“How cute,” Jodi said, shooting me a glance, and I nodded.
“Okay, shut up,” he said, pushing his empty plate away from him. “What about you, Shay, how are things going with Jensen?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head a little as I looked into my coffee cup rather than at them. “After I had to run out to the hospital, he hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts.”
“Think he’s getting tired of dating a superhero?” Steven teased, but Jodi shot him a look when I didn’t rise to the bait.
“Did you break up?” Jodi asked cautiously.
“Well, we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, so I don’t think we can break up.”
“Ugh, will you shut up with that!” Steven said. “You’re not dating anyone else, he’s not dating anyone else; you’re boyfriend and girlfriend, even if you don’t want to call it that.”
“Steven, not now,” Jodi said, turning her chair towards me. “Shay?”
“Yeah, it feels like a break up,” I agreed, setting my cup down and pushing it away. “Or a brush off, I don’t know. I was trying to avoid this, but I guess he’s just frustrated with all the complications that go along with dating someone like me.”
“I’m sorry,” Jodi said, reaching her hand out to clasp mine. I felt my throat tighten and my eyes sting, so I pushed away from the table quickly.
“Anyway, it’s getting late; we should head to the store,” I said, tossing some money on the table.
“How can it be getting late so early?” Jodi asked as we walked out of the restaurant.
***
We walked into the store single file, the chimes over the door tinkling as we passed under them. As I passed through the threshold, I felt Deb’s shields. Deb was sitting behind the counter with a cup of tea steaming away in one hand and another holding her place in an open book on the counter in front of her. She smiled brightly when she saw us and set her cup down as we walked over to her.
“Hello, kids,” she said warmly.
“Morning, Deb,” I said, and Jodi and Steven greeted her in turn.
“So, what’s the matter?” she asked without preamble. Deb was probably one of the strongest psychics I knew, so there was no point in pretending like we didn’t know what she was talking about.
“We need help,” I said, walking through the gap in the counter to steal the second stool hidden there while Steven and Jodi leaned on the glass counter that doubled as a large jewelry case.
“Hit me with it,” she said as she pulled the ribbon marker on the book, laid it in between the pages she was reading, and shut it, storing it under the counter. I was glad I had already come to see Deb the other day and didn’t have to start from the very beginning to get her up to speed, and I just told her about our failed attempt to capture the nymph and get the souls back.
“Well, it wasn’t really a failure,” Deb said before taking a sip of her tea. “You did capture the creature; she just had other resources to overwhelm you.”
“Fine, I’ll give you that,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. “But as long as we fail to get the souls back from the nymphs she’s given the souls to, Dale and Mark get closer to death.”
“True,” she said calmly, nodding her head. “And you’ve come to me to look for help from my coven.” She said it as a statement, not a question, before I had even asked. She always had a knack for knowing exactly what someone wanted and had no problem saying it out loud, no matter how unnerving that talent was.
“Yes,” I said and realized I sounded sad.
“Oh, honey, you mustn’t feel bad,” she said, hearing my tone as well, laying her hand over my own and giving it a squeeze. “We all need a little help sometimes; that doesn’t mean you aren’t still quite amazing at what you do. It’s been generations since anyone has talked about any kind of nymph as anything outside of a fairy tale.” She stood up and walked to the back room to get herself more tea.
“You did accomplish one thing though,” she said, walking back into the room with us.
“What’s that?” Steven asked.
“You’ve proven, despite the fact that she has some terrible powers, that she is still bound by the physical plane, just like us.”
“Because we were able to contain her?” Jodi asked, and Deb nodded.
“What I don’t get though,” I said, “is when I saw her clawing into that boy’s chest to steal his soul, I could have sworn she was actually tearing into his body. I mean, I thought I saw blood. But then, at the hospital, there was no physical wound on his chest.”
“But you said when you were there while we were doing the astral projection you could see the wound,” Jodi said before Deb could respond.
“That’s what’s so confusing,” I said looking from Jodi to Deb. “How can it look like she’s making a physical wound, but not be, and when I look at their auras, the wound is visible to me?”
“Because you’re not seeing their auras,” Deb said simply.
“What?” all three of us asked in unison.
“Think back; when you looked at that boy in the bed, did you actually see his aura?” she asked, speaking in a very patient tone. I looked away from her face to nothing in particular and let my mind travel down my memory to that moment when I saw Dale’s wounded chest, but another memory pulled at me, dragging me to Mark’s house and a vision of Mark sitting in front of me on his mother’s couch. I thought about the moment when I was reaching towards him to feel and read his aura and remembered having to stop myself because I never made contact with it.
No aura, but when I opened my eyes with my magic swirling around me and giving me second sight, I saw the same gaping hole in his chest like a wound on a decaying body three days old. I looked back at Deb, feeling cold inside as I realized what it was that she was waiting for me to figure out for myself.
“No,” I said quietly, shaking my head slowly. “They didn’t have auras when I looked at them. It was like they were already dead when I tried to look at them with second sight.”
“You mean when your soul is ripped from you, you lose your aura too?” Steven said, terror mixing with his voice.
