скачать книгу бесплатно
She sighed. My interpretation skills were rusty, but it sounded like an I’m tired and this is going to take too long to explain sigh.
A shadow passed over the sun and I looked up to see my wisp of cloud. There was definitely something underneath it, but not lightning. Something shimmering. Something paranormal. Something with a glamour that only I could see through.
“What is—” I was interrupted by my own scream as the cloud dove out of the sky, wrapped itself around me, and flew back into the blue.
still screaming when I ran out of air. Gulping a breath, I stared down at the ground. Tendrils of cloud shifted around me, not doing nearly enough to obscure the fact that the tree-filled landscape was much too far beneath us.
I forced back another scream and stared at my waist. Wrapped around me were two arms that both looked and felt terrifyingly insubstantial. I had no idea how something that seemed as light as the breeze was holding me up here, but I couldn’t think about that right now. I had more pressing problems. Like where the cloud was taking me and why. Even worse, tiny sparks were flying around us, and I didn’t like my odds for avoiding electrocution. The hairs on my arms stuck straight out, tingling with the energy crackling around me.
So, so bad.
I was ready to bid the Earth good-bye when I saw my small town beneath us and something snapped. That was my town. I was done being manipulated by paranormals. If this thing could touch me, then I sure as Hades could touch it. And if I could touch it …
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It had to be done. It wasn’t because I wanted to—this was a matter of life and death. Odds were it wouldn’t work anyway. I might be an Empty One, able to suck the souls straight out of paranormals, but I’d only done it once before. And that was different; the souls had been trapped and they wanted to come to me. This thing probably didn’t want to give me its life energy.
Still worth a shot. I threw my shoulder back, reached around, and put my hand flat against the first solid thing I felt, praying that whatever this cloud creature was, it had a chest.
I gave myself up, willing the channel between my hand and Cloud Freak’s soul to open. I want this, I thought, my mind screaming desperation. I need this.
My eyes flew open in shock, the soul crackling with dry, charged heat as it flowed down my arm and into my core, filtering outward until every part of my body tingled.
The creature let out a shrill cry of surprise and pain. It jerked back, breaking the connection; my head spun, drunk with the rush of new, strange energy.
And then we fell.
What a brilliant idea, Evie, go ahead and suck the energy out of the thing keeping you aloft thousands of feet in the air. But it was still holding it together somehow. We were spinning out of control, but we weren’t falling as swiftly as we should have been. If we could make it to the ground, we’d be okay.
It dropped me. I screamed, scrambling and grabbing onto its foot. It shrieked in frustration, kicking out, but I wasn’t about to let go. We were in this together. The earth rushed up toward us, a green and orange carpet of trees.
Before I could brace myself, I slammed through the canopy, leaves flying around me as I bounced off a branch and let go of my cloud’s foot. Another branch whacked my hip, slowing me enough that when the ground and I finally caught up with each other, it only felt like I’d been hit by a truck.
Every bone in my body had to be broken. There was no way I could be in this much pain and have any surviving appendages. I’d be in a body cast for the rest of my life. This was going to complicate cuddling with Lend. At least I’d get out of school for a while. And I’d definitely be off the hook for gym.
Electric tingling sensations rushed up and down my body, replacing the pain and making me feel buoyant, like my limbs were fuzzy and disconnected.
Oh, bleep. I was paralyzed.
Panicked, I leaped to my feet, running my hands over myself in horror. Well, duh. If I could do this, probably not paralyzed. Why did I feel so weird then? And where was Cloud Freak?
“Horrible thing!” a voice like the wind through dead trees rasped. “What has it done to me?”
Still covered in clinging tendrils of cloud, the small creature crawled across the dirt toward me. Although shaped like a person, it was delicate—almost childlike. Its eyes flashed brilliant white like lightning, but the rest of its features were blurred and indistinct; even its color matched the pale shade of cloud. To anyone else it would look like an animated section of solid fog, but my glamour-piercing eyes saw everything.
