My dreams sucked. I either dreamed Lisabelle was a murderess, or I dreamed of the President or of Keller. I wished there was some consistency instead of this back and forth between the very best things in my life and the very worst.
This time, it seemed that as soon as I had dozed off I woke again with a start, a cold sweat drenching my body.
“Trafton,” I murmured, lying in the makeshift bed he had set up for me. “I had a bad dream about Lisabelle.”
He tensed, his eyes shifting to the ground. “Recently?” His voice was strained.
“No,” I murmured. “Last semester. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I’m starting to wonder.”
Trafton continued to work on my bandages, but more in a way that said he had to keep busy than that he was paying attention to what he was doing.
“Tell me,” he said tightly.
I told him, and his face paled as I talked. Lisabelle was formidable, even to her friends, but the idea that she would kill us . . . well, it wasn’t even a real possibility.
“What does it mean?” I asked. “Is it some metaphor?”
Trafton raised his eyebrows. “Like for what?”
I shrugged, but it hurt, so I stopped moving. “For something innocent. You know, like, um . . . Yeah, I don’t know.”
“It’s bad,” he said, sitting back in his heels and lacing his fingers in front of him. “Darkness calls to darkness and Lisabelle has a lot of it. She probably doesn’t even realize how much energy she spends fighting it off, but she spends a lot.”
“Darkness calls to darkness,” I murmured. “It’s calling to Lisabelle?”
Trafton nodded. “She doesn’t have to give in. Some darkness mages don’t. Risper, for example.”
“But Risper . . .” I was about to say that Risper didn’t exactly live within the law. He was a great bounty hunter, which probably required him to do a lot of unsavory things and associate with a lot of unsavory paranormals. He was also Elam, a famed thief. Lisabelle did not have either of those outlets yet. But Trafton shushed me before I even got going on this thought train. It was a good thing, because I was too tired for this conversation right now anyway.
I spent the rest of the weekend sleeping. I wanted to read, but I didn’t even have the energy to hold the book, let alone read it. Trafton fixed it so that I would have no more dreams, and on Sunday night, as I was preparing to climb the stairs to my own bed for the first time since I had dreamed of Malle, Trafton sat down to talk to me.
“I think your mother was a dream giver,” he said. “Normal paranormals do not dream like this.”
Shocked, I tried to stammer out several replies, eventually landing on the oh so eloquent, “Huh?”
Trafton shrugged. “You don’t know, right? You know she was Airlee? Not Aurum, or Volans. Airlee, but that’s it. Yeah, maybe she was also Astra and you just don’t realize it. You never got to talk to her about it. I’m sure she wanted to tell you more, but the thing is. . .” - he scooted his chair forward, his eyes intense and his voice urgent - “the thing is, you shouldn’t be dreaming like you do. Sip and Lisabelle say you dream of Keller.” I blushed, but he was so intent on what he was saying that he didn’t appear to notice. “And of course you also dream of Malle. I can’t dream of Malle, not that I want to,” he said, grinning at my horrified expression. “And I’m a full-blooded dream giver.”
I sat there deep in thought. “It might fit,” I said eventually. “Dream givers were rare. She probably didn’t have much family, and part of the reason there aren’t many dream givers is that they get overwhelmed by most other powers. So, I might have some latent dream giver abilities. But fundamentally, I’m elemental.”
Was I really starting to find out who my mother was?
Trafton nodded enthusiastically. “You need to know more, of course. Maybe Sigil can help you with that.”
When I raised my eyebrows he shrugged. “Sip and Lisabelle told me you have a ghost. I can’t wait to meet him. Seriously, it’s the most exciting thing I’ve heard in weeks. They are so unusual!”
“He’s stuck in the attic,” I said indignantly. “Poor ghost. He’s been there for years.”
Trafton pooh-poohed that. “He’s a ghost. What more do you need in life?”
I showed Trafton out and then slowly climbed the stairs to my room. He had given me a lot to think about.
