Turning Tides (Elements, Book 3) Read online

  She laughed, a big booming sound that made me think everything was going to be okay. “Well, I hadn’t planned on catching a ride north, but when I stopped by the cabin, they were hooking up the trailer and fixing to leave, and I decided a road trip sounded like way more fun than babysitting my sister’s brats again. Good fucking thing, too. It turns out the cat isn’t much of a driver. He’s been napping most of the way up.”

  I nodded as if any of this made sense. I still hadn’t let go of Mac, and though it was almost physically painful, I disengaged and met his eyes, remembering the reason they were here at all. “Simon said you were ill.”

  He shook his head, a small smile appearing. “I was, but I’m finally on the mend. Must have been a two-day bug or something. Or maybe I just really missed you.” The smile took on a decidedly wicked slant.

  “Good thing I’ve got the cure for that.” I grinned, not even caring that the line could win me the cheeseball of the year award.

  “Are you done?” Simon’s voice had more edge than I’d ever heard. “Because I can assure you, we did not travel several hundred miles to watch the two of you and your amateur flirtations.”

  Mac leaned toward me until his mouth was right next to my ear, and I shivered from the warm brush of his breath. “Wanna go pro?”

  I giggled. Heaven help me, I giggled.

  That was apparently the last straw for Simon, who stepped between us, forcing an end to our teasing.

  Simon was shorter than both of us, with a mere fraction of the muscles Mac possessed. Even so, the glare he split between us was more than enough to cow me. Simon was not a frivolous man, and he wouldn’t drive Mac to Seattle for an interstate booty call.

  “Okay, okay.” I took a closer look at Mac. While he looked perfectly healthy, there were small signs this was a recent development. Lank hair fell across his forehead, as if it hadn’t been washed in days, and he was wearing worn sweats and an old t-shirt. He looked like he’d spent most of the day in bed, and not in the fun way. “Tell me what was wrong with you, and don’t even think of doing that macho dude thing where you insist it was a bad case of indigestion.”

  Mac looked at his feet, and I knew he was debating how much of the truth to actually share.

  “I mean it. If something’s wrong, I need to know, particularly since we have no idea how my magic is affecting you.” He still didn’t look up, so I played my trump card. A dirty trump card. “How mad would you be if I was feeling off and didn’t tell you?”

  His head jerked up, the reminder of my tenuous mental health doing what I hoped it would. Neither of us wanted to see me go off the deep end, but if I started heading that way, he’d insist on knowing.

  He grimaced, but at least he started talking. “It didn’t start off too bad. It was two or three hours after you left, I guess. I wanted to sleep a lot, and I usually only do that in winter. It felt like a flu, or what I would guess a flu feels like, and it kept getting worse. I didn’t want to eat or move. That’s how Simon found me.”

  I glanced at our friend, who didn’t look impressed with Mac’s accounting of his symptoms. “I stopped by yesterday morning. He was in bed, the sheets kicked off, sweating so much he could have filled a bucket. It was quite disgusting, really. He could barely stand, he had not eaten in a full day, and it took him several tries before he remembered my name. By evening, he did not know his own name, which is when I made the decision to drive to you. Miriam stopped by to check on us, and she helped hook the Airstream up to the Bronco. Mac has been in a state of constant delirium across three states, until about five minutes ago. Until you appeared, that is, and he was magically cured.”

  Mac shook his head. He didn’t argue with Simon’s list of his symptoms, but he wasn’t ready to agree with his conclusions. “It was just a thirty-six hour flu, maybe food poisoning.”

  Simon leveled his green eyes at Mac. “Bears often get the flu, do they?”

  Mac muttered something about having human DNA. Neither Miriam nor Simon looked particularly impressed. I hadn’t known shifters very long, but in that time I’d never seen one have so much as the sniffles.

  “What do you want me to say?” His voice rose, the anger I’d witnessed on more than one occasion rising to the surface. Mac would never hurt anyone he cared about, but he had a tendency to destroy inanimate objects when pushed to his limits. I stepped closer to him, offering silent comfort, and I felt rather than saw the tension ease. “I was sick, and now I feel fine.”

