I looked down at my ring. I’d been wearing it all semester hoping that it would start to shine, just like Sip’s and everyone else’s in Airlee. I rubbed the dull stone.
“Charlotte,” said Keller, “it’s your best way to find out where Lisabelle is.”
“How?” I demanded.
“Well,” said Keller, “if she’s innocent, it will make you powerful enough to find her, and if she’s not, she will come find you.”
“That’s a really cheerful thought, Keller,” I said. “Thank you. I’m so lucky you’re my tutor.”
It was almost afternoon now and the air around campus felt dead. We didn’t see anyone as we walked. With the campus on lockdown, students weren’t supposed to be out anyway.
“What if Zervos catches us?” I asked.
“I’ll tell him it’s my fault,” said Keller absently. We were close to Astra. Keller was flexing his hands, absently twirling his own bright silver ring.
Before we reached the path leading to Astra, Keller halted and reached out a hand to stop me. “We can’t go in there.”
Astra looked like it always did. Silent and colorful. A ripple moved across my vision. I squinted, trying to get a clearer look. It wasn’t easy to see, but if I looked right at Astra I could see that there was something surrounding the building.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s a protective spell,” said Keller grimly. “We aren’t going near that dorm.”
“But what about my ring?”
“You admit that it’s yours?” Keller asked. He sounded a little amused.
“Maybe,” I murmured. Keller laughed softly.
“I don’t want to be an elemental, just so that I have the satisfaction of you being wrong,” I grumbled.
“Yeah, I know. But you’ll have to wait for that.”
“Keller,” I asked, “not that I think so, but well....”
“What?”
“What if you are the one letting the demon in? Maybe I shouldn’t be going off alone with you.”
Keller threw back his head and laughed. “Whoever is letting the demon in has to have darkness magic. Fallen angels don’t. We are pure and good.”
I almost laughed. “But that leaves Lisabelle and the vampires. There are no other darkness mages on campus.” I waited for Keller to say something. When he didn’t, I glanced at him.
Keller’s face had paled. He looked at Astra, then at me.
“Charlotte,” he said, “go back to Airlee. Now. We’ll figure out what to do tomorrow after Dash,” he said. He was breathing hard. “Until then I don’t want you alone. Stay with Sip and Lough at all times. I don’t know what’s going on here, but it could get bad.”
“Keller,” I said, “what did you just figure out?”
Keller shook his head. “Maybe nothing. I have to see. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Charlotte?” he reached out a hand and cupped my face. His skin felt soft against my hot cheek. “If you have a problem, get Lanca. The demons might not even come, but you need to be prepared.”
I nodded. “They are coming. They are definitely coming. For me.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I wanted to run back to Airlee, but I didn’t; I had too much to think about. I had come up with lots of wild explanations for why I had done magic in Astra that Saturday morning, but none of them were because I was an elemental.
Now, because of Keller, I was sure. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know why, but I was. While I walked, I stuck my hands in my pockets. My fingertips brushed a piece of paper, which seemed odd, because I never put paper in my pockets. Frowning, I pulled it out. It was a bit of napkin from the dining hall. Written on it was a single sentence, scrawled in black: The demons are coming. – Lanca.
My stomach turned. She must have left it for me to find when she bumped into me, knowing that it was information I’d need. I didn’t have time to wonder at the vampire princess’ methods, I had to talk to my friends. I would have to find out later how Lanca knew I was an elemental and why she hadn’t bothered to tell me.
I started to run.
Sip would be in Airlee; I had to talk to her.
Breathless, I dashed into our dorm. I rushed past Nancy, who was competing in Dash the next day. She was surrounded by a small group of students, including Katie and Lauren Bells. Now I wasn’t sure I would make it to Dash, since I had other things to do that were more important than games. I hurtled up the steps and flung open the door to my room.
Sip sprang to her feet. “Are you okay? Where were you?”
