Elementally Priceless (4 page)

She was silent, and I thought perhaps I’d lost my connection to her. Not good in the middle of a conversation.

You wish permission to ignore your neutrality yet again and try to stop this demon?
 I didn’t miss the bite in her words and I cringed. I was still paying for that, twenty years later. But I would do it again in a heartbeat; the consequences were nothing to me. Exemption from the throne? What did I care? Missing all the extra powers that came from being queen? Nah. Not my style.

Instead of couching it, I answered her as bluntly as I could. “Yes. I think this demon might be behind far more than he appears. If he makes a bid for the demon throne, we could all end up paying the piper.”

Larkspur, one day you will face the consequences for your rebellion, for all the revenge you sought in your youth. But that day is not yet here. I will not approve of this, but neither will I forsake you; you should know that by now, my child. I will never forsake you.
 Her words softened and I felt her love for me flow over my heart and soul.

That was all I needed. I leaned forward, pressing my lips to the ground. “Thank you.”

Do not thank me. There is someone coming you must meet and she will be at the center of this mess. You need to protect her, Larkspur.

She was gone with a whisper on the wind, and I straightened, telling myself to mind my manners and not cause more problems than were already on the horizon. With a snort, I jogged back to my shop. Just helping the person Orion wanted me to kill might be enough to stop him from his plans. At least, I could hope that was the case.

Back in my shop, Tom was still passed out. Not that I wanted him to come with me. Bad enough that one of us would be getting into trouble for breaking the rules. Besides, I was only going to the edge of my territory, no further. I didn’t need Tom with me. I slid my hand over the grip of the katana, debating.

Yes, it was for this stranger, but now, or later? I lowered the blade and backed out of the shop. Not now. Soon, but not now.

Around the side of my shop I headed toward my sleeping quarters. I wanted my own weapons, because even though I could make the ground swallow someone whole, I’d learned the hard way not to rely 
only
 on my abilities.

The flicker of movement in the window of my small house stilled my feet. I flattened against the edge of the shop and slowed my breathing. Who the hell would be brassy enough to break into my house?

A better question was, who the hell knew where to find me? Especially since this was my second visitor in twenty years, and both on the same damn day. That could not be a coincidence.

Holding my breath, I lowered to my belly. With a flick of my thumb, the earth opened and swallowed me so only a thin skim of dirt was over me. A perk of being an elemental tied to the Earth. I moved through the hard packed dirt as if I were swimming, the dirt like water flowing over my body, the grit and rocks rolled against my skin, reminding me of everything I was.

At the foot of my door I waited, reaching out with my senses through the wood of the building, the bare floor. I could ask the ground to devour the intruder whole, but then I would have a hard time getting any answers. The energy flowing from the stranger was intense, vibrating through the ground, straight into me, and I recognized it.

I hadn’t seen her for years. Without concern I stood, the dirt falling from me as if I hadn’t been laying in it.

Opening the door I didn’t bother with the cloak of darkness that would hide who I was. It wouldn’t work with this one since she was a Reader. Closest thing to a psychic the supernatural world had. That and she’d spent a hell of a long time with me, until my banishment anyway.

“Giselle, what brings you all the way out here?”

The older woman turned to face me. Her dirty blonde hair was streaked with thick white bands and though her energy was the same, I was shocked at the changes in her appearance. Even her eyes had aged, as though she’d lost vital spark deep within them. Again, it had been a lot of years ago that I’d seen her. Over twenty, and even though she was a Reader, someone who could see the future in others, it was easy to forget she wasn’t like me. Yet, as a supernatural, she shouldn’t have been aging that fast.

She’d aged, while I hadn’t.

She stepped close and hugged me. I held her tight, more happy to see her than I wanted to let on. I’d missed her, and thought about her often over the term of my banishment.

“Larkspur, it is lovely to see you, my friend.”

I smiled, and looked at her more closely. She was in her forties at best while I crept over the sixty mark, though I still looked as I had when I first met her—barely thirty. Again, appearances could be deceiving.

“You just happened to be out my way, looking to have tea?” I closed the door and went to the old fashioned stove. I blew on the small bed of coals inside, igniting them again.

“Tea might make this conversation easier,” Giselle said, her voice and body slumping with what I assumed was fatigue.

I motioned for her to sit and she took the only chair available, the only chair I had. I wasn’t big on company.

Being who I was, I waited for her to spill her guts. Patience I had in spades and it had served me well over the years. Even if within my own circles I was still considered a child.

She sat quietly while I prepared the tea. I remembered she liked the cream put in first, then a half teaspoon of honey, not sugar. I used my own blend of herbs for the tea, the smell of chamomile filling the small room in a matter of minutes.

After pouring the brew into the only cup I had, a ridiculously delicate china cup with blackberry vines scrolled across it, I handed it to her.

She took it, her fingers trembling. “Thank you.”

I nodded, saying nothing. Though I had to admit my curiosity rose with each passing moment.

Why did I get the feeling the requests of my two visitors would intersect?

Giselle took a sip of tea, smiling sadly over the rim before speaking. “There is a missing child, one that I would ask you to save.”

