Shifting Selves (12 page)

He was handsome, with a carefully tailored suit and tidy haircut he’d likely paid too much money for. Josiah always did like to surround himself with signs of wealth and control, creating the sort of environment that relaxed him while causing everyone around him to tense up.

Jonathan clearly was not expecting us, and our presence had him panicking. “Mr. Blais did not tell me you were coming. He’s not here at the moment, but I’m certain he’d want you to wait.” He attempted to herd Sera and me toward the elevators while determinedly ignoring our friends.

I planted my feet. “When do you expect him back?”

“Oh, any time, any time. Please, you can wait upstairs.” I watched him carefully as he spoke the airy words, and I saw the hard flint in his eyes. He knew Josiah was eager for his daughters to return to him, and Jonathan was determined to keep us at the hotel until his boss returned.

Naturally, this made me even more determined to leave.

“Where is he? We can go to him.” I smiled, a big, harmless smile I didn’t mean in the slightest.

“He’s looking at a new piece of property on the south shore. Really, he’ll be back any minute.” Once again, he tried to push us toward the elevator. He made the mistake of placing a hand on Sera’s and my backs. Sera, of course, would not be pushed anywhere, and she firmly planted her feet. My absolute lack of muscle tone gave him some advantage, and he’d have been able to move me closer to the elevator if he hadn’t been stopped cold by the low growls coming from two of my companions’ throats.

Vivian watched the entire scene, more entertained than concerned. I knew she disliked lingering in the hotel lobby—her dreads, combat boots, and well-worn
Doctor Who
t-shirt made her stand out in this five-star hotel—but for the moment, she appeared to be enjoying herself fully. I realized it was a long time since I’d seen her smiling so easily, and I hoped it meant the distracted Vivian of the last few weeks was a thing of the past.

Jonathan was having considerably less fun. He hastily dropped his arms to the side and held his hands out, palms up, trying to show us how innocent his intentions truly were.

“Mr. Blais only wishes to speak to you. I know he’d want you to wait.” I couldn’t shake the suspicion that, if we chose to wait in the penthouse, we’d find ourselves trapped until Josiah returned, or possibly teleported to the volcano compound. If anyone on earth knew how to teleport people, it would be Josiah.

I tilted my head and tried to soften my expression, looking innocent. Jonathan took a step backward.

Someday, my face was actually going to make the expression I asked it to make, but today was not that day. I gave up, and laid it out for him. “We are going to leave now, Jonathan. You can either tell us where Josiah is, so we can go directly to him and he can speak to us, as he wishes,” I placed no small amount of emphasis on that final word. “Or we can leave, and wander around for a bit. Maybe go out of town for a few days. Maybe check into a hotel where he can’t find us. And then, you’d get to explain to him just why you were so determined not to divulge his location.”

All the blood drained from Jonathan’s face, causing him to look at least a decade or two older. “Of course, Ms. Brook.” He quickly scrawled the address on a piece of hotel stationery, handed it to us, and scurried away.

“Should I feel bad about abusing that lackey?” I asked curiously. After all, the poor man was just doing his job. It wasn’t his fault that job required him to do my father’s evil bidding.

“No,” said Sera, plucking the paper from my hands. “He needs to be tougher than that to work for our father. You did him a favor.”

I turned around and promptly pulled up short to avoid crashing into Carmen. I had no idea how long she’d been standing there. None of us had sensed her arrival, so quietly had she approached. Damn cat feet.

Mac was scowling, and even Simon looked a bit miffed. I suspected they really didn’t like anyone getting the drop on them, particularly another shifter. The self-satisfied smile hovering around her lips let me know she was well aware of this fact.

“Where is he?” Carmen asked Sera, glancing pointedly at the slip of paper in her hand.

Sera’s scowl mirrored Mac’s, and for a moment I thought she might swallow the evidence, simply to prevent Carmen from getting something she wanted. Instead, she tucked it neatly into the front pocket of her black jeans and held the woman’s gaze, Sera’s blank expression more than a match for Carmen’s smug one. “He’ll be back soon. You can wait.”

Instead, Carmen took a single step forward, until she took up Sera’s entire frame of vision. She was a couple of inches taller, and Sera was forced to tilt her head to maintain the stare. Sera maintained the expressionless mask she wore when she was the most volatile, but I saw tiny sparks coming from her fingers, the magic close to the surface. Worryingly, I noticed that Carmen’s nails were extending, hinting at the deadly claws she carried in her alternate form.

