“Just shut up!” I yelled. “Actually, get the hell out of this room. Now!”
“Fine.” Jack raised his hands up and got to his feet, then strolled out. After he closed the door behind him, I faced Jaiden, who was staring at the ground and worrying his lower lip between his teeth. “Don’t listen to him. What he said...”
“Yeah, I know.” Jaiden offered me a weak smile.
“This is just...” My mom shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. Can you change back, please?”
“I don’t know. Oh God.” I searched for my elements inside me, but I could still feel a thin layer of air over my skin, so instead of using my air again, I decided to pull that layer back inside. If that didn’t work out, well, then I’d have a serious problem. My element slammed back into me, and the room started spinning, my body turning invisible again and shrinking. Once it expanded again, I turned corporeal again and held my breath.
“Am I... me?” I carefully eyed my parents.
“Yeah.” The tension left my mom’s shoulders and tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh, honey.”
I picked up the mirror, just to make sure, but my face was mine again. “This is crazy.”
“Does that mean you can shapeshift? Like Sophia? It’s permanent?” my dad asked.
“I guess. I just didn’t expect anything like this.” I ran my hand through my hair.
“Maybe this is what you need to defeat that guy,” my dad said.
“I don’t know.” I was saying that a lot lately. “But he might still be able to tell who I am if he can recognize my mind or...”
“Can you show me how you did that?” Jaiden asked, his eyes swirling with an emotion I couldn’t recognize. “Did you have to run your element across...”
“No, I... It kind of happened. I guess because I was touching my mom, and my element is already familiar with her, so I didn’t really have to do anything.” I approached Jaiden and put my hand on his chest. “It’s not really an overly useful ability right now. If you don’t have it, it’s fine. Maybe you get something even more awesome, or you already did and you don’t even know about it.”
“It’s not that. It’s just...” He blinked at me. “Maybe I should try it so it doesn’t happen randomly in the middle of a fight or something.”
“Yeah, sure.” I took hold of his hands. “You can try turning into me. That could be fun. Very, very creepy, but fun.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath, and his body started to shimmer, but aside from that, nothing happened and he became visible again. “It didn’t work. There’s always something wrong with...” Letting go of me, he turned around.
I faced my parents. “Can you give us a moment?”
“Sure,” my dad said, taking my mom’s hand, and they both got to their feet and strode to the door.
“Jaiden,” I said when we were alone. “There’s nothing wrong with your elements.”
“They’re never strong enough.” He looked at me, his face expressionless, but his eyes were filled with bitterness.
“Maybe it’s not working because you don’t believe it can.”
“What?” He frowned.
“You might be blocking yourself from doing it because you think it’s not going to work.” I sat on the bed, leaning my back against the headboard, and tapped the spot next to me. “Come here.”
“And how am I supposed to unblock myself if I don’t even know that I’m doing it?” He climbed onto the bed and I pulled him close until his head rested in my lap.
“Close your eyes.” I caressed his hair, and he obeyed. “Stop thinking about your elements and abilities. Think about something else. Think about me.” I lowered my voice until it was no more than a whisper. “Picture me in your mind.”
“At least that’s easy.” A smile tugged on his lips and his muscles relaxed.
“And why’s that?”
“Because you’re always on my mind.”
“Oh, come on!” I laughed. “I’ll start to think someone’s pretending to be you again.”
“Ha ha. Very funny.” He squinted at me.
“Don’t open your eyes just yet.” I traced my finger up and down his shoulder. “Keep picturing me and tell me what you see.”
“Is that a trick question?”
“No, just tell me. What am I wearing? Is my hair up?”
“Ah, so you want me to picture you with your clothes on. You should’ve mentioned that before we started this... whatever.” He grinned.
“Hey!” I chuckled. “Okay, don’t tell me anything, just hold my image in your mind and reach out with your element.”
“Whatever you say,” he mumbled, but his body started to shimmer until he turned into a cloud of air. A few moments later, the hair I was touching was long and brown.
“See? I told you, you could do it,” I said.
“Do what?” He looked up at me, but instead of seeing his face, it was mine I was staring back at. God, this was so weird. I handed him the mirror and he nearly dropped it. He placed his hand on his cheek, then ran it down his body... my body. God!
“Okay, please turn back into yourself, because this is getting awkward.”
“Fine. But imagine if I ended up stuck in your body. I could...”
“Turn back already!” I snapped. His whole body started to shimmer again, and I breathed out a sigh of relief when he was himself again.
“Thank you for helping me with this.” He pushed himself up and covered my mouth with his.
Chapter 16
“You can do what?” Lily gaped at me when I told her about Jaiden’s and my new ability.
“Jack’s serum worked, so now we can change shapes,” I said, even though I knew she probably already realized that but needed some time to process it.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before we got on a plane and arrived here?” She rubbed her face. “We’re supposed to go investigate the casino report, but if you just discovered that new ability, maybe it’s better you stay behind.”
“Why? We could...” I started to say, but Lily lifted her finger.
