by Kate Kelley
Burning Violet
Urban Elemental Series Book One
by Kate Kelley
Burning Violet
Urban Elementals Series Book 1
Burning Violet - Copyright 2018 by Kate Kelley
Edited by K.J. Kelley, [email protected]
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
Publisher's Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication and Thanks
For my family, forever and always.
I'd like to thank my editor, K.J. Kelley, who is an incredible word smith and copy editor and also happens to be my big sister. She turned this mess of words into something readable, and for that, I am incredibly thankful.
I'd also like to thank Lexis Infinitum PR Team for supporting hopeful indie authors like myself, and helping to get the word out about our labors of love.
Chapter One
Bluuuurrrrrrrrp.
I checked the old grandfather clock that stood like a guard by the sliding glass doors. It was eight o’clock. Mr. Tuba was right on time.
BluuuuuRRRRpppppp.
I really didn’t know what tuba playing was supposed to sound like, but if it was supposed to sound like Mr. Tuba’s nightly serenades, then I was really not sure tubas took a spot as one of mankind’s best inventions.
Supposedly Mr. Tuba is a professional, according to the brother/sister duo who live below me. I hadn’t actually stopped to speak to Mr. Tuba for too long, which is why I don’t know his real name and why I lovingly refer to him as Mr. Tuba. I did remember his dog’s name, a blind border collie named Sam.
I stabbed my peas with my fork to the tune of the tuba.
Clunk. Bluuuurpp. Clunk. Bluuuurpp. Clunk. Bleeeeerrrrppp.
I really hated peas, but I was trying to be healthy, ever since the incident, and the only vegetable in the house was a dusty can of peas in the back of the cabinet. It didn’t expire until next month, so I took a chance on it and promptly wished I hadn’t.
I call it the incident because I didn’t know what else to call it. Images flashed through my head of that day, the golden swirling of effervescent shapes around me like sunshine-permeated cirrus clouds touching ground, but with eyes. And hands. And voices.
The voices, filling my brain so acutely that I thought my head would burst and splatter across the employee meeting table like a dropped watermelon. They had been speaking a language I hadn’t understood, and one that no google search yielded results for.
Apparently, I’d had a seizure and passed out, scaring the wig off of Janice.
Now I was on medical leave. My doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with my brain and sent me home after a night’s stint in the hospital, with a shrug and a diagnosis of “anxiety and mental exhaustion,” whatever that means.
I wasn’t getting paid for this so-called leave, which I wasn’t surprised about, since my job didn’t exactly pay buckets of money. I had just started as a receptionist at this inn two months ago. I spent day in and day out typing customer information, cleaning and greeting guests until my cheeks ached from the frozen smile plastered on my face. Let’s just say it’s not my dream job, or my dream town, but desperate times called for desperate measures. At least my degree and journalism experience gave me a boost on the salary rungs.
I stood and gathered my plate, rinsing it off in the sink and placing it into the dishwasher. Living alone had its perks, like not having to worry about someone else rearranging the dishes in the dishwasher. Or throwing dirty clothes right next to the hamper instead of into it. Or having sex with other women in the bed you bought yourselves as an engagement gift.
Yeah, being on your own had its perks, but it had its downfalls too.
Like moving into a podunk town for a less-than-desirable job and into a perfunctory apartment building which sprouted mushrooms on the bathroom ceiling and housed nocturnal tuba players, just so you could afford to eat.
I sat on my secondhand couch from a local thrift store that cost less than the gray, suede cover over it, and turned on an old episode of Friends. The night had grown a deep midnight blue, the air dropping in temperature so that the chill seeped through the cracks of the porch glass door, chilling my toes and nose.
Not that I had been happy when I was living with Evan. Sure, it was a swanky apartment and I had a decent paying job writing for the local paper’s entertainment column, but Evan and I were not compatible and it wasn’t until after I’d left him and the apartment and the city that I realized how much of my soul he had leached out of me.
Oh well. That’s in the past. It had been two months already and his face was losing clarity in my memories. Time heals all wounds. And deleting Facebook. That helps too.
A crash sounded, and my skin tried to detach itself from my body. I held my hand over my thudding heart.
The antenna I had taped to the wall had fallen, making the loudest sound to have ever existed. Ever since the incident, I was jumpier, more paranoid than usual.
I willed myself to calm down as I got up and bent over my TV stand, reaching for the fallen piece of equipment, my lifeline to forgetting. The TV static was the second thing that murdered my nerves. I scrambled for the front of the TV, my fingers frantically trying to find the off button. There.
Blessed silence filled the room. I picked up the antenna and proceeded to stick the velcro to the corresponding velcro on the wall. It would be cool if I could actually put holes in the walls, but alas, a renter’s burdens are many.
The antenna stuck to the wall for all of two seconds. I stared at it for a minute before giving up and retreating to the kitchen. I was sure I had a glass full left of a sweet red in my fridge. I wedged into the two by six kitchen space and opened the fridge. Aha! There it was, a local brand that was 4.99 a bottle.
