Fire: The Elementals Book One

by Gilbert, L. B.

  “Never say never. And circumstances might change. What if they really need you someday? Would you be able to turn your back on them? Because if the Mother is falling asleep, then hard days are ahead for everyone.”

  He digested that in silence for a while. “It would have to be pretty extreme circumstances. And, honestly, there are some capable people in the coven despite their outward frivolity,” he said waving her concern away. “Any luck with the image search?”

  “Not exactly. There were some mountains in the background and the feel of the place was familiar, but there wasn’t enough for a definitive location.” She sighed. “I don’t think flipping through pictures is the most productive way to do this. I would have to have the angles right in order to really recognize it from that. I need to narrow it down. Those mountains could be anywhere.”

  “Can you draw?”

  “Not even a little bit,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Well, I’m a fairly good artist. I had to learn to sketch reasonably well to document my artifacts, although I use a camera these days. Maybe you could describe the scenes you remember to me, and we can get close to what you saw. Then we can scan it and use an image search to find similar, and hopefully, documented photographs.”

  “It beats flipping through pictures aimlessly like this,” she said, putting the computer on the coffee table before stretching out on the couch.

  Alec grabbed a few pens and one of the large notepads Gia kept around to sketch before sitting in an adjoining armchair. They must have resembled a therapist and his patient as Diana proceeded to detail the scene as best she could.

  It went terribly for a good hour.

  “I can’t do this. I just don’t have the ability to describe what’s in my head!” she finally said exasperated before throwing a pillow in Alec’s general direction. He snatched it out of the air without looking up with those freaky vampire reflexes.

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “I think we’re getting closer. I know you can’t draw, but why don’t you try and do a rudimentary sketch and then flip through some of these pastoral art books, and tell me what scenes look similar. Maybe you could draw the plant life in a little greater detail, or I could have some botany books delivered.”

  Diana pulled at the threads of the last pillow left on the couch. “I guess I could try to draw some of the flowers. And Gia is not that into landscapes so maybe you should have some books sent.”

  He sat up straighter. “We can’t give up. If this works out, we don’t have to keep hammering the beetle pin lead. It’s too tenuous to rely upon.”

  “I know,” she grumbled before grabbing the notepad and pencils from his hand.

  It took another three hours, including two deliveries from Daniel, one for books and one for dinner. The latter was ignored while they flipped through large books of landscapes, and Diana sketched the ugliest flowers anyone had ever seen.

  “Don’t feel bad,” he said with a grin when she torched one of her less-than-successful efforts. “I’m personally rather relieved to find something I can do better than you.”

  He missed the pillow she threw at his head that time.

  When they were finally done, Diana was nearly ready to pull out all of her hair, but at least they had a reasonable facsimile of the exterior of the farmhouse.

  “It is a little vague still, but the feel is European, isn’t it?” Alec mused as he turned and bent the sketch to view at different angles.

  Diana shrugged. “Could be. Could be anywhere.”

  “You mentioned the Burgess family. We should start by looking at their English holdings. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a match. If any of them are near mountains, we might have a starting point.”

  “I don’t know.” Diana was skeptical. “From what I saw, this guy has been raised outside the family and isn’t likely to be on good terms with them. Not enough to be staying at their country house, if you know what I mean,” she said, continuing to flip through pictures.

  “True enough, but I’ve run into a lot of outcasts in my time,” he said, putting down one volume and picking up another. “I know you have, too, but I imagine the circumstances were different. Less screaming and running away in my case. Actually, I’ve known a few personally as friends. And while most have claimed to care less about what their family thinks of them, every last one would have done anything to be accepted and respected by them. They emulate them, buy the things they have, live in equally fine homes if they have the means. Finer if they can manage it. And when the family is doing worse than them financially, more than one has bought their ancestral home and edged their family members out. I think we should look at properties the Burgess family used to own. Farms in the European countryside, specifically.”

  “Well, we don’t have any better leads. Go nuts,” she said, waving him on.

  His eyes twinkled. “I’ll put my people on finding out anything about any Burgess remnants and have my bankers run down any associated properties.”

  “Bankers?”

  “Like I said before, it usually pays off to follow the money. I’ll tell them to go back a few hundred years.”

  “Witches don’t live as long as vampires. Don’t you think one century is enough?” Diana asked.

  “We’ll start with the most recent records. Why don’t you let me do the search while you heat up the food Daniel brought?”

  “Okay, but I should warn you that if the head of the Burgess clan is unaware he has another heir, it’s not very likely you’ll find a trace of one yourself,” she said, getting up and heading to the kitchen.

  Feeling weirdly domestic, Diana started pulling out plates and opening containers. Daniel had brought an assortment of Thai dishes, including Pad Thai, eggplant with chicken, and duck in a cracked black pepper sauce.

  She opened the sweet sticky rice and mango desserts and almost squealed with delight. It wasn’t as decadent as other meals Alec had arranged, but it was a feast of favorites for her.

  Damn, that man is a freaking mind reader.

  She peeked over at him tapping with vampiric speed on a shiny laptop he’d brought with him.

