Elemental Fire (33 page)

Professor Erikson, all in white,
made a sharp contrast as she confronted Vale and her deep purple velvet robes.
As usual, Vale was flanked by the Baxter brothers.

“How DARE you?” she was screaming
at me as she came forward. Her eyes bulged, and spit flew out of her mouth as
she yelled.

“How DARE I what?” I yelled back.
“Win? Foil your stupid, cheating plans? They weren’t very good plans. How does
a sophomore paranormal beat all you darkness mages?” Under my breath I
muttered, just for my own satisfaction, “I’m so sorry for not dying.”

Vale came to a dead halt in front
of me.

I was looking down, but I knew
she was close when I could see the tips of her shoes in my field of vision. The
roar of the crowd made it hard for me to hear her voice, even though she was
right next to me.

“What did you just say?” she
asked dangerously. I knew I had to be careful. We had been supposed to lose the
second Tactical. She probably didn’t even have a third one planned.

“I said I just tried really
hard,” I explained, raising my chin and meeting her eyes. I literally thought
Vale’s head would explode. She was staring at me so hard I was surprised I was
still standing. The sheer force of her hatred should have knocked me
unconscious.

But I was saved from any more of
her immediate wrath by a series thuds coming from all around me. It seemed that
many of the other students - Lisabelle, Daisy, Sip, Rake, Dobrov, Adver, and
Trafton - were finished with their second Tactical too.

When my teammates saw that I had
landed on the ground first, they raised their hands in triumph and ran over to
me. Rake grinned and clapped me on the shoulder, while Trafton shouted
something congratulatory in my ear. The Glories gathered and shook their heads
together. Dobrov was the only one who didn’t look upset. When Evan arrived he
stayed off to the side, giving me a small smile when no one else was looking. I
was glad he had survived the second Tactical.

Vale continued to stare at me.

“I’ll deal with you later,” she
hissed. “I expect you in my office after dinner.”

I nodded to her, not meeting her
eyes. I couldn’t stand the look I saw in them.

It was full dark by the time I
headed for the small brown house that Vale used as her office. It was the same
building Malle had used, and it was right next to a pond where, one night
during my first semester, I had seen my mother. Or my mother’s ghost. Actually,
to this day I still wasn’t sure what I had seen, and that event was a big part
of the reason why I wanted to spend the summer getting answers. If my mother
had been killed by darkness, then she had been killed by a paranormal. I really
didn’t want to add to the list of paranormals I didn’t trust, or pretty soon I
wouldn’t have anyone left. But my need to know what had happened to my mother
was stronger than my fear of what I’d find out.

Even though it was spring, the
nights were still cold and wet. I shivered further into my coat as I pondered
the tasks I had set myself. What I should have been doing was paying more
attention to my surroundings that night. Maybe then I would have sensed the
hellhound’s footsteps behind me, though since hellhounds move almost silently,
more attention might not have made any difference.

Either way, I had a lot to think
about, and after the adrenalin-pumping effort of the Tactical my mind seemed to
want to go quiet and assess everything that was going on.

First of all, there was all the
reading that Sigil had given me. I had asked him for more information on
Ashray, the queen who had helped found Public, and he had lit up, as much as a
ghost was capable of lighting up.  He wanted to talk on and on about her, and
when I asked again about Grace Lancing, he said there was nothing to be found
about her and quickly changed the subject back to Queen Ashray.

I had been worried all along that
Sigil was hiding something about my mother, and his behavior on that occasion
had only reinforced that suspicion. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find, but
I had to know. Mom had been married once before and I was Astra, which meant
she must have married an Astra, right? But Sigil was so nervous every time I
mentioned her that I decided to leave him alone about it and try to find out
for myself. As I walked toward Vale’s office that night I decided that after
the last Tactical I’d sneak back into Astra without telling Sigil, and search
the library while he was still downstairs. Even though the Mirror Arcane had
disappeared, I had asked him to continue guarding the ballroom while the whole
school was gathered at the Tacticals, just in case there was something else of
value that the thieves might come back for.

I also wanted to find all the
other artifacts. At this point, the only one I thought was truly safe was the
one with Lanca. She hadn’t been able to defend Dirr, but she would defend the
Fang forever. Here at Public we were having no luck finding the Mirror. I had
searched the whole Long Building and Sip had searched the library. Lisabelle
refused to spend that much time in a library for any reason whatsoever, so she
had searched the outlying campus buildings. We hadn’t found a shred of a clue.

Sip and I had an argument about
my obsession one night when I snuck into Airlee.

“I need to find the other
artifacts,” I said. “And I need to find out what happened to my mother.”

“You can’t go off by yourself,”
said Sip reasonably. “It’s too dangerous.”

“No,” I said. “It’s the only way
I
can
go off. If we go as a group
we’ll be easier to track. By myself I have a chance. Caid said I needed all of
them. Well, I can get at least half. The Globe White will be the hard one,
since no one knows where it is.”

All great battles have quests,
don’t they? I mean, my friend’s last name is Quest, for goodness’ sake. She
didn’t appreciate my reminding her of that.

My mind came back to the present
when I passed a Fire Whip guarding the way to Vale’s office. The man behind the
whip was invisible; all I could see was the fire, burning and crackling in the
dark. The heat of the fire drew me forward, the fear of the Whip kept me away.
The Whip didn’t move or seem to threaten me, so I went back to the last topic
that was weighing on my mind: Keller.

I smiled at the thought of him,
even if I hadn’t seen him in dreams recently. My friends mostly avoided
mentioning him because they knew it upset me, but it had happened a couple of
times.

“Did you ever meet Keller’s
sister over winter break?” Lisabelle had asked me out of the blue one morning
at breakfast. “Wasn’t that supposed to happen?”

