Magic of the Wood House

by Cassandra Gannon

  Magic

  of the

  Wood House

  Book Six of the Elemental Phases

  Cassandra Gannon

  Text copyright © 2014 Cassandra Gannon

  Cover Image copyright © 2014 Cassandra Gannon

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by Star Turtle Publishing

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  Also by Cassandra Gannon

  The Elemental Phases Series

  Warrior from the Shadowland

  Guardian of the Earth House

  Exile in the Water Kingdom

  Treasure of the Fire Kingdom

  Queen of the Magnetland

  Magic of the Wood House

  Coming Soon: Destiny of the Time House

  A Kinda Fairytale Series

  Wicked Ugly Bad

  Beast in Shining Armor

  Coming Soon: Happily Ever Witch

  Other Books

  Not Another Vampire Book

  Love in the Time of Zombies

  Coming Soon: Vampire Charming

  If you enjoy Cassandra’s books, you may also enjoy books by her sister, Elizabeth Gannon:

  The Consortium of Chaos series

  Yesterday’s Heroes

  The Son of Sun and Sand

  The Guy Your Friends Warned You About

  Electrical Hazard

  The Only Fish in the Sea

  Other Books

  The Snow Queen

  To the eternally appreciated fans who wrote and asked me for this book.

  It means so much to me that you like this series and I’m sorry it took so long to write this installment.

  Blame those darned Fire Phases…

  Prologue

  I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence,

  but something whispers to me.

  Major Sullivan Ballou- in a letter to his wife, one week before his death at The First Battle of Bull Run

  When the death toll reached a thousand, the Fire House stopped counting the bodies.

  The exact number was both too insignificant and too horrible to matter. Just saying a thousand dead seemed so easy; so clean, and neat, and meaningless. Until you had to pile the corpses in pyres and watch them burn. Until you saw the empty, ruined lives that each person left behind. Then, the number became so vast that no one wanted to contemplate its stark reality.

  At the end of the world, there just didn’t seem much point in keeping a running tally of the casualties.

  Anyone well enough to function blocked out the morbid desire to add up the total number of victims that they dragged to the courtyard of the Fire Palace. Like they struggled to ignore the shrunken faces of their friends and relatives, as they stacked the bodies together. Like they turned and tried not to see the flames eating away at the corpses, once the fires were lit. Like they attempted to block out the smell of burning flesh, and hair, and clothes, as they went to gather more decaying fuel for the terrible conflagrations.

  The pyres became tangible representations of how the Phases’ old lives were being destroyed right in front of their eyes. It was something that no one wanted to process. In shock and consumed with grief, most people pulled themselves into whatever sort of psychological cocoon they could fashion. They looked around with vacant gazes and uncomprehending expressions, even as they went about their grisly tasks.

  On the fifth day of the Fall, no one was ready to face the new reality that stared them in the face.

  Or almost no one.

  Teja, of the Fire and Cold Houses watched the bright light of fires burning against the summer sky, but she didn’t feel their heat. All around here, there was nothing but cold and darkness. A future without a future. To her mind, anyone paying attention already knew that the Fall meant the death of everything. Not just of the Fire House or the Elementals. But, everything.

  Teja was a pragmatist. Some said cynic. Some said bitch. No matter the word, she’d always seen through the bullshit and directly into the heart of the world around her. And right now, with that futureless future barreling down on her, she saw that her best path led straight down into the pavement.

  Suicide.

  It was such a stark word.

  But, Teja was paying attention and all she saw a total absence of hope.

  If the Elemental Phases went extinct, they took the rest of the universe down with them. It was a mathematical fact. The various Houses supported all the interconnected processes of nature. Everything depended on them, because they controlled everything, from Water to Time to Wood. Each member of the House held a bit of the whole, and each House relied on the others. The Heat House needed the Fire House’s element to produce warmer temperatures. The Fire House needed the Air House to feed their flames. The Air House needed the Weather House to generate the conditions for wind. And so on, in an endless circle of life and death.

  The Elementals kept nature in balance and the gears of the universe running smoothly. But, if too many Phases died, their House would fall. And if too many Houses fell, then they pulled the rest of the Phases down with them. Like an avalanche, the resulting disaster would speed up and grow bigger as it raced downhill. The world would topple.

  Teja didn’t see a way out of it, now. She sat at the edge of the Fire Palace’s wide Gothic roof and stared at the blazes far below with emotionless hazel eyes. They’d passed the point of no return. The world was closer to the end than it was to the beginning. Much, much closer.

  And one invisible microbe was the catalyst of oblivion.

  The Fall: A disease poised to end the universe.

  It had been released by Parald, of the Air House as revenge against the Council of All Houses. And, more specifically, against Tritone, of the Water House for refusing to be his queen. But, Parald’s vengeance had spun out of his control. The plague had a mind of its own and it wouldn’t be satisfied until it destroyed… everything.

