Chapter Twenty-Five
I wanted to run back to Airlee, but I didn’t; I had too much to think about. I had come up with lots of wild explanations for why I had done magic in Astra that Saturday morning, but none of them were because I was an elemental.
Now, because of Keller, I was sure. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know why, but I was. While I walked, I stuck my hands in my pockets. My fingertips brushed a piece of paper, which seemed odd, because I never put paper in my pockets. Frowning, I pulled it out. It was a bit of napkin from the dining hall. Written on it was a single sentence, scrawled in black: The demons are coming. – Lanca.
My stomach turned. She must have left it for me to find when she bumped into me, knowing that it was information I’d need. I didn’t have time to wonder at the vampire princess’s methods, I had to talk to my friends. I would have to find out later how Lanca knew I was an elemental and why she hadn’t bothered to tell me.
I started to run.
Sip would be in Airlee; I had to talk to her.
Breathless, I dashed into our dorm. I rushed past Nancy, who was competing in Dash the next day. She was surrounded by a small group of students, including Katie and Lauren Bells. Now I wasn’t sure I would make it to Dash, since I had other things to do that were more important than games. I hurtled up the steps and flung open the door to my room.
Sip sprang to her feet. “Are you okay? Where were you?”
I explained everything. It took a while, and at first, like me with Keller, she couldn’t believe it was true.
“Can you do any magic,” she asked, “without the Airlee ring on?”
I grinned. I had wondered that. There was only one way to find out.
Without a ring, I didn’t have as much focus for my power. I hadn’t performed magic during my Demonstration, true, but that was before I had spent a semester being trained. Now, I was confident and ready.
I took a deep breath and disappeared inside myself, searching for my magic. There it was, a blinking white light flaring inside me. I had never seen it so strong before. I pulled at it, trying to tease just the littlest bit out. It sprang from my fingertips to dance around my arm, expanding to include my chest, legs, and head. Sip was laughing and clapping.
I was an elemental.
I wanted never to stop. I loved the lights flickering around me, loved that I had control of them, but we were in danger, and there was work to be done, so with a palpable sadness I forced the magic back inside.
I tried to keep my lips from tugging into a grin, but I failed. I had never felt so good.
“Amazing,” Sip breathed. “You’re the elemental. There is an elemental.” She jumped up and wrapped her arms around me.
I nodded. “If I’m an elemental, my father must have been one too,” I said. All my life I had thought I was one thing, then I had come to Public and found out I was another. Now, after all the struggling through starting a mage college, I had found out something else again.
“This is bad,” said Sip suddenly, the full implications of this news having dawned on her. “You think the demons are coming here for you? Why?”
I showed her Lanca’s note. I hadn’t mentioned Lanca yet. I wasn’t sure how Sip would take the involvement of the vampire princess.
“And they got the professors away from campus intentionally?” asked Sip eventually.
I shrugged. “I don’t think anyone knows it’s me.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a pounding on the door and Lough burst in.
“What’s going on? Why did you come in here like a demon was chasing you?” He looked over his shoulder. “There isn’t one, right?”
Sip was rocking back and forth, she was so excited. She ended up telling him most of what had happened while I just sat and listened. When she got to the part about my being an elemental he just snorted, but then I performed magic that no Airlee mage had ever done, reveling in the new sensation of magic flowing freely inside me.
When Sip finished telling the story, Lough grabbed me up in a bear hug. He was laughing. “Awesome,” he whooped. “Awesome!”
“Lough, it means Charlotte is the target of demons. ‘Awesome’ is not really the right word,” said Sip.
“What about Lisabelle?” he asked, ignoring her. “If you’re an elemental, maybe you could use that as leverage to find her.”
“Lough,” Sip started, “she ran away.”
Lough shook his head. “Do you really think she’d run and not tell us?”
“What else would have happened?” I asked. I remembered him at breakfast. He had looked like he had realized something, but I hadn’t had the chance to find out what.
He rubbed his cheeks with both hands. “Zervos was the one who told us she had disappeared, right?” he asked.
Cold trickled through me like pellets of rain in my bloodstream. Zervos had been the last one to see Lisabelle. He was the one who had come to say she was gone. Now that Lough had pointed it out, it was so obvious it made me cringe.
