Chapter Twenty-Six
“No way,” said Lough, jumping up. He toppled a stack of boxes and a cloud of dust puffed into the air, but he ignored it. “That old psycho-bat-boss is helping the demons?”
“That’s not the exact words I’d use, but I agree with Lough,” I said. “Lisabelle, you must be wrong.”
“You think I’m wrong?” she cried. “How could I be wrong? She’s the one who hit me, drugged me, and brought me here. She visits every so often to let me stretch my legs and to give me a bit of stale bread. She has that hellhound with her. Crazy eyes. I’m NOT WRONG.”
I tried to let her words sink in. The President had been helping the demons all along.
“Why?” I asked. “Why would she do it?”
“She has darkness magic,” said Lisabelle quietly. “I don’t know how she got it. Maybe she was always a darkness mage, but it turns out I wasn’t the only darkness mage on campus after all.”
My insides churned. “I have to get my ring,” I said.
“You lost your Airlee ring?” Lisabelle asked. She was standing now, with Lough’s help.
“Oh, didn’t we mention that Charlotte here is the elemental that everyone is looking for?” Lough asked.
Lisabelle sat back down, wordless for the first time in her life. Lough explained everything and she listened, the look of shock fading only slowly from her face.
Finally I put a word in, hoping my friends could help me answer a question that had been nagging at me. “If she’s the one helping the demons, why would she want me to stay at Public? Why not just make me leave instead of putting me on probation?”
Lisabelle raised her eyebrows. “Keeping you here makes more sense than kicking you out. If she thought you were the elemental, she’d want you around where she could keep track of you. She had Keller help you so that it looked like she wanted you to learn.”
Lough nodded. “Lisabelle’s right. So let’s stop wasting time and go find your ring, Charlotte.”
“I don’t know where the hellhound is,” said Lisabelle. “I think it patrols.”
“We split up,” I said. “I’m going to the ballroom. You two check the upper floors. Who knows what else the President has hidden in this house.”
Before I left the kitchen, a rushing started to fill my ears. “Ouch,” I said, covering them. Lough and Lisabelle looked as uncomfortable as I felt.
“That hurts,” Lough muttered, covering his ears.
“What is it?” I asked, scrunching my face in pain.
“It’s demons,” said Lisabelle. “They’re coming.”
And they were.
In front of the three of us appeared a small globe of white light – Airlee’s color. It bobbed in the air like the owl’s eyes had bobbed the night before.
“What’s that?” Lisabelle demanded.
“It’s Sip,” said Lough. “We told her to contact us if Zervos was coming.”
“She doesn’t know he isn’t the one helping the demon,” I pointed out.
The globe was getting larger. It was now the size of a grapefruit, and the light started to pulse as one word came out: hurry. The voice was Sip’s, but distorted as it echoed off the walls of the empty white kitchen. As soon as the word was out, the light started to fade. I held my breath until it had completely vanished, then Lough waved his hand over the area where it had been.
“It’s like it was never there. You girls are talented,” he said appreciatively.
“Of course we are,” Lisabelle muttered, sweeping out of the room.
“I think underneath that rough exterior she’s really very sweet,” Lough whispered to me as we walked out of the room.
“You keep telling yourself that,” I whispered back. The truth was, I didn’t know if sweet was the right word for Lisabelle, but I knew she had a good heart.
We split up. I only paused for a breath to watch Lisabelle and Lough creep up the stairs. Then, steeling myself, I moved cautiously towards the ballroom. The only sounds I could hear were my own footsteps; I couldn’t even hear Lisabelle and Lough moving upstairs. But I still had to be careful. If the hellhound was in Astra, it could be anywhere.
I tried the ballroom doors. They were locked. I tugged on them, but they just creaked – and held.
I looked around for something to use to break in. Keller had used a key, but I didn’t have it. I vaguely wondered how he was doing at Dash. Everyone was probably cheering for him except Camilla, who would be cheering for Cale until he lost. Then she would start cheering for Keller.
I took a firmer grip of the door handle, calling my magic. This time it sprang easily to my fingertips.
I wasn’t prepared for what waited on the other side of the door. About twenty feet in front of me lounged a great black hound, identical to the one that had followed me over the summer. His massive jaws were open as he panted, whether with the warmth of the room or with eagerness to get at me I didn’t stop to wonder. At close range I could see that even his tongue was black.
At the opening of the door he sprang to his feet, snarling. His red eyes glowed as they locked on me.
I staggered backwards as the muscles in the hellhound’s shoulders bunched and its body coiled. Then, remembering what would happen if I failed here, I gathered my wits and what courage I had left and stepped forward, flinging the door closed behind me. The hellhound and I were alone in the ballroom, and it was ready to attack.
“You’re in the way,” I told it. Last night I had talked to a strix as if it could understand me, now I was trying to reason with a hellhound. Surely I was losing it. The hound just walked toward me, head lowered a little, red eyes never leaving my face.
“So, you should just move,” I suggested. He deserved fair warning. I was getting my ring, one way or another.
He snarled.
I shifted my feet, preparing to fight.
The black hound sprang forward, closing the distance between us in massive bounds. When he was fifteen feet away, I bent my knees. Anyone who had seen me in that moment wouldn’t have known if I was preparing for a magic fight or playing defense in a basketball game, but I didn’t care. I felt better bracing myself for the oncoming attack.
When the hound was ten feet away I sent a burst of power towards it, but without my ring I couldn’t control the power well and it bounced in front of the hellhound without touching him.
He slowed, but now he was only five feet away. I tried again. I missed again.
He snarled and lunged. I dove sideways, avoiding his snapping jaws by inches. He came again, and this time he hit me on my right side. The great body felt hot against my leg as if it burned with an inside fire. I covered my head with my arm, trying to call my magic. I didn’t know if I would have time before the beast bit a chunk out of my body.
Just then the hound gave a short howl of pain, and I peeked around my arm to see black fire coursing around it, attacking. The fire wasn’t coming from me.
I looked at the doorway and there was Lisabelle, leaning on the door jamb, concentrating.
“You should have let me deal with him to begin with,” she called. “I owe him this.”
“If I had known he was here, I would happily have left him to you,” I called back.
“Well, you clearly can’t function properly without me,” she retorted. “You should remember that next time. I have no idea how you’ve survived the last week.”
My ring.
I scrambled to my feet. The hellhound had all he could handle from Lisabelle. I raced to the case and touched it, and it sprang open for me. The artifacts were already blazing, and there, in the center of it all, was my ring.
The silver metal around the multicolored stone was already etched with designs, which meant that it had belonged to someone else. But I didn’t have time to wonder who.
I slipped it on and instantly felt my power focused and increased. Not just mine now, but that of generations of elementals who were coming together, concentrating my power and enhanc
ing it. I felt like I was floating. This is for my family, I thought. My dad, the other elementals, whatever had happened to them. I’m going to find out. And I’m going to finish this.
The hellhound was now on his side, wrapped in black fire. “We have to find the President,” I said, looking back at my friends. Lough was standing behind Lisabelle. Once he had given her the wand, there was nothing more he could do.
“We know where the President is,” said Lough. His breathing was hard, and his hands trembled a little. “Sip called again. Demons are attacking students at Dash.”