I took a step backward, trying not to stumble on the exposed roots of the massive tree kind enough to break my fall. “Hey, I didn’t ask to be snatched and flown off!”
“It took me—it took part of me away. Give it back.”
I backed up against the tree trunk. The creature levitated, turning upright and hovering in front of me. Thin traces of lightning surrounded it like a web. Its limbs blended in and out of the cloud—sometimes there, sometimes not—but there was an undeniable sense of power and force to it.
I was so out of my league here. I held up my hand and tried to look braver than I felt. “Leave me alone or I’ll take it all.” My voice trembled, part fear but part longing. My fingers tingled, my body yearned. A taste wasn’t enough. I wanted the rest.
No, I didn’t. I couldn’t have it. I didn’t want it. I wasn’t that person. I’d give it back if I could, but I didn’t know how.
Cloud Freak narrowed its large, flashing eyes at me. The air between us was dry and hot, charged with crackling electricity. It was going to kill me. I took a deep breath, wondering how much it would hurt, when the thing shot back up into the sky with a shrill blast of air. I watched as it went higher, occasionally veering to the side or losing altitude before climbing again. And then it was gone.
Letting out a trembling breath of relief, I leaned back against the tree. When I daydreamed about something happening to make my life more exciting again, this wasn’t what I had in mind. Clearly I forgot what being involved with paranormals—real, uncontrollable paranormals—entailed.
Fear.
Lots and lots of fear.
And now I didn’t even have Tasey with me for comfort. I stepped forward resolutely, taking stock of my situation. I had dropped my bag when Cloud Freak snatched me, which meant no cell phone. And while I was pretty sure we had been close to home when we fell out of the sky, who knew how far off course our fall had taken us? Still, how big could a forest be in the middle of Virginia?
No doubt I was going to find out.
By the time I hit a road an hour later I was tired, sweaty, and depressed. What were the odds that Raquel showed up the exact same time a paranormal tried to snatch me? What was she playing at, pretending to let me off the hook with IPCA and then coming back for me? I found it hard to believe that her goal had been to lure me out of the school so Cloud Freak could grab me, but it seemed the likeliest explanation. The idea that Raquel—who had been like a mom to me during my years at the Center—would do something like that broke my heart.
Fine, though. If IPCA wanted to play it like that, so be it. I stretched my hand and smiled, a vicious, smug thing. I could take care of myself now.
I shuddered, shaking out my hand to get rid of the tingles. No. I was never doing that again. Ever. I liked it too much.
My inner compass was better than I gave it credit for, because I managed to pick the right direction on the road. Practically crying with relief, I saw the turnoff to Lend’s house. My old house, before he moved out and I moved in with Arianna to avoid the awkwardness of living with my boyfriend’s dad. I ran up the long, winding drive and burst through the door into the family room.
Raquel was sitting on the couch.
“What the crap?” I shouted.
She jumped up and grabbed me before I could think to block. I tensed. And then I realized she was hugging me.
“I haven’t seen you in months and you go and get kidnapped first thing! I thought you were trying to be normal!” She pulled back, looking at me with tears in her eyes.
“You mean you didn’t send that thing?”
“Goodness no!”
“What was it?”
David stumbled into the room, a phone in his hand and a relieved look on his face. “You’re okay!”
“Besides being kidnapped by a living cloud and dropped thousands of feet to the ground? Yeah, I’m peachy.”
“So it was a sylph!” David pointed triumphantly at Raquel. “I told you they existed!”
Raquel’s lips tightened, and it was all she could do to hold back a sigh. “Yes, it would appear you were correct.”
“Wow.” David ran his hands through his thick, dark hair, eyes lit up with excitement. “Wow. A sylph. I think that’s the first confirmed contact ever!”
I raised my hand. “Umm, hello? Girl who was kidnapped by said sylph? Anyone want to fill me in on what it is and why it decided to give me an aerial tour of our fine state?”
