Windburn (The Elemental Series #4) (8 page)

“Yes, I’m fine. And don’t call me that. I’ve never been a princess, and wouldn’t want the title even if it were offered to me.” I pushed on his chest and he gave me some room. In his white T-shirt, jeans, and dark shoes he looked . . . human. I, on the other hand, looked like what I was—an Ender. But I trusted Ash. If he thought I could get away with looking a little different, then that’s what I was doing.

Thoughts of Ash brought the guilt back up in a roll not unlike nausea. I forced the guilt away and stood. I would not feel bad for loving Ash. Peta gave me a nod of approval.

“Why did you really come with me?” I stared at Cactus and he stared back. His face softened.

“I know you love him. I know you love me. I want to show you I fit in your life, Lark. That I’m good for you. The only way to do that is to be here. To be where I should have been all these years. At your side.”

My throat tightened, my ears rang, and I knew he was telling the truth as he saw it. I didn’t think, though, that he’d be happy with what the end result was going to be.

Peta broke the moment. “Let’s find this Reader. Do you know where in Bismarck she is?”

I shook my head as Cactus nodded. “How do you know?”

He grinned. “Griffin gave me something call an add-dress.” He held up a slip of paper.

I took it from him. “He wasn’t supposed to, was he?”

“No. But he pointed out we’d probably waste a lot of time looking for the Reader, and apparently he thinks you might try to stall for some reason.”

Embarrassed, I stared at the paper.

“Are you stalling?” His words were soft and gentler than I thought I deserved.

I looked up from the paper and made myself hold his gaze. “I don’t know. I . . . my father needs us to find him. The Rim needs us to find him. Bella needs us to find him.” I paused, took a breath and spit the rest out. “But I don’t know what I want.”

Oh, those words were hard to admit. Cactus nodded. “So we take our time. I don’t mind in the least.” He reached out, took my hand, and wove his fingers through mine.

Exactly as I’d done with Ash. I didn’t pull away, though. I stared at our locked hands. “Cactus, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. I trust you to make the right choice.”

Worm shit. I did pull my hand away then, and looked again to the paper with the add-dress.

The words really meant nothing to me—some numbers, 569—with a single word, Smith. To a human they probably made sense. I looked around. Where was a human when you needed one? They were usually like ants, swarming about and all but climbing over one another, there were so many.

We were at the edge of a large square building with a pole in front with a flag on top. The flag was covered in stripes and stars in the corner. I rather liked the look of it.

“Maybe someone lives in this box.” I took a few steps toward a double set of doors set into the box, and an alarm went off, screeching through the air like a flock of harpies gone mental. I slapped a hand to my side for my spear.

Peta leapt to my shoulder. “Nothing is wrong. This is a way for the humans to tell time.”

The shrieking ended as suddenly as it had begun and I lowered my hands. “Why do they not look at the sun’s passage? Why do they need a shrieking siren to tell them the time?”

What was wrong with them?

“Lazy,” she muttered.

The doors to the big building burst open and a flood of humans rushed out, laughing and yelling at each other, shoving and milling.

It took me a minute to zero in on what I was seeing. They were all teenagers, to the last one. Their life forces hummed around them like a buzzing beehive; they were like bees, not ants. Not unlike a beehive, they kept pouring out of the large boxed building.

I backed up a few steps until my back was pressed against a large tree that shaded a portion of the road we stood near. “How will we ever find her in this mess?”

Cactus took the paper from me. “I’ll see if any of them know what this means.”

Before I could tell him to wait, he ran into the crush of humanity. He wove between them with ease, and with a shock I realized in some ways he fit here. There was no fear in him. But for me the place was overwhelming. “Peta, why is it so hard for me to stand here? I feel like I have all these emotions, and—”

“That is Spirit. Human teenagers are rolling with emotions: angst, fear, hope, love and hate. You’re getting a rather large dose of it all.” Peta pressed her cheek against mine and some of the anxiety flowed away from me. Having her there was enough to help calm the emotions.

“I could never live among them, even if I were banished.”

“Do not even joke about banishment,” she said. “It isn’t funny.”

“Well, I’d still have you.”