  Simon looked between us. “I know you are both all loved up, which likely makes you stupid, but are you truly telling me neither of you sees it?”

  Miriam shook her head. “You can’t just blame the love endorphins, dude. I don’t know what you’re getting at, either. It sounds like you’re saying Aidan has some magical healing aura, except that would be fucking insane.”

  Simon looked at her in surprise, though I thought it had less to do with her confusion and more to do with calling him dude. If he was in cat form, he’d be bathing while steadfastly ignoring us in an attempt to regain his dignity.

  He spoke slowly, picking each word with care. “Aidan healed Mac with her magic. She quite literally returned him to life.” We waited for the part we didn’t already know. “Aidan leaves, and Mac grows ill. Aidan returns, and Mac instantly recovers.”

  I understood where he was going with this, but I didn’t want to hear it. Based on the vehemence with which Mac was shaking his head, he felt the same.

  Simon watched us, saw the fear creep into our eyes, and finished anyway. “Mac’s health, maybe his very life, is tied to Aidan. If she leaves him, I think he will die again.”

  Chapter 7

  Since the day Sera had landed on my porch and insisted I rejoin the world, I’d been working to curb my denial reflex. Ten years in hiding had trained me a little too well to ignore painful truths, and I feared that, during my lost decade, it had become less of a coping mechanism and more of an attempt to construct my own false reality.

  It was a work in progress, but most days I at least made a token effort to acknowledge what was directly in front of my face.

  Obviously, that was the wrong choice. Denial was awesome. Denial kept me from facing awful, life-changing things. I should do it more often, not less.

  “No.” I looked between Mac and Simon, the movement so sharp my neck muscles would complain later. “That’s crazy talk, Simon. That’s not how it works.”

  Miriam watched us, though she looked considerably more relaxed than we did. To be fair, a jet pilot on stimulants might feel more relaxed than I did at that moment.

  “You used your magic to heal him,” she noted. “We all saw you do it.”

  Mac appeared frozen. He wasn’t looking at Miriam or Simon. He didn’t even acknowledge their words. He looked only at me, but with none of his earlier warmth. Uncertainty clouded his eyes, as if he wasn’t sure he’d seen me before. Panic clawed at my chest.

  “Yes, but waters have been healing for years. My great-grandmother once cured a man who’d been electrocuted, and he showed no ill effects when she traveled. It just doesn’t work that way.”

  “But you are more than a water.” Simon was determined to make me consider his ludicrous theory. “You are a dual magic. We cannot assume your healing method is the same as a pure water.”

  He didn’t even know the half of it.

  After I healed Mac, my mother had examined him, and she was the only one who knew I’d left traces of my magic behind and that Mac could now manipulate small amounts of water. We’d told no one else. It was a secret we’d held close, something that belonged only to us.

  Also, we hadn’t wanted to run around shouting that I’d created the first elemental/shifter hybrid. That seemed like the sort of thing that could bite us in the ass down the road.

  “Can we be alone for a bit?” Mac spoke the words I’d longed to hear only a few minutes before. Not like this, though. Not spoken in a low growl, his brown eyes locked on my face. Normal
ly, they looked like melted chocolate, full of warmth and humor, but now they were as hard and flat as packed dirt. I couldn’t even guess what Mac was thinking, but I doubted he wanted privacy so he could indulge his more amorous intentions.

  Miriam hesitated. She didn’t know Mac very well, but even she could feel the anger building across his skin, the rage he kept tamped finding its way to the surface.

  “It’ll be okay,” I told her. There wasn’t much in this world I knew for sure. I knew that Johnny Cash was the coolest man who’d ever lived and pancakes were the best argument for waking up each day, and I knew that Mac would never deliberately hurt me. That last one, in particular, I had to believe. I couldn’t accept a world in which that was no longer true.

  Simon tugged on her arm, and she reluctantly let him pull her away. Even so, she didn’t leave the parking lot, climbing instead into the back seat of the Bronco and turning to look through the rear window, keeping the trailer in her sight. Simon followed.

