Wet (Elemental 1) (7 page)

“Yeah,” Logan
promised. “It’s safe. We’ll give them a minute before we meet up with them.”

Angela lowered her
hand, blinking her eyes rapidly for a second as they readjusted to the
sunlight.

Logan was scowling again
when she looked his way. “What happened?”

Her eyes drifted
up, toward the sky, reaffirming what she remembered. Like before, there were
only a sparse few—white—clouds overhead. As she lowered her eyes back to her
brother, she said, “This is going to sound weird, but … I think I was almost
struck by lightning.”

Logan’s eyes
widened at her statement. And after several seconds, she knew he had come to
the same realization she had.

They’d lost an
uncle to a lightning strike, back when their mother and father had only been
dating.

Chapter Seven

Concern in her
voice, Lillian asked, “Did something happen?”

“Yeah,” Dean said
as Blake led the way inside. His brother’s heavy tone fit their mood perfectly.

“Mom,” Angela
started with a glance toward Brooke. Her voice trailed, but the implication was
fairly obvious.

“Hi, Angela,”
Brooke said, seeming to sense the younger girl’s point. “I’m Brooke. I’m a
friend of Blake’s.”

“Blake sent her
here a short while ago,” Lillian explained calmly. “We couldn’t let her spend
money on a cab and she wouldn’t let us drive her to the beach, so we’ve opted
to wait together to learn what the emergency was.”

With a pointed look
at his son, Christopher added, “Seems she was worried.”

Blake cringed and
looked to Brooke, hoping she could see the apology in his eyes. “I’m sorry
about earlier.”

Brooke smiled.
“It’s okay, I’m sure you had a reason. And your parents are really nice.”

“Now,” Lillian
interrupted, “about that reason?”

Nate emerged from the
kitchen, two sandwiches plated in his hands, and extended one to Blake before
claiming the seat next to Dean.

“You two look a
little pale,” Christopher said as realization dawned.

“I’m fine,” the
brothers echoed. Blake wasted no time biting into his sandwich, knowing he
needed the rejuvenation.

Lillian cleared her
throat pointedly. “We’re still waiting for answers. Is someone hurt?”

“No,” Dean replied
quietly.

Angela pulled in a
breath and Blake paused in his eating to glance over at her. She was preparing
to explain, and he felt guilty at the news they were about to drop on their
parents.

“When I was walking
home,” Angela began slowly, her blue eyes focused on the carpet at her feet, “I
was … almost hit by lightning.” She paused, swallowed, and added, “It started a
fire, so I called Dean, and then Logan.”

When she paused
again, Blake stepped in. “Dean called me from the road. Said he was calling
Nate next. Nate managed to get there first, and held back the flames until the
rest of us got there.” If Dean had had the energy, Blake was sure he’d have
been interrupted by now with some kind of outcry. Blake wasn’t exactly the
brother most known for revealing their family secret on a whim, but it must
have been obvious to his brothers—and sister, for that matter—that he’d said
something about it to Brooke already. That, or he was willing to get into the
details later.

Christopher nodded,
and his voice was strangely detached as he looked between Blake and Nate,
saying, “But you had to transform to do it.”

Blake nodded, his
mouth full with the final bite of his sandwich.

“Yeah,” Nate said
with a swallow.

Before another word
could be said, they all heard the familiar rumble of Logan’s truck as it pulled
into the driveway.

Silently, they
waited until the final Hawke had joined them in the living room, claiming the
seat beside Nate.

****

Lillian excused
herself shortly after Angela had reiterated the story, in detail, for her
parents. And Brooke. The family sat in semi-awkward, dark silence as they
listened to Lillian move up the stairs. Blake was debating whether or not to
offer Brooke a ride home when his mother’s muffled voice carried down to them.
None of the words were distinguishable, and it became clear she was on the
phone.

Curious, Blake
looked across the living room to his father. “Who would she be calling?”

Christopher
shrugged, his confusion as obvious as theirs. “I have no idea.”

