Turning Tides (Elements, Book 3) Read online

  It was Vivian’s turn to look skeptical. “Maybe. You two are an acquired taste.”

  “Like fine wine?”

  “Or Marmite. What’s so urgent?”

  “Haven’t you listened to the messages?”

  She said nothing, but in her silence I heard both embarrassment and defiance.

  “Wow. You weren’t kidding about needing space, were you? Well, get over it. We need you. Sera’s been accused of murder.”

  “Again?”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that? It’s only the second time. It’s not like she qualifies for a punch card.”

  Vivian said nothing. Her lids lowered, hiding her thoughts. I tried to wait her out, but she was quiet for so long I feared Olivia would return before I got to the point of my call. “Vivian?”

  When she at last raised her eyes to me, I had no idea what she was thinking. It wasn’t that her expression was shuttered and enigmatic, as Sera’s often was. Rather, I saw so many conflicting emotions I had no idea how to interpret them. Sadness and regret and curiosity intertwined, and I couldn’t even guess what fueled them all.

  “Remember why I left?” Vivian asked.

  “Something about how we lived in a constant state of chaos and danger?” I kept my voice light, refusing to let her see how bad things truly were.

  She released a heavy breath. I had the feeling she wasn’t fooled. “I can’t get dragged in again. I need to try to make it work with Olivia.”

  “And she hates us.”

  “She doesn’t really. Okay, she kind of does. But it’s more than that. I didn’t leave just for Olivia.”

  “I know, but…”

  “I left for me, Aidan. The two of you see danger and run toward it, waving your arms to catch its attention. I’m not like that. I have a fraction of your power and a fraction of your lifespan. I don’t plan to spend it dodging people who want to kill me. I wish I could help, but you’re asking too much.”

  I heard the pleading note, and I ignored it. “I know things have been bad recently.”

  She refused to let me finish. “You really think things are going to settle down? Fine. When they do, come and find me. I’ll even drag Olivia over for dinner. Until then, you have to leave me out of it.”

  I turned her words over, looking for any loophole, any room for misinterpretation. There was none, and yet I couldn’t let her go. “Vivian, Sera’s being framed for murder. There are already two bodies, and no evidence pointing to a single other person. Her trial is tomorrow evening, and if she’s convicted, the sentence is death. If that happens, the best she can hope for is to escape and spend her life running and hiding. Any help you can give, we need it, and we need it now.” I kept my voice level, the words straightforward. This wasn’t an emotional plea. It was a statement of fact, one I insisted she hear.

  She closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. “What can I do?”

  I wanted to sob with gratitude, but decided that could wait until after our thirty minutes expired. “We’re trying to figure out if our house if bugged. Aren’t there, like, radio frequencies you can track or something?”

  She nodded, mind already five steps ahead. “If it’s being sent wirelessly, I should be able to detect the signal. Address?”

  “We don’t have them on the island. It’s about two hundred feet west of me. If you find any transmissions, we can assume they’re coming from our house. There will be a video feed, from Sera’s surveillance camera, but there shouldn’t be anything else.”

  I’d already lost her. While I could still see her face, she was no longer looking at me, intent on whatever window she’d pulled up. I heard the clack of keyboard keys as Vivian did the thing she was born to do. She was a weak earth, as close to human as an elemental could be and still call themselves a member of our race, but that wasn’t her true magic. Her magic was her ability to make any electronic do her bidding.

  It only took a minute. “It’s clear. Nothing except the camera. You and Sera are just being paranoid.”

  “We’ve had good reason to be. As you pointed out, people are trying to kill us all the time.”

  “Yes, but you’re also surrounded by a bunch of old ones who don’t know how to program a VCR. Covert surveillance is rather beyond their skills. Is that all?” The words were abrupt. Perhaps I shouldn’t have reminded her why she was avoiding us.

  “One more thing. If I email you a list of names, can you do your magic research thing?”

  She was clearly torn. On the one hand, this favor would only keep her tied to me and Sera. On the other hand, it might give her an excuse to hack into a high-level government database. “Fine,” she agreed, resigned. “What am I looking for?”

  “We think we might be dealing with another dual magic here, so our first priority is any connection to fires, burnt people or objects, that sort of thing. Other than that, you know. Suspicious stuff.” I nodded solemnly, the very image of a serious investigator.

  She didn’t even crack a smile. “If I find anything, I’ll email you. And Aidan, I meant what I said about needing distance from all this. You get my help until Sera’s safe. After that, I’m done.” She hung up before I could respond.

  Her dismissal stung. I understood why she wanted out. Based on just the last few months, any reasonable person would run far from us, and Vivian was an earth, grounded and eminently sane. Her reasons were valid. It didn’t matter. I still missed her. I still felt abandoned.

  I sent my magic rushing toward the water, needing its comforting touch before the fire decided to stir. Only when I felt calm enough to fake a smile Sera might believe did I stand and head back toward the cottage.

  After all, Vivian might think she didn’t need us anymore, but I still had several people who did. I was long overdue to check up on one of them.

  The old rowboat looked like it might sink if someone so much as looked at it funny, but somehow it held long enough to get me to the houseboat.