I wanted to believe they were just posturing, but I couldn’t be sure. If it came down to it, Sera should win any battle. With her magic, she could set Carmen on fire in the blink of an eye. Carmen might be intimidating, but I suspected even she needed a moment to recover from third degree burns.

However, there’d be no room in such a fight for even a moment of hesitation. Carmen could shift in the space of a heartbeat and rake a long claw across Sera’s throat, slicing the jugular before Sera was even able to singe her eyebrows. Death tended to bring an abrupt halt to any magical offense.

Regardless of who would win, I knew we didn’t want the battle to occur in the busy lobby of a luxury hotel.

“Why do you want to see him?” I asked. I had a fairly good idea, but I hoped such a harmless question would defuse the situation, at least temporarily.

She tilted her head toward me, considering me with large, unblinking eyes. It was strange to watch her movements, so similar to Simon’s and yet so foreign. She was a predator in a twin set. It didn’t seem to matter to her how much power we could wield. Until we proved otherwise, we were prey. I forced myself to hold her stare, knowing she’d interpret it as a challenge. To be fair, it was easy to be brave when defended on all sides and when at least one of those bodyguards had claws that made hers look downright dainty.

Carmen appeared to realize this as well. She stepped away from Sera, though I didn’t make the mistake of confusing her strategic retreat with our victory. Her eyes remained sharp and tense. “I understand he might know something about what happened to James, which means he might know something about Pamela. Why else would I be here?”

I nodded, deflating. I even resisted making some smart-ass comment about being there for the hotel’s fabulous spa, though such restraint pained me. Because nothing about Carmen suggested she ever felt like a victim, I’d forgotten how much pain she was likely feeling. Her daughter was still missing, and her only leads were the same ones the rest of us had. The fact that she was here, seeking the same answers we were, suggested she wasn’t involved with the abductions.

James wasn’t violent, Carmen was clueless, and we were back at square one.

Mac wasn’t quite ready to trust her, however. “May I ask how you learned about this?” His voice was calm and polite, but his gaze was dark and his body seemed to expand, taking up even more room.

Carmen looked at him, her eyes calculating and thoughtful. Perhaps she hadn’t scrapped enough with elementals to know how dangerous our powers could be. She might respect our powers in an abstract way, but she didn’t view us as a threat. She had no such confusion about Mac. Bears might not be pure predators in the way of mountain lions, but they were much, much bigger. She didn’t stand a chance in a straight fight, and she knew it.

That didn’t stop her from taunting him slightly, feeling safe in such a public place. “I have good ears,” she said, with such a pleased expression I decided the phrase “cat who ate the cream” was inspired by a shifter.

If possible, Mac tensed further, and his face grew darker. Carmen was basically admitting to spying on the cabin and overhearing his earlier phone call to his family.

Simon’s response was entirely different. He showed no such anger. In fact, he looked intrigued. For once, he was not the one skulking along rooftops and crouching under windows, hearing things the speaker never intended him to learn. And though I couldn’t explain why, I wanted to keep Simon far away from this woman.

“It doesn’t matter what you know, or think you know,” I said, bringing her attention back to me. “Josiah will never talk to you. You do realize he’s an old one, right? A full-blooded fire centuries older than the forest you call home?” The way her eyes widened momentarily told me this was, in fact, new information. “You can show up hissing, with bared fangs and freshly sharpened claws, and he’ll pet you lightly on the head and call you a bad kitty. Do feel free to try, though.”

I saw the fight slither from her body. However, while she might have conceded this battle, she had yet to surrender the war. She gracefully lowered herself into one of the lobby’s sumptuous armchairs and made herself comfortable, neatly curling her legs beneath her, as I’d seen Simon do countless times over the last months. Based on his close attention to her movements, I knew Simon noticed, too.

“You might be right, water girl.” I did my best to hide the grimace of distaste, knowing that was exactly what she was aiming for. “But if there’s even a chance he knows something about my girl, I can’t give up. He’ll walk through this lobby eventually.” She positioned herself so she had a clear view of both the front doors and the elevator banks and prepared to wait.

I shrugged. She could stay in the lobby as long as she wanted. That just made her Josiah’s problem, and I was more than petty enough to wish further problems on my father.

