Dark Waters (Elemental Book 1) (7 page)

“Why does there have to be a distinction?” the guy
next to her asked. “Why can’t we have a job in the human world without giving
up magic?”

“There are two answers to your question. First, I
will explain that neither a wizard nor fae can truly give up their magic. Your
magic is part of your soul and it will only remain with you until you die. If
someone offers to take your power, they mean to either suppress it or kill
you.”

“Why would anyone want that?” Darwin asked with a
very serious expression.

“For some, magic is too great a burden to carry, Mr.
Mason. The second answer to Mr. Garret’s question is that there does not always
have to be a distinction. That is what this class is about; I can teach you
ways to use your magic in the human world. Those of you who want to live
primarily in the paranormal world should take my class in your second
semester.”

“What is the job market like in the paranormal
world?” the first woman asked.

“Not as widespread as the human job market. The fae
tribes, who try very hard to adhere to their traditions, usually shun everyone
outside of their tribe. Your best opportunity to work with them, if you aren’t
fae and from their tribe, is to be a peace-keeper. Shifters are great at
healing themselves in their shifted form, but accidents happen and they can’t
go to normal hospitals. Therefore, if you can learn their unique needs, being a
healer for them can be a great career.”

“Fae are normally the best healers,” Darwin whispered
to me.

“Of course, there is also the wizard council, but
there are only ever thirteen members. Although you can work for them, the only
way to become a member is to be the next in line when one of them dies. Now,
back to the matter at hand. Everyone partner up and spend five minutes each
talking about your job choices. Bounce ideas off each other on how you can use
magic in your everyday life.”

Darwin and I looked at each other and there was
silence between us before we both turned away from each other.

*          *          *

After class, we had time for a snack, so we headed to
the dining room. We had just stepped out of the castle when the shifter who had
challenged Flagstone blocked our path. “Can you really sense vampires?” he
asked, more doubtful than curious.

“Yes.”

“I’m Van. You might be able to help me find some
vampires to kill. What do you say?”

“No, thanks,” I answered, walking past him. Darwin
hurried to keep up.

“That cat, Henry… he’s your roommate, right? I would
sleep with one eye open if I were you. Cats can’t be trusted. He’ll eat you
when you die. Now wolves are another story; we protect each other.”

“Thanks for the heads up.” I rolled my eyes.

When we got to the dining room, Henry joined us and
Darwin told him about the vampire. Of course, he embellished it until it
sounded like the teachers needed
my
help. “He just zapped her fanged
butt out of here with his super wizard skills!” Darwin said.

Henry looked thoughtful, but said nothing.

After eating, Henry and I headed to martial arts.
From the inside, the classroom looked just like any other exercise room; it was
well lit, the floor was waxed wood with mats, and there was a mirror along the
far wall.

We were early, so we watched the instructor, who was
the Asian woman from the school board meeting, work with some other highly
trained students. Tanaka-sensei was extremely fast, fluent, and made what I
thought was a combative sport into what looked more like artwork.

I couldn’t say the same for all of her students. A
wolf shifter and Zhang Wei were sparring. As tranquil as the tiger shifter was,
the wolf was no match for him, because the wolf fought with anger and
desperation. When Zhang Wei kicked the younger shifter in the chest, the man
shifted into his brown wolf form. He snarled at the tiger shifter and prepared
to attack, but there was a guard at the ready. Stationed throughout the room
were men in black ninja-like suits. The closest instantly shifted into a
massive ball python and coiled around the wolf.

The wolf whimpered and thrashed as much as he could,
but the constrictor just squeezed harder until the wolf finally went limp.
Slowly, the snake shifted back into a man… with his outfit intact. I had never
seen a shifter who was able to save his clothing in a transition before.

The wolf shifter returned to his human form and Zhang
Wei bowed to his enemy, as if the wolf had fought honorably. Zhang Wei greeted
me warmly when he saw me and beckoned Tanaka-sensei to me. Then he introduced
me as his friend, which I thought was high praise from a near stranger who was
Chinese. Of course, I wasn’t particularly educated in foreign relations.

