I was glad my friend was trying to discover what Darrow was doing here, because I had no idea.
“So, anyway, Charlotte,” said Darrow, clearly summoning his courage, “could I talk to you alone for a minute?”
“Um, sure,” I said. Sip handed Darrow a cup of whatever tea she had specially brewed for him, and he followed me back into the hallway, carrying the cup carefully. I didn’t turn around, because I knew Sip and Lough were staring after us in shocked silence.
I scrubbed my hands on my jeans, suddenly nervous.
Darrow was shaking so badly he couldn’t keep his teacup still.
“So, homecoming is soon,” he said, not looking at me. He scuffed his foot on the ground.
“I hadn’t even thought about it,” I said, a bit heedlessly. From the time I was a Starter, homecoming had never gone well for me. This year, without Keller, I had been actively avoiding any mention of it.
Darrow smiled shyly at me again, but he looked a little disappointed. To hide it, he took a great gulp of tea.
“I have to go,” he said, quickly handing me the tea. “Tell Sip that was good,” he said as he hurried out.
I stared after him, holding the cup. Sip peered around the door from the living room.
“Charlotte,” Sip asked, her voice filled with amusement, “did he like my tea?”
“Yeah,” I said, frowning at her, “but he left in a hurry.”
“Did you reject him?” she asked, grinning at me.
“Why would I reject him?” I asked. “He didn’t ask me a question.”
Sip frowned at me. “None at all?”
I followed her back into the living room.
“He likes you,” said Lough, taking a sip of his own tea. He had gotten into tea drinking, much to Sip’s delight.
“No he doesn’t,” I said. “He just asked about homecoming, and I told him I wasn’t thinking about. . . .”
“Oh, light bulb,” Lough teased. “He totally likes you.”
I stared at them in shock. “Sit,” Sip advised, pointing to the couch I had claimed as my own.
I sat heavily and stared at them. “Likes me likes me?”
“Um, yeah,” said Sip. “It happens.”
“I guess,” I said. “I’m just not ready. I miss Keller too much.”
“I don’t know,” said Lough. “I like Keller, but you haven’t heard from him in months. Maybe it’s time to move on.”
I curled up in a ball on the couch. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
The next day we got our Tactical teams. I hadn’t thought I cared whose team I was on until Zervos placed me on a team with Daisy and Camilla.
“He definitely wants me dead,” I said to my friends.
“You think you have it bad?” Lough asked. “I’m with Faci.”
No one had said what this Tactical would be, or if it would be similar to the Ultimate Tactical we’d had previously. Once our teams were formed Zervos disbanded us, saying that Oliva would tell us more the next day. I was fine with that, because I had a meeting with Dacer at the coffee shop, and Sip was coming with me.
It did not comfort me that as we walked away, Faci, Daisy, and Camilla came together and started to whisper, their eyes never leaving me and my friends.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I have your first assignment,” said Dacer pleasantly.
I was relieved; I was so frustrated at Public I was ready to scream. All summer I’d been desperate to return to campus, because nothing was happening in Maine except that I felt closer to Ricky, but now all I wanted to do was leave again.
“Adventure,” Sip cried gleefully.
Dacer gave her a stern look. “This is important, and serious,” he said. “There’s a camp of paranormals about an hour’s run from here” - he was giving time in terms of werewolf speed - “and Charlotte, you can fly. They have a Tempest, which is very rare. The demons are trying to kill her, and she’s just a little girl. I want you to go there this weekend and help strengthen the Power of Five.”
“Will the other paranormal types be there to help?” Sip asked.
Dacer shook his head. “They have found the other types to do it separately, since it is infinitely more dangerous for you to be traveling if several other paranormals have to know about it. This way, no one knows but me.”
“So, we aren’t even going to see this Tempest?” I asked.
“Not if everything goes according to plan,” he said. “Of course, since nothing goes according to plan, I did tell her mother that you were coming. She is planning to leave the door unlocked.”
“Alright,” I said nervously.
“Good,” said Sip, “finally we’re going to be doing something useful.”
“By the way,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible, “have you heard from Risper?”
Dacer pursed his lips. I could tell he didn’t like that I was asking the question.
“I haven’t,” he said, carefully. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” Sip and I chorused at the same time.
As we left Sip whispered, “We have to get back to that archive before we go.”
I nodded. “I want to see those rings again.”
“Definitely,” Sip agreed.
We decided to try again the next night, but first we had to attend Olive’s introduction to this year’s Tactical.
Oliva was waiting for us at the field when we arrived. We broke up into our teams, which was hard for me because I didn’t want to be anywhere near Daisy or Camilla.
“Students,” said Oliva, “I realize that it is difficult to concentrate on school while we’re at war, but I want you to understand that we’re fighting a good fight, and the best thing you can do for the paranormals is to keep up with your schoolwork, and that includes Tactical.”
The sky was cloudy and threatening rain. I wore a light jacket zipped up to my neck. Fall was coming.
