Turning Tides (4 page)

“Aidan!” Lana exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you since you visited me and…”

Marie returned with a glass in either hand. I grabbed one and thrust it toward Lana, hoping to distract her. Fortunately, a pretty piece of dust could distract Lana, and soon she was exclaiming over the oaky notes in her chardonnay.

I swallowed, fighting panic, and grabbed a second glass just for me. Lana couldn’t be here. Not with the council, not with her knowledge. Either she needed to get off this island immediately, or I did.

I caught Sera’s eye. She’d never met Lana, but she’d heard about our encounter. “Lana Pond,” I mouthed, tilting my head in the other woman’s direction.

A mask dropped over Sera’s features, as it often did when her thoughts were in turmoil. She whispered to my mother, whose eyebrows leapt in alarm.

I’d never met the man at Lana’s side, but I was certain he was the stone I’d spotted in the crowd earlier. A strong one, too, based on his traditional coloring. He was average height, and there didn’t appear to be a single part of his body that wasn’t covered in a muscle of some kind. His short hair was a medium brown undiluted by highlights, and his eyes were a dark slate gray. He was handsome enough, if your taste ran to body builders who looked like they smiled twice a year.

Me, I preferred a man who could destroy this one in an arm wrestling match, one who smiled damn near every time I walked in the door. I felt a sharp pang for Mac, still in Tahoe and expecting me home in a couple of days. We weren’t together, exactly. We’d agreed to wait to take the next step until I’d resolved my issues with the council and knew what my future held. At the time, it seemed the mature thing to do. With this new delay, I was beginning to regret that decision. Maturity is seriously overrated.

Forcing my thoughts back to the man in front of me, I stuck out my hand. “Welcome.”

He shook my hand somberly. I suspected he did most things somberly. “It’s nice to meet you, Aidan. I’m David Flint.”

One of the old names, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been surrounded by so many strong elementals.

These were supposed to be my people, but my thoughts and my heart kept returning to an A-frame cabin by the Truckee River, where shifters and elementals were equally welcome, regardless of how much magical blood they could claim.

Lana’s heart, however, was clearly right in front of me. “Isn’t he lovely?” She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder, her face soft and dreamy.

David gave her an indulgent smile and pressed his lips to her forehead in a warm kiss. In a way, I guess it made sense. Someone as batty as Lana would likely do best with a man who had patience of a saint, someone stable and reliable and predictable. In other words, a stone. I guess there really was someone for everyone.

That pang hit again, sharper than before, insisting I was too far from Mac. Whatever was happening on the island, I needed to figure it out quickly and get back to Tahoe. Every cell in my body yearned toward him. Being with him made everything else just a bit more bearable.

“What brings you by?” The question was more abrupt than I’d intended, but Sera and I needed a night of drinking and plotting, and only one of those looked to be happening now. “I mean, aren’t you all scared Sera’s going to burn you to ash?”

David cast a speculative eye toward Sera. Somehow, his face grew even more rigid. He was seriously considering my question. “Until she is convicted, I’d rather not behave as if she were guilty. Also, I can’t imagine any reason she would want to incinerate me or Lana.”

Stones always were a serious and pragmatic lot.

David nodded at my mother. “Fiona assured me that Sera was innocent and asked me to study your porch to see what kind of camera you need. A branch of my family owns a home security company, so I guess that made me the best option.”

I nodded, grateful. Without Vivian and Simon to help, I hadn’t thought how we’d manage the surveillance camera on an island full of luddites.

“I’ve been granted permission to fly into Bellingham tomorrow for the camera. Until it’s set up, Lana offered to stay with you. A witness, to confirm that Sera doesn’t leave.”

“That’s very… kind. But aren’t you worried Sera will hurt you, Lana? If you’re sleeping, you won’t be able to defend yourself at all. Perhaps you should stay far away.”

While we spoke, my mother and Sera inched closer to us. Hearing Lana’s offer, my mother didn’t even attempt to pretend she wasn’t eavesdropping. “She’s right, Lana. No reason to take an unnecessary risk. Please, come stay at my house. I have a lovely guest room already made up.” The offer was graciousness itself. No one would ever guess she was trying to keep us apart—or keep Lana under tight surveillance and away from the council.