“Yes, sweetie, that is exactly what I mean,” Deb said, and now she sounded sad.
“But why?” he asked, turning those terrified eyes towards me.
“Because auras only exist around living things. Some people think that they not only measure your emotional state, but also how healthy a person is,” I said with a sigh, disappointed in myself for not picking up on this sooner.
“Oh right, like how you say someone who is sick has a black aura, and when you try to feel their aura, it’s sticky, like mire,” Jodi said, looking at me expectantly, and I suddenly felt like Deb and I were leading a class, rather than discussing what to do about this problem.
“Right,” I said with a nod. “So that would explain why I didn’t feel Mark’s aura, damnit.” I stood up then and allowed myself to pace in front of the counter while I thought this over. “I wonder if that means we won’t even be able to return Dale and Mark’s souls to them,” I said to the floor as I walked past Jodi and Steven again.
“That’s what concerns me,” Deb said, tapping her fingers against the side of her cup, her many rings tinging against the ceramic.
“Are you serious?” Steven asked, his voice rising in pitch now.
“It’s very possible,” I said, feeling a chill run up my spine. “It’s kinda like the chicken and the egg question; can we put a soul into something without an aura? Or does the aura come back once the soul is there? The mother has both a soul and an aura when she becomes pregnant, so how do we know which a child gets first, its soul or its aura?”
“Oh my god, so they may already be dead,” Jodi whispered.
“Maybe,” I said with a shake of my head. “So then why was there a wound?”
“My best guess is that is how they look on a higher plane,” Deb said. “How they look spiritually now.” I made a noise of agreement.
<
br /> “So do you think your coven will help us then?” Jodi asked Deb, and that made me stop and turn on the spot to stare at her, waiting for her answer.
“Well, my loves, I’m not sure we can help,” she said finally, and I felt my heart drop into my stomach. “You see, you all are elemental beings, and we are not. We’re mortals, human; we work with the balance of the universe, not against it.”
“We’re humans,” Steven said indignantly.
“No, sweetie, you’re an elemental; you’re much more than human,” she said with a soft smile. Steven looked at her, his brows furrowed deeply and his brown eyes showing the confusion working inside.
“Fine,” Jodi said, taking up the argument quickly, “but how can you say helping us would be working against the balance of the universe? These things are arbitrarily killing human boys; isn’t that what’s upsetting the balance?”
“But these water nymphs are born of this world, they are essentially part of the world, their true form is pure water. It is not for us to mete out justice for their deeds,” Deb said. I could feel how sorry she was to say all this and understood that not one of us, including me, agreed with her.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Now you say these water nymphs are elemental creatures?” Deb nodded. “And so are we?” I gestured to Jodi, Steven, and myself, and she nodded again. “Is it therefore our job to fix this?”
“That is not for me to say,” she said to my chagrin.
“Fine, but would you say that it is more our right to mete out the justice against our fellow elementals?” I asked, trying to word my question very carefully. She eyed me, considering every word before she finally nodded.
“I would say that Karma and the balance of the universe would see it that way. They are kindreds of yours; who are we to judge what you do?” I nodded at her comments.
“Will you at least consider helping us?”
“In what way?”
“There are too many of those creatures for us to take on. We’ll have to be crafty about this, and it’ll take a lot of power on our part. I can’t waste perfectly good power and magic worrying about protecting all of us as well. Can you and your coven supply us with the power and magic we need to reinforce our shields?” I asked.
“That, I believe, we can do, and happily,” she said with a smile, and I felt a tension evaporate from my shoulders.
“Wonderful,” I said. “When do we start?”
Chapter Thirteen
We started that night. We had to sit on our hands all day, waiting until near sunset before we drove with Deb out to a large ranch in Oak View where one of the coven members lived. The day had been tortuous for me; we had checked on Mark and Dale’s progress and found that, while they weren’t any worse than when they’d been admitted, they weren’t doing any better either. The fluids they were being given seemed to be keeping them alive, but only just.
“If they lack the will to fight,” one nurse whispered conspiratorially to me after a little nudging from my empathetic powers, “there’s only so much we can do to keep them alive.”
“So you think they’ve just given up?” I asked in a whisper.
“Seems that way,” she said with a nod and clutched a clipboard to her chest, looking past me and out into the ward that we still couldn’t go into.
“What do you think it is?” I asked.
“It’s like they’re being starved to death,” she said, and I could feel the confusion swirling through her.
“But the fluids you put them on, that’s to replace calories and nutrients, right?” I asked quickly, making sure to keep my voice down in case any other nurses came out and I would have to give up my only source of information. The nurse nodded in answer to my question.
“To be honest,” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure we were still alone. “I think if you took those IVs out of their arms right now, in just a couple of minutes,” she paused, looking around again, “they would be gone, just like that.” She snapped her fingers in front of my face, making me blink.