I turned to go and felt the others do the same. All except one, that is.

“I believe I will stay here.” Simon’s somber green eyes met each of ours, briefly, and then he eased into an armchair next to Carmen’s. “Someone will need to inform you if Josiah returns while you are in transit.”

It was a perfectly reasonable explanation, but looking between him and a self-satisfied Carmen, I knew it had nothing to do with his decision to stay.

Unable to find any words to articulate my unease, I nodded once, then headed toward the door, trying to ignore the doubt that gnawed at me every step of the way.

CHAPTER 12

We drove in near silence toward the address Jonathan gave us, over an hour away in South Lake Tahoe. It was a beautiful drive, with the road skirting the western side of the lake the entire way. Campsites, cabins, and resorts lined the road, and in another month or two it would be crawling with vacationers tooling along on their rented bikes or entire families crossing the road with full picnic baskets and oversized inflatable rafts.

Until then, the locals still owned the road, and traffic was relatively light. We eased our way around the turns, the lake on our left. As we neared Emerald Bay, the ground rose gently, pulling us higher into the mountains. The lake stretched below us, shockingly blue and enclosed on all sides by the mountains. Some days, I marveled that I was lucky enough to call such a magnificent, peaceful spot my home.

And yet, at that moment, I found little of that peace in myself. I couldn’t fully articulate it, but something simply felt off. This did not feel like the same group of people who’d spent months working together to find an elemental killer, slowly becoming a family in its own right. Today was the first day Vivian wasn’t dashing off somewhere, trying to repair her relationship with a woman we’d never met. Simon was currently hanging out with a woman who set off all my alarm bells, but whose occasional whiskers gave her charms the rest of us lacked. And Mac... well, Mac and I couldn’t seem to be alone for five minutes without finding something new to disagree about.

It felt like things were falling apart, and I had no idea how to stop them.

We were high enough up that I couldn’t even touch the water for comfort, my magic unable to reach that far. Mac was now navigating the most nerve-wracking section of highway 89. High above the lake, there’s a section of road where the mountain drops away, leaving a two-lane road with no barriers and a drop of several hundred feet on each side. We’d driven up and down this ridge dozens of times over the years, but it still made me consider taking up prayer for a minute or two. To my right, I noticed Vivian grip her own handle tightly, and even Sera stopped fidgeting for the minute it took us to cross and once again have the comforting wall of the mountain on our right.

Sera’s phone rang, the sudden noise breaking the silence. The tension that coursed through her body let me know it wasn’t someone offering to sell her a fabulous time share in Las Vegas. Mac, who could easily hear both sides of the conversation, turned left at the next campsite, pulling into a parking lot overlooking the lake and turning the car around.

“She wants to talk to you,” Sera held out the phone. “Carmen,” she mouthed. I shrugged and took the phone.

“I know I can be a bitch,” said Carmen by way of greeting. I saw no reason to disagree. “Then again, so can you.”

“I prefer to think of myself as charmingly irreverent,” I informed her.

“I’m not apologizing.”

“Neither am I.”

“Good. So long as we understand each other.” She took a long pause. “Will you help us, then?”

We seemed to have skipped several steps necessary for this conversation to make any sense, but Mac was already turning right onto the highway, preparing to take us back north. I smacked the back of his seat and offered my best series of “Dude, what the fuck?” gestures, but he simply shook his head and continued driving.

“Carmen, I need a bit more information,” I told her, since Mac obviously had no plans to clue me in. All I knew, based on the speed with which he was taking the turns, was that he was in a much greater hurry to get back than he’d been to reach our original destination.

“Pamela’s back. According to Dana, she walked in the front door twenty minutes ago, sat down at the dining table, and hasn’t moved since. I just got back from the hotel, and the bears met me at the front door. They’re hoping to learn more information to help James. We need you to do whatever you do with the clothes or sweat.”

“Carmen, there’s no guarantee I’ll find anything new. I might be able to pick up another person’s essence on her clothes, but only if they were sweating when they touched her. And if it was done recently.” It seemed a good idea to manage expectations when dealing with a pissed-off mama cat with long, sharp claws.

“But you’ll try.” Carmen stated. It wasn’t a request, but it didn’t need to be. Of course I’d help.

