Elemental Darkness (Paranormal Public Series) (26 page)

Sip tried to talk me out of it, but I ignored her. I should have worried about the danger, but I wanted to make sure there was nothing still alive.

I wasn’t sure I was relieved or not when I realized that there was nothing at all. The animals were gone. There were a couple of dead Sparry Spirals, little obnoxious things that most resembled pigs, but otherwise there was nothing.

“Where’d they go?” I whispered.

“Maybe they got out in time,” said Sip hopefully. We looked around in the stalls and behind the barn. Sip quickly looked in the house, but came back almost in tears and refusing to talk about what she’d seen, just saying that she’d tackle me if I tried to go in. No matter how long we searched, there was no sign of life.

“We need to get back to Public,” said Sip at last.

I was still looking for animals or signs of demons, but all I found was a torn-apart child’s ball on the back porch.

I glared at my friend. “A family was just murdered, a family we were supposed to protect, and all their animals are gone, and you want to go home?”

Sip wiped her forehead. I could see that she was tired, but I didn’t much care at this moment.

“Charlotte,” she said, “they’re dead and they’re gone. I’m sorry, but wearing yourself out like this isn’t going to help them or us or the family we have to go protect next weekend.”

I shook my head defiantly. “I’m not waiting until next weekend. I’m going tomorrow.”

“You’re just going to disappear from campus again like they won’t miss you? You can’t take such risks. What if you’re caught and confined to Astra? Then who can you help?”

“Sip,” I said, “just leave me alone. I can’t be the only elemental and spend all my time holed up in Astra studying and pretending like there’s nothing wrong.”

Sip threw up her hands. “I can’t believe you think that’s what I want you to do. I’ve been here with you every step of the way,” she yelled.

“Well thanks for that,” I yelled back. “Fat lot of good it’s done us.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Sip panted. I glared at her and she held up her hands. “Sorry, poor phrasing, but you’ve been tired and irritable and you aren’t dreaming. What’s going on?”

“You think it’s easy being the only elemental?” I cried. “My boyfriend of two years and I broke up and I can’t even talk to him and you want me to walk around with a smile on my face all the time?”

I stomped away, tears pricking my eyes.

I went back to Astra alone. I wasn’t sure if Sip came or if she went to Airlee, because I closed the door to my room and climbed under the covers. Sip and I had never fought this way until recently. The stress of the war with the demons, and Lisabelle’s absence, had changed things. I felt tired and sad.

Tomorrow I’d have to apologize to Sip. She was only looking out for me, and I knew that. But before I did that, tonight I would dream.

It wasn’t what I expected. I fell into an uneasy sleep but somehow managed to remain aware.

Sip had brought out into the open something that had bothered me all semester about my lack of dreams; I had just had so much going on that I hadn’t taken the time to think very hard about it.

I thought of Keller all the time. Tonight, I wanted to dream of him.

I closed my eyes and settled back into bed, trying to relax.

But my dreams felt clouded. I kept my thoughts on blue eyes and strong comforting arms, but there was still nothing. Frustrated, I got out of bed and glared at the picture I’d hung between the two big windows in my room, then pulled it down. It was a peaceful scene of a field blooming with flowers of all colors.

Behind it I had hidden the Mirror Arcane.

Grabbing the Mirror, I closed my eyes and let its power sink into me, deep down, penetrating every layer, seeping into my mind, letting the mist wrap around my own fog, giving it a brightness and a clarity it hadn’t had all semester.

After a few minutes of deep meditation, I replaced the picture over the Mirror and got back into bed.

Closing my eyes, I simply tried to sleep.

I saw Keller almost instantly. Well, saw might be a stretch. I felt him. He felt the same. He felt just like I did, because we were one. I found myself smiling, and I reached for him, then frowned. He was closer, even closer than I had dared to think possible, but there was something wrong, something in the way. I reached for him again. Why was he so close, but I couldn’t touch him?

“Keller!” I cried, trying to get his attention. The picture of him was solidifying in my mind. He was sitting at a large desk, dressed simply all in black. He looked good in black. He looked good in everything. My hands itched to touch him.

“Keller!” I raised my hands and waved frantically, like an idiot, but he still didn’t see me.

He didn’t move. I wanted to scream in frustration. When it was clear that I wasn’t going to get his attention, that whatever sort of dream I was having it was not the living dream in which I could hold his hand, I forced myself to calm down. I examined the room he was in, looking for any detail that would give me a clue to where he was.

Keller was alone in a barren room. There was a red rug on the floor
, extending beneath the large desk at which he was sitting. I could see light streaming in from one side, but the window was out of my vision. I still had no idea where Keller was.

I don’t know how long I stayed in the dream, hoping he’d recognize me. But it was a very long time.

The next morning I woke up simultaneously feeling relief and frustration. I now knew that something was blocking my dreaming and that I could fight through it if I used the strength of the Mirror Arcane. I wanted to have a living dream, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t all semester, even when I’d dreamed of Lisabelle. But I didn’t know if even the Mirror would get me that far.

Maybe Lough and Trafton were having the same problem. I wondered how I’d tell Sip that the reason I couldn’t dream of Lisabelle was because of me and not because of the Nocturns she was with.

I decided to meet my friends for breakfast in the dining hall instead of eating in Astra. We rarely went to the dining hall now, not with fellow students so hostile, but I thought it was important that we not act afraid.

I had just started telling Lough about Keller and my dream when the Tabble lit up. I leaned over my breakfast to read.

“The known Traitor Lisabelle Verlans has been spotted,” cried the latest headline in the Tabble. I threw it down, only to pick it up again, hungry for any news of my friend. Had a she really been seen?