I explained everything. It took a while, and at first, like me with Keller, she couldn’t believe it was true.
“Can you do any magic,” she asked, “without the Airlee ring on?”
I grinned. I had wondered that. There was only one way to find out.
Without a ring, I didn’t have as much focus for my power. I hadn’t performed magic during my Demonstration, true, but that was before I had spent a semester being trained. Now, I was confident and ready.
I took a deep breath and disappeared inside myself, searching for my magic. There it was, a blinking white light flaring inside of me. I had never seen it so strong before. I pulled at it, trying to tease just the littlest bit out. It sprang from my fingertips to dance around my arm, expanding to include my chest, legs, and head. Sip was laughing and clapping.
I was an elemental.
I never wanted to stop. I loved the lights flickering around me, loved that I had control of them, but with a palpable sadness, I forced the magic back inside. There was work to do
I tried to keep my lips from tugging into a grin, but I failed. I had never felt so good.
“Amazing,” Sip breathed. “You’re the elemental. There is an elemental.” She jumped up and wrapped her arms around me.
I nodded. “If I’m an elemental, my father must have been one too” I said. All my life I had thought I was one thing, then I had come to Public, because I had found out I was another. Now, after all the struggling through starting a mage college, I had found out something else again.
“This is bad,” said Sip. “You think the demons are coming here for you? Why?”
I showed her Lanca’s note. I hadn’t mentioned Lanca yet. I wasn’t sure how Sip would take the involvement of the vampire princess.
“And they got the professors away from campus intentionally?” asked Sip eventually.
I shrugged. “I don’t think anyone knows it’s me.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a pounding on the door and Lough burst in.
“What’s going on? Why did you come in here like a demon was chasing you?” He looked over his shoulder. “There isn’t one, right?”
Sip was rocking back and forth, she was so excited. She ended up telling him most of what had happened while I just sat and listened. When she got to the part about my being an elemental he just snorted, until I performed magic that no Airlee mage had ever done. I wanted to enjoy the new sensation of magic flowing freely inside me.
When Sip finished telling the story, Lough grabbed me up in a bear hug. He was laughing. “Awesome,” he whooped. “Awesome.”
“Lough, it means Charlotte is the target of demons. ‘Awesome’ is not really the right word,” said Sip.
“What about Lisabelle?” he asked, ignoring her. “If you’re an elemental, maybe you could use that as leverage to find her.”
“Lough,” Sip started. “She ran away.”
Lough shook his head. “Do you really think she’d run and not tell us?”
“What else would have happened?” I asked. I remembered him at breakfast. He had looked like he had realized something, but I hadn’t had the chance to find out what.
He rubbed his cheeks with both hands. “Zervos was the one who told us she had disappeared, right?” he asked.
Cold trickled through me like pellets of rain in my bloodstream. Zervos had been the last one to see Lisabelle. He was the one who had come to say she was gone. I
t was so obvious it made me cringe.
“You don’t think Lisabelle got away?” I asked. I was kicking myself. I had just assumed that what Zervos had said was true. But Lough hadn’t. Lough was in love with Lisabelle and would do anything to find her. I knew what he was going to say before he said it. And I was sure he was right.
“Zervos still has Lisabelle. She never got away,” he said. “He must be keeping her somewhere.”
Sip gasped. “You think he would kidnap a student?”
“He murdered one, didn’t he?” I demanded.
“We have to find her,” he said. “We have to find her while everyone is gone.” He got up and started to leave, but I grabbed his arm.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “We go find her while everyone is at the game.”
“I’m going too,” said Sip.
“No,” I said. “You have to be at the game to watch Zervos. He’s still on campus. We have to know where he is.”
“So, you two are going to go into the professors’ building and just say ‘Hey Lisabelle, come on out now?’ Do you know what he probably has guarding her? The hellhound. Why do you want to have all the fun without me?” she asked.
“Maybe she’s in his private rooms?” I suggested.