Lana laughed, light and airy. “Don’t be silly. Look at that face.” She gestured toward Sera. “It’s such an honest face. I don’t know why we’re going through this charade of gathering evidence when it’s so obvious she didn’t do it.”

Sera looked between me and Lana, as if unable to believe this woman even existed. Her face, it should be noted for the record, looked very much like she could kill someone at that moment.

“Even so,” I continued, “I think my mother will stay. We haven’t seen each other much lately and…”

Lana shook her head, already dismissing my words. “And she’s your mother. Her testimony will never be believed. I, however, have no reason to lie for you.”

That’s what I was afraid of. Still, as much as I dreaded having to watch my every word and action while Lana was around, it beat letting her run around the island unsupervised.

Lana was already heading toward the back of the cottage. “Now, which bed is mine?”

“The pink one,” Sera and I announced in unison. Then, with a long look at me, Sera drained her glass before refilling it to the top. I suspected she had no plans to burn off the alcohol that night.

Chapter 4

To our unending joy, Lana
proved to be an incompetent witness. It took two glasses of wine before she was leaning against David’s shoulder, a decidedly slack look on her face, and she made no protest when he guided her toward the second bedroom. He left soon after with a promise to return the next morning and trade Lana for a security camera. I thought we were getting the better end of that deal.

My aunts wandered off a few minutes later, their last bottle clutched in Georgie’s hands. Before leaving, they covered my cheeks with enthusiastic kisses and insisted they didn’t believe I was guilty of murder, not for a second. My aunts never had been good with details.

My mother left with them, though she first murmured quiet promises to help exonerate Sera. They were vague words, though, and I knew she didn’t have any real idea where to begin.

The moment we were alone, Sera turned to me. “No.”

I raised both eyebrows. I was pretty good at filling in the blanks with Sera, but even I needed a little more to go on.

“I know how you’re planning to find the other fire. No.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” It was a lie, and about as successful as all the other ones I tried to tell her.

She listened for Lana’s quiet snores, then pulled me into the kitchen and turned on the water, disguising our voices. “You are not going to wander the island while accessing your fire side, looking for someone else doing the same.”

“No one would expect it, which means any hidden fires on the island wouldn’t try to hide their magic from me. It’s the best way.”

“To be discovered? To learn how far you can push it before something in you snaps? It’s not worth the risk.” She shook her head, the issue already decided in her mind.

“Shut up.
You
are worth the risk. You’d do the same for me. Don’t deny it.”

“I’m not a freaking dual magic, either, which means I’m a hell of a lot more stable than you are. It’s not even apples and oranges. It’s apples and tractors. We can’t begin to compare our magic.”

I opened my mouth to protest. I was perfectly stable. Sure, I might occasionally want to scream and throw things in a way a proper water would never do. It was possible I’d done two entire pushups the other day before I came to my senses. And yes, maybe I was aware of my fire side as I never was before, the individual threads of magic becoming dangerously familiar.

Oh, and there was the part where I might have given Mac a small measure of my elemental magic when saving his life after an FBI agent shot him, a freak occurrence I couldn’t even begin to explain.

Really, stable is such a subjective term.

“Well, we need to do something. You have a better idea?”

“What do we always do when things go wrong?”

I grinned. My burst of happiness was inappropriate, considering the current situation, but if nothing else we now had a valid reason to contact Simon and Vivian. Yes, they’d moved out of the cabin, but they’d never leave Sera in a lurch if they could help it.

“Didn’t Simon call earlier? Right before the trial?”

She groaned. “I forgot about that. He asked for Fiona, said he had a question about healing, but he wouldn’t go into details. I was supposed to deliver the message to her, but got distracted by the whole accused of murder thing. I’ll let her know tomorrow.”

“No, let me handle it. I may hate healing, but I can still answer some basic questions.”

Sera took a seat at the small laptop computer set up for guests and booted it up. “In the meantime, let’s see if Vivian will help. You do have internet here, right?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, already opening her favorite music program. If she was going to be trapped for several days, she would damn sure have Social Distortion for company.

I was relieved to see the cottage was connected, as elementals were historically quite anti-technology. Rumor had it we refused to ride in a passenger train until 1932. However, even we recognized the benefits of internet shopping. We might resist big scary metal things that rumbled along iron rails, but it was a lot harder to resist the lure of books and clothes being sent to the island with the click of a button. Even if it did force me to listen to Sera’s music, having access to the internet would make our investigation much easier.