Lis
abelle Verlans, deserter of paranormals, was spotted simply taking a walk, of all the seemingly innocuous things. Some reports say she was actually holding a book, a BLACK book, obviously, probably with the names of all her future victims written out on its pages.

Obviously, when Ms. Verlans was seen there were several brave-souled paranormals who went to confront her, but she was gone before they got close.

Can anything better be expected from a gutter-dwelling traitor?

“Stop reading that drivel,” said Lough hotly. “What they’re saying is that they ran away crying like babies when they saw her. For no reason. She’s never hurt anyone. If they really saw her they didn’t stick around long enough to know what she was doing.”

I quirked an eyebrow at him, surprised by the anger in his voice. We’d been dealing with dumb Tabble stories all semester.

“Okay, she’s hurt Faci, but who hasn’t wanted to do that?” Lough said.

“I see your notorious friend is at it again,” said Faci, stopping at our table.

“Oh, Faci,” I said. “Speak of the devil.”

“Faci, you eat?” Lough said. “Shocking. I thought you scared food away.”

“It’s not alive,” said the vampire coldly. He tried to shift away, but not before we saw that he wasn’t even holding a tray.

“Right,” said Lough, shaking his head. “What do you want?”

“Since you are my teammate in Tactical, it is my duty to inform you that we have practice tonight,” said Faci, his dead eyes looking anywhere but at the dream giver.

Lough stared at him. “What are we practicing? How to walk around campus with our eyes open?”

Faci’s face darkened. “You’ll be there if you know what’s good for you. I won’t lose Tactical because of a stupid dream giver.” And with that he stomped off and left us alone for the moment.

“Practice,” Lough muttered furiously. “Ridiculous.”

Sip joined us not long afterwards, looking harassed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Sip shrugged. “I’ve been summoned to Oliva’s tonight. He wants to discuss my thesis. He thinks he might know a werewolf or two who can help me.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” I asked.

Paranormal Public did not have many werewolf professors. Sip’s parents, Hyder and Helen, thought it was because Public didn’t allow the freedom that most werewolves required. Regardless of the reason for the scarcity, though, it had left Sip with some gaps in her thesis for which she was having trouble finding resources.

“If you’re both busy tonight,” I said, “what will I do?”

Sip rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you behind on Professor Erikson’s assignments?”

It was true. After every class Professor Erikson buried us under an avalanche of homework, almost as if she was trying to keep us from having any free time at all.

“I guess,” I said dully.

“You could always go out with Darrow,” Lough suggested. “He might see your true colors and stop giving you puppy dog looks from across the room.”

I choked on my bite of eggs. Lough was right. Darrow often watched me, but I just couldn’t go out with him. I wasn’t anywhere near over Keller, even if we hadn’t talked in months now.

“Sorry,” said Lough, seeing my distress. “I was only kidding.”

I gave him a half-hearted smile. “I know,” I said. “It’s not you.”

“Anyhow, come on,” said Sip. “We have to get to class.”

As we walked, I told Sip and Lough about my dream.

“I don’t think anything is blocking you, Charlotte,” said Lough, “but you should have told me about this earlier.”

“What do you mean you don’t think anything’s blocking me?” I asked, unable to keep the edge out of my voice.

“Sometimes you don’t dream for a while,” said Lough, shrugging. “Trafton and I are mainly dream givers because of what we can do with waking dreams and others’ dreams, not because of the ordinary dreams we have while we’re sleeping.”

“Fine,” I said, “but I used to dream of Keller all the time and now I don’t at all. And what about Lisabelle? I saw her that first night and now I haven’t seen her since!”

“I don’t know,” said Lough slowly. “But I don’t know how a paranormal could block your dreams, and besides,” he continued, eyeing me is if I was about to hit him, “you dreamed of Keller when you were together. You aren’t anymore.”

It was like he’d punched me in the stomach. Sip gave me a sympathetic look, but she didn’t say a word. I could tell she agreed with Lough.

I fell into a subdued silence, frustrated that I thought I finally had the answer and my friends didn’t believe me.

I spent the evening doing homework while Lough was at practice and Sip met
with Oliva about her thesis.

Sip got back to Astra first.

“I can’t believe Caid’s still here,” said Sip as she settled in on her couch, getting comfortable in the living room that the three of us had been using as a headquarters. Before she joined me she had made herself tea, and she now cradled the steaming mug in both her small hands.

“It sends the wrong message,” I agreed. “It makes him look scared. Like he needs Public’s protections to keep him safe.”

“As the leader of the Sign of Six,” said Sip grimly, “I refuse to be scared.”

She took a deep breath and held it for so long that I glanced at her. In her hands was a white piece of paper that she kept turning over and over.

“Can you read this?” Sip asked finally. She handed me the sheet. I took it with a raised eyebrow, seeing that it had beautiful ornate writing on it.

“Sure, and what is it?” I asked. I had a feeling I knew, but Sip looked so happy when I agreed to read it that I wanted to give her a chance to tell me about it.

“It’s the Sign of Six’s new constitution,” she said, beaming. “Nolan said that since I was the better writer, I should be the one to do it.”

“Very cool,” I said. It was pages and pages long.

“I’ll leave you to it,” said Sip, glancing at me nervously.

I nodded and curled up on the couch and started reading.

The Sign of Six is an organization of paranormals. All paranormals who wish to work toward the good of the whole are welcome. Our title comes from the Artifacts on the Wheel, from which our power as paranormals was first derived and where it is still held most safely. The Articles on the Wheel are of paramount importance to our defenses against any and all forces that would wish to do us ill.