“You don’t think Lisabelle got away?” I asked. I was kicking myself. I had just assumed that what Zervos had said was true. But Lough hadn’t. Lough was in love with Lisabelle and would do anything to find her. I knew what he was going to say before he said it. And I was sure he was right.
“Zervos still has Lisabelle. She never got away,” he said. “He must be keeping her somewhere.”
Sip gasped. “You think he would kidnap a student?”
“He murdered one, didn’t he?” I demanded.
“We have to find her,” he said. “We have to find her while everyone is gone.” He got up and started to leave, but I grabbed his arm.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “We go find her while everyone is at the game.”
“I’m going too,” said Sip.
“No,” I said. “You have to be at the game to watch Zervos. He’s still on campus. We have to know where he is.”
“So, you two are going to go into the professors’ building and just say ‘Hey Lisabelle, come on out now?’ Do you know what he probably has guarding her? The hellhound. Why do you want to have all the fun without me?” she asked.
“Maybe she’s in his private room?” I suggested.
Lough didn’t think so. His private room was in Cruor, and it wasn’t very big. “I think our best bet is the offices. There are all sorts of rooms there that aren’t used.”
“No, wait,” I said. “She isn’t at the offices.” I chewed my lower lip, thinking. “She’s in Astra.” With my ring. It made sense. I hadn’t been in Astra in weeks. Keller had said he hadn’t either. Once my punishment had ended, I had stopped going there on Saturday mornings. I missed it, but I hadn’t wanted anyone to think I was going for fun; it would have been too suspicious.
“How do you know?” Lough demanded.
“Because there’s some sort of protection around it,” I said. “I couldn’t get in. And it makes sense if the hellhound is in there. He’ll be ready for any elemental who tries to get in.”
Lough shook his head. “So how do we do it?”
“Lough,” said Sip, incredulous. “It’s a paranormal dorm! You can’t just walk in! And Charlotte thinks there’s a hellhound spell protecting it? You’ll have to think of another way.”
“Look,” said Lough, his jaw jutting out, “Lisabelle is in there. I’m not just going to stand here and hope she makes it out on her own. Yeah, there are hellhounds, crazy professors, and demons, but everything that involves Lisabelle ends in fireworks.”
I almost laughed. “Lisabelle would be proud of you,” I told him.
Lough grinned.
Sip sighed. “I still think it’s crazy,” she said. But as she eyed Lough’s set face and his arms crossed over his chest, she knew this wasn’t an argument she would win.
She took a deep breath. “Will Keller help?”
I shook my head. “He has to compete in Dash. There’s nothing he can do until tomorrow afternoon.”
?
??We can wait until after Dash, can’t we?” she asked.
Lough said we couldn’t. If we were going to sneak around campus, the best time to do it was when the whole campus was distracted: during Dash. Zervos would be at the field, so there would be no danger of his catching us breaking into Astra. Assuming we could break in at all.
“What if the demons come before the professors get back?” Sip asked. “We can’t fight them off on our own, particularly not if Zervos is helping them.”
“We could ask the other dorms for help,” Lough suggested. “You saw Camilla. She wants there to be an elemental as much as the rest of us do.”
“I don’t think we’re that desperate yet,” said Sip.
“No,” I said, “not Camilla, not the pixies yet, but I think we can talk to Lanca.”
“We can’t fight demons on our own,” said Lough as if he hadn’t heard me. “I mean, Lisabelle could, and we could try, but we’ll get trampled on.” Then he realized what I had said and gulped. “Wait, what? Lanca? She scares the shit out of me.”
I grinned. “I think she scares the shit out of everyone. And I think she likes it that way.”
Lough shuddered.
“When the demons come, everyone will fight. Until then our job is to figure out how to get Lisabelle,” said Sip.
“Alright,” I said, “I’ll go find Lanca.”
“A vampire? At night?” Lough asked. “Are you crazy?”
“Besides, we’re on lockdown, so there’s no way you’ll make it to Cruor,” said Sip, folding her arms over her chest.
I chewed my lower lip. I knew she was right. I glanced out the window and started to smile.
There, sitting on the branch of a tree not far from my window, was a dark owl, his eyes glistening in the night. He stared back at me. I looked back at Sip and smiled. “I have a better idea.”
“I hate it when you get that look in your eye,” Sip muttered. She got up and looked out the window. “Yikes!” she squealed.
I gulped. I knew nothing of the strix except that they were mean. Really mean. But I walked towards the window anyway.