“This semester, we want the Tactical to be as progressive as possible, that is, we want it to be a little different from past years. Yes, there are still high value targets, and as in real life we expect you to protect the elemental.”
I heard muffled laughter around the field and wondered if Oliva was being ironic, since Caid had advocated handing me over to the demons to end the war.
“Therefore, we want you to find an object that is hidden somewhere on campus. It is a Key of Light, and we want the Tactical teams to find it. Of course, you can attack each other while you do. We encourage all students to look, but only with your teams. To that end, if any student finds the object while alone, it will not count. We also encourage you to continue to make your fellow students targets.”
“I love this part,” Lough muttered to me. “Like fish in a barrel.”
“Do you think our teams will protect us?” I whispered back.
Lough glanced at Daisy and Camilla, who were standing next to each other and glaring at us. Then he shook his head. “What else is new?”
Tactical had become dangerous. Or maybe I should say more dangerous. Stuck with Daisy and Camilla, I was probably in more danger than anyone else. Sip was with Dobrov, who still mostly hung around the Nocturns. Ordinarily he never went near Sip or tried to speak to her, which was probably for the best, because Sip was in no mood to tolerate people who talked to Nocturns.
I continued to sleep poorly, which only served to make the days harder and longer. We were all buried under our coursework. It was like the professors had decided that the only way we would be saved from darkness was to study as much as possible.
“I don’t see why this matters,” Lough muttered. “I’m a dream giver. There are only a handful of us in the world. My destiny is to become sought after and rich.”
“You don’t want to work in government like Kair?” Sip asked. Kair was Lough’s older sister, who was dating one of Sip’s brothers.
“Absolutely not,” said Lough, shaking his head emphatically. “Too much work.”
Sip sn
orted.
“What do you want to do?” they both asked me. I shrugged. As the only elemental I’d been given countless lectures about how vital my role in paranormal society had become, but to be honest, I hadn’t really thought much about my future. I didn’t think of myself as a diplomat, and although I loved the idea of traveling around the world and using my powers for the protection of paranormals, I wanted to make sure I saw Ricky through college, paranormal or otherwise, first.
“I think you’d make an awesome professor,” said Lough, beaming. “You might not be as nerdy as Sip” - he ignored her cry of indignation - “but you’re excellent at explaining things and wonderful in a fight.”
“What does being wonderful in a fight have to do with being a professor?” Sip demanded, bracing her fists on her hips.
“Charlotte’s just going to have a time of it,” said Lough. “It proves she’s brave enough to cope with what’s coming.”
I smiled at my friend. At least he was on my side.
“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll see.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that I had secretly cherished the idea of becoming a professor. I saw how much Dacer enjoyed Public, how it gave him grounding for boundless opportunities, and I wanted that. I had also secretly wanted a future with Keller. Not that I wouldn’t work, of course I would, but with Keller’s life mapped out I had always thought of myself in relation to that. Without him by my side I felt lost and adrift. I didn’t really want to commit to anything at all.
The archives were as dark and musty as ever when Sip and I reached the top floor. She hadn’t wanted to bring me through the same window twice, so I had flown in through a window on the floor below. Alixar was as incredible as ever. I wondered why Queen Ashray hadn’t made more masks.
I was very careful to keep Alixar hidden, not only in Astra - I had complete privacy there for the time being, but I didn’t know if that would always be true - but especially when I carried it around campus. I was pretty confident that Dacer hadn’t told anyone he had given his student one of the priceless masks in his care.
And there was no doubt that I would hate it if he got in trouble because of me. As it was, I only used Alixar when there was no other way to get the job done.
Lough had tried to follow Sip into the building through the front doors, and the magical protections around it had sent him slamming backward. He had flown a good twenty feet before he plowed into the ground.
That event had led to an argument between the two of them, something that had been happening more frequently this semester. They had always bickered, but we were all feeling the strain of not having Lisabelle there and not knowing if she was alright. I kept reassuring myself that she was okay, because nothing would dare to hurt her. The Nocturns wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to get her on their side just to kill her, and if the paranormals working for the Police Academy had gotten to her we would have heard about it. If that had happened, Tabble would have gloated about it for months, if not years, and I probably would have had to take Sip out of the country. Sip was barely reining in her temper as it was, and her confrontations with paranormals like Camilla proved that she was still on edge.
“Wait a minute,” Sip said thoughtfully. We were in Astra, in the kitchen. Sigil had just appeared from the library to check on us. He had dropped something of a bombshell, observing that since there was a lot of mystery about the elemental royal family, and a lot of mystery about my parentage, perhaps the two were connected.
“Nascaro is the only royal house ever to rule the elementals,” continued Sip, “with Queen Ashray as the longest serving monarch, but I thought she didn’t have any children. So what happened? Did a cousin take over?”
“Ah, it’s a wonderful story,” said Sigil, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It is one I would have thought Charlotte had read by now. Then again, I do not recall this particular story making its way into the history books.”