“Keep her away from all heat sources for now,” I told her. “And inside, out of the wind. Anything that might speed her clothes drying.” Even I was impressed by the authority in my voice. “It’s okay to take off her clothes and get her into some clean ones, but put them in a fresh plastic bag and store it in the refrigerator. Also, make sure she doesn’t sweat until I get there, so if she starts, lower the thermostat. We’re just leaving Emerald Bay now, so we won’t be there for another fifty—”

I didn’t get to complete the thought. A loud popping sound shook the car, and the Bronco jerked violently to the right. Mac never even had time to swerve before we were falling down the side of the mountain.

Time reinvents itself during crises, rejecting linear strictures in favor of a more chaotic existence. No longer does one second follow another, or one minute lead to the next. Time claims to be rigid, but the moment it thinks no one is paying attention, it grasps the opportunity to rewrite its own rules. Time only pretends to make sense.

And so, as we tumbled down the mountain, I existed in two completely different worlds. In one, the crash happened in a heartbeat. The Bronco crashed into a tree, but that didn’t slow our fall. We simply spun out and continued to plummet. I was aware of uncontrolled movement, of Vivian’s and my limbs intertwined as we were yanked unceremoniously upwards before being jolted back down. Our seat belts likely saved our lives, but at the time all I felt was a searing pain as our chests were gripped mercilessly. I quickly lost track of which way was up, only recognizing various degrees of pain as we were tossed about the Bronco, unable to find any purchase when nothing stayed constant.

In the other world, I saw everything. I saw Sera brace herself against the dashboard, and a distant, clinical voice in my head told me that was wrong, because she had a better chance of survival if she allowed herself to go limp. Mac’s hands were glued to the steering wheel, his grip so tight I saw the plastic warp and bend under his fingers. He was still desperately trying to bring the Bronco back under his control, forcing the wheel enough to the left to avoid the trees directly ahead of us. Vivian’s face was ashen, her mouth tight and eyes panicked, but her attention was all outside the car. I knew she was calling the earth, trying to raise it and slow our rapid descent, but she lacked sufficient power for that level of manipulation.

We careened down the mountain with nothing to slow our fall but the pines. Each time we scraped against a tree, the metal groaned, and the car would lurch in a new direction, seeking out the next barrier the mountain wanted to throw between us and the lake below. Our bodies became more broken with each jolt and revolution the SUV made. Without access to our elements, we wouldn’t last much longer. I couldn’t bear to think what shape Mac would be in when we reached the bottom. If we reached it.

At last, we were close enough to the lake for my magic to reach, and I shoved it from my body, demanding it attach to the water and feed me its life.

Mac swung the Bronco hard to one side to evade one tree, only to find another in our path. The left side of the SUV crashed into it, and the Bronco’s side crumpled, the tree forcing a sharp dent into the metal only inches from the driver’s seat. I had no time for relief, as the entire vehicle swung into a clearing and tilted harshly toward the ground, executing a gut-churning roll down the steep slope.

Mac and Sera were viciously shaken with every movement, but somehow they were still alive. The Bronco might have a voracious appetite for fuel, but it was also the product of the 1970s American automotive manufacturing ethos, when it was perfectly reasonable to expect a vehicle to double as a tank. I saw countless dents in the roof and sides, but for the moment the general structure was miraculously intact.

The same could not be said for the windows, all of which had shattered as we fell. Several pieces had torn through my sweater and were imbedded in my arms, small pools of red forming around the tears. Blood oozed down Vivian’s face. One of her legs didn’t seem to be positioned quite right, and her right arm flopped loosely against her body. I felt liquid on my own face and arms, and distantly wondered whether it was all my own blood.

The SUV showed no signs of slowing. Rather, gravity was eagerly jumping into the mix, tugging on the Bronco and luring it into a second revolution. We still had at least fifty feet until we crashed into the water. It was too far to survive.

We were, I dimly realized, going to die. I was a full-blooded elemental, capable of living thousands of years, and I was about to die from being tossed around the back of a rusted-out SUV. I’d never given much thought to the way I’d die, since I didn’t expect it to happen before we all had flying cars and jetpacks, but this particular method never even made it onto the short list.

To have any hope of surviving, I needed to immerse myself in water, and Vivian needed to place her hands on earth. Even then, she’d likely need a fair bit of time in a human hospital. There was only one possible way I saw to accomplish this. It was a long shot, and it risked exposing us to all humans in the area, but when the choice was between exposure and death, my internal debate resolved itself pretty damn fast.