I nodded. “At one point it was,
but then King Daemon died and she wasn’t at the coronation. Her parents wanted
to keep her away, which, given what happened at Locke, isn’t surprising. Last I
heard she was somewhere in Europe. Keller thinks she’s going to stay there for
a long time. At least that’s what he said last time we talked about it.”

I had sighed sadly and pushed a
few stray strands of hair out of my eyes, and Lisabelle hadn’t pushed any
further. I just did my best to keep busy so that I didn’t think about Keller.
But it was hard.

I could see the pond and the
brown house now. There was a light burning in the window that was Vale’s
office, and a sign over the door read, “President of Paranormal Public.” I
didn’t think Vale had a receptionist at such a late hour, but at least she had
a massive, obnoxious sign in case any of us wondered where to go. I hoped this
would be over quickly. I planned to spend the rest of the evening searching for
the Mirror.

Suddenly, though, as I
contemplated how to get through this encounter as painlessly as possible, I
heard a thud behind me. It was all the warning I had before two heavy footsteps
reached me. I tried to turn, but something like iron slammed into my back. As
my vision blurred, the light from the house turned into a hazy beacon at the
center of darkness.

Then the light went out.

“Don’t let her move,” came a
voice from somewhere in the black clouds. My mouth felt hot and sticky and my
face itched. I raised my hands to rub my eyes and felt a stinging sensation
shoot through my wrists and arms. I was bound and blindfolded. I wasn’t moving
anywhere or seeing anything. Bile and fear shot up into my throat, but I
pressed them down and told myself I had to keep my wits about me.

I knew instantly that I was on a
dirt, slightly damp floor. The Baxter brothers were standing over me. I
recognized their cold, calculating voices.

“Where’s Vale?” I asked, since my
mouth wasn’t stuffed with cotton.

“Vale? She does what she’s told
if she wants her children to live.” The voice I recognized as Perspi’s was
nasty and confident. I hadn’t heard him speak so many words in the entire
semester he’d been on campus.

“Why are you doing this?” I
asked. My voice felt scratchy, like I hadn’t used it in a long time.

“You’re getting in the way of our
search. We can’t search for them if you hire ghosts to protect the Mirror
Arcane.”

I was slammed with the notion
that they’d been in Astra, met Sigil, and not been able to take the Mirror. If
they hadn’t taken it, who had? As an echo of my reluctant idea that maybe my
mother had been murdered by paranormals, for a split second I wondered if
President Caid or one of the others in the camp had snuck into Public and taken
the Mirror. But I quickly discarded that idea. Why would they?

“So, the starving, the Tactical,
was all, what? A diversion? Why make Vale President?” It all felt like an
elaborate scheme, and yet it appeared that they had nothing to show for it.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this
complicated,” Perspi growled. “We were supposed to be in and out and none the
wiser.”

“And when you say boss, you mean
Malle?” I asked.

“Well - ”

Perspi didn’t get to finish. I
heard a grunt, a swoosh, and a smack.

“Shut up,” said another male
voice, very similar to Perspi’s. That must be Purhogan. He was the surlier of
the two.

I heard a scuffle, and then a
door slamming. If it were possible, I would have said that the place I was in
got even darker than it had been a minute before.
They must have
extinguished the light,
I thought, and
inwardly kicked myself for being so stupid. They had lured me into a trap and
they hadn’t even had to try hard.

Now I was alone. I wasn’t sure
where, but by the damp earth under me I guessed it must be a basement of some
kind. Hopefully it wasn’t the catacombs. There was no way meeting a Slime
Dweller right now would help my situation. Taking comfort in the knowledge that
my friends would be worried about me, I strained against my bonds. But as
quickly as I tried to think positively about help arriving, I realized that it
wouldn’t. Yes, my friends knew where I had gone, but I lived alone in Astra.
They wouldn’t be waiting for my return.

Maybe by the next morning they
would start to look, but by that point who knew where I’d be. The Baxter
brothers could get me all the way to Locke by then without anyone being the
wiser.

At least it’s not Faci this time
, I thought. Faci was a
bloodthirsty vampire and had a cruelty about him that took my breath away. But
I didn’t dwell on that thought; it wasn’t healthy. And anyhow, the fiery bonds
that were keeping me locked in place were starting to hurt, digging and
stinging into my skin unlike anything I had ever felt before. I couldn’t have
kept my attention on something else if I wanted to.

I urged my body to calm down. The
worst of the pain was that my finger was throbbing, so much so that I could
barely breathe.
They
must have tried to remove my ring while I lay there unconscious,
I thought. It was universally
considered a terrible violation to remove a paranormal’s ring, but that must
not have stopped the Baxters from trying. Malle could probably have managed it
without killing me - or herself - but the Baxter brothers had nearly destroyed
my hand and they still hadn’t gotten the ring.

I bit back a cry of pain, knowing
that whining wasn’t going to do any good. There was at least a little bit of
benefit to the fact that I couldn’t see; I probably would have fainted if I had
actually seen my wounds.

The bonds that held me in place
also kept me from using my magic or moving. I wished I had a Contact Stone,
something I could use to call Sip and Lisabelle. They’d be furious, I knew, and
they could probably find a way to help.

After a while, with no warning, a
shooting fire rushed over me. I cried out and cried again, but no one came. It
was like I had been thrown into an incinerator that burned my skin and all the
air around me. I couldn’t breathe and I didn’t want to move, while all around
me there was a rushing and a crashing as the fire devastated everything in its
path. I wanted to scream, but I knew that if I opened my mouth it would be
burned.

Just when I thought I couldn’t
take it anymore, the flames stopped and everything was quiet. For a long time I
didn’t move. Instead, I took stock of my body. Did I still have my skin? Yes.
Did I still have my hair? I thought so.