  No one came out to greet me. I secured the rowboat, chucked the bag of supplies on the deck, and ducked inside. The reason for the silence was quickly apparent: the boat was empty. Neatly folded blankets lay on the sofa and two empty mugs were still in the sink, but there was no sign of Simon or Miriam.

  Only the rear bedroom held any sign of life. I found Mac buried deep under a small blanket fort.

  I sat on the edge of the mattress and rested my hand on his shoulder. I felt the heat of his skin through his gray t-shirt, several degrees warmer than he should be. As I waited, his body temperature settled, returning to normal as his magic fed off mine.

  There was no slow return to wakefulness. One moment he was sound asleep, his breathing long and steady. The next, his eyes were open and his left hand covered mine, holding it against his shoulder.

  We looked at each other, saying nothing, searching for answers the other couldn’t provide. I couldn’t apologize, not when this magical dependence was the side effect of being alive. He couldn’t assure me it was okay when he didn’t believe it.

  Instead, I offered him the only hope I could. “I’ll try to sneak my mother out here today. Now that we have some idea what’s going on, she might be able to fix it. You know I’m not giving up until you’re back to normal, right?”

  He nodded, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he threw off the weight of the blankets and pulled himself up, leaning against the padded headboard.

  The movement made my hand fall off his shoulder, but it gave me the chance to examine him. I meant to look for signs he’d been ill, but I was distracted by the sad discovery that Mac wore modest pajama bottoms rather than boxers. When it came to Mac, my libido never had a particularly good sense of timing. I dragged my eyes upward, but the gleam in his eyes told me my perusal hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “Where are Simon and Miriam?” When in doubt, change the subject.

  He stretched, long arms reaching forward with the fingers interlaced. My eyes followed the movement, the slow expansion of his biceps. When
I at last remembered to look at his face, he was fighting a smile, the bastard.

  “They shifted. Miriam is off looking for the local otter population, and Simon said he wanted to do recon. There are housecats on the island, right?”

  There were, as well as plenty of otters. They sometimes even drifted along our canals, as much a part of our natural world as the water that surrounded us. So long as my friends remained in their animal forms, no one would guess what they were.

  A bear, on the other hand, would stand out a fair bit. It was a good thing Mac stayed behind.

  “Wait, they left you?”

  “I insisted. I was feeling okay, and they were going stir crazy on the boat.”

  “No, you weren’t, you liar.” I pulled back the sheets, still damp with his sweat. “The fever came back.”

  “And now it’s gone. It’s barely been twelve hours. I knew I’d be fine.”

  “You don’t know anything about this. None of us do.”

  He didn’t even have the grace to look chastened. “I don’t need a nurse, Aidan. They couldn’t do anything.”

  “They could have called me if you got worse.”

  He gestured at the phone on his bedside table. “So could I. You’re on speed dial, so I only needed to push one button. Even I could manage that. If it got bad enough, I would have called.”

  I grumbled several unflattering things under my breath, then decided he deserved to hear at least one of them clearly. “You are a big, stubborn, annoying oaf of a man. You know that, right?”

  He shrugged, unconcerned.

  “So, I’m really on your speed dial?”

  That smile spread across his face, the slow and wicked one that made breathing difficult. “Number one.”

  I swallowed. I was pretty sure that was the modern version of going steady.

  “How are you feeling?” I refused to let him distract me.

  His smile vanished. “Are you going to ask me that every time you see me?”

  “Well, it’s either that or stare at you creepily in an attempt to read your vitals from afar.”

  My attempt at a joke fell flat. “Aidan, it’s hard enough being an invalid. It really doesn’t help when you look at me like I’m going to drop dead any minute.”

  I fixed my sternest glare on him. “You’re not an invalid. Stop whining and get up.”

  My sternest glare remained a source of amusement. “Yes ma’am,” he said, swinging his legs off the bed.

  A red duffel bag rested on the floor. He unzipped the top and grabbed a clean t-shirt, a white one this time, then pulled the one he was wearing over his head.

  I forgot how to close my mouth.

  I’d seen him without a shirt before, but that was a long time ago, before I’d been ready to admit what we could be to each other. Before I’d allowed myself to think too much about how it would feel when that chest pressed against mine, and my arms wrapped around him, pulling him to me until our skin felt like it was becoming one.

  It was one hell of a chest. I might be falling for the man underneath the muscles, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate the view.

  “Hand me my jeans?”

  “Hmm?”

  “The jeans. The pants made of denim.”

  I chucked them toward him, making a face. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

  “If you want to even things up, you could take off your top.” The words were teasing. The heated gaze that accompanied them was anything but.

  There were few things in the world I wanted more than to take him up on his offer. Unfortunately, one of those things was clearing Sera’s name. With only one day to prove her innocence, that had to take priority over naked fun time.

  Even so, I was really starting to regret our earlier plan to take things slow.

  He saw the decision in my eyes. “I know. Still not the right time.” I listened for frustration or resentment, but the words were a simple statement of fact.

  He stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind him for privacy while he changed into the jeans.

  “What, I don’t get to see if you’re a briefs or boxers man?” I asked through the thin door.