“What I don’t
understand,” Angela suddenly said, her eyes still fixated on an invisible spot
on the coffee table and her hands fisted in her lap, “is where could the
lightning have even come from? It’s a clear day.”

“I was wondering
that, too,” Logan admitted even as his brothers nodded silent agreement.

No one had anything
more to add, and once again the room fell silent. Lillian’s muffled voice
became all that could be heard as she continued whatever conversation she was
having.

Brook shifted her
weight on the loveseat, drawing Blake’s attention, and their eyes met. He could
read her confusion and concern as easily as he could discern his own. But he
didn’t have the opportunity to try to get her alone before his mother returned.

Lillian stepped
back into the room, her gaze downcast and her lips drawn into a tight, thin
line of unhappiness. Her eyes were slightly puffy, and there was a faint tinge
of red around the white.

“Lillian?”
Christopher asked, curiosity and concern mingling in his voice as she reclaimed
her seat beside him.

She took a deep,
heavy breath, keeping her eyes closed for a long minute. When she finally
looked up again a new layer of tears was visible around her faded blue eyes,
though they did not fall. “I just got off the phone with Nicholas,” Lillian
declared, only the faintest wobble detectable in her voice.

Blake’s eyes
widened. Nicholas was one of her brothers, and therefore one of their uncles.
He, like Dean, controlled the fire element. Unfortunately, due to a horrible
car accident which had left him crippled from the waist down, he had very
little influence over his natural element. None of the Hawke children had seen
their uncle since the boys had been ten, though he did send cards reliably on
birthdays and holidays.

“Why did you call
Uncle Nicholas?” Angela asked when her mother paused.

“I always thought
it was strange,” Lillian began softly, in a tone that indicated she was
divulging a shameful secret, “that one of my brothers was struck and killed by
lightning, and two more of my brothers were caught in a freak snow storm where
one of them died, and the other very nearly died, too.”

Blake looked away
from his mother’s saddened gaze, and beside him, his brothers and sister
shifted. Angela’s gaze was back on the coffee table. No one knew what to say,
or where she was going with this, so they held their tongues.

“After the
accident, Nicholas had nothing better to do, so he threw himself into our
family’s history. I always knew he had done the research, but I always assumed
nothing had come of it. After today, I thought it was worth asking. I don’t
want to lose any of my children … the way I lost two of my brothers.”

Christopher’s hand
wrapped around one of Lillian’s, which had been curled in her lap, as a tear
slipped down her cheek.

Lillian took only a
moment to push aside the lingering pain of her lost brothers, dragged in a
breath, and said, “Even so, I really wasn’t expecting what he said.” She paused
and wrapped her free hand over the top of the hand her husband still had around
hers. “A long time ago, when there were still many other families with powers like
ours, there were other kinds of elemental families, too.”

“Other kinds…?”
Angela repeated, clearly confused. Around her, her brothers shifted again,
their expressions turning from concern and frustration to confusion of their
own.

Blake noticed a
similar expression on Brooke’s face when he glanced in her direction.

Lillian nodded and
continued. “There were families with the ability to control the weather, in a
more direct way than any of us. The stories that Nicholas was able to dig up
all said that these other families were supposed to be a sort of balance to our
own ancestors. So the power that these other families were best known for was
the ability to control, or summon, lightning.”

She let that hang
for a long moment, knowing it wouldn’t take them long to figure out what she
meant. Electricity was the main weakness for all of the elementals of their
family, and of course lightning was the purest form of electricity. Blake’s
stomach clenched at the thought.

Blake tried to wrap
his mind around what his mother was telling him. “So, what happened to these
other families? How come we’ve never heard about any of this?”

“What Nicholas
found also said, at some point, that a feud broke out between our ancestors and
the ancestors of these other families. In fact, that rumor suggests a good
reason for why so many elemental families died off so quickly. But by the same
token, the majority of the other families were also eliminated.”

It was Angela who
spoke up next, faint disbelief in her voice. “Then … I’m assuming the surviving
families on both sides moved apart … and lost track of each other?”

Lillian nodded.
“That’s the assumption, yes.”

