Elemental Light (Paranormal Public Book 9) (26 page)

“The problem has always been that the paranormals refuse to unite,” she said. “So many are power-hungry, but real power is only derived from respect, otherwise it’s just abuse. Your father always wanted respect, not power for its own sake. We both worked so hard . . .”

She paused and looked down, and I could see that her eyes were bright with tears. I wanted to go to her, but I couldn’t move.

She looked up as one tear slipped down her cheek. She brushed it away.

“Ricky,” she said. “How’s my sweet boy?”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s with Lanca. He’s stubborn.”

My mom nodded. “He came by it honestly.”

“I’ll take care of him,” I said, wanting Mom to know I was doing my best, and that in the end Ricky was all that mattered.

She smiled and stepped forward, and something gently brushed against my legs, but I didn’t look anywhere but at her. I wanted to drink in every part of her, to remember every feature and memorize every line.

She placed pale, cool hands on either side of my head and smiled. Her kind eyes burned away all the darkness. All I wanted was to stay there forever.

“We did all we could,” she said, her eyes still bright with unshed tears. “We really did. We just didn’t know.”

“Know what?” I asked. “You couldn’t have told me who I was?”

“You didn’t even believe you had powers,” said my mother. “In hindsight, maybe telling you that your father was a king would have been easier for you to understand, since at least that’s something real.”

My mother was kind to say it, but we both knew I would not have believed her. Kings and queens lived in fancy castles, I lived in Maine.

“Does your brother know?” she asked. “About us?”

“I’ve told him some,” I said. “Now that he knows he has powers he wants to use them. He wants to fight with us.”

My mom looked terrified. “He can’t,” she said hoarsely. “He’s still a child!”

“The demons will destroy us whether we’re still children or not,” I said, with some bitterness.

“I know,” said Grace. “I do know, and I’m so very proud of you for fighting. Astra is a safe place. The power will fight for its royalty, always did, always will.”

I felt there must be stories that she could tell me, and I wondered about Queen Ashray, about my father and his family. How many elementals had died in Astra?

A sad smile broke over my mother’s lips. “None,” she said, reading my thoughts again. “Royalty cannot die in Astra.”

“What?” I asked, astonished.

“Queen Ashray made sure of it,” she said. “Royal blood is too powerful to be destroyed in Astra, with its own ancient powers flowering through your veins.”

“Did Dad know that?” I asked.

My mother nodded, and now tears started to flow freely.

“Mom,” I said desperately. “Please don’t cry.”

She wiped a tear away. “It’s okay,” she said. “He was protecting me.”

“But didn’t you die in Maine? That’s where you’re buried.”

“Where my body is buried is immaterial to where my spirit exists freely,” she said. “And yes, I did, you know that, but I did because your father succeeded in protecting me.”

I nodded, too numb to speak. What my mother was saying was that Dad couldn’t be at Astra, because he had to protect her, and probably others. If he’d been at Astra he wouldn’t have died, but if he had been in Astra, then those he loved would have.

“Of course,” said my mother, smiling through her tears, “that means he was protecting you and Richard, too.”

It was strange to hear the name my mother had given my brother. He had insisted that no one use it after Mom’s death, but of course if he could have heard this conversation, I didn’t think he’d mind.

“When he comes to Astra,” I said, “can he come to the lake and see you too?”

She sucked air in through her teeth and her eyes filled with fear. “After all this is over,” she said, “I’m not sure I’ll still be able to be here.”

I nodded. I didn’t know how difficult it was, but I knew dream and living memory spells were incredibly difficult and incredibly delicate.

“I would love to see my son again,” she said. “I wish I could say more that would help.”

“Mom,” I said, “what happened to Dad?”

“I can’t tell you that,” she whispered, looking down.

It was then that I realized we were standing in water. I looked to the left and to the right, and I saw more water stretching away. But I couldn’t see what the water was surrounded by, I couldn’t see where we actually were.

“Mom,” I started desperately, sure that she wouldn’t deny me.

“No,” she cut me off. “I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. He was gone before I was, and I had only a couple of connections left in that world, and they didn’t know either. There was no help for me when the time came. Something must have happened to him, because I know he would have been there otherwise.”

“Can you tell me what you do know?” I asked.

After a few seconds’ pause my mom started to speak, but her voice sounded broken. “You were eleven and Ricky was three,” she started slowly. “He’d been visiting pretty regularly. It was lovely, and we had every confidence that we’d be together again soon.”

She sighed. I knew she was about to tell me about the last time she’d seen her husband, and at some point after he was gone she’d created a dream so that she could do just that. The terror she must have felt, knowing that her children were in such danger, I couldn’t even imagine.

“You have to understand,” she said, “it wasn’t that bad for a long time. If I had known you would be the only elementals left, I’d have done a lot of things differently.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Mom,” I said.

“Now,” said my mother, “close your eyes.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” I whispered. “I just want to stay here. It was too hot where I was.”

“I don’t think even you can take on a mass of Nocturns,” said my mother fondly. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Then let me stay,” I said. “Obviously I’m too silly to be on my own.”

My mother threw back her head and laughed. Oh, I missed that laugh. It was the first time I had heard it in years and yet for one moment it was as if I had never lost it.

“I’ll see you again,” she said.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I did what my mother asked. I closed my eyes.

Chapter
Twenty-Four

For a long time I felt nothing. I wasn’t hot or cold, I just felt a slight floating sensation. I remembered that she had asked me to get to Astra, but how was I supposed to do that? Was my body even here, whatever “here” meant?