“Come to mama.” I poured it into the large wine glass I got as an engagement gift. The cool thing about calling off a wedding two weeks before the date is that you get to keep all of the gifts. Hell, I had left my registry up online and still received the odd gift here and there. I now had three blenders, two crockpots, and three sets of dishes. I really needed to sell some things.
I sat back down in the corner of my couch and sipped the cold wine, welcoming the bite of tannin and alcohol on the back of my tongue. I picked up the novel I had started a couple days ago. It was a paranormal romance novel, the kind that gets overlooked by every day library patrons, but one the cult followers knew was mind-blowing. And it certainly was.
The grandfather clock gonged, signaling nine o’clock. I set the book, page down, and took my glass back into the kitchen for a refill. Eureka! There was just enough for another glass. I sipped it on my way back to the couch, swaying my hips to a song that had been stuck in my head all day. Mr. Tuba was silent.
I picked up my book and continued reading, my head growing pleasantly fuzzy from the cheap wine. These days I stayed up until after midnight, with nothing to do all day but read and watch TV. I also took walks during the warmest parts of the day, which wasn’t often, being early November in Indiana.
My leave was three weeks in total, which meant that in two days I would be back to work.
I sighed at that tho
ught, the existential dread threatening to break into my soul. I found my place in my book, prepared to drown out the sickening feeling of despair.
The lamp went out, drowning me in darkness.
“Really?” I twisted the knob with two clicks; it wouldn’t turn on. I got up with a huff, and shuffled to the wall with the single light switch to the ceiling light, almost missing it in the dark. I found the switch and flipped it. Up, down, up, down. Nada.
“Shit,” I mumbled. The power was out. Did I pay the bill?
I went to the window to check the neighboring building which normally glowed with faint yellow light from the outside. All the windows were dark. Even the old woman’s across the parking lot who had decked out her windows and porch railings with pumpkin and skeleton shaped lights was out. Well, at least it wasn’t just mine.
Rain I couldn’t see railed against the window in front of my face, rushed by a strong gale. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I watched the night and listened to the wails of the rain and thunder growing louder until my eyes adjusted and I could see the lines of rainfall in the moonlight streaming through the invisible clouds. A particularly loud clap of thunder ripped through the sky, rattling my window where my forehead was resting, the vibration traveling down my nose and cheeks.
Something caught my eye to the left, the apartment building across the street. A crack sounded. I turned my head further to see a bloom of orange rise up behind an upper level window. At first I thought their lights had returned, but when I saw no other lights were on around me, I realized what it was, just in time for the thick bog of black smoke to trail out of the windows.
“Oh my God!” I covered my mouth and realized my hand was shaking. The flames licked atop the roof now, making quick work of the shingles and crawling toward the gutter pipe. I watched in horror another moment before searching for my phone, usually in my back pocket. Someone needs to call 911. I brought my phone up and dialed, quickly receiving the operator.
“This is 911. What’s your emergency?” A pleasant woman’s voice picked up.
“Hi, uh, my neighbors apartment building is on fire. I think a lightning bolt struck it. It’s really, really bad. Going up in flames. Oh, my God!” I watched as the siding all but melted off in the destruction of the element.
The woman asked for my address, which I gave, and hung up. I watched, gripping the paint-chipped window sill. No one was outside yet. I remembered vaguely seeing kids often hang out in front of those steps. I couldn’t just stand there anymore.
I surged toward the door, tripping over the leg of a folding chair I used as a dining chair.
I caught myself on my hands and scrambled up, finding my boots by the door. I was fairly certain I’d put them on the wrong feet, but I didn’t have time to sort that out. I was out the door and running down the wooden staircase in a matter of seconds. I almost ran into the sister and brother duo who stood side by side like a pair of twin mannequins, their silhouettes outlined by the roaring fire.
“Well, that ain’t good,” said the sister, who puffed on a cigarette. The brother, who’s long, stringy, gray hair fell to the middle of his back, crossed his arms over his skinny chest.
“No, it ain’t,” he replied.
“I called the fire department,” I added, and they turned, surprise on their faces. I guess they hadn’t heard me approach.
“Has anyone come out yet?’ I asked, squinting into the spaces around the apartment. There was no one. I didn’t wait for a reply.
I jogged over to the street. Even from the opposite side, the heat of the fire scorched me. Tears welled in my eyes as the smoke rushed over me in a gush of wind. Cold prickles of rain stabbed my scalp. I watched helplessly.
The distant sound of sirens pierced my horror, eliciting a sense of calm. Thank God. I backed up a pace and placed a forearm over my mouth and nose, zeroing in on a window. Is that…?
It looked like someone was in the window, a figure, there and gone the next instant.
Another movement, on the roof. A flash of white.
A fire truck pulled up, it’s sirens deafening me. I put my fingers over my ears until it quit. Three more fire trucks pulled up behind it. I watched as the firefighters did their work, pulling their hose out and disappearing up the stairwell with it. My eyes landed on a group of kids kneeling on the grass, the smoke wafting away from them. A couple of firefighters helped them to their feet.