  Mac opened the trailer door and waited. There was nothing to do but step inside.

  This really wasn’t how I’d imagined our reunion.

  Normally, the trailer was pristine, the bed neatly made and Mac’s few possessions tucked away in the drawers and cabinets. For the first time, it looked like someone lived in it.

  The acrid smell of sick hit me as soon as I stepped into the trailer, and half-full mugs filled the sink. The door to the bedroom was open, and I could see the bedsheets were twisted and damp, covered in his sweat.

  “Simon would make tea when we stopped for gas. I drank what I could.”

  I nodded, mute. The hale man who’d greeted me wasn’t the same one who’d ridden up from Tahoe. Simon hadn’t been exaggerating.

  There was a small table, surrounded by two benches bolted onto the sides of the trailer. It was the only seating available, and I sank into one of the chairs. My mind churned through options, desperate to find any explanation that made more sense than Simon’s.

  Mac eased into the other seat. It was a tight fit, but he made it. The table sat between us. It might as well have been a city block for all the distance I now felt from Mac.

  “Is he right?”

  I held my hands out, palms up. “I have no idea. There’s not any precedent for what happens when a water and fire dual magic brings a shifter back to life, you know.” A bite crept into my words. I didn’t want to fight with him, but neither would I sit here and beg forgiveness. I’d done what I had to do, and I would change nothing.

  He was silent. He watched me, and waited. Damn Sera for teaching him that nothing made me speak faster than silence.

  “I still don’t even know what I did. It was like the magic possessed me. It told me what I needed to do to save you, and it worked. It fucking worked, Mac, so whatever’s going on now, we’ll deal with it, because at least you’re alive, and you sure as hell wouldn’t be if I hadn’t done whatever I did. So I’m not apologizing, and you can stop giving me that evil look any time now, okay?”

  He closed his eyes and released a heavy breath, and when he opened them again, he looked like Mac. Maybe not with as much warmth in his face as earlier, but the stranger who’d taken over his face since Simon’s damning words was retreating.

  He ran his hands over his face and tugged on his hair. It was still dirty and damp from his sweat. Now that I knew what to look for, his face showed signs of two days without food, the cheekbones jutting angrily against the skin.

  “Are you hungry?”

  He looked at me in surprise. “I am.” He laughed, a quiet, rueful sound, but at least one that was identifiably Mac. “That might partially explain the bad mood. Sorry about that.” He stood and rifled through the cabinets, returning with a box of plain crackers, several pieces of sliced watermelon, and a large glass of water. He put them between us, indicating I should help myself, but my stomach was too tied in knots for food to sound tempting.

  I waited while he polished off at least half a watermelon and a bag of crackers. If I was going to face an angry bear, it seemed a good idea to at least face one with balanced blood sugar.

  At last, he leaned back in his seat. “Let’s try this again.”

  The water in the glass bubbled, then rose a fraction of an inch above the rim before sliding back down. “The water magic is weaker. A week ago, I raised it several inches above the glass.”

  “You were desperately ill less than an hour ago. Maybe it takes more time to recharge.”

  He let out a heavy sigh and pushed the water across the table, as if he couldn’t stand to have it so close.

  “We know you weren’t able to retrieve all your magic when you healed me.”

  I waited. He didn’t need me to confirm what we’d known for weeks.

  “Which we thought made me just a tiny bit of an elemental, something we agreed to keep to ourselves until we understood what we were dealing with.”

  He recited the facts as though, by speaking them aloud, they’d begin to make sense. Unfortunately, we had very few facts to work with. I’d never heard of anything like this happening before, and we couldn’t ask other elementals without revealing my own heritage.

  “Have you noticed anything else?” I asked. “Other than getting ill and being able to manipulate water a bit.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Which is why I wasn’t too worried about having some extra magic. It was weird, yeah, but I supposed it beat the alternative. But this, I’m not okay with this, Aidan.”

