Elemental Light (Paranormal Public Book 9) (27 page)

Had I really just identified myself as a queen?

Lough quickly got up to follow me toward the staircase. His eyes were wide with shock, but a grin was slowly spreading across his face.

He hurried up the creaky stairs in front of me and pushed open the door, “Your majesty,” he said.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Wait until Sip hears this.”

I heard the others following us, still in quiet conversation.

Looking behind me I said, “Dacer, Duchess, may I speak with you? Where is Trafton?”

I saw Lough’s jaw instantly tighten. The two dream givers who were currently students at Public were not on the best of terms.

“Where are you going?” Lough demanded as we passed through the entryway.

“The ballroom,” I said.

“Don’t you want to check on the Mirror Arcane?”

“The Mirror Arcane is fine,” said Duchess Leonie. Dacer’s mother was small and did not look formidable, but I had seen her fight. She still held her cane, red-jeweled at the end, even though at Golden Falls she had made it clear that she didn’t really need it, and was just using it as a prop to throw off the Nocturns.

“I know it’s fine,” I said. “Because I left it in the ballroom.”

“I thought you left it in your room,” said Lough. “Behind a picture or something.”

“Yes,” I said, “well, I did, but at the last minute I changed my mind.”

“Oh, great,” said Lough. “Girls.”

“Why the ballroom?” Dacer asked.

I glanced behind me. The woman who had greeted us, plus Martha and four more people I had barely looked at, had already dispersed to other tasks. I was now alone with my friends.

“Because it’s the place where I was when I first knew I was an elemental,” I said. “There’s something powerful there. The thrones
. . .”

My throat tightened. My father’s throne, and now mine.

“You’ve found out an awful lot since we saw you last, haven’t you?” Duchess Leonie asked kindly.

I nodded. Yes, I had.

“We need to exchange news,” said Dacer urgently.

I nodded, but I didn’t stop moving. “We can,” I said, “once I have the Mirror Arcane.”

Putting it back in the ballroom when even my closest friends thought it was still hidden in my own room had been risky. They would have protected my room until death, but they wouldn’t have paid as much attention to the ballroom. I was counting on the fact that I had hidden the Mirror in plain sight.

I threw the double doors open and breathed in the familiar scent of old dreams and dances. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over a beautiful green, and the thrones stood waiting, as if they knew they would one day be filled again. My plan had been to close the drapes in case any demons were watching, but they were already closed when we entered.

I marched up to the throne. The seats stood on a raised dais, with a protruding wall directly behind them. On the wall hung a series of tapestries, in the middle of which was a small mirror.

“Brilliant,” Duchess Leonie breathed. “I would never have thought
. . .”

To hide what the Mirror really was, I had wrapped a blue cloth around its edges so that it looked like an elaborate homemade decoration. It would not have stood up to scrutiny, but I counted on the fact no one would look too closely.

“Your room was ransacked,” said Dacer quietly. “I hadn’t wanted to tell you before I saw that you still did have the Mirror. It’s not surprising that one of our number was afraid enough to attempt to retrieve the Mirror.”

“Martha and Sigil?” The Astra library ghost had worked hard to protect us since I had found him floating around. Ghosts, however, were notoriously difficult and a little crazy on account of being dead but continuing to exist as a sort of wispy presence that could talk to the living.

Dacer shrugged. “Martha has Public’s best interests at heart, not ours. All well and good whenever we aren’t under attack. Sigil . . .”

Dacer paused. “Sigil’s alright, a little manic, but alright.”

I closed my eyes and turned back to Lough and the Duchess in time to catch Dacer’s frown. “Aren’t you going to take the Mirror down?”

“No,” I said quietly. “If I did that, then whoever the mole is will know where it is, and for all practical purposes will have it. There’s no sense having a full-blown war before we have to.”

“She’s right,” said Duchess Leonie. “If they know we have the Mirror, they’ll all come, Malle in the lead.”

I wasn’t so sure about Malle being in the lead of anything anymore, not after what I’d seen at Vampire Locke, but I didn’t have time to explain that just then. “That’s probably why they haven’t attacked us outright yet,” Dacer mused.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well,” said Dacer, reaching up and gently adjusting the crown on my head, “there are thousands of darkness mages and demons outside this building. The rest are at Vampire Locke, but we wondered. With that amount of power, they should be able to obliterate us, even if Astra is supposed to be impenetrable.”

“You think they’re waiting because they want us to lead them to the Mirror?” I whispered. Dacer nodded. “It’s truly the only thing that makes sense at this point.”

“Right,” said Lough. He paused, seeming to think it through, then said, “They want the Mirror and they want their
Black Ring ceremonies, anyway.” Neither Duchess Leonie nor her son looked surprised at the mention of the ceremonies, so this clearly wasn’t the first time they had heard of them.

Just then Trafton came skidding into the room. He was as beautiful as ever, if maybe a little thinner. “Sorry,” he said breathlessly, running up to us. “I just had to see you for myself.” With that he threw his arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug.

Lough growled next to me. ‘You’re interrupting a top secret meeting.”

“I’m sorry, you can go all stealth on me again in a minute,” said Trafton pulling away from me. I saw his eyes go wide as they landed on my crown. “So, you finally became a queen.”

“Given that I haven’t even graduated from college yet, I feel like it’s still early,” I said dryly.

Trafton grinned. “You may be right about that, sorry.”

“What is it you want, Trafton?” Lough asked. Our days on the road, where we had been attacked and later captured, had made Lough more protective than ever.

“Nice to see you, too,” said Trafton, smiling at his fellow dream giver. Lough didn’t respond.

