Turning Tides (Elements, Book 3) Read online

  This one’s for the readers.

  Yeah, I mean you.

  Chapter 1

  I expected it to rain the day my life changed forever.

  It wasn’t an unreasonable request. Sure, it was early June, but the Pacific Northwest was notorious for its wet weather. I saw no reason it shouldn’t storm during my trial. I wasn’t asking for much, just a few fat, angry clouds hovering over my head, prepared to split open once my sentence was read.

  Instead, I stood beneath a cloudless blue sky while the ocean lapped against the shore of my family’s island. I supposed I could make it rain, if it came to that, but that felt like cheating. Everyone knows omens and dramatic symbolism don’t count if you create them yourself.

  It would have been more practical to hold the trial inside, but elementals never did anything important inside. Our lives took place in nature, with the open sky above us, earth beneath our feet, and, in our case, water as far as the eye could reach.

  Behind me, practically all my relatives had gathered to witness my trial. This island was the home of the extended Brook clan, fifty or so elementals who were once the only family I knew. I also spotted several unfamiliar faces, a couple of waters from the other old families and even a few who lived in the human world, as I did. They’d flown in just to witness my trial. A council visit was rare enough. A council visit to banish the daughter of a powerful old one was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and no one wanted to miss it.

  No one except Great-grandma, of course. She’d muttered something about how unseemly it was for a Brook to be involved in such a scandal and decided it was a good time to visit her cousins in Martha’s Vineyard. Great-grandma did have an impressive history of ignoring any events that upset her world view.

  The rest of my family were all present, and though I hadn’t been granted even five minutes to speak to them, I appreciated their support.

  When the seaplane landed, I was led directly before the council and the makeshift court they’d constructed on the beach, just above high tide. There wasn’t much occasion for the council to make an appearance, so the island had no permanent court. Instead, my family dragged an eight-person dining table to the shore and covered it with plastic white tablecloths, the kind you could buy at the Fred Meyer on the mainland. They were pinned in place with a variety of small shells and rocks, and only the wind’s lack of interest in the proceedings kept them from flying away.

  Really, the court looked a lot like a low-budget wedding except, instead of cake, I was about to receive a lifetime banishment. A few weeks ago, I’d been okay with my punishment. Though I’d prefer not to be exiled from the elemental community, this wasn’t really my life. My life took place a thousand miles south of my family’s island in the San Juans, in a cabin in Lake Tahoe, where elementals and shifters alike stopped by on a regular basis. It was where a man who regularly made my toes curl lived in an Airstream trailer just behind the house.

  That was the home I’d chosen, but this was where I’d been born. Though I hadn’t visited in well over a decade, now that I’d set foot on its familiar shore, I couldn’t help feeling melancholy at the thought of losing it, and most of my extended family, forever.

  However, unless I was able to concoct some mighty convincing lies in the next five minutes, lose it I would.

  “Aidan Brook,” said the woman in the middle. She had short, wispy blond hair the wind enjoyed playing with, and she looked to be in her early thirties, if we were counting in human years. As council members were always full-blooded elementals with lifespans of thousands of years, I could count her age in centuries, rather than decades. Like most waters, her clothes were built for comfort—a cream jersey dress and belted cardigan with an oversized collar—but I sensed little softness in the woman herself.

  “Yes,” I answered. I was tempted to keep speaking, but I was doing my best to follow the one bit of advice everyone had given me over the last week: keep your answers short, volunteer nothing, and for the love of all that was holy, tell no jokes.

  In other words, pretend I was someone else for the next hour or two.

  Edith Lake stared at me, as if expecting a longer answer. Normally, the council consisted of six waters, one representative from each of the old families, and leadership revolved between the families. I didn’t know much about the Lake clan, other than their family lived on an island off the coast of one of the Carolinas, and it was their turn to take the reins.

  Also, based on the sour look Edith fixed on me, they might not like me very much.

  Normally, my family held the sixth seat at the table, but for some reason they thought my grandmother might be biased in my favor. This might have something to do with the way she whispered, “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” when I walked past her.

  Therefore, this incarnation of the council contained only five members, four women and one man. I’d like to believe that coming from a matriarchal society meant they’d be more inclined toward mercy and forgiveness, but their stern expressions suggested I was being overly optimistic.

  Edith consulted her notes. “Fiona’s daughter. Half-blooded water elemental.”

  “Yes,” I said again. It only took me two questions before I started lying. That might be a record, but sadly not one I could brag about. I was most definitely Fiona’s daughter, but I was a full-blooded elemental. Unfortunately, the other half came from Josiah Blais, my fire father, and that made me an elemental freak. I was a dual magic, which meant I was capable of controlling two elements. It also meant I was prone to no small amount of madness if I accessed both sides of my magic too often.

  Madness in a human was tragic. In an elemental, it could lead to murder or natural disasters that destroyed entire cities. That sort of thing tended to be frowned upon by the old ones. For now, I was sane, but the council wouldn’t care. The punishment for being a dual magic was death. If they learned what I was, they wouldn’t hesitate to order my execution.