We did stretches to start with and learned the
routine exercises we would be using for the rest of the semester. By the end of
it, I was sore, but I was much better off than some of the other wizards. Then
again, all of the shifters made it seem like child’s play, including Henry, who
managed to appear elegant through the entire class.

It turned out that Zhang Wei was Tanaka-sensei’s
assistant. He was also extremely hard on Li Na, who was taking the class with
Henry and me. There were ten other students, but Li Na had to work much harder
just to get Zhang Wei off her back.

*          *          *

After dinner, we retired to our rooms. Darwin arrived
a few minutes later with a stack of books. Once he set them down, he took off
his gray hoodie and adjusted his sweaty white t-shirt. I studied his wrists,
arms, and neck, and saw no signs of abuse. “Why do you wear the hoodie when
it’s too warm for one?” Henry asked before I could.

Darwin shrugged. “I don’t like to be touched.”

Henry and Darwin began studying, but I couldn’t
imagine that it would do me any good. Instead, I pulled out my notebook and
tried to work on the case. Ten minutes into it, my notebook still had nothing
on it.

My instincts were normally uncanny; I never took more
than a week on a case unless it required long-term surveillance or computer
software. Here I was on my second day… I wrote down the information about the
five students who were killed as well as the vampire I confronted, just to get
something down. Then, because I couldn’t think of any more clues, I drew the
vampire I had seen… only, what I drew wasn’t right. My sketch resembled
her
more than the stranger.

Damn…

This was why I never got involved with supernatural
cases; everything was lost in my head and I would start thinking of Astrid.

I sat up straight, startled at the thought that
surfaced in my mind, and wrote down a question I didn’t know had been bugging
me.
Who is Vincent Kingston Knight?
I skipped a few lines. To find my
answers, I needed to know the right questions to ask.

Why are vampires killing paranormals?
Surely
they knew they couldn’t win a war against every single paranormal being. My
hand moved of its own accord as my instincts pushed against my consciousness. I
crossed out “are vampires” and wrote, “is someone.”
Yes
. It was a better
question; less specific, so it was less likely to be wrong.

Why hasn’t anyone threatened me over Regan’s crime
scene?
Someone knew what I found. Was nobody trying to keep it a secret? Or
maybe I was supposed to know. Maybe me finding her body was a threat in itself.
Back off.

Who here has anything to gain by giving
information to the vampires? Jealous classmates?
But the school was
probably closed to students during the time when the records could have been
stolen. I pulled a heavy book from my small bookshelf, snuck a glance at my
roommates to make sure they were engrossed in their own work, and then opened
it to the files I had gotten from Hunt the night before. Since my roommates had
been asleep by the time I was done with the meeting, I tried to get
fingerprints, but all five files were completely clean.

Why would vampires want to kill you?
Normally,
ideas came to me when I looked at pictures like this or studied crime scenes.
Vampires
were ruthless killers, yeah, but why
these
people? If it was because of
their power, why not go after the wizard council, the fae tribes, or the
shifter alphas?

I stood up before I realized what I was doing. “I’m
going to the library,” I said, discreetly slipping the files and pictures back
into the old book. With any luck, there would be texts on vampires. Maybe I
would come up with a new angle.

“Oh, I’ll go with you,” Darwin said quickly. “This
place is creepy at night and I need some more books.” He stood and grabbed his
hoodie.

I nodded, since there was no viable reason to argue.
Plus, he was right; it was creepy.

We wandered through hallway after hallway, finding
nobody and no library. “I thought you said you knew where it was,” I said.

“I do, bro. I was there earlier.”

Unfortunately, I had the sneaking suspicion that the
rooms were not always in the same location. Now, I had never rejected the
supernatural, but rooms that relocated at will were a little too much for me.

I heard a hushed conversation in one of the rooms we
were about to pass. Without thinking, I grabbed the back of Darwin’s hoodie and
pulled him to the floor, careful not to touch anything but his clothes. He looked
at me, startled, and I put my finger to my lips.

