Elemental Fire (31 page)

“I rather like it,” said Sip. “It
reflects our personalities, which is what a room should do. There’s honor in
honest decorating.”

“What she’s not saying is that
she’s spent the last year trying to force me to get rid of the black and she’s
failed.”

Once they finished arguing I
insisted that Lisabelle tell me what had happened. But there wasn’t much to
tell.

“Vale said that there was no room
for disrespect of professors at Public. She didn’t want to hear that I hadn’t
disrespected anyone, I’d merely threatened to kill them, and of course a Fire
Whip was there. Those guys need to lighten up. At first he didn’t want to hurt
me,” Lisabelle said smugly. “I informed him when he finished cutting up my arms
that he hadn’t, and that I would kill him.” Vale then insisted that he use the
Fire Whip on me again, but when she realized that the whip was going to break
before I did she sent me away. The Fire Whip was sweating.”

“You got sent to the President
because you threatened murder, and your solution was to threaten murder again?”
Sip was appalled, but her hands carefully changed the dressing on Lisabelle’s
wounds. “Yours is a singular kind of ‘logic.’”

“No,” said Lisabelle comfortably.
“I
threatened
to kill the pixies. I
promised
to kill the Fire Whip.”

“That’s my girl,” said Trafton,
leaning against Sip’s desk.

“I’m not anything to you,” said
Lisabelle disdainfully. “Especially your girl.”

“Agree to disagree,” said
Trafton. The fact that Lisabelle’s surliness no longer bothered him was the
surest sign that he was now part of our merry little band of friends.

“Want me to get Vanni? Or Nate?”
I offered. Nate was a friend of Keller’s. He didn’t hang around us much, having
a lot of his own Aurum friends, but I knew he’d do me a favor if I asked, and
Lisabelle could certainly have used some healing.

But she shook her head. “I’ll see
Vanni tomorrow. She’ll help.”

“Serves you right if she
doesn’t,” Sip muttered. “Why don’t you tell the committee members what Vale
did?”

“Because they aren’t running the
school anymore,” said Lisabelle. “They’re merely figureheads now. Decoration.
They ‘chose’ a new president. There’s nothing they could do.”

“She has a point,” said Trafton,
rubbing his chin. “I mean, what does it mean when Professor Erikson, one of the
very committee members who is charged with our well-being, is the one who sent
Lisabelle there?”

What did it mean indeed?

The next day was Ultimate
Tactical number two, fight to the death! - as Sip sarcastically called it. I
had barely slept, thinking of Lisabelle. Needing comfort, I’d made the mistake
of opening my mind up to dreams. But it wasn’t Keller I dreamed.

Malle stood on the same dry
plane. There was nothing but dirt for miles.

“No,” I spat out. “Not right now.
WHAT do you want?”

“You’re right,” said Malle. If
possible she was even more bent than she’d been before. You are busy looking
for your missing Mirror Arcane, are you not?”

My blood ran cold. To tell the
truth, I had tried to search, but we had nothing to go on. It had just
disappeared into thin air. My friends and I had agreed that once the second
Tactical was over we would go to good hiding places on campus where it might
have been left, including the Long Building and the deep reaches of the
library. But we had to get through the second Tactical first, and given how the
odds were stacked against us there was no evidence we’d make it to a third.

“I just wanted to make you a
promise,” said Malle, trying to shrug. It didn’t look like her shoulders worked
properly any more.

“Oh? What’s that?” I seethed. “I
have sleeping to get back to. It’s more important.”

Malle took a deep breath. “For
centuries, the darkness has lain dormant. There have always been demons and
hellhounds to fight against, but without organization they’ve been useless.
They are not useless now. We have a group, the Nocturns, we have a darkness
council, and we have power. I may not rise to be Queen of Darkness, but someone
will. Of that you can be sure.”

“Good to know,” I said coldly.
“I’m rolling over now.”

And with that I woke up, drenched
in a cold sweat and with my eyes staring, unseeing, at the ceiling. Malle’s
promise was not one I wanted to think about. But when I did I wondered who, if
not Malle herself, could rise to be Queen of Darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The second Tactical started in
the same place as the first. It was easy to find the field. Since massive piers
of fire burned on each corner, all I had to do was follow the smell of smoke.
Lizards were everywhere, more than I’d ever seen before, their black scales
flashing in the spring sunlight. Students were afraid of the giant creatures
and gave them a wide birth. The lizards themselves looked coiled, like they
would attack at any moment.

My team stood out from the crowd.
Our pink uniforms had been scrubbed to shining, embarrassing perfection again.

Unlike last time, I was one of
the first to arrive. I imagined that Lisabelle was taking her time trying to
figure out how to dress her wounded arms appropriately. It would slow her down,
she’d said, especially because in order for her wand to be available for use,
it would have to burn through some of the fresh cuts on her skin. Vanni was nowhere
to be seen, and I could only hope that she was with Lisabelle.

The Glories team was already
assembled. Evan was now on their team and he looked positively miserable.
Dobrov’s head was still down, but to his credit he stood close to the vampire.
Cale, the only alternate left, stood off to one side near the center, his hands
clasped in front of him. I noticed that Camilla kept shooting glances his way,
but he did not meet her eyes.

Rake was the only one of my
teammates who was already there, and he gave me a welcoming nod. Shortly after
I joined him the rest of my team showed up, and we all stood close together.
Lisabelle looked impassive, but Sip still looked furious.

I tried to listen closely to the
instructions. My life depended on it, after all, but it was hard to concentrate
after a night of broken sleep, plus the worry and fear that built upon
everything that had happened in the last few weeks. Perhaps worst of all was
that I still didn’t know where the Mirror Arcane was, or even where to start
looking for it.