  All things considered, I had few qualms about lying in this particular case.

  “Do you admit or deny you told two FBI agents about the existence of elementals?” And it appeared the easy part of our Q&A was at an end. Edith pinned me with hard gray eyes.

  “Well, see, they already knew. Not those two in particular, no, but the FBI in general knew we existed and already had a secret branch to deal with magical creatures, so it’s really not the problem you seem to think it is.”

  Two people cleared their throats about twenty feet apart from each other. One came from the direction of my family’s section, and I’d heard that sound too many times growing up not to recognize my mother. The other was directly behind me and sounded almost amused. Sera Blais, reminding me that, as usual, I was my own worst enemy.

  “That is to say, I admit. With reservations.” I muttered the last sentence, but Edith continued to stare at me, catching every word.

  “And do you admit or deny that you raised Lake Tahoe over twenty feet in front of hundreds of human witnesses?” Her words were precise, her voice clipped. She kept one hand braced on the table, the other tightly gripped around a small black case. In general, she looked tense and painfully self-contained, making it hard to believe she was truly a full-blooded water. There were exceptions, but for the most part we were a relaxed group and easily distracted. I began to regret that it wasn’t the Ponds’ or Rivers’ turn to take the lead.

  “Really, it was more a tilting than a raising. Just to be clear. And I had no choice. We were in a vehicle that was crashing down the side of a mountain. We would have died if I hadn’t called the water. It slowed our fall.” I raised my chin. No, tilting one of the most popular tourist lakes in the country on end hadn’t been the stealth
iest move, but it had been necessary.

  “We?” Edith raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

  “Myself and three friends,” I elaborated as little as possible. The eyebrow didn’t dip, and she continued to watch me. I had to literally bite my tongue to keep from speaking, but I managed to stay quiet.

  “Tell me about these friends,” she pressed.

  She knew. Somehow, she already knew. That was the thing about living for hundreds of years. You developed an impressive network of resources.

  “It was Sera, a fire.” I turned to the side, acknowledging her. She nodded, her face impassive, but I saw the steady tattoo of her fingers against her black jeans. She knew exactly where this was going. “Our friend Vivian, a low-level earth who also lives in Tahoe, and Mac.” I paused for a breath, then met the woman’s eyes. “A shifter.”

  I might as well have said I’d befriended the Loch Ness monster. The spectators erupted, hissing and booing and generally naming me a liar in an impressive range of ways, some of which required profanity even I wouldn’t say.

  Again, I looked toward Sera, whose fingertips had begun to spark. She was the only one allowed to insult me, after all.

  I felt my own fire uncoil and raise its head in interest. It did so more and more often these days, ever since I accessed both sides of my magic simultaneously in order to heal Mac from a bad case of dead. Prior to that night, it only stirred when I felt angry, and for years before that I hadn’t known it was there at all. I’d only felt that something inside me wasn’t quite right.

  Things were different now. I’d called on my fire side too many times of late, and it was no longer complacent. I was aware of it all the time. It was part of me, a constant burn in my core.

  I might know the fire was there, but that didn’t mean I chose to access that side of my power. When I allowed it free rein, it insisted on total control, and I was rarely happy with the results.

  Over the last several weeks, my fire side and I had reached some sort of compromise. I no longer attempted to thrust it into a tiny compartment and deny its existence, and it no longer attempted to burn things without my permission. It was a tenuous control, but I’d take whatever I could get.

  I sensed its curiosity, its desire for release, and I ignored it, focusing on my water heritage. Grumbling, it quieted, no longer challenging me as it used to.

  I was grateful for the increased stability. As I was currently awaiting a lifetime banishment from the entire elemental community and being denounced by my extended family for the company I kept, I’d take whatever good news I could get.

  I studied the faces I’d grown up with. While many looked calm and supportive, there were an equal number that were enraged or accusatory. Just your typical family.

  There were lots of problems with elementals. We were slow to change and didn’t always integrate with humans as well as we ought. We lived a long time, and it wasn’t uncommon to turn a little odd as the millennia passed. We tended to believe that, as descendants of the earth’s original magic, we were just a little superior to every other creature in existence.

  We also liked to pretend an entire race of magical creatures didn’t exist, all because we didn’t want to share our origin story with creatures born from the union of magic and beasts.

  I faced the leader of the council. Her gaze never wavered from me. When she spoke, she did so in a soft voice, forcing the others to quiet if they wished to hear her—and they all did. “You are saying that shifters exist.”

  “Yes.” She did not blink. The existence of shifters was a poorly kept secret among the old ones. I’d wager at least half the people at my back knew about them. They simply chose to deny this fact as often as possible. Denial, it seems, runs in the Brook DNA.

  “You are also saying you have befriended one.”

  “Yes.” Behind me, the murmurs started again. It was shocking enough that one of their own might have revealed our existence to humans. To have done so in the company of a despised shifter might be unforgivable.

  Listening to some of the people I’d grown up with denounce me, I decided banishment couldn’t come soon enough.

  “And you are saying you chose to save one of their lives at the cost of our secrecy.”