Chapter Fifteen
Monday morning dawned gray and snowing. It hadn’t snowed since we got back to Public, and I’d been dreading it. I bundled up warmly, with the added benefit of covering my shoulder. It was still stiff, but it was healing. I would have a nasty scar, mostly down my back. I would just have to be careful of the t-shirts I wore in the future unless I wanted to give a long explanation of why it looked like my shoulder had been dipped in acid.
My stiff arms and aching legs meant that it took me longer than usual to get ready. I didn’t realize how late I was to my first class of the week, How to Spot a Traitor Paranormal, until I was trudging through the white snow on campus and there were no other students in view.
I looked around worriedly. Vale’s lizards, the great black giants she had with her at all times, were said to patrol campus to make sure that no students skipped class. Since I was the only student out walking now, I sincerely hoped that was not true.
There was a prickling at the back of my neck, but everywhere I looked I saw nothing but the empty campus. If I hadn’t been walking in other students’ footprints, I’d have thought the place was deserted.
I remembered Sip asking why Vale couldn’t have just used hellhounds, but of course the answer was obvious. Hellhounds had trouble in daylight, as did demons and Fire Whips. The lizards were the product of the Baxter brothers, and they seemed to be trained specifically to terrify students. Sometimes I wondered who exactly was running this school, Vale or the Baxters. Just thinking about them made me walk faster. I was almost to Cruor, whose door was hanging open even in this weather because the vampires, except for Zervos, were safely sleeping, when I heard a loping gait behind me. It was all the warning I had.
The great shadow loomed behind me, covering the sun. I threw myself forward. I thought dully that if I kept getting attacked at this rate I would become great at rolling out of the way, if nothing else.
The lizard barely touched the snow as it landed and sprang again. I rolled over, trying to go to my left to protect my injured arm, then I kicked my feet out just as the lizard struck down. I couldn’t help it, I used a bit of magic to ward the thing off. I was lying on very cold water, after all, and I threw just enough of it in the thing’s great red eyes so that it faltered.
My red and chapped hands scrambled on the snow.
The lizard’s giant red tongue flicked out, looking a lot like a Fire Whip. Keller, who loved battle theory, had explained that to be precise with a whip was one of the most difficult feats a paranormal could master. The Fire Whips and the tongues of the lizards always hit their marks.
“How many lizards are there?” I’d asked Lisabelle when we first saw them. We both tried to count, but it was impossible. Somehow the lizards kept rotating, coming together and breaking apart until we were so confused we lost track. I had thought there were six, while Lisabelle had seen ten. Sip said she only saw two. Whatever the number, if you were walking around campus you could assume they weren’t far off.
Without thinking, I closed my hand around a stick that was lying in the snow and slashed it in front of my face just as the lizard’s giant tongue flicked out. Wrapping around the flimsy wood, the tongue pulled the stick out of my hand easily. I was trying really hard not to think how gross it was.
The lizard pulled the stick into its mouth, flexed its haunches, and taunted me with its giant eyes. I gulped, unsure where to go from there.
“What is the meaning of this?” a voice hissed behind me. Never in my life had I expected to be glad to see Zervos, but there he was, striding in my direction. He swished around me as I sat on the sno
w, my butt soaked through, and came to stand between me and the Baxters’ pet. His ring blazed as he stared the reptile down.
“Leave,” he ordered it. “Now.” The lizard cocked its head to one side, eyeing the professor. Its tail swished once, then again, as if it was sizing the vampire up. But eventually it turned around and glided away, keeping its eyes on Zervos until it turned the corner of the nearest building and disappeared.
Zervos, for his part, continued to stare the thing down until it was out of sight. Once I realized that the staring contest was about to end I wished it wouldn’t. I didn’t want to deal with Zervos’s wrath.
Sure enough, the moment the lizard’s tail disappeared around the corner my professor rounded on me.
His black eyes blazed, his nostrils were flared, and his jaw worked, but no sound came out.
“Just get to class,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t get in trouble for using your powers for something that was not ‘the greater good,’ or some such nonsense.”
