you here alone. It’s not safe
.
I need to
know if you
’re
coming so that I can
build you into my master plan.”

Lisabelle ducked her
head and turned away, trying to hide her laughter.

Lough shifted his
shoulders and rearranged his hands, relaxing further
backward onto
the ground. “I’m not
coming,” he said. “In fact, I have no intention of moving
for
the rest of the day. I’ve had
enough stress to last me a lifetime
,
and my friendship
with you three isn’t nearly over.”

“Fine,” Sip growled.
She glared down at the prone dream giver for another second, then turned back
to her backpack. She bent down and gathered
the
mishmash of papers, booklets
,
and scrolls that she
had pulled
out of it
and marched away.

“What plan is she
going to hatch?” I asked Lisabelle, figuring that as
Sip’s
roommate Lisabelle would have a
clearer idea of what the werewolf wanted to do
than I did
.

The darkness mage
glanced at the sky. It was gray, but the clouds were so thick you could
n’t
see where one started and another
ended. At least they were
n’t
very dark
. It didn’t look like it was
going to rain, and I was thankful for that
. Being stuck out here in
wet weather
would
just
make everything worse.

My friend’s gaze
shifted to Sip, who had sprawled out on a log, her head bent in concentration.
“No idea, but whatever
it is it’s going to be perfect
.
”
A
slow smile spread across
Lisabelle’s face
as
she said it
.
She was
clearly
excited at the
prospect of breaking into Paranormal Public
, but as I stood n
ext to her, a fist turned in my
stomach and nerves shot down my spine. I looked up at
the
walls of my university
, and n
ever before had it looked so
forbidding.
It was
just like us to
decide
that
the best way to handle
being refused entry would be to enter anyway. Back to Paranormal Public we
would
go,
no matter who tried to stop us. B
ut this time
we would go
under the cover of
night.

“We
start
at first dark,” Sip called, as
if reading my mind. “Rings at the ready.”

Chapter Two

The day dragged on.
Lisabelle and I spent most of it reliving the events of the past week. Lough
broke his silence long enough to join in the conversation, but Sip’s eyes
stayed firmly on her papers and maps. At one point Lisabelle asked what exactly
she was doing, but Sip only growled at her and Lisabelle did
n’t
try a second time.

“What’s Lanca doing
now?” Lough asked. He had let us have our girl
time, as he liked to call it,
after we had captured Faci and killed
or driven out
the other darkness mages
who
had been at
Vampire Locke.

“She’s trying to
figure out which Rapiers she can trust and which were on the side of
Castov
and Faci,” said Lisabelle. “It’s
good she has Vital there. He’s a big help when it comes to intimidation and
threats.”

“He’s also smart and
good-hearted,” I felt the need to add.

“She also has Saferous
of the fallen angel house Safe,” Lisabelle continued.

“And Keller,” I
murmured
.
Lisabelle started to
say something
,
then stopped. Even
saying his name caused my chest to ache, but I refused to give in
to the pain of my
loss. I simply had to hold out hope that he would come back to me, or let me
go
back to him. I was
n’t
sure which
,
and I was
n’t
sure that I cared. I just wanted
him to wrap his arms around me and tell me it would be alright. My heartache
was made even
sharper
by the fact that we
were now sitting locked outside
the
gates
of
Public. When we
had
left Locke I had
expected to be in Astra by now,
enjoying
a warm bowl of
something Mrs. Swan had cooked up. Instead we sat outside in the middle of
winter with nowhere to go.

I had also expected
Keller to follow me.

“
Lanca
has a lot on her plate,” said
Lough. He had started a fire and now held his hands toward the flame, taking in
the warmth.

“What of the demons?
Or is it Nocturns now?” I asked.

Lisabelle nodded. “All
the
darkness on the side
of Malle is
now
calling itself
Nocturn. So, the darkness mages
who
do
n’t
have
the name Verlans or Risper,
the
demons,
the
hellhounds, and the random Rapier
vampire
. . .
all of which reminds
me, have you had any
more
dreams?” She eyed me carefully,
as
if she thought
I might lie. It was true, I might. I did not want to worry my friends.

“I haven’t had any
dreams,” I murmured, taking a sip of
the
hot
tea Lisabelle had
been
prepar
ing
. Lisabelle, who was obviously
worried about the plan Sip was hatching
,
accepted my response,
but I could tell Lough did not. He continued to eye me, even if he stayed
silent.
But I didn’t
want to talk about it.
Bad
dreams were the least of my problems.

After a silence during which we
all chewed on our own thoughts, Lisabelle brought up another question. “Did all
the pixies make it back here?” Lisabelle asked. I was glad she did, because I
had been wondering about Cale. Long ago I’d had a crush on him, and in quieter
moments, when Keller was not around, those feelings still bubbled up. But Cale
was with Camilla, and that was just all kinds of awful. Camilla Van Rothson
hated the Airlees, and since I hung out with Airlees, and was the last
elemental, she hated me too.