“Sylphs are air elementals.” Raquel spoke quickly, shooting a perturbed look at David, like she wanted to prove that even if she hadn’t believed in them, she still knew more than he did. “Thought to be distantly related to faeries. It was commonly believed that they either never existed or had simply ceased to be, but this is because a sylph would never willingly touch the ground, thus making finding one impossible and looking for them an enormous waste of time.” She shot another one of those looks at David.
“Oh, come on, just because my specialty was elementals and you focused on common paranormals like unicorns and leprechauns.” David winked at me as if I were somehow in on this joke. “She’s always been jealous that I know all the really cool ones.”
Now I was the one holding back an annoyed sigh. “Air elemental, got it. Great. Now does anyone know why? You said they were related to faeries maybe?” All my annoyance squished itself into a ball of fear. I didn’t want the fey back in my life.
Neither one of them said anything. Then Raquel cleared her throat, her voice strained. “We could always ask Cresseda if she knows anything.” She said “Cresseda”—Lend’s mom and the resident water elemental—with a strange emphasis.
“No, we can’t, actually.” David shuffled his toes into the carpet. “I haven’t been able to get her to surface for a couple of months now. Ever since Lend moved out.” His voice was soft, but the pain underlying his words was obvious. I wanted to hug him. It was bad enough that he fell in love with an immortal water nymph, worse still that she only stayed human with him for a year. But now for her to abandon him entirely because Lend was gone? I couldn’t imagine the pain.
Actually, I could imagine it. I frequently imagined it. Some days it was all I could do not to imagine it. Being the mortal in a mortal/immortal duo was something I understood all too well.
I still hadn’t told Lend he was never going to die, though. The thought that he might give up this life—the one here, with me—to figure out how to be an immortal terrified me. I’d tell him, though. Soon. Soonish.
Eventually.
Raquel straightened, looking pleased. “Well then, this is something I can help with. I’ll get all my researchers on air elementals. It’s strange that it would show up now, especially given recent upheavals in elemental populations. We’ll figure it out. But it’s not why I’m here.”
I frowned. “Exactly why are you here?”
“IPCA needs your help.”
David’s voice was low and annoyed. “Evie is not going to get sucked back into IPCA. What was the point of telling them she was dead if you come here six months later and bring her back in?”
“I told you, the situation is different now.”
I held up my hand again, tired of them talking around me. “I can take this one, thanks. I miss you, sure, but I don’t want to come back to IPCA. You sterilize werewolves!” That was one of the many crimes I had discovered the International Paranormal Containment Agency committed in the name of keeping the world a safer place.
Raquel got a tight look around her eyes. “That practice is no longer in effect. As I’ve already explained to David, things have changed drastically in the time you’ve been gone. Our policies toward nonaggressive paranormals have undergone serious revision, including greater werewolf rights. Any and all eugenics have been done away with entirely. There was a lot wrong with IPCA—there still is—but you and I both know how much good it does. And I’m a Supervisor now, which means I have final say in most policies.”
I folded my arms, frowning. “I won’t work with faeries.” I hadn’t seen Reth since he had come to visit me in the hospital after I released the souls, and I never wanted to again. Him or any of the other creepy, manipulative, amoral, psychotic, insert-further-negative-adjectives-of-your-choice-here faeries. Especially after today, if the sylph was with them. I wasn’t about to draw their attention to me by holding hands through the Faerie Paths.
She smiled. “I understand. In fact, one of my first initiatives was weaning IPCA from faerie magic dependency. I think you’ll be pleased to find that we now use them a mere forty percent of the amount we used to.”
“Forty percent, huh? That’s still about one hundred percent more than I’m happy with.”
“We’ve got a way for you to be effective without any faerie interaction whatsoever.”
“Effective doing what?”
She glanced at David, who scowled. “I’m not having any part of this.”
“With that in mind,” Raquel said, a haughty lift to her eyebrows, “I’d appreciate it if you left the room. I can’t give classified information to two dead people, after all.”
I was confused until I remembered that David had worked for the now defunct American Paranormal Agency eighteen or so years ago, at which point he faked his own death to get out. That seemed to be a popular option around here. Of course, I didn’t fake mine; Raquel fabricated it for me, so that they wouldn’t come looking after I disappeared.
