Free Elemental Shining (Paranormal Public Series) by Maddy Edwards Page A

cheeks.
    “It’s my sister,” he said. “She didn’t just talk about her boyfriend this summer. She talked about a lot of stuff.”
    “Like?” Sip asked, her ears perking up. She loved government gossip.
    Lough looked off into the distance, seeing something far away that only he could see. “My sister, she talked a lot all summer. She’s really worried.” My chest tightened as the dream giver’s eyes flicked to me. “She said that they’ve been catching demons in packs. Senior paranormals who work for the government and are tasked with protecting the other paranormals are constantly busy. All summer she would get reports about fights and demon eliminations. I was with her a couple of times when she got messages like that, and she always went white as a sheet and had trouble talking and finishing sentences for hours afterwards. It was scary. The demons are hunting now, much like the hellhounds always have. The demons are learning from the dogs of fire. That’s what she always mutters. Then there’s the Map Silver causing everyone stress. It’s a mess.” He looked around, his kind eyes filled with worry.
    “And that’s so bad, why?” I asked, confused. “We knew the demons and the hellhounds were working together. That’s why they attacked us first semester. And the government has the Map.”
    “Because they’ve never organized before,” said Sip. “They’ve always gone after paranormals, sure, but it was random attacks and they are such stupid beasts that they were never really a threat to our races. President Malle changed all that. Decimating the Power of Five was smart. Too smart. She and a small group of darkness mages are using the whole demon/hellhound kinds as their own personal army in a fight against the paranormals, a fight that they started. What else did your sister say?” she ended, turning toward Lough.
    Lough glanced nervously at me.
    “Lough, stop staring at me like I’m about to keel over and die,” I said hotly. “I’m not, unless it’s from boredom.”
    I gave him my best ferocious glare, but Sip ruined it when she said, “You probably shouldn’t contort your face like that. It looks strange.”
    Ignoring us, Lough continued, “According to my sister, the takeover was perfectly planned and executed. The first step, obviously, was to remove the Power of Five from the equation. The demons set about doing that with a ruthless intensity, as we all know since we’ve seen the results. The orchestration was flawless. None of the senior paranormals saw the attack on the elementals coming.”
    I felt like a million tiny stab wounds were ramming into me, like someone had thrown me against a wall of needles and I had stuck there. My whole body tingled with pain.
    “The paranormals, including any remaining elementals, were blindsided when they realized there was only a few elementals left. My sister was still in school at Public then, and she’d call home and worry about her elemental classmates.
    “My brothers were the same way,” said Sip. She had five older brothers, which according to her meant that she was lucky to have ever had a date in her life, and when she did manage to find a guy who would brave all those brothers she had to keep him away from them for as long as possible, because they would terrorize him. I never said it to her, but I thought she was lucky to have so many family members looking out for her.
    “Yeah, our siblings went to school together,” confirmed Lough with a nod. “Your parents probably took one look at you and stopped at one, huh?” Lough said to Lisabelle. When he was met by nothing but a stony expression, he turned back to Sip.
    “My brothers talked about it a lot,” Sip offered. “They had friends who were elementals. Lots of them,” she explained. “All their good friends . . . died. The strange part was that no one saw it coming. The ones that no one would miss were killed first, then more just died from old age and natural causes.