Free Dark Waters (Elemental Book 1) by Rain Oxford

was why I never got involved with supernatural
cases; everything was lost in my head and I would start thinking of Astrid.
    I sat up straight, startled at the thought that
surfaced in my mind, and wrote down a question I didn’t know had been bugging
me. Who is Vincent Kingston Knight? I skipped a few lines. To find my
answers, I needed to know the right questions to ask.
    Why are vampires killing paranormals? Surely
they knew they couldn’t win a war against every single paranormal being. My
hand moved of its own accord as my instincts pushed against my consciousness. I
crossed out “are vampires” and wrote, “is someone.” Yes . It was a better
question; less specific, so it was less likely to be wrong.
    Why hasn’t anyone threatened me over Regan’s crime
scene? Someone knew what I found. Was nobody trying to keep it a secret? Or
maybe I was supposed to know. Maybe me finding her body was a threat in itself. Back off.
    Who here has anything to gain by giving
information to the vampires? Jealous classmates? But the school was
probably closed to students during the time when the records could have been
stolen. I pulled a heavy book from my small bookshelf, snuck a glance at my
roommates to make sure they were engrossed in their own work, and then opened
it to the files I had gotten from Hunt the night before. Since my roommates had
been asleep by the time I was done with the meeting, I tried to get
fingerprints, but all five files were completely clean.
    Why would vampires want to kill you? Normally,
ideas came to me when I looked at pictures like this or studied crime scenes. Vampires
were ruthless killers, yeah, but why these people? If it was because of
their power, why not go after the wizard council, the fae tribes, or the
shifter alphas?
    I stood up before I realized what I was doing. “I’m
going to the library,” I said, discreetly slipping the files and pictures back
into the old book. With any luck, there would be texts on vampires. Maybe I
would come up with a new angle.
    “Oh, I’ll go with you,” Darwin said quickly. “This
place is creepy at night and I need some more books.” He stood and grabbed his
hoodie.
    I nodded, since there was no viable reason to argue.
Plus, he was right; it was creepy.
    We wandered through hallway after hallway, finding
nobody and no library. “I thought you said you knew where it was,” I said.
    “I do, bro. I was there earlier.”
    Unfortunately, I had the sneaking suspicion that the
rooms were not always in the same location. Now, I had never rejected the
supernatural, but rooms that relocated at will were a little too much for me.
    I heard a hushed conversation in one of the rooms we
were about to pass. Without thinking, I grabbed the back of Darwin’s hoodie and
pulled him to the floor, careful not to touch anything but his clothes. He looked
at me, startled, and I put my finger to my lips.
    “Why are we hiding?” he whispered.
    “Are we allowed out of the dorms at night?”
    He considered it for a minute. “I don’t know. I
didn’t read the handbook.”
    “Neither did I, so shut up and listen.” The door to
the room was closed, but the window into the classroom was open just a crack.
    “We need to tell Logan that a vampire was in the
school,” a woman said. It only took me a second to place her voice. Professor
April Nightshade.
    “I told you; he would shut down the school,” another
woman said. This was a voice I didn’t recognize. Her voice was sharp; the kind
that warned against any nonsense.
    “If she got past his wards, then others can, too,”
Professor Nightshade said. “I trusted you the first time this happened, but you
didn’t do anything about it. Who knows how many vampires there could be hiding
in the school?”
    “Who did you say uncovered the vampire?”
    “Devon Sanders. I didn’t think he had an ounce of
talent in him, but he’s all the other students are talking about. He’s got some
psychic ability over animals and