Eventually I tried to open my eyes, and in that very instant I knew I was submerged in water. It poured into my mouth and nose and forced me to shut my eyes again. I could feel my hair, wet and floating, as if I was at the bottom of the ocean. I tried desperately to swim, but my arms wouldn’t move. At least I wasn’t on fire anymore, but this water didn’t feel like it recognized my elemental power. Instead it cocooned me and kept me still.

As I thrashed, I quickly realized that something very strange was happening. I didn’t need air. I was under water and not even trying to breathe. A suffocating feeling pressed on my chest as fear took hold of my heart. I couldn’t drown here! I wasn’t ready to die. I pushed again, desperately trying reach the surface. My magic felt far away and dead.

If it was the Nocturns doing this to me, they were doing a poor job of killing me, but they sure were making me panic.

Then, just when I thought I was lost, strong hands reached out and grabbed my arms. I fought, because I was so used to fighting, but the hands only gripped me more tightly. I felt them pull me up, and a smattering of voices assaulted my ears, but it was as if I was hearing them through the covering of a wool blanket. I took a deep breath and then another.

“Are you alright?”

The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t focus on it yet because just then I coughed as air replaced water, and I struggled to remember what to do with it. My eyelashes dripped like rain off a gutter, and I couldn’t have stood up for all the lightmares in the world.

“I’m great,” I tried to say, but it came out as a watery cough. There was something heavy resting on my head and I reached up to pull it off with my eyes still closed.

My cold fingers gripped the elemental crown, and an extreme calm instantly settled over me. Everything was fine. There was no more panic and no more pain. I had the crown, my skin definitely wasn’t melting, burning, or on fire, and even if I wasn’t among friends . . .

The voice spoke again and this time I recognized it.

“Are you alright?” Professor Luc Dacer’s voice asked me.

“I would be if I wasn’t caught in one of Lough’s nonsense dreams.”

“Dreams are never nonsense,” said Lough hotly.

“Charlotte, you’re safe,” said Dacer’s voice again through the fog filling my mind.

“For now,” came a woman’s voice.

“Thank you, Mother,” said Dacer, a little more harshly than was necessary.

Duchess Leonie sniffed.

“We should have left days ago.” This was another woman, whose voice I didn’t recognize. “Now our last hope has come to be stuck here with us.”

“We still have the Mirror Arcane,” said Dacer.

“But for how much longer?” The argument sounded like they’d had it so many times already, it was as if they had rehearsed it.

There was no answer this time. I sat up, feeling surprisingly good for having just died at the hands of Fire Whips.

All around me were pale faces. I blinked several times, but they remained the same.

“How’d you get here, Lough? Where’s Sip?”

“When I realized the entire group of Nocturns had attacked you, I wanted to go back,” said Lough, “but Sip appeared out of nowhere and ordered me forward; she must have gotten loose in the chaos you created. She’s gone straight to the library, which is a death’s errand if you ask me, but she said there’s something she has to do. Oh, and she didn’t ask me. Typical.”

An image of Lisabelle, tired and weak, flashed through my mind. I knew Sip couldn’t stand to see anyone in pain, especially Lisabelle. The werewolf was determined to save her roommate, but she was more conflicted than ever after witnessing Risper’s cold-blooded murder.

“Should we go get her?”

“I’m pretty sure Ms. Quest will be all right,” said Martha. The tiny personification of Public was peering at me through her horned-rimmed glasses. She wore her gray hair in a bun, and she had muddy brown eyes and a beaked nose. When she smiled, it looked like her entire face was full of teeth.

“You know that for a fact?” I asked timidly. The problem with Martha was that you never had any idea what would set her off. She was old and the only one of her kind, and she loved Public, but not the paranormals who used it.

She nodded.

“Yes, they haven’t found her. These Nocturns have no interest in the library, so it is deserted.”

“What about her getting back here?” Dacer asked. Apparently he had not ventured outside Astra.

Martha frowned. “There are patrols, but as a werewolf she should be able to make it. She’s been to Astra enough times, and she knows many of Public’s secrets.”

“She hasn’t shared any of them with us,” said Lough stoutly.

Martha gave him a glare. “Well if she had, they wouldn’t be secrets, now, would they?”

“Excellent point,” said Lough, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “So sorry.”

I clenched my jaw. I knew Sip needed the information in the library, and I figured she’d probably head to the archives next, which we definitely weren’t allowed into. But Sip had never let that stop her.

“The elemental rings are in the archive,” I said, the memory dawning. “I need them.”

I realized now that among the familiar faces - Dacer, Duchess Leonie, Martha, and Lough - there were several in the group surrounding us that I’d never seen before. A woman, who I could only assume was the one who had spoken before, now said, “Under no circumstances are you going to the archives. You have an elemental ring, what do you need another one for?”

I didn’t want to say it was for Ricky. I had no idea who this woman was or if she was trustworthy. That Dacer trusted her said a lot, but not enough for me at that point.

Instead I stood up, relieved that my feet weren’t shaky. However my mother’s dream had worked, it had done its job. I wasn’t about to die anymore. Of all the types of deaths I didn’t want to experience, burning alive was right at the top of the list.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” I said. “I’m Charlotte Rollins Nascaro, Queen of the Elementals, and I’m in my ancestral power source, Astra. You will just have to trust me.”

With that I moved past all of them. In my mind’s eye I was once again in the basement of Astra, where the stream flowed in from underground. I had memories of first semester, of sneaking in to find Lisabelle. Some of the changes that had happened since then were expected, and some were not.