I blushed. I had done a lot of reading, but it had all centered on the history and former powers of the elementals. I’d been so obsessed with learning how to be a proper elemental that there were still gaping holes in my knowledge.
“Um, err . . .” I said.
“Never mind,” said Sigil, zipping through the air. “You know how dearly I enjoy a good tale.”
And with that he began.
“Queen Ashray lived in the country, where her father had sent her, supposedly to keep her ignorant of her station as a princess and future queen. But in actuality that’s not the only reason he sent her away. It was also partly to hide her love for a man and the fact that she was pregnant.”
Sip and I exchanged glances. The royal family sounded complicated.
“She had a child, whom her lover raised once she was called to duty as queen of the elementals,” said Sigil. “We are all fuzzy on the details, and there’s a good chance even some of the history books have it wrong, but the point is that she did have an illegitimate heir. Once she died, at ninety-eight, that heir, her son, had long since married and had two sons of his own. This was not revealed until it was absolutely necessary, because it was clear that the elementals were already a target for darkness. It was equally clear that royal purists would not want an illegitimate king, even if he had all the incredible powers of his mother. Even so, one of those sons became king upon his father’s death, while the other son became the heir of the first.”
I was staring at him like he was mad.
“Did either of those sons have children?” I asked breathlessly.
Sigil shrugged. “Asher Nascaro was the younger son and the family rascal, but I remember a story that said that he did settle down eventually, finding a girl that knocked his socks off, so to speak.” Sigil steepled his fingers. “Lovely when that happens. Most young men come around eventually.”
Was it even remotely possible that Queen Ashray was my great-grandmother?
“Sigil,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me all of this a long time ago? Wouldn’t you think I would want to know?”
Sigil blinked at me several times. “My dear, it’s the royal family.” He puffed out his chest and stared hard at me. When it was clear I still didn’t understand, he said, “One does not gossip about the royal family.”
“You have strange ideas,” I muttered. He was right about one thing, though. I knew of the royal family and their rule. I had just never thought I was the child of a prince, or a king. It all sounded too dream-like to be true.
I shook my head, trying to wrap my mind around it all.
“Are there pictures?” I asked.
Sigil nodded. “Most of the second floor is pictures of generations of Nascaros.”
I bolted. Behind me I heard Sigil say forlornly. “Always running here and there. I wish she’d just relax by the fire with a good book.” He paused, then added, “Or even a mediocre book.”
I heard Sip running after me. “Maybe after we defeat the Nocturns,” she called back to him.
“Maybe you’d have a better chance of not being killed by them if you stopped trying to defeat them, so to speak.”
Sigil’s words were drowned out after that as I pounded down the staircase from the library. I was going so fast that I nearly fell when I reached the second floor. Having been a dorm for hundreds of students at one time, Astra was massive. I had barely started to explore it, but I was going to remedy that omission now.
There were several small studies I had never been in, which had simply remained locked. Leaving them that way gave me more of a comforting feeling when I had the place all to myself.
The first study was called The King’s Room. I gently placed my hand on the handle, unlocking it with my touch, and stepped inside. There was one big window overlooking Astra’s back yard and the stream that flowed toward the dorm. And there were pictures everywhere.
Sip coughed. “Dust in here, why don’t you?”
“Yes, I have nothing else to do,” I muttered.
“It’s not like yo
u have much of a social life,” Sip commented.
She was right. Most of our fellow students looked at me like it was my fault the Nocturns had taken over Vampire Locke. It was a constant comfort to me to remember that Queen Lanca didn’t think so.
“Over there,” said Sip. On the wall around the window there was a small plaque that read, “Nascaro Family,” and under it were several pictures.
“Here,” she said, pointing. “And here.”
There were pictures of aunts and cousins of the Nascaros. As I counted faces I realized that I was seeing more of the extended family, and even that wasn’t very big.
“They were the first targets,” said Sip. “If the Nascaros had always ruled, it would make the most sense to get rid of them first. They were a very powerful family, not just among the elementals but among all the paranormals, but they didn’t have as much protection as, say, the Rapier vampires. I’m sorry, Charlotte, but it looks like their goodness is what brought about their demise.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I went to the library by myself. Sip wanted to go with me, but I told her I needed to be alone. I don’t know why I thought my entire life story would just be lying in a book waiting for me, but I wanted it to be.
After hours of research and the sun disappearing into the night I realized that the whole enterprise was silly. There was absolutely nothing here to confirm what Sigil had said, but somehow I still believed him. Sighing, I closed the book I was reading. Putting the books on the cart so the librarian could put them back in the right place, I headed out into the darkness. I hadn’t realized how long I’d been there until I went outside and didn’t see any other students around. It was past curfew. It was vampire time.
Even though I was on Public’s campus, I walked faster. The night swept around me and the cold wind picked up. I glanced behind me, but saw nothing, so I turned around and focused on the path in front of me. A heavy footstep was the only warning I had before I went sprawling.
Elemental Darkness (Paranormal Public Series) Page 17