  Okay, so not exactly a man.

  She finished setting out small plates with a little bit of everything and heated it all up with little controlled blasts of heat. There was no dining table, just the coffee table and the bar, so she set the plates out on the coffee table and threw pillows at Alec till he stopped typing.

  Smiling good-naturedly, he set down the computer and they ate, him a little and her a lot. He pretended to fight with her over the last piece of mango, but in the end he let her have it.

  Alec’s phone rang as they were clearing the plates. He picked it up and spoke for a few moments.

  “Good, email me the list.” To Diana, he said, “We have leads, with pictures in some cases, on their way.”

  “That was fast,” she said, throwing herself on the couch next to the sketch Alec had made. “You know, this makes me think of France more than England,” she said, studying the drawing.

  “The Burgess family has holdings all over Europe, including some in France and Spain. I’ll start with the French Alps,” Alec said, leaning forward to look at her over the couch.

  Diana nodded and dug out the laptop that belonged to the safe house to do her own image search. Ten minutes later, she almost flung it out the window with a panoramic view of the city.

  “It’s not the Alps! It’s the Pyrenees!”

  She ran out of the room to grab one of their old topological maps.

  When she came back carrying it, Alec put his hands in his pockets and said wryly, “You know, you could find one of those online, like on the computer you just threw across the room.”

  “It wasn’t across the room, only to that armchair. . .which is somewhat soft and fluffy,” she said defensively.

  “I’m starting to think that heat may not be the only problem your electronics have with you.”

  “It’s fine,” she hu
ffed “And an electronic map will not show ley line hotspots or other points of magical convergence,” she added instructively, tossing the empty takeout containers into the fireplace and lighting them before rolling the map out on the space she’d cleared on the coffee table.

  “What do you mean by other kinds of magical convergences?” Alec asked, leaning in.

  “Like portals or time slips and loops. Stuff like that,” she murmured, only half paying attention as she smoothed out the thick oily paper.

  “Portals to where?” he asked.

  When she didn’t answer, he traced a ley line on the map with his finger. “Are all of these still active? I thought most ley lines drained and dissipated over time only to be replaced by new ones somewhere else.”

  “Most of them are like that, transient. But not all of them disappear. The bigger ones can last decades or even a few centuries. Some only appear to dissipate, but in reality they shift along a certain geographic range. It’s kind of like magnetic fields, but ley lines are more affected by the topography of the region they are found in,” she said, poring over the map.

  “I always figured it was something like that,” Alec mused aloud, and Diana wondered if she should be grateful that vampires couldn’t tap into ley lines.

  “How often do you update these?” he asked.

  “We inform each other about changes as we find them.”

  “But this looks old, and there are no corrections,” he said.

  Diana tapped on the map. It went from featuring Western Europe to focusing on the south of France.

  “This is charmed. It updates if we will it to do so,” she said, flattening out the area she wanted to focus on more closely.

  Alec let out an impressed whistle. “Now I know how you managed to survive without a computer. This is remarkable. Aren’t you afraid of it falling into the wrong hands?”

  She gave a dismissive wave. “The people who would be the biggest problem are sensitive enough to detect major ley lines on their own. The witch clans keep their own maps. A ley line in of itself is not a problem. The practitioner is.” She pointed to an area outside of the city of Toulouse. “We need to look around here. There’s a major point of convergence at the base of the Pyrenees, but it’s been a while since we’ve been in that area. It’s probably shifted around since we were there last. It has a history of moving around. I’m going to get in touch with Logan. She spends more time in southern France than the rest of us.”

  “Why?” Alec asked, but his phone rang. “Sorry. I have to take this. It’s Daniel.”

  He went to the other room to take the call. When he came back, his face was drawn and pale.

  He started gathering his things. “There’s a problem with Pedro. Daniel is not sure, but it’s possible he tried to commit suicide. I need to go see him.”

  Their pleasant dinner turned into a rock in her stomach.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “He drank something toxic from under the sink,” Alec said. “Daniel isn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but Pedro served himself some bleach with dinner.”

  “I should go with you. But. . .we need to get to France. I need to update the others and get some gear together.”

  “I understand. And you said you’re not a healer, so you’re not going to do him any good. I’ll go alone and call in a healer I know to look in on Pedro. One with a record for reliability. Maybe they can do something. I’ll get the plane ready unless you want to try and find a fire that is capable of transporting you,” he said, pausing to look expectantly at her.

  His concern that she would go without him was written all over his face.

  “There aren’t any in that region right now that are big enough to ensure I wouldn’t be seen,” Diana reassured him. “There are always campfires and fireplaces but those generally have people around. The last thing we need is for me to end up on YouTube. I can’t tell if there’s someone on the other side, so I usually don’t travel that way unless it’s prearranged with one of the other girls. Exposure has to be avoided at all costs.”

  “Makes sense,” Alec said distractedly as he put on his coat.

  His gaze was distant as he kissed her on the forehead before hurrying out the door.

  Diana stood frozen in front of the closed door. She didn’t think Alec was aware of what he had done. He’d been a little disoriented, which was disturbing in its own way, too.