  Teja’s feet dangled off into infinity as she scrolled through her grandfather’s iPod. She stopped when she reached the “recently played” section and pushed the button to make AC/DC’s This House is on Fire blare over the headphones. “Recently played” was such a subjective term. What did it really mean? To the iPod, “recent” mean the songs that Oberon had listened to over the last week or so. But, to anyone who’d survived the Fall, anything that had happened just a few days before already seemed like someone else’s life.

  Ancient history.

  Some people continued to cling to hope. Teja had heard their whispers and coughs as they prayed for salvation, night and day. If they could just survive this, then maybe… Maybe… Maybe they could pull the rest of the world through. Maybe the universe wouldn’t end. Maybe Gaia or God or whoever was watching over them would have mercy.

  Teja knew better.

  In order to have children, Elementals needed Phase-Matches. The one person that they could combine their energy with, and love, and connect to on --well-- an elemental level. Two parts of a symbolic whole. The Fall had already wiped out so many Phases that Teja doubted one in ten survived. There was no way they could find enough Matches, now. No way they could have children or recreate a viable population.

  And the Fall hadn’t stopped, yet. More and more died every hour. Every minute. With the odds stacked so high against them, it was impossible for the Phases to bounce back
.

  On the iPod, The Bloodhound Gang started screaming The Roof is on Fire.

  Teja barely noticed.

  It was all over for the Elementals. They were extinct in every way that mattered. Some Phases, like Teja, and her cousin Djinn and his family, seemed to be immune from the plague. No one knew why. Few cared to know. Caring about anything was beyond most people, now. In the end, it wouldn’t matter.

  The lucky ones had gone first. The so-called survivors were postponing the inevitable by hanging on. They just got to watch the universe struggle through its death throes. Teja read the plain truth in the twisting flames of the funeral pyres. But, what did it matter, at this point? What really mattered, at all?

  Her grandfather was dead.

  The Fall took him and all Teja could do was watch it happen. Without Oberon, every single reason for anything was gone. It had been carried away in the ashes of his funeral pyre and left nothing behind for Teja but a cold, dark future without a future.

  All she felt was empty.

  Her emotions had been frozen out of her.

  That was… good, though. She didn’t want to experience more pain and loss. Teja didn’t want to feel anything, ever again. The ice inside of her was a relief and she was afraid of what might happen if it melted away.

  Fire and Rain came through her headphones. It was a nice song, slow and sad; completely unlike her larger than life, type-A personality grandfather. It wasn’t that Oberon loved James Taylor, but every song on his iPod had the word “fire” in it somewhere. Oberon, the murdered King of the Fire House, had weird ideas, sometimes.

  The world could never be right, again. Not with him gone from it.

  Oberon had been her hero. Most Elementals saw the Fire House as a bunch of loud, aggressive lunatics. Usually, they were unfavorably compared to the human mafia. The Fire Phases liked to have their own way and were completely fine with cheating if that’s what it took to win. They could be impulsive, oblivious, and somehow incredibly stubborn, all at the same time. They had zero regard for the feelings of others and senses of humor that edged towards demonic.

  And Oberon had been the worst of the lot. An egotistical, irreverent, “might makes right,” video game playing, eye rolling rebel. He was the champion of every underdog and the gadfly at every Council meeting. Every day, he did something crazy that made Teja want to pull her hair out by the roots. Oberon drove her nuts with his insane ideas and disregard for the rules. He had a booming laugh and a zest for life that no one else could even come close to matching.

  He made Teja proud to be his granddaughter.

  And she’d let him down. She done everything she could think of and it still hadn’t been enough to save him from the Fall. What could possibly matter to her after that?

  James Taylor gave way to the Ink Spots declaring I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.

  Job, of the Earth House, High Seat of the Council and the oldest Elemental left alive, wanted to rebuild. He had some half-assed plan to re-form Council and rally the remaining Phases. Teja had promised to help him do it. He’d pressured her and she’d relented, because she just didn’t have the energy to argue with him. Even though she could no longer feel it, Teja knew she had a great deal of respect and love for the Earth King. Job was a good leader and an even better man.

  But, he’d always been an idealist. Job couldn’t face the truth, yet.

  Not like Teja could.

  The icy void situated inside of her chest grew bigger all the time. She’d promised not to kill herself. She’d looked right at Job and promised him. She’d promised her grandfather, too. When he lay in his bed, dying of a disease that no one had even heard of three days before. She’d promised Oberon that she’d help Djinn rule the Fire House. That she’d clean up her cousin’s messes and ensure their family’s legacy wasn’t broken with Djinn’s nutty schemes.

  But, at the end of the world, what did it really matter if she went back on her word?

  The song switched again. Billy Joel proclaimed We Didn’t Start the Fire.

  The rest of her family would get over Teja leaving them behind. They could just toss her in one of the pyres and move on. Teja didn’t have a Match or children, but Djinn did. He had Pele and the kids. He’d recover. So would their adopted cousin Hope. Djinn would take care of her. He was the Fire King, now. He could run the Fire House and their family would be okay.

  Maybe.