Sera found the site she needed and opened a video chat window. “Wait. This isn’t right.”

I peered over her shoulder, trying to see the problem. Unfortunately, after my decade as a technology-free hermit, video chat was still relegated to the “freaky science fiction” category.

“Vivian’s not online,” she explained, pointing at the gray dot. “Vivian is always online. What has that woman done to her?”

The woman to whom Sera referred was Olivia, Vivian’s live-in girlfriend and the subject of my and Sera’s irrational dislike. Sure, Vivian chose to move out of the cabin because she needed a break from the non-stop chaos and murder attempts, but we preferred to blame Olivia.

We hadn’t heard from Vivian since she left, and we were trying to respect her need for distance. Still, she was a friend, and I had to believe she’d be willing to help Sera avoid a murder conviction and the subsequent death penalty.

I pulled out my phone to call our earth friend. It went to voicemail, and I left a short message, asking her to call us.

“What about Simon?”

“In what world would Simon sit around, waiting for people to contact him?” She had a point. “Mac’s never online, either. When did you last talk to him?”

“When the plane landed, just to check in. He sounded tired, but he brushed it off when I asked him about it. Think they’re having wild parties without us? Maybe they’re all sleeping it off.”

I was joking, but my words triggered a thought for Sera. A few keystrokes later, a familiar and utterly adorable face filled the monitor. “Ladies,” said Miriam, her voice booming. Sera adjusted the volume down. “How the hell you doing? Homesick already?”

Miriam was an otter shifter, and she looked it. Physically, she was as cute as a basket of, well, otters, with big melting brown eyes, a button nose, and cheeks that begged to be pinched. Of course, if you followed through on that urge, you were likely to lose your hand. The woman was brash, outspoken, and often seemed to speak entirely in curse words. I kind of wanted to be her when I grew up.

Like Vivian, Simon, and a handful of other shifters, she knew my secret and hadn’t told anyone. I trusted these people, far more than I trusted elementals these days.

“You have no idea how homesick we already are,” I answered.

“Brook, I’m looking at your tits, and let’s be honest, there ain’t that much to see. Get in the damn frame.”

I knelt until only my disembodied head appeared in the bottom of the frame. “Better?”

Miriam nodded. “So what’s up?”

“Sera’s been accused of murder,” I announced, like any older sister tattling on a younger one.

“Again? Did you at least do it this time?”

Sera shook her head, disgusted. “I was thinking unflattering thoughts about the victim, but nothing incendiary.”

“It was awful,” I said. “I’m going to have nightmares about what we saw today. The problem is we have no idea who did it. All we know is the councilwoman was about to deliver my sentence, then she freaking exploded. So far as we know, there aren’t any other fires on the island. We’re pretty much as a loss here.”

Miriam nodded, then a smile lit up her face. “I could come up and help.”

Sera dumped the last of the cabernet into her glass. “No offense, Miriam, but what could you do?”

The otter’s grin remained firmly in place. “I could smack some elemental heads together. That would definitely help me feel better.”

“Maybe later,” I said. “Have Vivian or Simon been around? We could use their help with some surveillance and research stuff.” The otters liked to hang out in the river behind the cabin and seemed to know more about what went on in our house than we did.

“I was last there yesterday morning. Simon’s been by to visit Mac, and those agents have stopped by a couple of times, but that’s it.”

That was news. We hadn’t heard from the FBI agents for weeks now, ever since the night Carmichael accidentally killed Mac while trying to protect me. I’d managed to revive Mac, but that didn’t mean I was ready to forget how he’d ended up dead in the first place. I imagined I’d forgive Carmichael eventually, but I wasn’t sure it would be in this century.

I pulled my notebook from my handbag and began rifling through the pages until I found Olivia’s address. I handed it to Sera, who typed it into the chat window while speaking. “Miriam, could you wander over to this apartment building and let Viv know what’s going on? I think she might be ignoring us, so maybe find a way to convince her that’s a bad idea?”

There was a beep on the other end as the address went through. “Will do. You want me to tell Will and Carmen?”

I considered it. We’d recently helped find several missing shifter children, and I was sure their parents would be happy to help, if only to even the score. No shifter wanted to be indebted to an elemental. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything they could do, and I feared their involvement would only worsen matters with the council.