There was cold air slipping over the sill as I slid the window up. “Good evening,” I said to the owl, feeling like a total idiot for hanging out a window at night and talking to an animal like he could understand me.
The owl’s huge gold eyes floated in front of me like globes of light suspended in the air.
“Could you give Lanca a message for me?” I asked.
The strix ruffled his feathers.
“I’m sorry, but could you tell Princess Lanca that the demons are coming? Maybe tomorrow? And that I know what she means now?”
The strix considered me. In future semesters I would have classes that went into detail about paranormal animals. Until then I would just have to hope that strix didn’t expect gifts before they would carry messages. I shifted nervously under this one’s gaze, but after a brief hesitation the owl pushed off. It was much larger with its wings spread than it looked when it was perched in the tree; I was glad it hadn’t attacked me. I could only hope it had understood me, and that Lanca would understand me as well.
“You done talking to animals?” Lough asked from inside the room. “Maybe we could get some real stuff done?”
As I tried to sleep, a million thoughts chased each other through my restless mind, but chief among them was that I was an elemental. The only elemental. The demons had spent years trying to exterminate them – us – me, and until recently, they thought they had succeeded. My dad was dead. All that had happened to me this year couldn’t have been a coincidence. Now they were coming after me to finish what they had started.
And I was relying on a bunch of Starters and some vampires for help and protection.
I was screwed.
I should have slept more, but as I chased sleep it remained one step ahead of me, so after lying in bed for a couple of hours I got up. Sip, who couldn’t sleep either, kept vigil with me. Now that I was looking for it I felt a badness coming toward me and I wondered how long it would take the demons to penetrate Public’s defenses. Not long if Zervos let them in. When I told Sip what I feared she said, “We can’t think like that.”
There was a gentle knocking on the door, and Lough poked his head in. “Ready?” he asked. “Everyone’s heading down to the field. I don’t know why. Keller has it in the bag.” In the belt of his jeans he carried Lisabelle’s wand, which she had left behind when she’d been arrested. His ring shone.
I looked around my room at all of Sip’s neon stuff and wondered if I would ever see it again. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I knew we were bracing for an attack, and it was a battle we very well might lose.
Sip hugged us both before we left. Lough and I would have to be careful, she insisted. We weren’t supposed to be anywhere but in the dorms or at the Dash field, so we had to stay hidden. We both knew that telling us stuff we already knew was Sip’s way of calming down. As we finally set out, she stood quietly in the doorway of Airlee and watched us go before heading over to the Dash field.
“I’ll let you know if Zervos leaves or if anything else happens,” she promised.
Lough and I were quickly soaked by the hard rain that had started falling before dawn. “Do you think Lanca got your message?” he asked, wiping back his wet blond hair.
“I have no idea,” I said. I didn’t want to tell Lough that even if she had gotten it, she might not understand what it meant. I hoped she did, though. She had to.
“How are we getting into Astra?” I asked.
Lough snorted. “You’re the elemental. It’s the elemental dorm. You figure it out.”
I punched him in the arm and grinned. “Fine,” I said. “I will.”
Even through the rain, I still thought that Astra was the most beautiful dorm on campus. For a long time the two of us stood just looking at it, hidden in one of the bushes along the path. There was no movement. There was no noise. It looked empty. It didn’t look sinister. And it wasn’t, I reminded myself. It was what was inside that was sinister.
“I can’t see a shield,” said Lough, squinting. “Are you sure we can’t just walk in?”
“It’s there,” I murmured, concentrating. I was sure of that. As an elemental, I should have been able to call to the power inside the dorm. It was there, ahead of me, surging forward, elemental magic. Instead of the white of Airlee or the silver of the fallen angel, it was a soft blue mixed with a deep burgundy, flowing everywhere I looked. Since the powers had been dormant for so long, they had had a chance to rest and strengthen. Now, at my calling, they rose up.
I blinked. The magic couldn’t reach me. There was something blocking its path that felt like a black wall. Opening my eyes, I could now see the defenses around the dorm. They were a mass of shimmering black. This was advanced magic, definitely not something I’d learned in Intro to Para Studies. But I didn’t have a choice. I would get in – or die trying.
“Wow,” Lough breathed. “I see it now.”
“Where do I go?” I asked the elemental magic. “How do I get in?”
In response, the magic disappeared. I felt its loss immediately. Breathless, I waited. What had I done wrong?
