Elemental Shining (Paranormal Public Series) (28 page)

“Hey,” I said. “Glad I came before you two killed each other.”

“The morning is young,” Sip hissed, glancing first at me, then back to Lisabelle. Sip’s face was bright red, while Lisabelle’s was still pale and calm. “PSYCHO!”

“Lisabelle,” I asked. “What did you do? Sip is acting like you’ve been kicking kittens.”

“I like kittens,” said Lisabelle. “They mind. Their. OWN. Business, which is more than I can say for werewolves!”

“You are my ROOMMATE! You are my business!” Sip shot back.

If I hadn’t been so worried about my friends I would have laughed. At some point over the last year I had realized that they were the perfect example of two paranormals who could put aside their differences, of which there were many, and be the dearest of friends.

“And this is how they talk to their friends,” Lough murmured to me, only making me smile more.

Sip pointed an imperious finger at me. “Smile again and die.”

“Bossy little thing, isn’t she?” Lisabelle asked, much more calmly.

Now that Sip had moved and I could see Lisabelle clearly, I kind of wished I couldn’t. At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but when I did figure it out I decided that it wasn’t any wonder Sip was so upset. The room was brightly lit, both by lamps and by sunlight, so there was plenty of illumination of Lisabelle sitting cross-legged on her bed, the long black dress she wore covering her knees.

“Lisabelle,” I breathed. She was holding a metal instrument with a needle on the end, pointing at her exposed forearm. At first I thought she was doing some sort of drug, but I quickly realized that drugs weren’t what Sip was having a fit about.

“I’m giving myself a tattoo,” said Lisabelle, as if digging a needle into your own arm was the most normal thing in the world.

“Did you hear her?” Sip cried in my general direction, wringing her hands. “Tell her of what,” she shouted, now looking at Lisabelle.

I looked at Lisabelle expectantly. Behind me, Keller and Lough watched.

“Glad you’re here, man,” Lough muttered to Keller. “Girls are nuts.”

Keller merely grinned.

“What are you doing?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if Lisabelle had finally gone off the deep end or if this was some strange ritual that darkness mages engaged in. Either way, I could see why Sip was so upset.

“I’m tattooing my wand onto my arm,” said Lisabelle casually. She still held the needle, and I could see now that the tattoo wasn’t complete. She must have been about halfway done when Sip had discovered what she was doing.

On Lisabelle’s arm was half of a very intricate design. It was entirely black and looked just like the wooden wand that Lisabelle had carried for the past year.

“It takes too long to call my wand, and there’s always the chance that I will forget it or it will be broken. If I tattoo it to my arm it will always be with me.

Sip rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t make sense and it’s GROSS.”

“It does make sense,” Lisabelle argued. “The power of the wand comes from the intricate design. Well, I’m good with design, and I can just as easily transfer this one to my arm. Other darkness mages have done it. I’ve been reading up on it. I didn’t mention it because I had the funny notion that you’d be upset. Glad to see I was wrong. Oh—not.”

“You can’t just write stuff onto your skin, Lisabelle!”

“Why not?” Lisabelle said. “I just did. When I finish you’ll see. This will work.”

“I don’t want it to work! There’s nothing wrong with using your wand!”

Lisabelle put down the needle, giving Sip her full attention. Sip calmed down a little bit under Lisabelle’s steady gaze. “This is necessary. The demons have come back. There’s someone loose on Public grounds, and you got hurt. Not to mention that the Map is missing and I think it’s pretty clear that things are going to get worse before they get better. If they ever do get better. I have to do this. It’s safer for everyone. Don’t you want to have tea whenever you want?”

Sip’s lip trembled. “You aren’t digging designs into your flesh so that I can have tea.”

“No,” said Lisabelle. “I’m doing it so that we can all live as long as possible. I rather like that idea.”

Sip didn’t seem to know what to say. Neither did I. Luckily, Keller did.

“Let me help you with that,” he said. “We need to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

He moved past me to sit on the bed in front of Lisabelle. “We should probably give them some space,” said Sip.

“I want you here,” said Lisabelle.

For a second I thought Sip would refuse; some people are cut out for watching tattoos being inked, and some are not. Sip was not, but she stayed anyhow. Moving around the bed, she went to sit on Lisabelle’s other side, while Lough and I sat in the desk chairs.

We spent the rest of the morning there, the five of us enjoying some quiet time, or as quiet as we would ever get.

“Will this make you more powerful?” I asked, watching Lisabelle and Keller’s heads bent over her arm. The design was coming along nicely. Now it stretched along most of the inside of her forearm in one thin, continuous black line.

Lisabelle nodded. “It will. Over time. Some powers get lost in the transfer from mage to wand. Now that transfer no longer exists. More of my power will stay with me, and that will definitely make me stronger. Since my wand is now IN my arm, my magic will recognize it more easily.”

“So, this is a good thing,” I mused. “Do you think Malle has done it?”

“Probably,” said Lisabelle. “She of all paranormals wouldn’t want to lose her wand.”

“Too bad,” said Sip. “If she hadn’t done it we might have an advantage.”