“You still with us?” Steven asked me from the backseat, and I nodded in reply. I knew I had been more quiet than usual, but I was getting frustrated, with myself, with that damn water creature, and just everything that was working against us. The thought of two young boys dying because I couldn’t find the answers to save them was eating away at me, and the last thing I wanted to do was to open my mouth and start yelling at Jodi and Steven just because they happened to be in the line of fire.
“We’re going to figure it out, you know that, right?” Jodi asked from my right side, and I didn’t look at her. They were always so confident in my abilities and what we could do as a team, but I wasn’t always so sure, and right now was one of those times. But instead of arguing with them, I just nodded again and kept my eyes on Deb’s car in front of me as she turned right again, and I finally saw a house coming into view. There was a split rail fence that circled the property, but despite the humble sized house, the fields that rolled out from it were very impressive.
“Wow, no wonder no one ever stumbles upon them when they’re working,” Steven said, not hiding the awe in his voice.
“No kidding,” Jodi said as I parked and turned off the engine. We all climbed out of the car and took a moment to look around. It wasn’t until you were standing, facing the land, that you realized just how big a few acres could be. In Southern California, most houses sat on a quarter of an acre and that was only if you were lucky enough to have both a back and a front yard. Past the fields behind the house, we could see three horses grazing lazily; two were a beautiful, deep chestnut color and the third was cream, speckled with brown spots. Trees and much larger hills bordered the rest of the property, cutting off the view from any of the major roads leading to and from town. I nodded my appreciation as I turned on the spot, taking in everything around me. I’ve always loved nature; I could never live so far from the thrum of human life, but I could see the draw of this place. Never worrying about someone catching you casting would be tempting enough to give up even my small city life.
“Okay, kids,” Deb said, drawing our attention to her. “Let’s get inside so we can get started.” We followed Deb up to the house and waited on the front porch until we heard footsteps beyond the front door. When the locks slid out of place and the door opened, we were greeted with a smile by a very young girl. I blinked in surprised as she looked up at all of us with wide brown eyes before she squealed in delight and flung herself at Deb. “Hello, my love,” Deb said as she patted the little girl’s back lightly. “This is Trisity, Jane’s daughter.”
Trisity pulled away from Deb and waved at all of us before grabbing Deb’s hand to pull her over the threshold into the house. We followed them in and were doubly surprised when we saw just how large the house really was. The floors were all sunken in about three feet so that you had to take steps down into the living room, and the ceilings were much higher than they looked outside, making the whole place feel like it was open and sweeping. The back wall was all smoked glass doors, offering an unobstructed view of the fields and hills beyond.
“Jane’s husband is a contractor,” Deb said when she saw all of us stop in surprise, “so he’s been adding to the house ever since they bought it. He’s really good at getting the most out of the space as possible.”
“No kidding,” I said as I looked up and up to the ceiling.
“We’re going into the kitchen, so follow me,” Deb said as she turned, hand in hand with little Trisity, and led the way out of the living room. The kitchen turned out to be as much of a surprise as the living room was; it was an eat-in kitchen, but instead of some little breakfast nook off to the side, it was large enough to have a full ten-seater dining table, two china hutches, and a large island that doubled as a bar before you ever got to the marbled counter tops along the wall.
“Do they have any eligible sons?” Jodi asked as she looked around. Deb laughed and shook her head.
“Not unless you�
��re willing to wait another fifteen years before it’s not illegal to date him,” Deb said.
“Damn,” Jodi said with a mock snap of her fingers. I turned towards the actual kitchen part of the room and nodded towards the three women gathered near the stovetop. Even if I didn’t know they were Deb’s coven sisters, I would have seen the magic in them; all three of their auras pulsed in deep, healthy colors, bleeding in and out of each other’s, creating a rainbow of light around them.
“Good, you’ve already started,” Deb said brightly as she set Trisity on one of the barstools at the island before walking over to them. They were tending to a pot on the stove. Deb took the wooden spoon and gave the contents a slow stir as she leaned forward to take in a deep breath. She came away nodding in approval.
“I picked the lavender!” Trisity said from her perch, bouncing excitedly. “And the mint! That mint was mine and I picked it!” Trisity pointed at the pot, looking from us to the other women, waiting for someone to notice what she said.
“That’s probably why it smells so good,” I said to her, which seemed to appease her immediately. She squinted at me for a moment before nodding and settling back down on the seat.
“It does smell good, actually,” Steven said, walking over to the women. “What is it?”
“It’s a little concoction we’ve put together for you,” Deb said, turning back to face us. “But I’m being rude; introductions first. This is Jane, our hostess tonight.” She gestured to the brunette to her right, whose aura pulsed a pleasing shade of lilac that bled to white the closer it came to her body in a bright halo. “This is her sister, Sherry.” She indicated the other brunette who raised her hand in a small wave, and I watched the blue of her aura swirl around her. “And this is Jessica,” Deb said, turning to her left and nodding towards the blonde woman who nodded back, but I could taste her distrust like pennies on my tongue.
“Nice to meet you all,” I said, taking a step forward. “I’d like to thank you all for helping us, especially on such short notice.”
Elemental Series Omnibus Edition Books 1-4 Page 72