Where had they come from and how had they gotten out?
Another movement to the far left of the building caught my eye. I followed it with my eyes. A large shadow of a man. He came out of the umbrage of the building and stood, watching the children. The fire’s light engulfed him in its glow. His clothes, a white t-shirt and jeans, were rumpled and marked with black soot. His face shone with sweat, his hair, long and black, was a tangled mess around his face and shoulders. He took a deep breath and the next thing that happened would haunt me for the next two days. He looked up into the rain, spread his arms and disappeared.
As in vanished. As in, he was there one moment and gone the next.
He hadn’t run, he hadn’t walked. My eyes had been glued to him the entire time. He disappeared.
I rubbed my eyes, thinking the smoke and fire were playing tricks on me. I swung my gaze back to the kids. They wailed, hugging each other and their mother. They were safe. Massive relief flooded me and my knees buckled. I swayed before catching myself as a news station van pulled up from the opposite side of the street.
A blonde woman dressed in a charcoal suit leapt out, her mic already in hand, the cameraman following suit, already taping the footage of the destruction.
Greedy bastards.
The woman surveyed the scene briefly before scanning the other side of the street. Her eyes stopped on me and she didn't hesitate to bolt toward me.
Shit.
She held out her free hand as she approached me and I caught her firm handshake. “I'm Cassandra Klout, Channel 8 Nightly News. Would you mind telling me what happened here?”
The cameraman adjusted his lens, which was only a few feet away from me. I tried not to think about the fact that I wore mismatching plaid pajamas.
“Sure,” I said tightly, “well. I noticed the fire from my window. I live in Brickyard, just there.”
“Gabe roll it back,” Cassandra said in a flat voice, then turned to me. “ Don't tell me where you live and wait for his cue.”
I nodded and swallowed, wishing I could be anywhere but there.
Cassandra smoothed down already-perfect hair and faced the camera. “This is Cassandra of Channel Eight Nightly News reporting live on a fire on the west side of Emerald. It appears to be a rather large, destructive fire and it is unknown whether everyone is out of the building as firefighters work to douse the flames. I am with a bystander who witnessed the fire.” She turned to me and my throat constricted when I saw the cameraman zoom in. “Can you tell us a little bit about what happened here?” She moved the microphone in front of my mouth.
“Well, I saw the fire start from...across the street and called 911--”
“You called the fire in? Wow.” She passed the mic back in front of me.
“Uh, yes. I mean, I couldn’t just stand there and watch it go up in flames. I was worried about the kids who I knew lived there.” I thought about the man who’d rescued them. Should I mention him? Wouldn’t he want to be recognized?
“And firefighters rescued them, correct?”
I hesitated. The man had disappeared. Maybe I hallucinated him. There’s no sense in being the crazy girl on the news. I didn’t need that kind of publicity. “I--I don’t know,” I finally said into the mic. “All I know was that when I made it over here, the kids and their mother were safe on the front lawn and...that’s really all that matters. They’re safe. The rest can be rebuilt.”
Cassandra turned back to the camera with some final words before cutting the camera roll and moving closer to the scene.
I returned back home, and l
aid on the couch until the last of the fire’s light outside my window died down, and, dark again, I could close my eyes. I dreamt of a man appearing in my house, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, every inch of his skin glowing with fire like an angel of death, except his eyes--obsidian black, cold, and unrelenting in their gaze which were focused solely on me.
Chapter Two
My hair was almost frozen in the evening air as I walked toward The August Bed, the inn I worked as a Front Desk Agent (I liked this title better than Greeter or Receptionist. It made me feel like I was doing something covert and important. The August Bed was a giant Victorian mansion that had been converted into an inn--Janice had said it had belonged to a glass jar manufacturer who had been a bit of a weirdo. Apparently several portraits of erotic paintings had to be removed from every room when the new owner bought it. Not that I’m shaming anyone for kink, but in the kitchen, really?
Rosa, one of the resident maids, swore up and down that there was a ghost of a Victorian woman haunting rooms twelve and thirteen. She’d make the sign of the cross and kiss her golden cross necklace every time she entered the rooms, muttering in her native language. I’d yet to see any ghosts. That is, assuming my incident wasn’t a ghost sighting. I still didn’t know what that had been. Maybe if I ignore it and will my mind to forget about it, it wouldn’t happen again. Kind of like that man who’d rescued the kids from the fire and then disappeared out of thin air. He continued to haunt my dreams for the next two nights. Out of mind. Out of sight. Right?
I marched up the steps, counting them as I went up.
I opened the heavy, paint-chipped door, the bell on it tinkling as I entered. Frances glanced my way as she slung her oversized faux leather bag onto the glossy front desk, one arm in the sleeve of her faux fur coat. An unlit cigarette hung from her mouth. “You’re late,” she said without moving her bright red lips, lest the cigarette fell out.