I was now getting a little nervous about racing off to the ballroom right after I had gotten to Astra; I didn’t want the mole to think I knew where the Mirror was or that I’d gone to check on it. But it was too late to remedy the mistake now, and anyhow, Trafton was insistently claiming my attention.

“There’s a messenger here for you,” he said. “I think you’ll want to see him.”

“Alright,” I said reluctantly. The truth was, I didn’t want to see anyone. But I followed Trafton into the entryway of Astra with my friends trailing behind. There stood about twenty paranormals, the entirety of the resistance at Public. And there in the doorway stood a man, yes, definitely a man, with broad shoulders and very dark hair, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Here she is,” said Trafton with his usual casual cheer. “Just like I told you.”

Keller Erikson turned around, his blue eyes finding my gray ones instantly.

Chapter Twenty-Five

We went into the kitchen. One look at my face and the paranormals who had been in the room went sliding away. My friends had followed us in, but they stayed in the background as I absorbed the fact that my former boyfriend had appeared in our sanctuary. I moved over to the large sink that faced a window and the field beyond. Keller took a seat at the island, which he had done a million times before, just in very different circumstances.

“I won’t join Malle,” I said firmly. “If we leave here they’ll surely take us prisoner.” Unsurprisingly, I was having a hard time looking at Keller. Lisabelle and her night visits were one thing, I would only ever act one way with her, but my ex-boyfriend, who now worked for his godmother the enemy, was another. I kept turning the faucet on and off, grabbing the dish towel and then throwing it back down again, and desperately trying not to eat the entire plate of cookies that Martha had left on the table. One, because I wasn’t hungry, two, because it’d be awkward, and three, because it would mean I’d have to get closer to Keller.

“She has given her assurance, through me, that she’ll do no such thing,” said Keller, his eyes serious. I snapped my eyes back to the ground. Oh, look, tiles, those are nice. Flecks of blue in them, no, that’s not the tiles, that’s Keller’s eyes. Get it together, I ordered myself. I used Sip’s voice for added emphasis.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said, looking up again and hoping that my face wasn’t contorted in sadness, desperation, or the embarrassing giddy happiness I felt at looking at him, which might give him the idea I’d dart across the room and throw my arms around him at any moment. “Why are you working for her?”

“She doesn’t feel that the paranormals are on the right track,” said Keller, sighing. There was something cold and distant about him that made me want the dreams back. “Look, she’s a family friend, and this has not been a normal war. All the types fight, which creates a lot of pain and difficulty for fallen angels, who are usually the peacekeepers and the healers. She wants to stop all that.”

“So she gets demons and hellhounds to do her bidding?” I crossed my arms over my chest to keep my hands from shaking visibly.

“Starting over is the only way,” said Keller.

“Okay, robot,” I said, tears pricking my eyes. I turned around and grabbed the dish towel again, desperate for something to do that didn’t involve standing there and staring at Keller.

Dacer, seeing that I was getting upset said, “You can hardly tell me to believe we aren’t at war.”

“Believe what you like,” said Keller, shrugging. How on earth could he be so calm in this situation? I was a mess inside, and it was starting to seep out. I started to think that maybe he really didn’t care about me after all, maybe he never had.

“Obviously there are battles, but turning down the invitation and refusing to come to the Ceremony wasn’t going to fix anything.”

“Did you volunteer for this assignment?” I asked, wondering why it had to be him to deliver this news. He was always so much harder for me to say no to than anyone else ever was.

Keller paused before answering. “Yes.”

“Because you wanted to see our faces when you informed us that we were invited to our certain doom?” Professor Dacer asked coldly.

The Museum of Masks professor looked furious. His mother, standing behind, looked calmer. Trafton’s expression was unreadable, but he shifted from foot to foot. He didn’t have the boyish charm I remembered, and that was just another thing to grieve over, another item on a lengthening list. There was nothing wrong with losing innocence, but it felt like there was something wrong when it was forcibly taken away.

“Are you alright?” Keller asked me, softening slightly.

I gaped at him and he flinched away from my angry stare. What a ridiculous question!

“No,” I cried, slamming my fist into my hand and looking wildly around. “No, I am NOT alright. How on earth could I be alright? In what alternate universe do you suppose that would happen?”

“I only wondered,” started Keller, looking sad.

“Uh huh,” I said. “You only wondered what?”

“I only wondered, because you’re always so strong,” he said softly. “She’s trying to break you and you’re letting her. Come in two days. Fight!”

With that he turned on his heel and headed for the door. I couldn’t watch him leave; it was all the worse because I hated it when he wore black. Somehow, lost in my own thoughts, it took me several seconds to realize that everyone was staring at me. He had walked away so easily!

Lough, on my right, gave me a sympathetic look, but in his eyes I could see that he didn’t think it would do any good.

“Sip,” I said. “Is she still at the archives?”

“What’s she doing there, anyhow?” Dacer asked curiously.

“Trying to save Lisabelle,” I said.

Duchess Leonie sniffed. “That girl isn’t savable. With that much darkness coursing through her she’ll never be back to the way she was before.”

“Sometimes you can’t go back,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean you have to shrivel up and accept your fate.”

Duchess Leonie gave a graceful shrug with her thin shoulders. “Darkness calls to darkness.”

Sip came back looking angry not long after Keller disappeared. Lough and I were both too tired and overwhelmed to do much besides look at her curiously. How she still had the energy to keep going at the pace she was setting for herself, I didn’t know.

“Oh, hello, rain cloud of acid,” said Lough as she stormed into the kitchen.

She glared at him.

“Food?” Lough offered, nudging a muffin in her direction.

“Do you think that will help?” she asked tightly, her purple eyes the color of amethysts on fire.