Elemental Earth (Paranormal Public) (21 page)

“But I always knew about those,”
I had said, whining. “Magic is something I could never reach.”

“You just have to practice,” he
said, smiling at me. He was holding my hand and it was hard to concentrate on
anything other than his thumb rubbing small, warm circles over the web between
my thumb and forefinger. “Here,” he said, standing up but not letting go of me,
“I’ll show you.”

Well, okay! If you insist.

He moved until he was sitting
behind me, so that my back pressed against his chest and I felt his breath on
my shoulder.

“Close your eyes,” he said,
taking my left hand in his left hand and my right hand in his right. “Breathe.
Okay. . . .” His voice was soft, but I could still feel the slight vibration of
his vocal chords.

“What are you thinking about?” he
asked, having let several breaths go by.

“Pie,” I said without thinking.

He chuckled. “Is that supposed to
help you concentrate?” He moved our right hands to press against my stomach and
I giggled. “I don’t hear anything,” he said.

“I’m still hungry,” I said,
suddenly shy.

He pulled me closer and my breath
caught.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll concentrate
so we can go eat.”

“Yes, magic first, food later,”
he said.

“Pretty sure your priorities are
confused,” I muttered.

So he had helped me. We
concentrated together until it became second nature for me to simply close my
eyes, and there my magic would be.

“It’s a living, breathing thing,”
he whispered. “My mom told me to imagine it as if it were a coating all over my
skin. Your body is covered in green, and brown, and blue and gray,” he said.

“So, I have a fungus, some moles,
several bruises, and some very dry skin,” I joked. He laughed and my heart
lifted. I knew why he was teaching me this; it was because I needed to be fast.
I might be confronted by Nocturns or darkness, and I wouldn’t have time to
think before I fought. I would only survive if my reactions were quick enough.

“And you have to survive,” Keller
had whispered lovingly in my year. “You just have to.”

Now, as I rode high over the
ground in a sightless carriage, my powers came to life. They sparked as I
called to them, and they flowed easily out of me, joining the wind, greeting
the water, pushing the fire.

The earth was an endless strip of
power beneath me. It rolled and moved, some of it dry and some wet. I knew the
parts that had growth, clumps of trees and shrubs.

I started to feel strange and
pushed further. My body had never felt this way before. Neither had my powers.
As we continued to move, the trees and shrubs were fewer and farther between. I
was starting to feel dry and parched, like a husk that had sat for ages in the
sun. I licked my lips, but that didn’t help. Images of oceans and lakes, long
showers and rolling rain started to flash through my mind. I desperately wanted
water, but all I felt was dryness.

“The ground is dry,” I said,
still keeping my eyes closed.

“Uh huh, that’s what happens when
it’s winter and not snowing,” said Trafton. “I thought you understood winter.”

“It’s not winter here,” I said. In
the carriage the temperature hadn’t changed, and since we couldn’t see out
there was no way to know what the weather was like unless you were with an
elemental.

“If it’s not winter, where are we
and how fast were we traveling?” Lisabelle demanded.

“I’m, I’m sorry,” I said, “I
wasn’t paying attention until now.”

Lisabelle came to sit next to me
and took my hand. The magic that crawled over my body started to crawl over
hers. We had done this before, sharing powers to help Lough when he was caught
in the tower, and again the day before in repelling the hellhounds from outside
Golden Falls. It wasn’t supposed to be possible, but I thought it was the
strength of our friendship that allowed us to do it. Besides, neither of us
could use the other’s powers. Lisabelle could just see what I was seeing and
feel what I was feeling, kind of like she could see into my mind. She had no
powers with water, which was probably a good thing. If mages thought they could
take over others’ powers by, say, killing them, the paranormal world would
change indeed.

“We’re over a desert,” Lisabelle
breathed. “Shocking.”

I felt another body move next to
Lisabelle’s and Sip’s hand rest against my arm. “I can’t feel anything,” she
muttered. “How do you two manage that?”

The truth was that I didn’t want
to think very hard about the connection Lisabelle and I had, or why we had it.
So I said nothing.

“Well, we’re going down,” said
Sip, “so I expect that’s where we’re landing.”

“They’re going to try to kill us
in a desert and let the sun cook our dead flesh,” said Lough, his voice shaking
uncontrollably.

“They aren’t going to kill us,”
said Lisabelle in exasperation.

“You they aren’t going to kill,”
said Rake. “The rest of us are up for debate.”

“I wish they’d go faster,” said
Sip, her hand gripping me tighter.

We all held our breath as we sank
lower. I didn’t realize how tightly my teeth were clenched until I felt the
carriage touch down on the ground. With a sigh of relief I relaxed enough to
open my eyes. I had followed the ground all the way as it rose up to meet us.

We landed with a thud and
bounced. None of us made a sound, but I knew it was just form sheer force of
will.

“Phew,” said Sip, pretending to
wipe her hand over her forehead. “For a second I thought we were goners.”

“I’m sure we’re fine,” said
Trafton. “We’re on a school field trip, after all.”

“Saying we’re fine on a field
trip with Faci is like saying Lisabelle is only kind of sarcastic,” said Lough,
scrubbing his face and making his cheeks even redder.

“Well put,” said Sip, releasing
my arm and standing up. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Now.”

The light was blinking and I
found myself blinking several times in response. Sip pushed at the carriage
door, and it opened with a heavy creak. “Let me out,” she said in a rush.

The rest of us followed. Pearl
made sure to leave right in front of Lough, causing Lisabelle to give her a
dark look.

The ground felt dry and brittle
under my feet.

“Gather round students, gather
round.” Ferwick’s voice came from a short distance in front of us. The Golden
Falls students, accompanied by Faci, Daisy, and Camilla, were standing in a
circle around him. I noticed that they were all wearing glasses.