“I rather think it was my good,” I said.
Zervos paused mid-turn. His eyes narrowed, he said, “Yes, well, you do spend a remarkable about of time thinking about yourself, don’t you?”
I was so flabbergasted I didn’t respond. I merely pushed myself to my knees, then to my feet. If Zervos noticed how slowly I was moving he didn’t feel the need to comment. I dusted the snow off my backside with as much dignity as I could muster and stomped into Cruor.
I hadn’t realized that we had an audience. All my classmates were standing inside the doorway staring at Zervos and me as I brushed past them. Sip and Lisabelle were in their normal seats, as was Dobrov, who hadn’t said a word to us since his sister and he had appeared on campus.
I wanted to go to him and see how he was doing, but given the purple and yellow bruise that was forming on his face I didn’t.
“Did the lizard almost kill you?” Lisabelle asked casually as she sharpened a pencil against the rough floor.
“Yes,” I fumed. “The nerve.”
“You’re late,” said Lisabelle, shaking her pencil at me. “You are the scourge of society, you awful paranormal, you.”
Sip giggled, covering her mouth with her hand as her purple eyes sparkled, and suddenly, with my friends there, the dungeon didn’t feel so dark. Trafton sidled in after most of the rest of the class had returned to their seats and mouthed, “How are you?” to me. I nodded, letting him know I was fine.
Zervos stomped into the room last, adjusting his robes.
“If we’re done with all the ridiculousness?” he said menacingly. “Let us begin.”
The next couple of weeks passed slowly. Whenever I saw my friends alone, which was when they snuck into Astra late at night to meet Lough, we discussed the artifacts on the Wheel. We all knew what was at stake. If the artifacts fell into the hands of the demons, the paranormals would be wiped out, and with the elementals all dead the only hope of enacting the Power of Five without me was with the artifacts. I told them what Malle had said, that she had two, and that the Globe White was the only one unaccounted for. I told Lough to ask Keller about it, but when he mentioned it Keller told him it was a myth and to stop being ridiculous. President Caid would arrive the day after the first Ultimate Tactical. Lisabelle made fun of the fact that it was called the Ultimate Tactical. She was confident there would be another Tactical next semester and that this was nonsense. I was not so sure. Vale wanted everyone on my team dead, that much was obvious, and Tactical was a perfect cover for the process of killing us off and getting the artifacts.
As the days went on I read my books and visited Sigil whenever I could, but if I asked about my parents, my history, he deferred, saying he would check for next time and that he had never really learned how to use the catalog anyway.
“This is too much homework,” said Sip, her shoulders slouching forward. We were at breakfast in the dining hall on a gray and bleak Friday morning. Even at this time of day the torches were burning, giving the room a flickering, smoky feel.
“Tell me about it,” said Lisabelle, bracing her chin on her hand.
“I am,” said Sip tartly, “because I know you don’t do your own homework.”
“I do most of it,” Lisabelle replied indignantly.
Trafton was sitting across from us. He had checked on my shoulder again, until Lisabelle made fun of him for being more of a healer than a dream giver. He blushed, but otherwise he ignored her teasing.
“I can’t believe your mother was part dream giver,” said Sip, buttering her toast. “That explains a lot.”
“Like what?” I said.
“Well,” said Sip, “why you don’t know a lot about her. Lough and Trafton are the only dream givers at Public, because there just aren’t that many. It probably means that she doesn’t have any family left.”
“Besides me and Ricky,” I said.
“Right,” said Sip, nodding. “Speaking of Ricky, how’s he doing?”
“Good,” I said. “He wants me to come home this summer or visit soon.”
Lisabelle snorted. “He has no idea.”
Just then there was a banging and a scream from the front of the room. One of the lizards had jumped up on the table and one of the Baxters was shooing it off as a couple of nearby students screamed.
“Have you ever heard of those lizards?’ I asked my friends quietly. “I’d prefer hellhounds.”
