Elemental Air (Paranormal Public Series)

by Edwards, Maddy

  Elemental Air

  (Paranormal Public, Book VI)

  by

  Maddy Edwards

  Copyright © 2013 by Maddy Edwards

  Cover Design © K.C. Designs

  This novel is a work of fiction in which names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is completely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the written consent of the author.

  My blog: http://maddyedwards.blogspot.com/

  My goodreads page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5288585.Maddy_Edwards

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Prologue

  The message I had always dreaded.

  Ricky’s in trouble. Come quickly.

  It came from Cale, and it made me realize that I hadn’t heard anything from or about him all summer.

  I had to find out what was going on.

  Quickly I packed my bags and got the first available bus back to Maine. Dacer would just have to deal with my absence for a day or two. I wasn’t worried about demons, because my protections were strong against them. I was, however, worried about other paranormals. Malle still had a price on my head.

  It was the middle of the night when I got home. Our house was small, and in a wooded area. I had texted ahead to let my stepdad know I’d be coming, but I knew better than to expect him to be waiting up for me. We didn’t have the best relationship.

  Before I went inside I checked for signs of darkness. Lisabelle was teaching me how, though she had explained dryly that it was a questionable decision on her part, since she was essentially teaching me how I could track her whenever I wanted. Finding nothing out of the ordinary in the woods and fields around the house, I fetched the spare key that we kept hidden under the mat on the back porch and let myself in. Carefully, I crept upstairs.

  “Stop right there, hands in the air!” a young voice ordered, beaming a light right into my eyes.

  Raising my right hand to shield my face I said, “Ricky, put that light down.”

  “Charlotte?” came my brother’s surprised voice. “Where’d that ring come from?”

  I frowned. I had left my Astra ring on in case Ricky was in trouble, which he obviously wasn’t.

  “Um. . .” I started.

  “Oh, you’re going to do that girl thing again where you chatter a lot about nothing and totally miss the point and never answer the question?” He rolled his eyes as he said it.

  “Why are you so negative?” I demanded. “Girls aren’t like that. I was going to tell you something about the ring, but you didn’t give me a chance.”

  “You were going to lie,” he insisted. “To me.” He pointed at his chest, pretending to be offended.

  “I just can’t tell you I got it,” I said. “Admitting that much is better than lying, isn’t it?”

  “Not really,” said Ricky. “I just thought maybe Mom gave it to you.”

  My senses sharpened.

  “Why do you think Mom would have given it to me?” I asked carefully.

  After my talk with Sigil last semester and everything that had happened since then, I was very careful when I mentioned Mom around Ricky. She had told me herself that she had magic, which of course had sounded absurd at the time, all the more so because she obviously had nothing to do with the magical community. I owed Ricky the same honestly, but I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him what he didn’t yet know. I had thought, though, that it would already have been done for me when I got a message that Ricky was in trouble.

  “Never mind the ring,” I sputtered. “Are you alright?”

  Ricky stared at me like I was going crazy.

  “I’m f-i-n-e.” He said it slowly, as if I was stupid. “Obviously.”

  And it was obvious. He was standing in front of me in his pajamas looking bleary-eyed, as he always did when he was awakened.

  “Right,” I said. “Sorry. I just thought I’d come home and surprise you.”

  “Oh, it’s a surprise,” he said. “A big surprise. Proven by my thinking you were an intruder and almost walloping you over the head with a baseball bat.”

  “You’d never,” I said, grinning.

  “Oh, I would,” he said. “See here?” He reached around the corner and pulled out one of his Little League bats.

  “Oh, and Ricky?” I said, still grinning. “You would TRY to wallop me over the head.”

  Ricky snorted. “Try - and succeed. Girls -” he started to say, but I interrupted him.

  “Don’t start in on the differences between men and women,” I said, holding up my hand. “You have no idea.”

  Ricky closed his mouth, but only for a second.

  “So, what are you doing here?”

  “Can’t I come see my favorite brother?” I asked, bracing my hands on my hips and trying to appear casual.

  Ricky’s face told me I was failing miserably.

  “I just wanted to see you,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

  “You know, a good way to see someone you care about is to let them know you’re coming,” he suggested. Then, relenting, he darted forward, wrapped his arms around my waist, and squeezed. “I missed you,” he said, his voice muffled in my shoulder.

  I wrapped my arms around his thin shoulders. “You’ve gotten so tall,” I murmured. “When did that happen?”

  “Dad thinks I’m going to end up taller than he is,” said Ricky, his eyes shining.

  We only chatted for a minute longer, then I went into my room and collapsed onto my bed. But no sooner had I turned the lights out and heard Ricky go into his own room than I realized I needed to ask him a question. I groaned and jumped out of bed.