“Why are we hiding?” he whispered.

“Are we allowed out of the dorms at night?”

He considered it for a minute. “I don’t know. I
didn’t read the handbook.”

“Neither did I, so shut up and listen.” The door to
the room was closed, but the window into the classroom was open just a crack.

“We need to tell Logan that a vampire was in the
school,” a woman said. It only took me a second to place her voice. Professor
April Nightshade.

“I told you; he would shut down the school,” another
woman said. This was a voice I didn’t recognize. Her voice was sharp; the kind
that warned against any nonsense.

“If she got past his wards, then others can, too,”
Professor Nightshade said. “I trusted you the first time this happened, but you
didn’t do anything about it. Who knows how many vampires there could be hiding
in the school?”

“Who did you say uncovered the vampire?”

“Devon Sanders. I didn’t think he had an ounce of
talent in him, but he’s all the other students are talking about. He’s got some
psychic ability over animals and shifters, but---”

“Any shifters? Does he know what you are?”

“I don’t think so. Deja is too powerful to succumb to
mind tricks. She sleeps most of the day, but she did take notice of Devon at
the meeting. I don’t see what they have to do with each other. We should take
this to Logan.”

“No. He doesn’t fear vampires like the council, but
he would not think twice when it comes to the safety of the students. He would
shut down the school, the council would investigate, and what do you think they
would say about you? How will they react when they find out you’re still
alive?”

I heard footsteps and instantly backpedaled around
the corner with Darwin right behind me. Once we were a few feet away, I
stopped, causing Darwin to halt, and turned around. “Now we just act like we
are coming from the dorms,” I whispered. We were rounding the corner again just
as Professor Nightshade and Mrs. Ashcraft reached it. “Good evening, Mrs.
Ashcraft, Professor Nightshade,” I said as brightly as I could.

Professor Nightshade was clearly surprised to see me,
but Mrs. Ashcraft’s smile was natural. “Good evening, Devon. Isn’t it a little
late to be going for a stroll?” the deputy principal asked. She was the woman
who had been arguing against going to Hunt with information on the vampire.

“Actually, we were just heading to the library. You
wouldn’t happen to be able to point it out to us, would you?”

“Not a problem.” She pointed to a large, rounded
doorway in front of us. “That’s the one most suited to Circle One students. I’m
glad to see you are taking your studies so seriously. Have a good night.” She
walked off and Professor Nightshade followed hesitantly.

“That door wasn’t there a second ago,” Darwin
whispered.

I opened the heavy wooden door and hesitated. There
was no light.

“What’s wrong?” Darwin asked, trying to peer around
me.

“I guess it’s closed for the night.”

“The library doesn’t close, bro.”

When I stepped through the threshold, a torch on
either side of the door caught fire. The library was about
twenty-four-by-twenty-four and every inch of the walls was lined with ten feet
tall floor-to-ceiling shelves. There were also three columns and six rows of
bookshelves, so that the walkways had barely enough room for two people to pass
each other.

I pulled the torch out of the sconce on my right and
went in search of my book. There were no section headings, but I soon figured
out that the books were organized in a relatively normal fashion. Among others,
I found a section on fiction, a section of textbooks, and a section on spells
and potions. As I scanned for titles on vampires in the history section, Darwin
was pulling down every book that caught his eye, only to put it back a few
seconds later.

“Hey, check this out,” he said after a while. I looked
at the big, leather bound book in his hands. “This is on the history of this
place. Logan Hunt bought it in 1960 and made it into the school.”

“That’s not possible. Hunt would have to be over
eighty years old.”

He shot me a look. “Wizard, yo. Anyway, it says here
that Heinrich Baldauf, born 1850 in Germany, died 1876 in the United States,
was obsessed with the supernatural. He married when he was fourteen, but his
wife died within a year of unknown causes. He remarried a month later… and she
died within six months. Publicly, he said both girls were frightened to death
by poltergeists. There were no physical signs of injury, but the second wife
was documented to be severely malnourished.”