“I don’t want anything to go wrong. If you can’t control your ability and you change into someone in the middle of the casino, people are going to freak out, and I don’t think making everyone forget what happened is a good idea, especially if you might fry their brain signals. Did you check if that ability of yours got stronger too?” Lily raised her voice.
I bit down on my lip. “We haven’t thought about that.”
“See? You should stay here. Only one of my scientists came here with me in case we needed help with our enemy, but I guess he can take a look at you and make sure you’re fit to go on missions. Besides, we’re just supposed to investigate today, so we probably won’t need you. And knowing our luck, the guy will be long gone and no one will be able to tell us anything useful.” She sounded tired. “Alert me if something happens or if you run into someone who knows our mystery guy.”
“Okay.” I gave her a small smile and watched her storm down the hallway. Turning back to Jaiden, I closed the door, leaning against it. Our room was nice and big, in black and white colors, and Jaiden was resting on the nice double bed.
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s noon. I’m sure the guy won’t be there. If he wants to play again, it’ll be at night.”
“Yeah, I hope so.” I chewed on my bottom lip. “But what if Lily’s right? What if our mind control changed too? We can’t just go around, use it, and hope it doesn’t shrivel someone’s brain signals.”
“I know.” He sat up. “We should test that.”
“But how?” I plopped down onto the bed next to him.
“We can try on each other. Something simple that won’t do much damage even if it becomes permanent.”
A frown creased my brow. “Yeah, but what?”
“We make sure we never call each other baby.” He laughed.
I shrugged, a smile breaking out on my lips. “Okay.”
“Good. You first.
”
I focused on my element and called it out, then guided it to Jaiden’s head, gently pushing inside. Grasping some of his brain signals, I willed them to do what I wanted them to, and waited to see what would happen. “They’re just darkish. Definitely not shriveled.” I breathed out a sigh of relief. “I can reverse it.” I undid my mind control with ease.
“Baby,” he said, grinning at me.
“Yeah, awesome. Now you try it.” I straightened my shoulders and waited as his air shot out of him, going for my mind. I didn’t resist as pain pierced my skull, and when he pulled back, I used my own element again to get inside my head and see if I could heal his mind control.
“Done, baby.” I smirked. “Looks like we’re not going to shrivel anyone’s brain signals.” I found the old, shriveled signals that our mystery guy had left in my mind, but no matter how hard I tried, nothing happened. “Still can’t heal the shriveled ones. Damn it.”
“His mind control really is permanent then. I wonder if it’ll block us from being able to see him again,” Jaiden mused.
“Um, that would be terrible, but at least we’d be able to tell it’s him. I mean, there aren’t many blurry, shadowy people walking around.”
“We should try our mind control on someone else, just to be sure. Maybe we’re strong enough to withstand it, but what about regular people?”
“Right. We should try, but maybe we should find some volunteers.” Entering someone’s mind without permission was wrong and could be unpredictable, no matter how small and innocent our mind control might be, so it was better if people knew what we were doing and were okay with it.
“Yeah, except everyone probably left with Lily already.”
“We should find a regular elemental. Maybe someone who has a very weak element.” I didn’t know if our brain signals and their ability to resist mind control had anything to do with our element. It probably didn’t, but it was better to check before we did something we might regret.
“Well, that should be easy. There are plenty of elementals in this hotel.” A smile spread across Jaiden’s lips. “We can explore a little. Maybe find some poor soul crazy enough to do this for us. And then we can go see if our mystery guy is around or if anything weird is going on.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I got to my feet.
“Then let’s go.” Jaiden turned into air and grabbed my arm, changing me into a shimmering cloud, and we flew out into the hallway. After zooming up and down and exploring every floor, we flew into the foyer and made ourselves visible behind one of the columns. While we’d been flying, no one seemed to notice us, but the people we saw were older than us, so that wasn’t surprising.
“Excuse me,” Jaiden said to one woman who was talking about some meeting on her phone. She waved him off, but he waited until she finished the conversation and started explaining something to her. I took a seat on one of the couches, too far to hear what they were saying, but when Jaiden came toward me, the woman trailing behind, my eyebrows shot up. I would’ve never guessed he’d convince her to do this so easily.
“I told Virginia everything about our scientific project and she agreed to participate,” Jaiden said to me. Ah, so we were pretending that we were scientists now. Of course, if we’d said anything else, the woman would’ve called the cops because some lunatics were trying to get her to agree to let them into her mind.
“I never met a tainted elemental,” Virginia said, her brown eyes slightly wide, and she ran a shaky hand through her dark brown hair. “But if you say that this could help you create a blocker for mind control, then yes, I’m totally ready to do it.”
I arched an eyebrow at Jaiden, who only flashed me a smile.
“This research is completely anonymous, right? And you won’t mess up my mind or force me to do anything?” She eyed me with suspicion.
“Don’t worry. We don’t collect any personal info aside from what we need for the blockers.”