Vale explained in detail what was
about to happen. We would each be placed in a glass box. Anything at all could
be in the box and it would be as large or as small as Vale demanded as long as
each box was big enough for one of us to fit inside. The outside of the box
would be covered in order to obscure visible escape routes. There would be a
platform beneath the boxes, and she didn’t want us to see how far above the
platform we’d be falling when we escaped. As for the platform, whichever student
got to it first had to deal with the challenges awaiting us there, and then we
had still to get off the platform . . . and hit the ground, not dead. The
student who did that first, from either team, won the second Tactical.

“Now,” said Vale, her voice booming
out over the crowd. “If you would please?”

From out of the sky came the
glass boxes. It didn’t look like anything was holding them up, except a very
thin wire that disappeared high into the clouds. I gulped.

“Why does everything we do here
have to involve heights?” I muttered. “Why can’t we all just hang out on the
ground like sane paranormals?”

Sip smiled a little but jerked
her chin in the direction of Vale, who was waving her arms wildly and calling
out orders to the lizards.

“I see your point,” I said
grudgingly. Sip nodded.

“Let’s have the Glories first,”
said Vale, beckoning the gray team over. Trafton looked grim. “She’s doing that
to give them more time in the boxes. Since it’s a race to get out first,
whoever goes in first has an advantage, unless she blindfolds them or
something. But obviously she won’t do that.”

I hadn’t even thought of that,
but now I saw what Trafton meant. The Glories walked up to the boxes slowly,
examining their outer walls. Each box was made of black glass, not something
I’d ever seen before. The lines were perfectly cut, so smooth I couldn’t see
where one panel started and the next ended. They were also smaller than I’d
been envisioning.

“They’re like coffins,” said
Rake, cheerfully. “For once I’ll be in a place where I’m comfortable.”

“Yeah, isn’t it lovely,” said
Vanni, her eyes snapping wildly and her voice dry. She stood next to Lisabelle,
a delicate hand on the darkness mage’s arm, still trying to get a little
healing in.

Once all of the Glories were in
their individual boxes, the black containers rose high into the air. I craned
my neck backwards, but they really didn’t go very far. They were probably as
high up as the top of the Tower had been before it collapsed.

The next set of boxes floated out
of the sky as gasps went up from the other students. These boxes were much
bigger and the glass was just a shade darker. Trafton leaned over to me, his
voice angry. “Bigger boxes means more for us to have to break out of before
we’re free,” he explained. “Another trick against us.”

“Now, the Verrmins’ turn? If you
will?” Vale beckoned us over. Lisabelle stepped out first. On Vale’s left stood
several Fire Whips, their hoods pulled over their faces, but Lisabelle seemed
to be staring at one in particular, who was taller than the rest. I wondered if
he was the one she planned to kill. She stared at him all the way into her box,
as if the box didn’t even matter. But the instant she was inside, the glass
panel slid over the opening and she shot into the air.

After that the rest of us quickly
got into our own boxes. The students had crowded forward with a murmur to watch
us enter, but silence fell as the black glass doors slid back, revealing the
thicker blackness inside.

I was the last one in. As I
braced my hands on either side of the door the glass felt smooth and hot,
hotter than the sunlight. Without hesitation I pushed myself through.

Instantly the door slid shut
behind me and I was in darkness. I blinked several times, trying to get my
bearings as the box shot up into the air, stumbling against one side and then
another. The wild swinging had not looked so bad from the outside, but once
inside the moving box I could barely stay standing.

The box kept shooting up and up
and I forgot about everything except not throwing up. We (I assumed it wasn’t
just me) were going much higher than I’d seen the other team go.

Of course. I had always hated
roller coasters, probably because of my fear of heights, but this was much
worse. And somehow, Vale had known it would be. If she had called the fire
Tactical “The Roller Coaster” she should probably call this “The Roller
Coaster’s Bigger Cousin.”

Eventually the box came to a
sudden halt and I stumbled forward. The box was still rocking gently, but each
side to side motion was less than the one before and I breathed a little
easier.

Then something slithered across
my foot and I jumped. Unfortunately, I landed on something else wet and slimy
and screamed again.

The room was stifling. I needed
light. My body was already sweating so much that my shirt was nearly drenched
through.

But I didn’t bother with just any
light, I wanted fire. Red and orange heat quickly burst out of my ring, to hang
in a globe above my head. I could hear the air whistling around my cage, but no
shafts of sunlight came through the corners of the box. It was perfectly
sealed. I was trapped.

Instantly I knew that activating
a light source had been a mistake. I was in a box of lizards, just like the
ones that walked around on the ground, only these looked like sleeping babies.
There were tons of them, so many that they covered the floor. If I moved at
all, I’d step on one. A couple were awake, but blinking slowly. It was only a
matter of time before they came to full attention.

I gulped. This was why the room
was hot. The lizards liked the heat, and they especially liked fire. I always
saw them congregating around the flames on campus. Sip had once suggested that
Vale was really a lizard. We had all laughed, but seeing how many of them were
here I started to wonder.

Okay
, I thought.
I can do this
.

I just had to figure out how to
get out of there without waking any of them up. No big deal. Gingerly, I
stepped around the first tiny body. Taking a deep breath I looked for the next
place to set my foot.

Now, halfway across the room, I
saw a tiny bit of light coming from a spot on the floor: a trapdoor, or so I
hoped. But there was no way I was going to get through it (probably to fall to
my death from hundreds of feet in the air) without waking the baby lizards,
which was not high on my to-do list, or, you know, anywhere on my to-do list.

My next step was a mistake. I
knew it instantly. There wasn’t enough room for my foot anywhere, so I had
tried to just put my toes down as gingerly as possible so as not to create any
vibrations in the floor.