David huffed. “You seem to forget that I’m Evie’s legal guardian.”
“And you seem to forget that there’s absolutely nothing legal about your guardianship, considering all the documents were forged.”
“Don’t start with me about legality! An international organization acting with absolute impunity on American shores, not to mention—”
The front door flew open and Lend ran in. My heart did a happy flip in my chest, like it did every time he surprised me. His usual look, a dark-haired dark-eyed hottie, shimmered over his actual appearance, which was like water in human form.
And absolutely gorgeous.
“Evie!” He threw his arms around me, picking me up off the floor in a grip so tight I was suddenly aware that I had, in fact, sustained some serious bruisage.
I laughed through the pain, happy that at least I got some extra Lend time out of this whole mess. He put me down, holding me at arm’s length and examining me. “Are you okay?”
“Just some bruises. I’m fine, though, really.”
“How did you get away?”
Oh, crap.
Raquel and David gave me matching puzzled looks. “How did you get away?” Raquel asked. In their eagerness to bicker they had neglected to ask me. I kind of preferred that.
I bit my lip. “I, well, we were high? Really, really high. And it was this weird cloud and lightning and faerie thing. I didn’t know where it was taking me or why, and I was so scared I did the only thing I could think of.”
“Which was?” Lend prodded, worry shadowing his face.
I shrugged, a small, guilty gesture. “I took some.” Hating the concern in his eyes, I rushed on. “Only a little bit—not enough to hurt it, really, just enough to surprise it, and then we fell, and it tried to drop me, but I grabbed on and some trees broke my fall. And afterward the Cloud Freak was okay, really, it was. Just kind of pissed. And then it flew off.” I didn’t mention the erratic flight pattern. It was probably woozy.
My story was greeted with dead silence. And suddenly instead of feeling guilty, I was downright mad. Who were they to judge me? It’s not like I was going all Vivian, sucking the life out of everything around me. “I didn’t have any other options! You should be glad I had a way to defend myself.”
Lend quickly shook his head, squeezing my hand. “I am. Really. I just remember what it did to you before, and I worry that—”
“You don’t need to! It was barely anything. Promise.” Vivian had gone crazy and sucked the souls out of every paranormal she could find, under the guise of “freeing” them from this world, but really because she liked how it made her feel. Having all those souls in me after I took them from her—for a few minutes I was an immortal. It was strange and wonderful and dizzying to be that powerful, that disconnected from my mortal life. For a terrible moment I was tempted to abandon mortality entirely … to take Lend’s soul away from him. I didn’t like to think about it too much.
“Is it still inside you?” Lend asked.
I hadn’t even thought to look. A nervous pit formed in my stomach as I held out my arms, searching for anything under my skin. Nothing. But there—a tiny spark under my palm. And then it was gone. It was probably nothing. Definitely nothing.
“Nope,” I said with certainty. “Must not have taken enough for it to have an effect. Can’t see anything but plain old Evie.”
Lend grinned, pulling me in closer. “You’ve never been plain.”
David cleared his throat. “Well then, as long as you’re okay, that’s what’s important. Why don’t you two go get something to eat?”
Raquel’s lips pursed in annoyance. Apparently driving her crazy was a father-son thing for the Pirellos. Lend had the same knack for it. “I haven’t finished speaking with her,” Raquel said.
David looked ready to argue otherwise, so I jumped in. “Relax, it’s okay. She can tell me what she needs to; what’s it going to hurt?”
Lend and David wore matching frowns. There was no way Raquel and I would be able to have an actual conversation. And, unlike Lend and his dad, I liked her. A lot. I wanted to know how she’d been, find out how things went after I left, stuff like that. Suddenly my old life was sitting in the room with me, and I realized I missed parts of it.
Lish, especially, but she was gone forever.
I turned to Lend. “Why don’t you go see your mom? Ask her if she knows anything about the sylph.”