My eyebrows shot up. “I heard through the grapevine you were training a Tracker. First one in a lot of years, why not get him to find the kid?”

Her brown eyes seemed to flicker, and I recognized hints of madness. The spirits and her natural talent were not kind to her, taking too much of who she was with each Reading of a person’s future. “The Tracker I am training, she is too young, too inexperienced to face the creatures that hold this child captive.”

That did not sound good. “And you think I can get this kid out?”

She took another sip of her tea, then put the cup down but didn’t let go. Just held onto it as if her hands were cold. “You must.”

I burst out laughing. “I must do nothing I don’t want to, Giselle. You of all people should know that.”

“He is a child, yet already he is a Writer, and the words he writes are ripples of prophecy.”

I leaned my hip against the edge of the stove away from the hot kettle. “You don’t mean writer as in Stephen King, do you?”

Giselle’s eyebrows rose and I kept her gaze, refusing to blush. What did she think, I was a complete illiterate? Gods, it was boring on your own for twenty years, reading was one of the few pleasures I had besides my metal work. She cleared her throat and dropped her eyes to her teacup.

“No, I mean Writer as in the spirits speak through him, demanding he be their voice. It is far worse than being a Reader like myself. He is without training. I am shocked he has made it this far.”

That much I already knew. Writers and Readers, they needed help navigating the early years as their talents rose up. Without help, the often lost their minds to the information coming through them. “How is it, then, that he’s still alive?”

Her head snapped up and her brown eyes met mine. “What do you mean?”

I blew out a slow breath. So much of the supernaturals history was embedded in me that it was hard to remember I wasn’t really supposed to tell all I knew. Then again, this was Giselle and I’d known her since she was a child. And she was one of the few people unable to forget meeting an elemental. A perk of being a Reader, I suppose.

“Writer’s tend to be killed if they are not lost to the madness. Especially those who write through the ‘ripples’ as you call them. So I am curious if he is even alive.”

Her fingers tightened around the cup. “He must be. And he must be kept and hidden from the world, kept safe from those who would use him for their own gain as is the case now.”

A groan slipped out of me. “No, no, no. I am not taking on a kid.”

“At least find him, and find a place for him to be safe.”

I stared at the ceiling, the cracks in the wood evident from years of drying in the desert sun, the little sprouts of greenery kept trying to survive the heat in those cracks. “Why, why would I do this?” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help; it was more of getting into shit again. Giselle had been there when I’d rebelled, when I’d been seeking out those who’d destroyed me. She knew what it had cost me. Her request was far more deadly in some ways than what Orion had asked. Him, I could deny. Giselle was far harder to say no to.

“Because the world will rest on his prophecies. Because the Blood of the Lost is coming into her own and must have this Writer’s prophecies if she is to stop the end of the world from crashing around us. I know you believe this, even if the other elementals do not.”

Biting the inside of my lip, I thought over what she said and what she was implying. “Let me get this straight. I save this Writer kid, put him somewhere safe, and that’s it?”

“Yes. It should be simple for you, with your abilities and strengths.”

My jaw twitched. Giselle didn’t know what she was really asking of me. I’d been confined to Death Valley and was supposed to stay for at least another fifty years. A sentence I could handle, even if I hated it. If I left to find this kid, then I would be forfeiting any rights I had as an elemental.

I would be anathema and even my father wouldn’t be able to save me.

“I will think about it,” I said, unable to give her more. Her eyes flickered and again I saw marks of madness hover over her.

“Lark, please do more than that. I do know what I ask of you.”

Of course she did, how could I be so stupid? “Then what waits for me, Reader, if I do as you ask?”

“The world will be saved, and the Blood of the Lost will triumph over the demons that come.”

I shook my head. “No, I get that part. What happens to me?”

Her lips pursed tight and she stared into her mostly empty teacup. “It will not go well for you, I will not lie.”

“How bad?”

“You will lose your freedom. You will lose everything you are until the final battle when the Blood of the Lost will come for you.”

The blood slid from my face and pooled somewhere about ten feet below me. I knew what she was saying. “The oubliette?”

Mouth tight, she nodded and I swallowed the bile that rose in the back of my throat.

Save the world, and face the consequences: the oubliette was the one place I never wanted to be again.

The one place I couldn’t face. A small, dark, miserable hole where people were put as punishment of the worst kind. Cut off from the world, from light and the earth and everything good in the world.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

I didn’t give her an answer.

Rylee

WE DROVE THROUGH
 the night, and I was surprised at how well Caleb held up. Even when we stopped for gas, he didn’t seem tired. Of course, it was maybe a bit hard for me to judge because every time we pulled over my mind was far busier with the taste of his mouth and the feel of his hands roaming my body. His touch aroused and confused me. I loved that he seemed to want me, but I couldn’t think with his skin on mine. And I needed to think. Needed to remember what I was supposed to be doing.

“Rylee, you should have come to see me ages ago,” he murmured against my mouth. I pulled back and sucked in a deep breath, feeling as though I were drowning under some sort of crazy spell. Which was nearly impossible for me. Spells tended to bounce off, same as poisons and sickness. Another great perk from being an Immune on top of being a Tracker.