“We already have an advantage,” I said.

When my four friends looked at me questioningly I said, “Each other,” and settled back in my chair.

As the semester wore on, my only break from studying was Tactical, and I didn’t think of it as a break because I was in a constant state of anxiety about it.

If you had asked me who the best Tactical player was before the semester started I would have said Keller, and everyone else would have said the same thing. The second best player would have been chosen from a list that included Dirr, Lisabelle, Cale, and maybe a couple of others. Trafton was very good at misdirection.

As it turned out, the second best player was someone else entirely.

We were still in Lisabelle and Sip’s room, getting ready for that evening’s Tactical, when Lough said, “I can’t believe Dobrov is catching so many students each time we play Tactical and we’re still losing.”

“He’s unbelievable,” I said. “I think he’s caught Trafton every time.”

As the other dream giver, Trafton was a very high value target. Right up there with royalty and being an elemental. “He changes into that big guy and that’s that.”

“And it’s in a different way every time,” Sip mused. “Has he talked to you much yet?”

“Hardly,” Lough scoffed. “The kid finds the ground fascinating. He acts like he’s reading the best book in the world when really he’s staring at dead grass. Someone should tell him.”

“I wouldn’t talk much either if I had a sister like that,” said Sip. “She’s mean.”

Before Tactical that evening I got a note from Dacer, who was working like a madman trying to get the Museum ready for visitors. We were opening in the Long Building until a more permanent location could be found, and he wanted me to come by and help him identify some of the oldest masks. Since Zervos disqualified any team that didn’t arrive on time and I had only enough time to stop in and help Dacer before Tactical started, I rushed out of Astra without seeing Mrs. Swan.

Over the past month, as Mound’s letters had gotten more vitriolic and paranormals kept dying at the hands of the Knights of Darkness, there was a growing contingent of students who thought paranormals would be better off without the Power of Five and were willing to make that happen. My friends were still making sure I never went anywhere alone.

That night, I went to the Long Building alone.

I left my friends in Airlee while Keller went back to Aurum to get dressed against the terrible weather. We would be spending the evening outside and it was cold, not to mention pouring rain. When Keller dropped me off I insisted that I could manage the walk from Astra to the Tactical bonfire by myself. I didn’t like being babysat or putting my friends in danger, and I could see the field from here.

But because of the note from Dacer, instead of going straight to Tactical I left early and went to Artle’s workshop.

By the time I left Astra, night had come. Even without the demons overhead blotting out the sun, the clouds and rain erased any light there might have been. Mrs. Swan saw me off, handing me a heated stone to carry in my jacket to keep me warm. I thanked her and hurried away. I was already late.

As I trudged along the rain-soaked path, I started to regret my decision to walk alone. The night was strangely quiet, all noises drowned out by the rain. I tried to ignore the fluttering in my stomach as the shadows stretched and lengthened, but the weather was so bad it was difficult to see, making me think that every shadow was a demon.

At least it wasn’t snowing yet, but if the rain kept up, the campus would soon be nearly submerged in water.

I walked faster.

A crackle made me look over my shoulder, but when I turned there was nothing there but the path. In the distance I could see Tactical’s meeting place, but there was no fire tonight. With the rain, it was too difficult to keep a bonfire going. Only magic would have kept a fire going in this mess, and no one thought that was a sensible use of magic under the circumstances.

I looked up and from side to side, hoping that if something came at me I would see it from any direction.

But it didn’t work.

Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever—no sound, nothing visible, not even a slight change in the direction of the falling rain—something hard slammed into my shoulder. I toppled over. The next second I felt like I was sinking, sinking, deep into the ground.

I struggled to my knees. My hands sank into wet grass and mud as I looked around frantically. Water was pouring into my eyes, making it hard to see. I pushed myself up, but I couldn’t see anything.

Without hesitating, I jumped to my feet and ran the rest of the way to the Long Building with no further attempt to figure out what had hit me. I hoped it was just a bat or some other flying or leaping animal, but I knew I probably wasn’t that lucky.

The door to the Long Building gave a familiar squeak as I pushed it open, but it wasn’t comforting. Instead the noise echoed off the walls, telling me just how alone I was. With a wave of my hand I turned the lights on, a trick Dacer had taught me that I used often these days. The lights were so dim that you’d have to be standing very close to the building to see that they were on, so I was protected from getting caught by any deans or professors who might happen to walk past, but I still had some light to see by.

I realized that there was something wrong almost instantly. If Dacer had been there more lights would have been on before I got there, and I should have been able to hear him banging away in the Museum.

Instead there was silence. Not moving, I waited to hear something.

“Dacer?” I yelled, moving forward. Maybe he was in the back room. Sometimes he got so immersed in work he didn’t hear anything else.

Going carefully and seeing no sign of anyone, I reached the door of the Museum. I didn’t have to try it to know that it was locked, because by this time it was clear that Dacer wasn’t there. I had a key, but if he was there he always unlocked it so I didn’t have to. Besides, he said, no one in their right mind would try to steal the masks while he was there. As he himself pointed out, he was a formidable vampire, and wearing pink eye shadow did not change that.