Opening my eyes, I looked again. Of course. There it was, a faint blue shimmer flowing underground. I now knew how we were going to get in; Lough and I were going to swim. I grabbed his rain-soaked arm and propelled him forward.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.” He didn’t protest. He was too busy staring at the black cone of magic encasing Astra, keeping everything out, and in.
“What are we doing?” he asked, when he saw that I was taking him around the back of the building.
“Looking for a pool, or a stream,” I told him absently. “I think.”
“You realize it’s December, right?” he asked. “We can’t go in the water in December.”
“Why not?” I demanded. I never stopped looking from side to side, up and down, searching for th
e way in.
“Because it’s cold,” Lough informed me.
“No kidding,” I replied.
Lough stopped. “Are you serious about making us swim?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, then this way,” he said, and turning on his heel he walked toward the small hill that sat to one side of Astra. We rounded the corner, and there, moving with the impact of thousands of tiny raindrops, was a stream. I followed it with my eyes. Lough was right. It led right toward Astra.
“Since some of the elementals were specialists with water, it made sense that they would have their own personal underground lake inside their dorm,” said Lough. “A bit spoiled if you ask me.”
“I didn’t,” I told him. He gave me a wet smile and I grabbed his arm again. “Come on. There’s no time to waste. Let’s find Lisabelle.”
At the mention of why he was there, Lough roused. “Yes, let’s.” He beat me to the water, pulling off his jacket.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said. “And I hope I’m better at holding my breath than I think I am.” He dove in. I followed him.
I barely heard him cry out, “That’s freezing,” before I jumped.
I hit the icy water and couldn’t breathe. I fought to the surface, my body shivering, and looked around for Lough, but he was nowhere to be seen. Taking a deep breath, I plunged again.
I tried to open my eyes, but the weight of the water made that impossible. Besides, my magic was there to guide me. Lough’s dream giver power blazed ahead of me and I swam toward him. I grabbed him and didn’t let go.
Everything about magic was new. I hadn’t known there was so much I was missing. Now that I could tap into elemental power, I realized that I had only touched the surface of what magic could do. Underwater, where no one could see me, I smiled.
As Lough and I moved along together, I didn’t even have to swim, because Astra magic was pulling me along with Lough close behind. But my hands and head were getting numb, and I was sure that my lungs would explode if I didn’t get air soon. It was only a small comfort that the water was starting to warm up.
Just as I started to panic, the magic pushed me to the surface. At first I wanted to resist, because I didn’t know where the water had taken us. What if it pushed my head into a floor and I was knocked out and drowned? But instead, I trusted the magic. It was my magic, after all. Elemental magic.
Lough and I surfaced in a cellar. There was a faint light filtering in from somewhere nearby, but my vision was blurred. The pool we were in was small and much warmer than the water outside. I smelled damp earth.
Lough came splashing to the surface, coughing and wheezing.
“Get…me…out…of…this…water. Now,” he sputtered.
“Where are we?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“We better be in Astra,” said Lough as he hauled himself up. As I placed my hands on the edge of the pool, dirt grated under my fingers. We were still underground.
“That worked well, don’t you think?” I asked.
Lough gave me a dirty look as water streamed off his shivering body.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s find ourselves a hellhound.”
“It might already know we’re here,” I offered. “Plus, you’re having way too much fun with this.”
“It’s a quest,” Lough said. “We’re saving Lisabelle. And you too,” he added as an afterthought.
Men in love. I rolled my eyes.
“Can you do anything about the light?” he asked.
I shook my head, but realized he couldn’t see that. “No. I don’t know how.”
“Elementals don’t have very useful magic,” Lough sniffed. I didn’t see what he did, but a second later a small light was shining near his hand.
I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the light. “Yeah, but dream givers are wonderfully useful.”
“There’s a door over here,” he said, pointing. He was right. Buried in the wall was a wooden door. A circular metal ring was its only handle.
“Think it’s locked?” he asked.
“There’s only one way to find out.” I walked over to the door. Taking a deep breath, I wrapped numb hands around the cool, rusting metal and pulled. Nothing happened. I pulled harder. To my surprise and great relief it swung open soundlessly. Beyond was darkness.
Lough appeared at my elbow, holding the light. Despite his brave words about finding hellhounds, his hand quivered slightly. The light cast shadows over a dusty wooden staircase.