“Just Simon, if you see him.” We said our good-byes and closed the chat program.

I’d waited all night to make the next call. Mac might not be able to do any more than Will and Carmen, but just hearing his voice would provide more comfort than every bottle of wine in the kitchen.

The call went to voicemail. It was one of those automated responses, too, so I couldn’t even be pathetic and enjoy the sound of his voice telling me to leave a message.

I tried to hide it, but Sera saw the disappointment cross my face. “Get some sleep, H2O. You’ve got a busy day tomorrow, what with exonerating me and figuring out where the hell all our friends have gone.” She grabbed a blanket out of the closet and chucked it to me, indicating the sofa with a jerk of her head. “And accused murderers always get the bed. See you in the morning.”

She walked into the second bedroom and closed the door, leaving me alone in a silent room.

To my surprise,
I managed several good hours of sleep, only waking when the risen sun peered at me through the blinds. Sera and Lana were still asleep, so I started
a pot of coffee for them and put on the kettle for my morning tea. I eyed my journal, craving the clarity I always found in writing, but I didn’t feel safe jotting down my thoughts while surrounded by a bunch of old ones. I always described my life in broad strokes, not wanting to give away the existence of elementals should the journal fall into human hands, but these days that was the least of my concerns. If an elemental read it and guessed that my two halves didn’t refer to one side that liked peanut butter and another that liked chocolate, there’d be no laughing. Blood and death, perhaps, but no laughing.

Instead, I pulled off my sweats and, in just my underwear and a cotton camisole, I stepped outside, ran around the porch, and dove into the ocean.

It swallowed me instantly, and I sank to the rocky bottom. I stayed there for a long time, letting the water recharge me and fuel my magic in a way sleep never could. So long as I accessed my element, I could go weeks without eating or sleeping. I had a sense I’d need to be at full power today, and I definitely wanted my water side to be in charge. Even in June, the water was cold, but I didn’t feel it. It just felt like home.

At last I rose, ready to face whatever new insanity this day felt like throwing at me. I pulled myself up the ladder and drew the water from my body, drying off a bit before heading inside.

I returned to the quiet living room, pulled my sweats back on, and grabbed my phone. I stepped onto the front porch for a bit of privacy, in case the others awoke. I didn’t care how early it was. I hadn’t spoken to Mac since noon the day before, and that was too damn long. Hell, sometimes an hour felt like too long.

It rang four, five times, and just as the heavy weight of disappointment settled in my stomach, someone picked up. Unfortunately, that someone wasn’t Mac.

“We are on our way.”

“Wait, what? Simon?”

“Of course.”

“But this is Mac’s phone.” I wasn’t sure if I was the one being simple-minded or if it was him, but one of us was definitely confused.

“Mac is sleeping. I answered. Are you going to continue to offer inane commentary, or are you going to tell us where to meet you?”

I was at least three minutes behind on this conversation, and I wasn’t sure I could blame it entirely on my lack of caffeine. “How did you know we needed help?”

“I’m psychic. Or I have no idea what you are talking about. Choose one.”

“Wait, then why are you coming up here?”

“He did not tell you?”

It was with a great force of will that I didn’t bang my head against the porch railing in frustration. Unconsciousness might be more productive than this conversation.

“Simon. You know I love you, but if you were speaking in Swahili, you couldn’t make less sense. What is going on?”

A brief wave of static interrupted whatever response Simon was preparing. “We’re cutting out. I’ll tell you when we get there. Meet us in Seattle tonight?”

My gut clenched. As much as I wanted to think they were rushing to visit because they so missed me and Sera, experience suggested they were bringing some fresh hell my way.

We set a time and place. “Can you tell me anything? Cause you’re kind of freaking me out here, Simon.”

“Mac’s…” His voice cut out, leaving me with only fragments of words. “In… mountains.” The line cleared for a moment. “Why do you need help?”

“Sera’s accused of murder.”

“Again?” Simon asked, just before being disconnected.

I hung up and stared at the phone, hoping it would provide an explanation for what had just occurred. It remained frustratingly silent. I knew I should be worried, and I was, but a larger part celebrated the news that, in a few more hours, I’d be seeing Mac.

My mind still struggling to make sense of the conversation with Simon, I stumbled into the kitchen where a cup of tea waited, along with a bright-eyed water elemental.