Her silence was enough to send a chill through me. “Peta, if I was banished, would you not still be with me?”

“No. Banishment from the elemental world strips you of all your rights and familiars.” Her voice dropped. “I had one charge who was banished, Lark. You do not want that to happen. The madness would take you and then you would end up killing yourself one way or another.”

“What did he do?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know, but the talking helped keep the emotions of the humans at bay. Helped me pretend I wasn’t feeling the press of hundreds of teenagers’ fluctuating feelings swirling through me.

“He was an assassin of Fiametta’s predecessor.”

“How successful was he?” I didn’t recall ever hearing about an assassination attempt that had actually succeeded.

She snorted. “He was banished and Fiametta became the queen. What does that tell you?”

Cactus spoke with a trio of girls who even at a distance I could see he’d charmed. They giggled and flipped their hair this way and that as they batted their eyes up at him. My mind, though, was still on the conversation with Peta, about her charge who had been banished.

“Did you know what he was going to do?”

Peta let out a hiss. “I did not.”

“Don’t get your tail in a knot. I ask only because I know you. If you’d known, you would have tried to stop him. Right?”

“Of course.”

But there was a hesitation in her; she wasn’t sure. Her loyalty ran deep to her charges even when they were idiots. “I will do my best not to put you in that kind of position.”

Another snort, but she said nothing more. Cactus jogged back to us. “You won’t believe it, this add-dress is right here. This is a school, which means Giselle is somewhere in this madness.” He waved a hand behind him. “The three girls didn’t know her, though. I did ask.”

Peta’s head swiveled back and forth. “Look for her aura. It will glow like fireflies.”

I scanned the crowd. “There has been nothing that looks even remotely supernatural.”

“It’s not like she’s going to have wings and be speaking in tongues, Lark,” Peta said.

We stood there scanning the crowd for many minutes. Two older humans in suits approached. The one in the lead had mostly gray hair and a bit of a gut. “Can I help you two?”

“We’re looking for someone, a friend of ours,” Cactus said, his smooth talking coming into play. Perhaps he was the best companion for this journey. Ash would have glared at them and expected them to go away.

The two human adults raised their eyebrows. “A friend? Do you have a name? This is private property.”

Something in their tone, the way they held themselves, made me reach out and touch Cactus on the arm. “We’ll catch up with her later. Let’s go.”

I knew a territorial stance when I saw one. Either of us could have forced the men to their knees and made them beg for mercy, but that was not our way when dealing with humans.

Cactus gave me a questioning look and I tipped my head. We walked away, but the feeling of being watched lay heavy across my shoulders. “Peta, can they see you?”

“Yes.”

“But they can’t hear you.”

“That is correct. Unless I want them to. And I most certainly do not.”

We walked away from the school. The crowds thinned, along with the feeling of eyes on us. I glanced back. The two men were gone. I slowed beside a fence that surrounded a large green space behind the building. An open field of perfectly manicured grass but no fruit trees. No garden or flowers. How very strange to have grass, but nothing grazing on it. What was the point?

A figure darted out of the building, her body ablaze as if she were lit from within. “There.” I pointed as she ran into the center of the wide field. I grabbed the edge of the metal fence and vaulted it, Cactus right behind me, while Peta leapt ahead of us, racing toward the girl.

But we weren’t the only ones closing in on her.

A swirl of a black cloak ran after her from the building. Blackbird would reach her before us if I didn’t do something. Niah was right: we were not the only ones looking to chat with Giselle.

I flipped my hand at him, bucking the earth under his feet, but he used the momentum to leap forward.

“Damn!” I tapped into the earth and redoubled my speed. I had to get to her first.

Whatever Blackbird wanted with her, it couldn’t be good.

Whether he was there to take Giselle for his own uses or only to slow me in my search for my father, it didn’t matter. Either way, I had to stop him. A fireball shot past me and slammed into Blackbird, sending him backward in a tumble ass over teakettle. The girl cried out and fell to her knees. Peta reached her first and curled her body around her.

The Reader was barely into her teens, if her size was any indication. A child. Niah had sent us to a child.