“You first,” said Lough, sweeping his arm out in front with an elaborate bow.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Who says chivalry is dead?” I asked.
Lough laughed softly.
I took one careful, deliberate step into the stairwell, with Lough close behind me. “They need to teach us some practical magic,” he said.
“Like what?” I whispered back. I didn’t want the hellhound or whatever was in this dorm to hear us coming.
“Like, how to dry your clothes in ten minutes or less.”
When we reached the top of the stairs there was a door identical to the one we had already come through. Again I held my breath to see if it was locked, and again it opened without a sound. I took deliberate steps, pausing to listen. Astra was silent.
We came out in the kitchen. Everything in it was either white or steel, and the floors and countertops were still pretty clean from when Lisabelle and Sip had been coming to Astra on Saturdays. It was a large room, large enough to support banquets in Astra’s ballroom. Light filtered in despite the cloudy day and the grimy windows.
“Hey, this is nice,” said Lough quietly in my ear. “Good place for a party.” His soggy clothes dripped onto the floor.
“Yeah, Lisabelle would make one hell of a housewife,” I said.
At that I heard a faint banging.
Lough and I exchanged a glance.
“That was coming from the freezer,” he said, pointing. He was right. In the back of the kitchen was a large metal door to a walk-in freezer.
“We have to open it,” I said, hurrying forward. My muscles protested the quick movement; I was still cold and stiff from my winter swim.
“Wonderful,” Lough muttered. “Just once today I would like to be warm.”
The banging was getting louder.
“Don’t you want to think about this first?” Lough asked as I reached for the metal handle. He had extinguished the globe of light and was now standing next to me, his hands braced on his hips. “The hellhound could be back there.”
“Lough,” I said, “if you’re right and Lisabelle didn’t run away, but was kidnapped, why would the hellhound be the one locked in a freezer?”
One sharp bang split the silence. Lough lunged for the door. When his hand touched the handle I heard a loud hissing sound, followed by Lough’s cry of pain. He pulled his hands away. Red welts were starting to form across the palm.
“That’s magicked,” he informed me. “Be careful.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said. I took a deep breath and gathered my magic around me. It came easily now that I wasn’t wearing the Airlee ring. I nudged it into my hands, hoping it would offer some protection. Holding my breath, I reached out and took the handle.
Nothing happened. I tugged. Nothing. I tugged harder, still nothing. The banging was getting more insistent now.
“Put your magic into it,” Lough urged.
“I thought I was,” I muttered, pulling harder. I shoved my magic into the handle and the lock. With a groan, I started to feel it splinter. Encouraged, I shoved more magic into it.
Before I knew what was happening, the air popped and Lough and I were thrown backward. Gasping, I went crashing into a table while Lough hit the floor. The door was destroyed. Sitting in the freezer, which looked like it hadn’t been turned on in years, was Lisabelle.
Her dark eyes burned with a triumphant light. She tried to speak, but the gag made it sound like she was gurgling. Lough, quicker t
han I was, got to his hands and knees. He was covered in a thin layer of dirt, but he managed to crawl over to her on all fours. He removed her gag first, then unbound her hands.
“What the hell took you so long?” she demanded, rubbing her wrists to get the circulation back.
Lough gave her a tired grin. “You’re welcome for rescuing you.”
I had gotten to my feet by then. “Lisabelle, where’s the hellhound?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t really chatted with the thing. It mostly just breathes smoke, but I don’t think it’s here. I think she took it with her.”
“She?” I said. “Professor Zervos is really a woman?”
“No woman is that ugly,” said Lough.
Lisabelle glared at him.
“Lisabelle Verlans, you have no idea how much I missed you,” said Lough, wrapping his arms around her despite her protests. She rolled her eyes at me.
I let them have their moment. Lough deserved it. But Lisabelle had said her captor was a female, and I had no idea who she meant. Lambros? Anania? One of the other professors I didn’t know?
When Lough showed no signs of letting Lisabelle go, she gently pushed him away.
“Who is it, Lisabelle? Please say it isn’t Lambros….” I liked Lambros. Plus, she was a pixie. Some of the Volans students might hate me, but pixies weren’t known for conspiring with demons.
“You haven’t guessed?” Lisabelle asked quietly.
Lough and I shook our heads.
“It’s the President,” said Lisabelle. “She’s the one helping the demons.”