“Okay.” The woman sat on the couch opposite me and smiled. I looked at Jaiden, and he gave me an encouraging nod. Ah, well, this was as close to a volunteer as we could get, and if she really believed our word that we wouldn’t hurt her... Maybe I should mind control her never to agree to such a thing, but hey, if she wanted to take a risk, who was I to tell her she couldn’t?
Letting my air slip out, I went for her mind. Her whole body turned rigid, but she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t a tainted, so she wouldn’t feel any pain or that I was in her mind. I captured some of her signals, darkening them, then breathed life back into them. Virginia’s brain was completely healed.
“We’re done here,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“We are? Um, okay.” Virginia blinked at me, but then got to her feet, rushing away from us. She kept giving me strange looks over her shoulder until she entered the elevator.
“You know there’s still a chance she’s going to call the cops on us, right?” I groaned. “But at least we’re sure that we won’t fry anyone’s brain. That’s good.”
“She won’t. She’d be too embarrassed to admit it.” Jaiden offered me his hand and I took it. “Want to go outside? Maybe we could... become someone else.”
“Sure.” I still didn’t know how I felt about being able to take on someone’s appearance. We weren’t really hurting the person whose image we stole in any way, unless we committed a crime with someone else’s face on, but it still felt icky. But, my feelings aside, we had to make sure our ability could be controlled.
It would be really problematic if we turned into our enemy in the middle of a fight and someone started shooting at us or fighting us instead of our bad guy. But if he could turn into us, well, that was an even bigger problem. Maybe he couldn’t use his other abilities at the same time, so he wouldn’t want to change anyway.
Jaiden and I turned into air when we were sure no one could see us and flew out. People knew we existed and what we could do, but it would draw a lot of unwanted attention if we vanished into thin air right in front of their eyes. Tainteds were rare here.
We materialized behind one of the buildings, and Jaiden held my hand as we walked down the street.
“How about them?” he said, nodding toward a couple who was kissing not far from us.
“Sure, but I’ll take the girl,” I said, letting my element out. “Wait, how does this even work? I mean, we could just picture each other, but we were already familiar with every part of our bodies, just like our elements.” We’d flown together so many times, and our elements knew each other really well. These people, on the other hand, were not even a bit familiar, and we couldn’t even see their faces completely.
“I guess we should just let our elements run over them. If they don’t start screaming first.” Jaiden grimaced. “They look young. Could be like us.”
“We’ll see.” A mischievous smile popped up on my lips as I guided my air toward the girl, letting it wrap around her like a soft blanket but making sure she didn’t feel it. Jaiden focused on the guy. The girl shivered slightly, but she didn’t seem to notice anything else. Jaiden and I pulled our elements back, and hid behind one of the trees. When we were sure no one was watching, we let our air consume and change us.
“You look... well, not like you,” Jaiden said, except he was a guy with gray eyes and sandy blond hair that was falling into his eyes when he moved his head.
“Good.” I touched my ponytail and tugged at my new dark red hair, but when I looked down, I gasped. Instead of my shirt, I was wearing a tight red top. “I should’ve picked someone with better clothes.” Or not let the shirt change at all, but the girl had a bigger chest than me, so I didn’t think she’d fit into my shirt. Not that I actually knew how to change only certain parts of myself.
“It’s fine.” Jaiden was barely containing himself from laughing.
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s fine.” I rolled my eyes. “Come on. Let’s see how long we can keep this up for.”
“Sure.” He took my hand and we interlaced ou
r fingers. As we strolled down the street, I hoped no one would recognize us or ask us anything. We might have taken someone’s appearance, but we hadn’t taken their brains too, and one part of me was really glad about that, because changing completely into another person and taking over their identity... that was some real nightmare material.
“Do you think we can brush against other people’s minds and get them to tell us if they’ve seen something strange or the man we’re looking for?” Jaiden asked.
“We can try.” I shrugged. “But I don’t know if we can keep our disguise and use our element for something else at the same time. Oh, and did you maybe ask your father if these abilities are permanent or if we can lose them if we use up our energy?”
“I think they’re permanent,” Jaiden said. “But I guess we’ll see. I don’t really trust my father much when it comes to his serums. He might try to blackmail us with something again.”
“Okay. We shouldn’t worry about that right now.” I focused on the person who was coming our way. “Will you do it, or should I?”
“You do it,” Jaiden said, and I carefully called to my air.
“If I start changing back or something, just fly me out of here, okay?” Seeing us disappear would actually be less upsetting for people than seeing me turn into another person.
Jaiden nodded, and I guided my element toward my target.
Chapter 17
“Are you sure that’s going to work?” Noah asked after Lily finished explaining our mission. We were supposed to go to the casino and attack the guy with all we got.
“I don’t know, but I hope it will,” Lily said, leaning over the plans spread out on the table. “We know he came to that casino every other day last week because the cameras went off.”
“What if the cameras are just wonky?” Ashley asked. “We could be preparing for nothing.”
“No, it’s not a coincidence. It’s always at the exact same time. 8 p.m.” Lily checked something on her phone. “We have to go there now and be ready.”
Resilient (Tainted Elements, #6) Page 9