  “We don’t even know what ‘this’ is yet. We’re jumping to conclusions, based on a half-assed theory Simon came up with on the fly. This could all just be a massive coincidence. It could have been the flu. Hell, it could be your body adjusting to the new magic, but that doesn’t mean your life is tied to me.”

  As I babbled, Mac’s expression softened into something dangerously close to pity.

  “This isn’t denial,” I insisted, pointing a finger at him. “This is considering the situation from more than one angle. Is it still just the water? No rogue fire magic showing up?”

  He stood and withdrew a plain white candle from a kitchen drawer and set it on the table. Still standing, he focused on the wick, his face contorting, as if he was straining to lift a large boulder. After a minute, he shook his head, and the tension left my body, as well. “Looks like I’m not that much of a disaster just yet. One dual magic’s enough for now.”

  “That’s good. So, let’s keep going. Process of elimination and all that. We’ve been apart before. I ran errands, checked on my mother when she was recovering from the anti-magic drug. It’s not like we were attached at the hip.”

  “And you were never very far away or gone more than a few hours. You were too worried to leave me alone for long, remember?”

  “Okay, but that doesn’t mean distance or time is the problem. When was the last time you were ill before this week?” He looked blank. All right, then. “Never? Seriously?”

  “I had the sniffles once when I was fourteen.”

  I tried to picture that. I didn’t get ill often, but colds still snuck up on me if I didn’t access my element as often as my body needed.

  I sat up straighter. “That’s it. You weren’t actually feeding on water, were you?”

  Mac glanced across the room. A large bucket sat next to his bed. I’d assumed Simon placed it there in case of emergencies, but once I focused on it, I could feel the gallons of water it held.

  “I’ve had my hand in that for the last twelve hours, Aidan. I may be new at this whole elemental thing, but I’ve been watching you for months. I know you need water to stay balanced.”

  At that moment, I felt many things, but I wasn’t sure balanced would even make the list.

  “Oh.” I tried to come up with something, anything else, but apparently intelligent wasn’t on the list right then, either.

  He moved to the other room, which was dominated by a large bed. He sat on the edge with his feet planted on the ground and his elbows resting
on his knees. His wide shoulders hunched, just a little, but he kept his head up and his eyes fixed on me.

  Neither of us said anything, and after a minute I moved to his left side, mirroring his pose. We both stared straight ahead, but our thighs touched. After a long stretch of silence, I took his left hand, threading my fingers through his.

  “It’s you. We can come up with a hundred different explanations, but that doesn’t change what’s happening.” His voice was pitched so low I strained to hear it. “Though it’s in my body, it’s still your magic. It doesn’t belong to me. It barely even responds to me anymore. It only answers to you. And if you’re not around, it becomes sick.”

  Shifters needed to change, and elementals needed to connect with their element. Bad things happened when magic didn’t get what it needed.

  Things like Mac falling gravely ill.

  “Maybe this was a one-time thing. Maybe you were already getting ill, and you just needed an extra boost of magic to kick it. It’s okay. I can be around when you get sick. Just consider me a walking, talking bowl of chicken noodle soup.”

  He was kind enough not to scoff. “Maybe.”

  “Look, I have an idea. We need to keep you close until we figure out what’s going on. We’ll separate for a couple of hours. If you don’t feel any different in that time, maybe we’ll be okay. We could just be overreacting.”

  He faced me then, and his eyes were once again the warm chocolate brown I knew, the eyes that looked at me and somehow saw only the good. His right hand rose to stroke my cheek, an almost tentative touch.

  “It is good to see you, you know. Even when I was horribly ill, I missed you.”

  It was exactly what I needed to hear. “Me too,” I managed.

  He leaned into me then, almost cautiously, as if he was unsure what would happen when our lips met. The kiss was slow and gentle, his mouth fitting against mine. It was pure warmth, a touch that could light a fire in a frozen room, and I savored it.

  And then, it changed from a simple kiss to something more. My magic rose, calling to him, and I felt his own respond. It wasn’t only his magic, though. It was mine, the threads of magic that had found a home in Mac when I healed him, but also different. Weeks in close proximity to his shifter magic had altered it, turning it savage and hungry.