Lisabelle didn’t bother to look as she shrugged. “Nope, but there are all sorts of paranormals that are rare and nearly extinct. That’s why it’s called the sixth dorm, because not all paranormals fit into the neat designation of vampire, pixie, Airlee, elemental, and fallen angel.”
“I thought that’s what Airlee was for. I mean, it’s not just one paranormal type.”
“Yes, but there are lots of each, except for dream givers,” said Lisabelle. “The Airlees that started the dorm refused to live in the same building as lizards.”
“I still want to know more about where the lizards came from,” I murmured. “Have you noticed how they seem to get bigger when they’re around fire?”
Sip nodded. “I wondered if that’s what they feed on.”
“Does that mean they wouldn’t feed on paranormal flesh?” Trafton joked.
“Go find out for us,” said Lisabelle, jerking her chin. “Bye.”
One thing I was not expecting to do this semester was attend a party, so when I heard that Cruor of all places was throwing a rager, I was shocked, to say the least.
I had been reluctant to go, because I still felt animosity directed my way on a regular basis from some of my fellow students. They had heard about Malle telling the paranormals to kill me last semester, and there seemed to be a large group of them who thought it was rude of me not to be dead yet. Lisabelle, of course, had told me not to worry about it, but she didn’t mind getting stared at. Sip had taken a different approach. Every time a student walked past me and muttered something rude, Sip would bare her teeth and growl. They quickly got the message.
After meals in the dining hall every day, where there was always tight control, this party would be the first time I had been with lots of other students outside the classroom.
The crackdown on students at Public had been sudden and devastating. Many students had tried to cope, mostly out of fear, but it was increasingly clear that no fun would be tolerated. The Cruor vampires were also dealing with the stress of a new Rapier queen and the strained relations that had been out in the open since Faci’s father had tried to kill Lanca and wound up killing Dirr instead.
Now that Lanca was gone from Public, I knew only a few of the vampires on campus. One of them was Rake, but despite his size he kept his head down. He said that Faci had been made unwelcome in Cruor, and under the pretext of wanting a little fresh air, Faci now slept in one of the outpost buildings behind the Cruor castle. He had a friend with him, a thug if ever I’d seen one, but at least he wasn’t bothering the other Cruors.
>
The party that was now being planned was to be hosted by Evan Drapper. He was my year, just a sophomore, very blond and powerful. Back when Lanca and Dirr had been students at Public he’d been Lanca’s personal bodyguard. He had wanted to stay with Lanca at Locke, but she had ordered him to return to Public to finish his schooling. As the story went, Evan had had a fit, and Vital, Lanca’s new personal bodyguard and one of the best fighters in the world, had been forced to bodily remove him from the mountain.
Ever since then Evan had been a ticking time bomb, and the way he had decided to release some of his stress was to throw a very much against the rules party. I knew there had sometimes been parties at Public, but I’d never really been invited to any. Keller got invited to every single one, but since they were frowned upon he usually just hung out with me. Small parties that consisted of just members of your own dorm were fine, but since there weren’t any other elementals, I couldn’t even have had that kind of gathering.
But Evan was having a school-wide party, and it was for just one purpose - to see if he could get away with it.
Before the party my friends met me in Astra, mostly so that Lough could sneak in and see us off.
“It’s amazing that you haven’t been caught yet,” said Sip when Lough appeared.
“They aren’t even guarding the place,” he said in wonder. “They don’t care. You all could leave. I’m sure there’d be consequences for the students left behind, and maybe relations with the paranormal council, but you’d be fine.”
“I don’t think we can risk it,” I said. “I don’t trust them whether I can see them doing anything or not. In fact, it’s probably worse if there’s nothing to see.”
“Right,” said Lisabelle. “And then there’s tonight. Having a party is such a guy thing to do. Couldn’t he wait until the prom later in the semester?”
“You really think there’s going to be a prom?” Sip asked. “I can’t imagine Vale wouldn’t view prom as some sort of horrible debauchery and cancel the whole thing.”
Elemental Fire (Paranormal Public Series) Page 12