My magic was still deep in the lake, pulling whatever energy I could to counteract the damage caused by the fall. Now, I summoned it, whispering to the molecules that they needed to come to me, and come quickly. Their movement was sluggish at first, the water reluctant to follow an unfamiliar path, but it could not resist for long. It recognized me from the years I spent swimming in its depths. More importantly, it recognized the magic as its old friend. As the memory of its own birth alongside the earth’s primordial magic returned, it came willingly, eager to reunite.

I widened my reach and continued to tug, even as the Bronco completed another full rotation. Once again, it showed no signs of slowing. I wasn’t certain Vivian could survive another turn. Her body already looked like a rag doll, and the blood on her face was flowing freely.

I felt a wet stickiness on my own legs and looked down to see my leg twisted unnaturally, and what appeared be my own shin bone poking out of my jeans. I was beginning to wonder if I could survive another turn, as well.

I no longer asked the water to come to me. I begged it. I wasn’t even certain I controlled the magic any longer. I thought it might be controlling me, rushing to bring my element to me, to save me from the human weaknesses all elementals shared, regardless of how much magic raced through our veins.

Water poured through the broken windows. “Hold your breath and unhook your seat belt,” I ordered, but it was unnecessary. Sera was already free and pulling her small body through the window.

By now, the lake had risen a full thirty feet, at least in Emerald Bay. In other parts of Lake Tahoe, I knew kayakers and boaters would find the water inexplicably dropping several inches. The Bronco was on its side, resting against the slope and surrounded by water, its frantic descent halted at last. I felt no relief yet. It took every ounce of concentration I possessed for the water to hold the vehicle in place, and I couldn’t maintain it for long. Soon, I’d need to let go, and the Bronco would either resume its fall or sink to the bottom of the newly risen lake—or both. In either case, the others wouldn’t survive.

Sera was standing on the passenger side, the only part of the car now clear of the water. She yanked hard on the rear door handle. It was stuck. “Not me,” I shouted. “Mac first.”

The face he turned to me was livid, his jaw locked in a stubborn set I knew meant he had no intention of agreeing with me. Water now filled the entire driver’s side of the Bronco.

I stuck my head above the waterline so he could hear me clearly. “We don’t have time to argue,” I said, forestalling whatever arguments he was preparing to make. “If we end up under water, Vivian and I can fit easily through a window, and I won’t drown. You can’t fit, and you
will
drown. Go!”

I looked at Sera and worried our argument was moot. She was fighting desperately to open the front passenger door, which had been crumpled and broken by the fall. The locking mechanism was stuck.

I saw rage cross Sera’s face and felt the answering emotion rise inside me, my personal fire-starter once again proving it had no sense of timing. I closed my eyes against the sight, refusing to tempt my other side, but it still chafed against its reins when it felt the warmth of Sera’s fire.

She was melting the door handle, I realized. She kept one hand on the door the entire time, completely immune to the searing heat. The moment the metal softened enough to release the locking mechanism, the door wrenched open in her hand, providing a single exit.

Mac cast one more look toward us, but my jaw was set every bit as stubbornly as his was. “Don’t even start. Either you play the hero and we all die, or you get out and help us. Now, get your oversized ass out of the car while you still can.” I reached out one hand, trying to ignore how bruised and bloodied it looked, and gave him one weak shove against the shoulder. He nodded, then moved quickly toward the door and pulled himself out, instantly reaching a hand back in for Vivian.

She was barely conscious, and it wasn’t easy to maneuver her into the front seat. Fortunately, she was able to float across the top of the bucket seats. Mac gripped her wrist, and a moment later he was pulling her out. “Get her to ground!” I yelled up. He nodded, already handing her to Sera, who was in the lake. The last I saw, she had Vivian under one arm and was awkwardly paddling uphill, moving above the water and toward the earth Vivian desperately needed to begin the healing process.

“Now you,” ordered Mac, reaching his hand back into the cab. I nodded and eased into the front seat, but I’d waited too long and exerted myself too much. The water still surrounded the SUV, but it struggled to hold it in place. I lost concentration for a moment, and that was enough. The Bronco completed its final rotation, coming to a stop upside down.