Lough didn’t think so. His private room was in Cruor, and it wasn’t very big. “I think our best bet is the offices. There are all sorts of rooms there that aren’t used.”
“No, wait,” I said. “She isn’t at the offices.” I chewed my lower lip, thinking. “She’s in Astra.” With my ring. It made sense. I hadn’t been in Astra in weeks. Keller had said he hadn’t either. Once my punishment ended, I stopped going there on Saturday mornings. I missed it, but I hadn’t wanted anyone to think I was going for fun; it would have been too suspicious.
“How do you know?” Lough demanded.
“Because there’s some sort of protection around it,” I said. “I couldn’t get in. And it makes sense if the hellhound is in there. He’ll be ready for any elemental who tries to get in.”
Lough shook his head. “So how do we do it?”
“Lough,” said Sip, incredulous. “It’s a paranormal dorm! You can’t just walk in! And Charlotte thinks there’s a hellhound spell protecting it? You’ll have to think of another way.”
“Look,” said Lough, his jaw jutting out, “Lisabelle is in there. I’m not just going to stand here and hope she makes it out on her own. Yeah, there are hellhounds, crazy professors, and demons, but everything that involves Lisabelle ends in fireworks.”
I almost laughed. “Lisabelle would be proud of you,” I told him.
Lough grinned.
Sip sighed. “I still think it’s crazy,” she said. But as she eyed Lough’s set face and his arms crossed over his chest, she knew this wasn’t an argument she would win.
She took a deep breath. “Will Keller help?”
I shook my head. “He has to compete in Dash. There’s nothing he can do until tomorrow afternoon.”
“We can wait until after Dash, can’t we?” she asked.
Lough said we couldn’t. If we were going to sneak around campus, the best time to do it was when the whole campus was distracted: during Dash. Zervos would be at the field, so there would be no danger of his catching us breaking into Astra. Assuming we could break in at all.
“What if the demons come before the professors get back?” Sip asked. “We can’t fight them off on our own, particularly not if Zervos is helping them.”
“We could ask the other dorms for help,” Lough suggested. “You saw Camilla. She wants there to be an elemental as much as the rest of us do.”
“I don’t think we’re that desperate yet,” said Sip.
“No,” I said, “not Camilla, not the pixies yet, but I think we can talk to Lanca.”
“We can’t fight demons on our own,” said Lough as if he hadn’t heard me “I mean, Lisabelle could and we could try, but we’ll get trampled on.” Then he realized what I had said and gulped. “Wait, what? Lanca? She scares the shit out of me.”
I grinned. “I think she scares the shit out of everyone. And I think she likes it that way.”
Lough shuddered.
“When the demons come, everyone will fight. Until then our job is to figure out how to get Lisabelle,” said Sip.
“Alright,” I said, “I’ll go find Lanca.”
“A vampire? At night?” Lough asked. “Are you crazy?”
“Besides, we are on lockdown, so there’s no way you’ll make it to Cruor,” said Sip, folding her arms over her chest.
I chewed my lower lip. I knew she was right. I glanced out the window and started to smile.
There, sitting on the branch of a tree not far from my window, was a dark owl, his eyes glistening in the night. He stared back at me. I looked back at Sip and smiled. “I have a better idea.”
“I hate it when you get that look in your eye,” Sip muttered. She got up and looked out the window. “Yikes!” she squealed.
I gulped. I knew nothing of the strix except that they were mean. Really mean, but I walked towards the window anyway.
There was cold air slipping over the sill as I slid the window up. “Good evening,” I said to the owl, feeling like a total idiot for hanging out a window at night and talking to an animal like he could understand me.
The owl’s huge gold eyes floated in front of me like globes of light suspended in the air.
“Could you give Lanca a message for me?” I asked.
The strix ruffled his feathers.
“I’m sorry, but could you tell Princess Lanca that the demons are coming? Maybe tomorrow? And that I know what she means now?”