“I guess Daisy forgot to tell us
something,” Sip muttered.

“Shocker,” I said dryly.

As we walked over to Professor
Ferwick, I examined our surroundings. Even my magic had retreated, pooling
inside me, not liking the dryness of the air. It was an interesting way to
neutralize an elemental. There was no water here, and since I hadn’t known we
were coming to a desert, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

Anyhow, as soon as I opened my
eyes I wished I hadn’t. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Sip had
gone green.

My own stomach churned at the
sight of the barren wasteland they had brought us to. In certain places I could
see forms, like bones, sticking up from the dry ground.

“What are we doing here?” Sip
cried. “This is a battlefield. From one of the first battles between the
paranormals and the demons.”

“It’s an important piece of
history,” said Professor Ferwick, his eyes milky. Glancing at Camilla, I saw
that she had gone over to examine one of the piles of bones.

“These are pixie bones,” she said
with wonder. “Mixed in with hellhound remnants.”

“Yes,” said Professor Ferwick,
rushing over to the pretty blond pixie. The Volans fought mostly with the
demons in this war, many, many years ago, but it was a different time then.”

Camilla’s expression turned
thoughtful.

“Oh man, she’s thinking. Now
what?” Lisabelle muttered.

“What do you mean?” Camilla asked
the professor, ignoring Lisabelle’s insults.

“Well, the pixies are small and
known for trickery. They’ve grown in power and strength generation by
generation, little by little. They’re now respected on the field of battle, but
they’re still small. Back then it was the brute force of the demons against the
scheming and artifice of the pixies. In those days they also had a closer bond
with their kindred faeries.” Ferwick choked a little on the word faery, and I
wondered what he thought about the faeries who worked in the kitchens of Golden
Falls, or if he’d even noticed.

“Anyway, we must be heading back
soon,” he said, waving his hands. “So we must see and learn as much as we can
while we’re here.”

My friends and I walked around a
little. I didn’t want to, since the only thing to look at was the paranormal
bones strewn over the field, but Ferwick wouldn’t tolerate us just standing by
our carriage and the demon that had pulled it there.

“Who won this battle?” Sip
whispered, as she gingerly stepped over a particularly large heap of bones.

“By the looks of it, the demons
did,” said Lisabelle. “There are very few demon remains. It’s mostly smoke and
ash and some of that would have blown away, but there’s plenty of material that
wouldn’t have been moved by mere wind.”

“There are a few hellhound
bones,” said Lough, bending down and examining a rather strange tangle of
remains.

“I continue to wonder what use,
if any at all, dream givers are,” came a bored voice from behind us.

“And we thought we’d get through
an entire semester without wanting to kill Camilla,” said Sip dreamily.
“Weren’t we silly.”

“I’m not,” said Lisabelle,
looking offended.

We didn’t bother turning around,
but it didn’t matter, because Camilla came around to where she could face us,
then stood with her feet firmly planted and her arms crossed over her chest. I
hadn’t really looked at Camilla in weeks. Her gorgeous blond hair was as
gorgeous as ever, but there was something dark and stormy in her eyes that I
didn’t remember being there before, as ill-disposed toward us as she was at the
best of times. I wondered if it was because she and Cale were no longer
together, or because Cale was gone, or maybe she knew something about Kia’s
death that she shouldn’t.

“Dream givers are a lot more
useful than pixies,” said Lisabelle. “I mean, if you’re a pixie, the main use
of your powers is through DUST, and you let your best friend get murdered. No
one wants that.”

Camilla took a step forward and
uncrossed her arms. Her ring was still green, but there were starting to be
flecks of black in it. Worse, at the moment it was pulsing with unused power.

“You think you can goad me into
doing something stupid,” said Camilla. “You can’t.”

“You’ve already done something
stupid,” said Lisabelle. “You didn’t leave us well enough alone.”

“I’m just stating facts,” said
Camilla, spreading her hands wide. “I’m trying to get you to understand what a
waste of space your friends are. Oh, I know that for a small FEMALE werewolf
Sip’s alright, but in the scheme of things that doesn’t really say much.”

“I hate to break it to you,
Camilla, but you’re a female too,” said Sip coldly.

Camilla smiled indulgently, as if
she was talking to a child. “Yes, but it’s different for pixies. Our useless
dust powers, as you call them, are not dependent on BRUTE strength. Or on
sleeping.” She made a show of rolling her eyes.

Lough, who was standing next to
me, stayed quiet, but his hands were balled into fists at his sides, and his
nostrils flared.

“I dare you,” said Camilla,
turning to Lough. “I dare you to prove your worth. What good is a dream giver?”

“We do plenty,” said Trafton,
stepping up before Lough could lose control of his anger.

At this point we’d acquired a
crowd. Even Professor Ferwick had come over to see what was happening. For once
Faci and Daisy were just watching, but I had a feeling that they were eager for
one of us to do something stupid. Jewel, her masses of red hair pulled back,
stood a little apart, next to Nolan, and neither of them spoke. Nolan looked
uncomfortable with what was happening, but I knew we were all helpless to stop
it.

“Like what?” Camilla asked,
looking around and smiling at our audience. She was going to milk this for all
it was worth.

“We can see the future and the
past,” Trafton explained.

“The future, huh?” Camilla gave a
high-pitched laugh. “So, you knew we were going to have this conversation?”

“We can’t always see the future,”
said Trafton. “Just sometimes. We can send nightmares at our opponents and
dream ourselves and our companions to safety.”

“Ah, what you did during the
Tacticals?” Camilla asked. “That’s simply fascinating. I’m sure there was no
other way through than to dream it.”