  “It was necessary to keep all of us alive. The elementals, as well. Sera and Vivian might not have survived the crash.”

  “Hmm,” she said. Such a non-committal word, capable of conveying so much doubt.

  “Shall we discuss this?” The question came from the woman on her right, the Pond’s council representative. Her expression was softer, and I suspected if she was handling the questions the day would bear less resemblance to a witch trial.

  “Is there much to discuss, Lydia? There is no question that Aidan Brook recklessly and repeatedly revealed our presence to humans. By her own admission, she did so while consorting with tainted creatures, as if her own elemental blood meant nothing. We are the pure creatures of magic. We might integrate with humans out of necessity, but there is no excuse for fraternizing with those vile beasts. Even worse, she chose to save one, regardless of the cost to our secrecy. Through her own actions, she is no longer one of us. It is time to vote. Michael, would you begin?”

  The man at the far end stood. He was a Bay, the only water family with a habit of popping out more boys than girls. Given the circumstances, I figured it wasn’t the best time to make a joke about his unfortunate name.

  He walked into the ocean until it reached his knees. A heavy table was stationed in the water, the metal legs dug into the sand for stability. Our traditions stated that we needed to connect with our element during all significant life events. This allowed waters to be at full strength as they married, attended funerals, gave birth, or decided the fate of a woman they’d never met before.

  The table held writing supplies and something that looked rather like a small urn. He scribbled his vote on a scrap of paper, placed it in the container, and returned to his seat.

  Lydia Pond repeated his actions, her mouth set in a grim line. On her way back to her seat, she nodded at me, just once.

  Deborah Rivers followed, and the crowd perked up as she moved toward the voting table. She hadn’t said a word during my trial, but it wasn’t due to her lack of prestige. If the waters ever decided to elect a queen, she would cruise to an easy victory. As far as anyone could track these things, she was the oldest and most powerful of us all. I’d only met one elemental who could rival her rumored strength, and he’d fathered me.

  She didn’t even glance at the crowd as she wrote my fate on a slip of paper and returned to her seat.

  Rachel Strait went next, her movements hurried. She wanted this trial finished.

  At last, Edith Lake moved to the box. Each step was graceful and precise. When she reached the table, she cast her own vote but didn’t replace the lid. Instead, she shook the urn slightly so the votes wouldn’t be pulled out in the reverse order they were cast. The council’s votes were supposed to be anonymous.

  She withdrew the first piece of paper. “Guilty.” Her voice rang across the beach. Though the gulls called and the waves continued their gentle lapping, the elementals were eerily silent as the votes were read.

  She pulled the second slip of paper. “Guilty.”

  Chairs creaked as everyone leaned forward to hear her read the third vote. “Innocent.”

  Unwanted, hope rose in my chest, only to be instantly squashed with the fourth vote.

  “Guilty. There is no need to read the final vote. Aidan Brook, this council, in its role as protector of the water elementals, has found you guilty of revealing our existence to humans and recklessly endangering the elemental race through your actions. Do you have anything to say before your sentence is decided?”

  She paused as a matter of form, though she didn’t seem to expect me to speak. Since I doubted “Fuck you and the broom you rode in on” would make me any friends, I held my tongue.

  I braced for the words, trying to ignore th
e sting of regret. Not regret for the actions that had placed me in this position—they were choices I’d make again and again. The regret was for my absence, for the years I could have visited my family, floated down the canals in summer, swum in the sea.

  Once the sentence was read, that would all be in the past. I’d be escorted back to the seaplane, never again welcome at any elemental enclave. I’d be a pariah, and those who refused to cut me out would be tarnished. My mother and Sera—their lives would change, too.

  As I waited to be banished forever, I held the image of my friends in my mind, a reminder of what I could return to. Mac, quiet and mysterious and yet, somehow, everything I’d never known I wanted. Sera, my sister in every possible way, who would remain at my side no matter what a bunch of uptight elementals said. Simon and Vivian, who were exploring their own paths but were never far from my thoughts. The shifters who’d grown to trust me, Miriam and Will and Carmen. There were so many people waiting for me in Tahoe. I just had to receive my sentence, then get on the plane and return to my real life. By evening, I’d be curled up on one of the cushions in the A-frame cabin’s living room, surrounded by ugly orange curtains and upside down teddy bear wallpaper, and everything would be okay. I’d be home. It was where I belonged.

  Edith lifted her chin, letting the sun fall on her face, and offered the gathered crowd a gentle smile. Perhaps it was only my imagination that saw malice in the gaze she turned to me.

  “Please stand. Normally, in such cases, we choose the mercy of banishment. However, given the severity of your actions and the company you have chosen to keep—”

  I stood straighter, my spine growing rigid. There should be no “however.” There was only one punishment for my crime. Only murder of another elemental earned the harsh sentence of death. For everything else, it was banishment. There was no other option.

  The current leader of the water council disagreed with me.

  “We believe an example must be made. Aidan Brook, you will submit to…”

  She never finished the sentence. As the entire island watched, the councilwoman exploded.