  “Ricky,” I called through his closed door.

  “Go away,” he called back. “Occupant is sleeping.”

  “Ricky, this is important,” I said. “Can I come in?”

  I heard grumbling on the other side of the door, but eventually Ricky opened it.

  “What? You want to know about Mom’s necklace? Okay, she had a locket. I just thought your ring looked like it. Are you going to tell me where it’s from? No, okay, I’m going to bed. We can talk more about it when I wake up.”

  He closed the door.

  “Do you know where the locket is, Ricky?” I asked softly, with my mouth next to th
e edge of his door.

  He opened the door again.

  “No,” he said. “I thought you had it. Maybe dad does.”

  I flinched. That was a terrible thought. My stepfather and I barely spoke, so that wasn’t a promising theory.

  But Ricky’s question suggested that there was an Astra locket that went with this ring, and that at some point it had been in the possession of my mother. I didn’t remember it at all, and I wondered if Ricky was just wrong. But surely he hadn’t gotten the idea out of thin air.

  “Why didn’t you bring Lisabelle?” he asked, his eyes lighting up when he said her name. Lisabelle had come to get me when we’d been wanted at Vampire Locke for Lanca’s coronation. She had met Ricky, and the two of them had instantly started a long-running banter battle.

  “She was busy,” I said evasively. The truth was that I hadn’t told Lisabelle I was heading home. She would probably be furious with me for racing off without her and Sip.

  “Doing?” Ricky prompted.

  “You act like my parent,” I informed him. “You aren’t.”

  “Just tell me,” he said stubbornly, his foot tapping against the floor.

  “She’s at summer camp,” I fibbed. “And she can’t get away, because she’s in charge of a bunch of girls.”

  “Have you NO respect for my intelligence?” Ricky demanded, appalled. “And you’re a terrible liar. Good night.”

  With that he stomped back into his room and shut the door behind him. I had a feeling he would have liked to slam it, but he couldn’t because it would have awakened Dad.

  I crawled back into bed, glad that he was fine. My Contact Stone was flashing, probably because Dacer was furious at me for leaving without saying good-bye, but I ignored it. Tomorrow I would talk to Cale and see what he was playing at, making me think my brother was in trouble. But right now, all I could do was sleep.

  I woke up a couple of hours later and checked my Contact Stone. To my surprise, Cale had left me a message. Apparently he had spent the summer in Maine and had been keeping an unofficial watch over Ricky all summer. He explained that he thought he had seen hellhounds around the house and had become worried. I shook my head. The first thing I did whenever I came home was to walk around the house and search for signs: large paw prints, leaves scorched from where they had come into contact with hellhound fur, and a stench were all signs that hellhounds were nearby. But I had seen none of those this time or on previous trips home.

  I had no idea what time it was, but it was still dark outside, and I couldn’t shake my sense of unease, the feeling that something horrible was going to happen. I wondered about Ricky and the locket, but knew I’d never be able to find it. When I had first gone to college he had sent me some of Mom’s things, and a locket was definitely not part of the package. The next best option was that my stepdad had it and had just never told us, and that would do me no good whatsoever.

  For a second I had the horrible, and painful, thought that it was buried with her, but I knew it couldn’t have been. She had never been a big fan of jewelry, especially rings, and we hadn’t buried her with any. My stepdad would probably have said it was a waste of money anyway, which would have made me hate him more if that were possible.

  Unable to sleep, I threw back my covers and headed outside, frowning with worry. It was now closer to morning than midnight, and I could see the sky starting to turn from black to gray.

  Cale had thought something was wrong and I needed to find out what it was.

  Somehow I wasn’t surprised to see Cale sitting in a rocking chair on the porch. My stepdad had made that chair for my mom, one of the few nice things he had ever done for her. It made me wonder if he hadn’t secretly cared more for her than he had let on. Cale had rested his head against the back of the chair and was rocking slowly. He had obviously been waiting for me, because he sprang to his feet when I opened the front door.

  “Hi,” he said breathlessly. “Sorry.”

  “For what?” I said, carefully closing the door behind me.

  “Calling you here,” he said. “I thought Ricky was in danger.”

  “He’s always in danger,” I said quietly. “Can’t hurt to be careful. I didn’t realize you were keeping an eye on him.”

  Cale shrugged. “I was here for the summer. I thought another pair of eyes couldn’t hurt.”

  Even in darkness Cale looked good. His hair was messy from resting it against the chair, but his eyes sparkled out at me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it. Did he know you were there?”

  “No,” said Cale. “I just got a job at his summer camp, so he really didn’t know I was keeping an eye on him. Kid’s smart, though. He always won the mind games.”

  “Not the physical games, though?” I asked, laughing. My family wasn’t really known for being good at athletics.