  She ignored that skeptical thought because she just didn’t have the energy to follow her doubts to their logical conclusion.

  Teja was so tired.

  It was difficult for a Phase to commit suicide. Or complete suicide or whatever politically correct phrase the humans had for blowing their own brains out. All day, Teja had been trying to figure out how she could do it effectively. She was a perfectionist and she didn’t want to screw-up her last job.

  Elementals were hardy folk, though. Susceptibility to mysterious plagues aside, they didn’t die easily. The gun-to-the-head thing wouldn’t work on Teja, because bullets were harmless to Phases. Slitting her wrists and putting her head in an oven were out, too. Hanging might do the trick, but it would take a while.

  There just weren’t a lot of foolproof options.

  Nothing killed a Phase faster than decapitation. That would be the ideal way to go. If only she had a guillotine, she’d be all set. Years before, the Shadow House had built one, but then Job outlawed them after an unauthorized execution. So, unless she jumped into the human realm and visited a French Revolution museum, “off with her head” didn’t seem real feasible.

  Teja frowned. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. Could she find a working guillotine at a museum? It was possible. But, the idiotic humans probably removed the blades from the exhibits. They wouldn’t want some frigging tourist to climb in and Marie Antoinette himself while posing for a goofy vacation photo.

  Damn stupid humans.

  St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) came on the iPod, but Teja didn’t even hear it.

  Basically, Teja figured her easiest choices were leaping off of a tall building, and hoping for the worse to happen, or finding a poison that worked on Elementals. Poison had a nice Classical ring to it. Cleopatra, Socrates, and Teja, of the Fire and Cold Houses… All dead by self-inflicted poison.

  Unfortunately, poisons strong enough to kill a Phase weren’t exactly sitting on grocery shelves. At least, Teja didn’t think that they were. Her knowledge of toxic substances was limited. Fire Phases racked up a high body count, but they knocked-off their victims in much more direct ways. Hacking an enemy to quivering bits? Sure. But, they’d never resort to something as impersonal as poison. And she was just too exhausted to do a lot of research on the stuff, now. So, poison seemed like a longshot, which was a shame.

  Her eyes stayed fixed on the funeral pyres. There were worse ways to go.

  A doctor would know about poisons. But, -Oh, the irony!- the Fire House’s doctor had died from the Fall three days before. Teja’s cousin Freya, of the Cold House was still alive, though, and one of the foremost healers in the real. She’d been there trying to help Oberon at the end, although she and her brother, Eian, hated the Fire House.

  They especially hated Teja.

  Hell, if the Cold Phase side of her family knew that Teja needed some kind of “adios cruel world” pills, Freya would probably hand over bottles of poison with a happy smile and wave good-bye. Sadly, Teja just didn’t have it in her to go to the Cold Kingdom and witness more destruction. Not even if it meant that her own end would be more swift and painless.

  Jumping would have to do. Not even a Phase could survive a four story swan dive onto the pavement. Her skull would be shattered by the impact; her body broken beyond repair. Her last memories would be the rush of air on the way down and of her grandfather’s stupid music.

  That wasn’t so bad, considering.

  The Fall was a hard death, wiping out whole families and erasing people like they’d never existed. Until half-an-hour before,
Teja had been taking a shift at the pyres, stacking the anonymous bodies. Some she recognized. Some had pinned their names to their clothing, as if they wanted someone to know who they’d been and remembered them. Some lived and died alone. The illness was democratic in infecting all sorts of people and then leaving them all at the same place: Burning in mass bonfires that most survivors couldn’t bear to watch.

  By the end, most victims of the Fall were glad to let go.

  Sitting on the roof and looking down on the chaos, Teja understood the victims’ sense of liberation. Of course, they wanted to be free.

  Teja did to.

  The iPod’s playlist progressed to Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. Her grandfather’s favorite song brought back bittersweet memories of Oberon dancing with her. Oberon illegally downloading half the songs on the internet. Oberon booing the contestants on American Idol. Teja shoved the thoughts out of her head.

  She had other things to focus on, now.

  Like a suicide note. Should she leave one behind? It seemed pretty pointless. What could she really say? “I’m sorry” seemed trite and insincere. If she was really sorry, she wouldn’t have done it in the first place, right? “I love you” was just as bad. Who could read a note that said that and not think, “Yeah you loved me, but not enough to stay and help me, huh?” She could list some reasons for choosing death, but the mass cremations and rotting corpses covering their homeland seemed like a pretty fucking eloquent rationale.

  Shit.

  Teja had been useless when it came to emotional crap, even before she lost the ability to feel anything. Her family would be better off without her. She couldn’t even think of a way to say good-bye to them. It was better not to leave a note. They’d figure things out when they saw her splattered body on the pavement.

  That image made her wince.

  Teja didn’t want to subject Djinn and Hope to the sight of her corpse. Her cousins were having a hard enough time. Maybe she could aim for one of the gigantic pyres with her fall. That way it wouldn’t leave such a mess. It would be her suicide and funeral all in one.