I went to my knees in front of the Reader, facing Blackbird. “Stay down, Giselle.”

“Who are you?”

“Friends.”

“Friends don’t shoot fire at each other,” she said.

I didn’t dare look back at her. “True, but he is not our friend.”

Blackbird strode toward us as though he hadn’t been slammed with a fireball. Then again, he carried all five elements . . . it was hard to imagine what would hurt him. Maybe nothing but cold hard steel.

“Larkspur, you are really beginning to be a pain in my ass.” Blackbird came to a stop twenty feet from us.

“Consider the feeling mutual.” I stood and pulled my spear from my side, twisting the two halves together. I pointed it at him. “Time to leave, boy.”

His whole body jerked as if I’d hit him. A sore point, then? He had to be young; being called a boy would only bother a young man trying to prove himself.

With a grin I whipped the spear forward. “Tell me something: what do you want with Giselle?”

“I do believe that is none of your business.”

Needing him to make a mistake, I poked at him. “I’m making it my business, brat.”

A snarl escaped him, giving more evidence to what I believed. He had a temper and didn’t like people thinking he was too young.

“My lover wants to speak with her.” He spat the words out as though they cost him.

“You mean Cassava, don’t you?”

Blackbird lifted his hands and the wind around us picked up, a gust slamming into me and flipping me backward before I could anchor myself into the ground. I flew through the air, catching glimpses of the scene around me. Peta clawing the ground to hold Giselle firm. Cactus out of sight.

The ground rushed up and I hit it hard, landing on my hip and shoulder. Rolling, I was on my hands and knees in a flash. Forty feet away, Peta’s fur rippled as the wind hammered her. Giselle screamed as she slipped, her arms wrapped around Peta’s neck.

“Don’t let him take me!”

Propelled by the need to protect them both, I ran straight for Blackbird. He saw me coming and I watched the power lines climb his arms. At the last possible second I arced my arm back and threw my spear at him. It flew true straight for his heart.

He threw himself to the side, catching the blade in his shoulder. Crying out, he touched his arm and twisted his hand over it.

With a pop of air, he was gone, my spear buried in the ground behind where he’d been. The wind eased immediately, and I stood there, panting with adrenaline as much as exertion.

“He’s got a Traveling band,” Peta said as I approached them.

“Yes. Why would he use it now? Not that I wish he’d stayed, but it makes no sense.”

“Perhaps, he is a coward?” Giselle said softly. “My mentor told me cowards always run when they are first injured.”

Though her words were true, I doubted that was the case. I didn’t know what the reason was and that bothered me.

“What’s a Traveling band?” Giselle asked as she sat up. Her tawny hair was in disarray and her pale blue eyes seemed almost transparent as she took me in.

“Wait.” I crouched in front of her. “Did you hear Peta?”

“Yes. I’m a Reader. The rules don’t apply to me.” She gave me a tentative smile.

I held my hand out. “My name is Larkspur. And I am an elemental.”

She put her hand in mine. “My name is Giselle. I knew you were coming. You have a big job ahead of you. Maybe bigger than you even realize. But . . . the boy in the black cloak. Do you know him?”

Cactus jogged up beside us, panting. He had blood running down the side of his face. “That bastard threw me against the wall.” The wall was a good three hundred feet away.

“We were lucky this time.” I looked around, knowing I was right. We were in an open space, with humans on the fringes. Even now a few watched us. Blackbird wasn’t stupid, even if he was young. He was waiting for me to be weak and alone before he took me on.

“He will fight you soon. You will do something that will enrage him and it will push him over the edge. You’ll hurt someone he loves,” Giselle whispered, her eyes unfocused. “He knows you, though, Lark. He knows you better than you know him.”

Helping her to her feet, I chose not to say anything. Silence was often a virtue overlooked by those in a hurry to get their answers. Something I’d learned from my mother.

Peta shifted to her housecat form and I scooped her up. Cactus grabbed my spear from the ground where it had lodged and cleaned the tip off before handing it to me. “Where to now?”

I looked at Giselle. “Do you have somewhere we could talk?”

Giselle looked from me to Cactus and back again. “Yes, I think so.”