  Cale’s teeth flashed in a smile. “I’m sure he’ll get better at those.”

  “Why are you here?” I said. “You’re going into senior year at Public. Shouldn’t you have an important internship or something?”

  Cale looked away, down our porch steps. I knew he had been having a hard time since he and Camilla had broken up, even if that was probably the smartest decision he could ever have made. Seriously, no one should be crazy enough to date Camilla, let alone a sweetheart like Cale. But a rock could have made the decision to leave her sooner than he had.

  “I have stuff to work out,” he said. “I might not come back to Public.”

  I stared at him, open-mouthed. “Not come back for senior year? Why?” I couldn’t imagine my life anywhere but at Public. Cale and I had our differences, but I also had a hard time imagining Public without him.

  “What will you do?” I asked. “You can’t stay here.”

  Paranormals rarely lived among humans. My mother had tried it with disastrous results. Of course, now I realized that my mother had been doomed from the beginning.

  “I’m thinking about the Paranormal Police Academy,” he said. “I want to help. I’ve enjoyed this summer, keeping an eye on Ricky, and I think I’d be good at it. The Police Academy is getting record high enrollment, and they’re starting younger than I am now, so if I’m going to join, it needs to be soon.”

  “I guess you won’t have the problem of your parents asking why you haven’t finished college,” I said, trying for lightness. Of course, Cale’s parents didn’t know he was a paranormal, because Cale was adopted. It would have come as quite a shock to them to learn that the son they had nurtured since he was a baby was really a pixie, but they weren’t likely to find out.

  Cale grinned. “I think they’d be pretty surprised to learn the truth, but I like the idea of telling them that I’m helping those I care about. I just have to leave out the fact that those I care about are paranormals.”

  “But how can you go to the Academy now? Don’t you have to apply and stuff? Isn’t it a hard process?”

  I didn’t like the idea of losing friends of mine to the Police Academy. Yes, I would be very proud of Cale, but I also knew that the work was dangerous, and I couldn’t stand the idea of something awful happening to one of my friends.

  “I applied last fall,” he said. “I got accepted, and then I told them I had to think about it. There aren’t a lot of pixies who do well there, because pixies are normally smaller than I am.” He smiled again, and this time it was a wolfish grin. Cale had always been great at sports, and he had been equally good at Dash and Tactical at Public. He hated to lose.

  “It’s one of the big fights Camilla and I had. She didn’t want me to go,” he explained.

  I hated the idea that Camilla and I agreed on anything, but I knew that the Paranormal Police Academy was set to become our primary defense against the demons. I knew we had to fight fire with fire, but still, I worried about Cale.

  “Can’t you finish at Public and then figure out what you want?” I asked.

  “You’re trying to talk me out of it too? I thought you’d understa
nd,” he said. “Your own life has been in danger ever since I walked you home that night two years ago. You of all paranormals should want me to do this.”

  Cale had been protecting me even then, and remembering that night helped me to realize that this was the work that he was meant to do. “I’ll miss you at Public,” I said. “Everyone will.”

  “If Lisabelle actually cared at all about me one way or the other, she’d do a happy dance that I was gone,” he said dryly. “Don’t try to tell me otherwise.”

  Now it was my turn to grin. “Okay, maybe Lisabelle won’t miss you. But I will.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “You’ll be so wrapped up in your boyfriend you won’t even notice. Besides, it’s not like we’re never going to see each other again. I’ll be back to visit.” He squeezed me tighter as I hugged him back.

  “When do you leave?” I asked. “Are you sure Ricky’s okay?”

  “I leave in the morning,” he said. “As a new recruit I have to be there earlier than the other students. As for Ricky, I’m sure he’s fine. It was probably just my nerves or something. He has good protection. Does he . . . I mean, you haven’t told him he’s a paranormal?”

  “I haven’t told him about Mom,” I said defensively. “I don’t want to worry him. Besides, he hasn’t shown any signs yet.”

  “How do you know if he’s shown signs or not?” Cale countered. “He might not tell you.”

  I glared at the pixie, his face half illuminated by moonlight. “He would tell me,” I said with a confidence I did not entirely feel.

  “If you say so,” said Cale.

  “I do,” I said.

  Shrugging, Cale shifted his weight to lean against one of the porch posts. “Maybe I’ll end up defending the paranormal president,” said Cale. “It’s the highest honor for those in the Police Academy.” He gave me a small smile.

  I waved. The next time I saw him it would be under very different circumstances. He would be a hardened defender. I thought of Vital. The vampire bodyguard had never gone to school to learn his craft, but he lived and breathed Lanca’s safety in every movement he made. If Cale could become half that good, the paranormals would be lucky.