The strix considered me. In future semesters I would have classes that went into detail about paranormal animals. Until then I would just have to hope that strix didn’t expect gifts before they would carry messages. I shifted nervously under its gaze, but after a brief hesitation the owl pushed off. It was much larger with its wings spread than it had looked perched in the tree; I was glad it hadn’t attacked me. I could only hope that it had understood me, and that Lanca would understand me as well.
“You done talking to animals?” Lough asked from inside the room. “Maybe we could get some real stuff done?”
As I tried to sleep, a million thoughts piled through my mind, but chief among them was that I was an elemental. The only elemental. The demons had spent years trying to exterminate them – us – me, and until recently, they had thought they had succeeded. My dad was dead. All that had happened to me this year couldn’t have been a coincidence. Now they were coming after me: to finish what they had started.
And I was relying on a bunch of freshmen and some vampires for help and protection.
I was screwed.
I should have slept more, but as I chased sleep it remained one step ahead of me, so after lying in bed for a couple of hours I got up. Sip, who couldn’t sleep either, kept vigil with me. Now that I was looking for it I felt a badness coming toward me and I wondered how long it would take the demons to penetrate Public’s defenses. Not long if Zervos let them in. When I told Sip what I feared she said, “We can’t think like that.”
There was a gentle knocking on the door, and Lough poked his head in. “Ready?” he asked. “Everyone’s heading down to the field. I don’t know why. Keller has it in the bag.” In the belt of his jeans he carried Lisabelle’s wand, which she had left behind when she’d been arrested. His ring shone.
I looked around my room at all of Sip’s neon stuff and wondered if I would ever see it again. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I knew we were bracing for an attack. It was a battle we very well might lose.
Sip hugged us both before we left. Lough and I would have to be careful, she insisted. We weren’t supposed to be anywhere but in the dorms or at the Dash field, so we had to stay hidden. We both knew Sip telling us stuff we already knew was her way of calming down. She stood in the doorway of Airlee and watched us go before heading over to the
Dash field.
“I’ll let you know if Zervos leaves or if anything else happens,” she promised.
Lough and I were quickly soaked by the hard rain that had started falling before dawn. “Do you think Lanca got your message?” he asked, wiping back his wet blond hair.
“I have no idea,” I said. I didn’t want to tell Lough that even if she had gotten it, she might not understand what it meant. I hoped she did, though. She had to.
“How are we getting into Astra?” I asked.
Lough snorted. “You’re the elemental. It’s the elemental dorm. You figure it out.”
I punched him in the arm and grinned. “Fine,” I said. “I will.”
Even through the rain I still thought Astra was the most beautiful dorm on campus. For a long time the two of us stood just looking at it, hidden in one of the bushes along the path. There was no movement. There was no noise. It looked empty. It didn’t look sinister. And it wasn’t, I reminded myself. It was what was inside that was sinister.
“I can’t see a shield,” said Lough, squinting. “Are you sure we can’t just walk in?”
“It’s there,” I murmured, concentrating. I was sure of that. As an elemental, I should have been able to call to the power inside the dorm. It was there, ahead of me, surging forward, elemental magic. Instead of the white of Airlee or the silver of the fallen angel, it was a soft blue, mixed with a deep burgundy, flowing everywhere I looked. Since the powers had been dormant for so long, they had had a chance to rest and strengthen. Now, at my calling, they rose up.
I blinked. The magic couldn’t reach me. There was something blocking its path that felt like a black wall. Opening my eyes, I could now see the defenses around the dorm. They were a mass of shimmering black. This was advanced magic, definitely not something I’d learned in Intro to Para Studies. But I didn’t have a choice. I would get in – or die trying.
“Wow,” Lough breathed. “I see it now.”
“Where do I go?” I asked the elemental magic. “How do I get in?”
In response, the magic disappeared. I felt its loss immediately. Breathless, I waited. What had I done wrong?
Paranormal Public (Paranormal Public Series) Page 23