  A low rumble reached me, the sound of his laughter. “Today, I’m neither.”

  The door opened again, presenting me with the disappointing view of a fully dressed Mac. “Commando?” I did my best not to think about what was underneath the jeans. My best wasn’t very good.

  “Simon packed a bag for me when we left the trailer behind. I guess Simon doesn’t view underwear as a necessity.”

  I found Simon’s point of view quite compelling at that moment.

  “So, what’s the plan?”

  I tore my eyes from the front of his jeans. Truly, a decade of celibacy had turned me into an outright pervert. I decided the plan was to prove Sera innocent, then lock the Airstream door and refuse to open it for at least a month. We could deal with healing our weird connection once we actually wanted to be more than a hundred feet away from each other for any length of time.

  Unfortunately, step one of that plan was something of a doozy.

  “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. Vivian has the list of everyone on the island, and she’s looking into it, but I don’t know if she’ll be fast enough. There was another body this morning. Someone I knew.”

  He didn’t hesitate, just stepped to me and wrapped me in his arms. If I let myself go, stopped trying to hold myself up while the world fell apart around me, I knew he’d catch me.

  Whatever else was between us, whatever tension and strain our magical bond might bring to our relationship, I wasn’t alone. It was the one thing I knew.

  “Are you okay?” His chin brushed my temple, the stubble rough against my skin. I felt the words more than heard them.

  “Yes.” I pulled back to meet his skeptical expression. “Okay, not really. Not even a little. But I can’t fall apart, not yet.”

  He nodded, his face thoughtful. I wanted to stay, to discuss everything that was happening, everything that was changing, but it wasn’t the time. Not yet.

  Some day, it would be our time. I’d just keep telling myself that until it was true.

  Chapter 11

  As I approached my mother’s house, my mind remained fixed on a houseboat drifting miles to the west—at least until I noticed who was standing on her porch. Lana Pond was happily chatting to two others, her hands moving gracefully through the air to emphasize her point. I couldn’t see the faces of her companions. One was tall and blond, like most of the island. The other had dark hair and a compact build. Josiah was talking to the woman who could unknowingly doom me.

  I picked up speed until I was damn near running. I’d managed to fob Josiah off on my mother, somehow forgetting I should be doing everything in my power to keep him and Lana from speaking. She had information that could end my life. He had a bad habit of killing people who threatened me. It was a rather large oversight on my part.

  “And that’s how you build a wind chime from coconut husks.” Lana triumphantly finished her story, and I made no attempt to disguise my relief at finding them discussing something so innocuous. I also felt no small amount of happiness that I’d missed that particular tale. “Aidan! I was going to visit you today, but everyone told me if I did, your roommate would kill me. I didn’t believe them, of course. Well, not entirely. But still, I must say I’m glad you’ve come for a visit instead. You know my aunt, right?”

  I turned to the other water on the porch and, using reserves of control I didn’t know I possessed, managed not to drop several loud and heartfelt f-bombs. “We weren’t ever properly introduced.” I tried not to squeak the words.

  Lydia Pond inclined her head, offering me a gracious smile.

  I’d assumed Lana and Lydia Pond knew each other. They shared the old surname, which indicated a relation, but not necessarily a close one. There were plenty of Brooks I’d never met, so I’d rather hoped the woman who could out me as a dual mag
ic and the woman who could order my death were sixth cousins, twice removed.

  “Lydia takes such wonderful care of my family. My mother and grandmother are a bit flighty, you know. My family would fall apart without her help.”

  Her aunt waved off her niece’s gushing praise. I forced a frozen smile, afraid to believe there were waters flightier than Lana.

  Josiah turned to me, looking bemused. “Aidan,” he said in greeting. “I’ve just been speaking to this… lovely young woman.”

  Lana missed Josiah’s doubtful tone. “It’s been wonderful. I’ve never met a fire before. You should have introduced me to Sera, you know, with us living so close to one another.”

  I offered some sort of non-committal grunt. “Lana, Lydia, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak to my—” I caught myself in horror, and Josiah’s lifted eyebrows told me the slip hadn’t gone unnoticed. “To Josiah for a bit. I have some questions about fire elementals that might help clear Sera.”

  Lana nodded happily, her head bobbing on her thin neck giving her the distinct appearance of an exotic bird. “I’ll go make some tea. Come in when you’re ready.” She wandered inside, humming to herself.

  Lydia remained. “Do you really believe your friend is innocent?” She sounded more curious than skeptical.

  “I’m certain she is.”

  “Despite there being no one else on the island with both access and motive?”

  I wasn’t about to mention the dual magic possibility to a member of the council. Best to keep that particular elephant far, far from the room. “I’m looking into other options.”

  “Hmm. I wish you luck, Aidan Brook. I don’t quite understand what is happening on this island, so I would be grateful to anyone who could make sense of it all.” She glanced through the open door and eased backwards down the stairs. Her movements were furtive, a woman who didn’t wish to be caught. “Er, can you tell Lana I had to be… somewhere?” She offered a weak smile. I suspected it was the same one on my face when I was trying to disengage from a conversation with Lana.