  And she hadn’t even thrown a fireball at him in response. Had the same thing happened a week ago the vampire would have gone up like a Roman candle. But she didn’t do anything right now because she liked him.

  Maybe more than like.

  “Are you in love with him?” Logan asked excitedly. Diana jumped.

  “For the love of the Mother, Logan! How many times have I asked you not to do that?”

  “If you don’t want me dropping in, you should have closed the window in the library,” Logan replied reasonably, tucking her shoulder length black hair behind her ears.

  The Air Elemental was dressed the way she preferred to dress when traveling the air currents: in a form-fitting mock turtleneck, dark jeans, and biker boots. She teased Diana about her ‘uniform’ but when it came right down to it, all of the girls dressed similarly when they worked. Form-fitting clothes and tied back hair were requirements for fighters—although Serin often did her best work in a bikini. Regardless, giving your opponent something to grab onto was a bad idea.

  “How long ago did you get here?” Diana asked in a resigned tone.

  “Only a few minutes. I was dying to meet tall dark and deadly, but he seemed a tad distressed, so I thought it could wait,” she said before smiling wickedly. “It also gave me a chance to spy and see if you would send him off with a kiss. And you did!” she crowed. “Well, almost. . .”

  “Are you six years old or something? We are working this case together. At most, we are friends. That last thing was a weird anomaly. He was totally distracted by some bad news,” Diana said, motioning Logan to the map. “I have a lead. I connected with the Mother. Kind of. It wasn’t like Gia described.”

  “How was it different?”

  Diana rubbed her head, remembering the pain. “It was a flood of images like she said. That much was the same. But there were so many, I could barely distinguish one from the next. It was like being in whitewater rapids and then being dashed against the shore. I could only grab a few images before I got spit back out again.”

  “That sounds exactly like what Gia described.”

  “Yeah. . .but she said she could feel the Mother’s presence. Her awareness of Gia’s attempt to communicate. Gia felt her guidance. I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel another’s presence at all. But it happened so fast. Maybe I just didn’t have enough skill to hang on long enough. It felt like my brain was being fried.”

  Diana put her hands on her head and propped her elbows on her lap.

  Logan sat down next to her with a thump. “Wow. I wondered what you had got up to when I felt that spike coming from your direction. What did you do? Set Boston Harbor on fire?”

  Diana smirked. “I decided the Colorado fire was big enough to passage to. I used the big fireplace in the coven house to get there.”

  “And there was nothing useful?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I saw a connection to the Burgess family. The witch we are looking for is Hillard’s illegitimate son or daughter. Not the one here in the states. I doubt Gerald is even aware of this one’s existence,” she said.

  Gerald Burgess was the current patriarch of the Burgess family. None of the Elementals particularly liked him, but they didn’t like any witches. And Gerald had kept the covenant. To their knowledge, he had never before failed to keep track of any of his heirs before. Even the illegitimate ones had his support.

  Logan frowned and reached for one of the full take-out containers still on the table. “That family hasn’t had this kind of trouble for centuries. They have a reputation for staying on the straight an
d narrow. I guess it makes sense the current generation has forgotten our warnings to keep track of their own.”

  “Yeah, but there wasn’t an image of who the child is now. I don’t know what they look like. I couldn’t even tell what gender it was. In the present day, I got a quick flash of a farmhouse. I’m hoping that’s where the kids are. The vamp and I spent the last few hours trying to define the location from the snippet I saw of the surroundings. We think it’s in southern France, somewhere near the base of the Pyrenees,” she said, moving to smooth the map again.

  “You can call him Alec. I know he’s your new BFF. No need to pretend with me,” Logan said.

  “I’m not pretending anything. We’re partners on this case. Possibly friends. That’s it,” she lied.

  She was trying to distance herself from Alec in front of Logan. But she had gotten pretty soft about him and felt the need to backtrack now.

  “Suit yourself,” Logan said. “Well, I’m not sure if it’s relevant anymore, but I have a lead on your insect pin lady. The wind whispered a location, nothing more. And it’s not in France.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Salem.”

  “Of course it is.” Diana groaned. “If a wannabe witch or outcast wants to play at witchcraft they always end up in Salem.”

  Few genuine talents called Salem, Massachusetts home these days. Today it wasn’t any richer in ley lines than any other part of the state. But at the time of the Salem witch trials, a large unstable line had run through that region and some genuine practitioners had lived in the area.

  One of them, a Delavordo descendant, started a whole heap of trouble that resulted in the deaths of as many as two dozen people. It was considered bad luck to live in the area if you were a Supernatural—something that became a lasting legend about the area even after everyone had long forgotten the details of what happened.

  “I can give you a lift to Salem right now.”

  “Thanks. Let me grab some stuff. I can text Alec to meet me there. And then we need to get to France. He’s getting his jet ready,” she said, pulling out Alec’s gift.

  Logan hopped closer. “Since when do you have a phone?” she asked, plucking it out of Diana’s hand. She whistled. “What kind is this? It’s huge.”