Free Elemental Earth (Paranormal Public) by Maddy Edwards Page B

Lough tried to comfort her. Lisabelle was standing a couple of paces away,
her face a worried mask.
    “This is the first time I haven’t
been able to help her,” she told me quietly, glancing at Sip. The small fire
that was still lit in the center of our safety zone cast strange shadows on her
face. I was still shaken from Keller’s anger at me, which made no sense.
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    Lisabelle glanced at Sip and then
away. “She’s so small and kind. She always sees the best in people. Today she
almost died. She doesn’t deserve any of this. We all almost died today,” said Lisabelle.
“I’m okay with dying. I’m not okay with you and Sip dying.”
    “It’s the nature of war,” I said
quietly, although I wasn’t sure if that was all there was to it. Lisabelle gave
me an angry look.
    “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t Faci,
but someone sold us out,” she said. “Probably someone at Public. The demons
knew we were coming. They were waiting for us and they would have killed all of
us if they could have. On of these times we’ll need more luck even than today,
and it won’t be there for us, and then what will happen?”
     
    It was almost morning when I
decided to stop waiting for Keller to come to me.
    He was sitting by himself near
the fire, while the rest of our friends talked in hushed tones. Zervos was
standing where he had been the night before, as if he was waiting for Faci to
come back. The vampire had stormed away from our shields and we’d not seen him
since.
    “What was that about?” I
demanded, sitting down next to him. I was all set and ready to defend myself,
thinking that he was angry because I hadn’t lowered the shield for Faci. What
he said instead surprised me.
    “You could have been killed,” he
said, his eyes filled with shadows.
    I moved to touch him, but he
backed away.
    “You could have been killed. It’s
this constant danger we’re all in. My parents spoke to me about it, about how
we’d never have peace as long as you were the only elemental.” He said it
softly, staring at his hands. A stone settled in the pit of my stomach.
    “My parents worry that with me so
close to you . . . you’ll be attacked and I’ll be killed. Maybe it’s selfish, I
don’t know, but I’m their son. It was one of the first things they said to me
when they found out that we were dating. They didn’t congratulate me or tell me
to be happy. They said I was likely to die because of you.”
    I couldn’t make any words come,
so I just sat there and kept listening.
    “I don’t worry about that,
though,” he said. “I told my parents as much. They were angry, but I don’t
care. I told them that I loved you and that what worried me the most was that
if something happened to you” - now he looked at me again, and my heart broke a
little - “I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
    I reached out and took his hand.
His fingers were cold, despite the nearness of the fire.
    “If you die,” he said, his voice
breaking, “I have to die too.”
    I squeezed his hand as he met my
eyes. I scooted forward until I sat next to him, side by side, my legs across
his.
    “I feel the same way,” I
whispered. “If the demons attack me and kill you, they’d better hope they kill
me too.”
    He laughed softly and I was
relieved by the sound. “Big bad Charlotte going to avenge her boyfriend?”
    I grinned. “Yeah, something like
that.”
    “Ms. Rollins?” Zervos came
striding over. His hair was sticking out at odd angles and the dark circles
underneath his eyes were more pronounced; he obviously hadn’t slept. “Are you
ready to lower the shield?”
    I forced myself not to glare at
the professor. Zervos had done nothing for us, and now we were stuck with him,
and only him, for the whole semester. Hopefully Sectar and Golden Falls would
be better.
    “How’s your magic, Charlotte?”
Lisabelle came over and knelt down next to Keller and me. My ring had remained
dull whenever I looked at it,