Logan’s voice was
low and tight when he added, “So the lightning that nearly hit Angela wasn’t an
accident.”

“That’s … a possibility,”
Lillian replied, her voice wavering again for an instant.

“We would never
even know if we were standing next to the descendants of those
lightning-families,” Blake said, frustrated.

“But how would they
know who we are?” Nate asked. “I mean, why should we believe their records are
any more accurate than ours?”

Logan answered his
brother’s question before their mother could, turning his attention to Nate and
saying, “We lost two uncles to freak accidents of weather. Uncle Nicholas was
crippled in the same storm that killed Uncle Trevor.
Today
Ange was nearly hit by lightning. What are the chances of
that?”

Before Nate, or any
of his siblings, could respond to Logan’s argument, Lillian spoke up again. “We
don’t know anything for sure,” she said. “We need to be careful, and be sure to
stay in touch with each other. And for now, if there’s anyone you’ve told
anything to, I have to ask you not to talk to them about this.

She turned her gaze
to Brooke, who was watching silently, and said, “I’m sorry, Brooke, but we need
to ask you not to talk about this with anyone outside of this room, too. Can we
trust you to do that?” Her question was direct, but Brooke nodded without
hesitation.

“Absolutely,” she
said, never breaking Lillian’s eye contact.

An odd tickle of
pride danced through Blake’s stomach.

“Angela,”
Christopher added after Lillian fell silent again. When his daughter was
looking at him, he asked, “I don’t suppose you noticed anyone around before the
lightning hit? Or did you hear something strange?”

Slowly, Angela
shook her head. “There wasn’t anyone around, at least that I saw. And I don’t
think there was anyone behind me. My music wasn’t that loud.”

Looking back toward
his mother, Blake asked, “What other sorts of things can these
lightning-families do?”

“According to the
stories Nicholas found,” Lillian began, “in their prime they could control all
types of weather. Creating a snow storm, like the one that put Nicholas in that
wheelchair … would have been child’s play.”

“Well,” Dean said,
leaning back against the couch, “I’m distinctly uncomfortable now.”

Christopher sighed,
ignoring his sons as Logan reached over and smacked Dean upside the head, and
released Lillian’s hands as he stood. “All right, that’s enough of this for
now. We’re incredibly glad you’re all safe, and we’re proud of you boys for
saving your sister. And in light of all this drama, I think we should have an
outrageously large dinner. Family only. And Brooke, of course.”

****

The diner was
strangely busy, and both Georgia and Brooke were being forced to stick to their
assigned sections. Therefore, when Emma had come in with a slightly older man
Brooke didn’t know, it was Brooke—and not Georgia—who had gone to greet them.
The man, probably in his late twenties, kept his eyes on his menu as he ordered
his drink. His tone was clipped, verging on rude, so Brooke opted not to push
conversation. Emma’s tone was similarly short, though she managed an apologetic
smile.

In the back, as
Brooke poured the two glasses of iced tea, she ran into Georgia and asked,
“Hey, do you know the man sitting with Emma?”

Georgia paused, her
hand hovering with a fresh straw over a glass of soda, and said, “There’s a guy
with Emma? I didn’t know she was with anyone…”

“It didn’t really
look like a date,” Brooke elaborated, sticking her own straws into the glasses.
“And if it was, you should really suggest she look elsewhere. He didn’t look
like much of a catch.”

“I’ll try to
remember to ask her about it later,” Georgia decided as she slipped the soda
onto her tray. “Let me know if anything interesting happens!” And then the
currently-blonde woman sashayed out the door.

Brooke followed
suit a minute later, still pondering that nagging feeling in the pit of her
stomach. There was just something odd about that man; for that matter, about
the whole atmosphere around them.
Not
that it’s any of my business,
she reminded herself as she approached their
booth.

She was coming up
from behind the man’s position, and she noted curiously that he hadn’t bothered
to remove his trench coat. Emma, who was facing her, had her eyes closed and
was pinching the bridge of her nose, head slightly bowed, as if in frustration.