that.
Maybe it was Eva’s screams, or maybe it was the hope in the bastard’s eyes—the one emotion I could never quite disregard or turn away from. Either way, I knew I had to help him.
I bent down closer to Kincaid, looking at the noose around his neck. Both his and Eva’s fingers dipped into the water time and time again, but they weren’t having any luck grabbing onto the stream and yanking it away. All they were really doing was getting their hands wet, and the water was slipping through their fingers and snapping right back into place like a rubber band. It almost seemed like the elemental was playing with them, solidifying the water just enough for them to think they had a chance to rip it away, then letting it dissolve and run through their hands only to re-form the deadly noose again. No doubt the elemental was enjoying every second of this sick game.
I couldn’t rip the thing off with my hands, any more than Kincaid and Eva could, and my knives wouldn’t be any help either. That left only one option.
“Eva, stop! Stop! Kincaid, quit fighting, and hold still,” I said.
Eva reached for him again, but I shouldered her back and out of the way. Despite the fact that he was the one being strangled, Kincaid was calmer than she was. He managed to nod, although his face was tinged with blue by this point.
I put my hand down on the noose, feeling the water writhe like a snake against my fingers. Then I reached for my Ice magic, letting the power rise up out of the deepest part of me. A silver light flared in my palm. The other elemental would sense me using my magic and probably realize what I intended to do with it, but there was nothing to be done about that right now. I just hoped our assailant didn’t have enough magic left to try to suck the moisture out of anyone else on deck. Probably not, since it took a lot of power to do that sort of thing, and the elemental hadn’t tried the same trick on Kincaid already.
It only took me half a second to completely freeze the noose around Kincaid’s neck and turn all that shifting, sloshing water into a solid ring of elemental Ice. I sent out another burst of magic, shattering the Ice around his throat, and Kincaid quickly sucked down breath after breath.
He looked at me, his blue eyes cold and furious. “Find her,” he rasped. “Kill her . . . now . . . before she . . . gets away. . . .”
Her? So the other elemental was a woman. Good to know. I didn’t need to be asked twice. My head snapped up, and I scanned the deck once more. Off to my right, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a slender figure sneaking onto the walkway that lined the rear of the boat.
Sneaky people were always up to no good. I knew from years of being that way myself.
“Stay here!” I yelled at Eva.
Then I palmed another knife, got to my feet, and raced after the fleeing figure.
Rounding the corner, I sprinted onto the back walkway. It was darker on this side of the boat, with only the moon above and a few globes wrapped around the brass rails to light the way, but a woman pounded down the narrow strip about a hundred feet ahead of me. Just like Kincaid had said. She opened a door that led into a glassed-in sitting area, ran through that, and then shoved through the door on the other side.
I chased after her. I didn’t bother shouting at her to stop. Waste of breath, and we both knew it.
But she was fast. She sprinted down the walkway like she knew her life depended on it, which it did.
She reached the far end of the walkway and rounded the corner, stepping out onto the back deck and disappearing from sight. I put on another burst of speed and ran after her. There was nowhere for her to go, unless she decided to take a header into the Aneirin River. And even if she did that, I could always jump in after her. One way or another, I was getting some answers about Eva, Kincaid, and why he’d really asked me here tonight, and I was willing to bet the elemental knew a lot more about all that than I did.
I drew in a breath, left the walkway behind, and rushed onto the back deck, my knives up and ready to injure, at the very least, or kill, if absolutely necessary.
But she was gone.
My eyes cut left and right as I scanned every shadow, peered into every dark nook and cranny, but the deck was deserted. I craned my neck up and looked at the three levels above my head, but she wasn’t climbing up the side of the boat. I even darted over to the paddle wheel and peered at the wide slats, thinking that she might have somehow lowered herself down.
But she wasn’t there—she wasn’t anywhere on board.
Whoever the mystery woman was, she wasn’t on deck anymore. So where had she gone? I hadn’t heard a splash that would indicate she’d leaped into the water—
Water. Of course.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move out in the river. I rushed over to the railing, thinking that the elemental had done a very quiet swan dive after all and was now swimming across the dark river.
I was right, and I was wrong.
She’d gone over the side, but she wasn’t swimming in the water—she was walking on top of it.
8
The elemental was at an angle to me, and I leaned over the railing and stared at her, wondering if she was really doing what I thought she was. But the woman casually strolled across the rippling surface of the Aneirin River like it was as sturdy as the wooden boardwalk Sophia and I had trudged across earlier. Every time she put her foot down, the water in front of her solidified into a square just big enough to keep her from sinking, allowing her to cross the river as easily as I could the street outside the Pork Pit.
Hell, she wasn’t even getting her flip-flops wet.
You had to be gifted in one of the four main areas—Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone—to be considered a true elemental, but lots of folks could tap subsets of those areas. I’d once fought an assassin named Elektra LaFleur who’d had a talent for electricity, which was an offshoot of Air.
And now, I’d crossed paths with someone with water power, which was a subset of my own Ice magic. That was why the elemental’s power had felt cool and wet when I’d sensed it on the main deck earlier. That was why it hadn’t made me grind my teeth together like I would have if she’d had some sort of Air or Fire magic—because her power was similar to my own.
And she’d wielded it with deadly efficiency. Disgusting, given what she’d done to Antonio, but definitely effective.
The water elemental reached the far bank of the river. The translucent, watery walkway underneath her feet vanished the second she stepped back onto dry land. She hurried forward, heading for the woods, not stopping for a second, not even to glance over her shoulder to see if I was watching her. Her plan had gone to hell, and she was running away, distancing herself from the scene of the crime as fast as she could. Five seconds later, she was in the trees and out of my line of sight, vanished like she’d never even been there at all.
I hadn’t gotten a good look at the water elemental, had only seen that she seemed to be wearing white shorts and a dark T-shirt, the better to help her blend into the college crowd. Normally, that would have frustrated me, but not tonight.
Because I had a suspicion that I already knew exactly who she was.
In a way, magic was just like a fingerprint, in that everyone’s power had a slightly different feel. Sure, the magic emanating from Fire elementals would usually feel hot and be able to burn you, but there would still be subtle differences in strength, skill, and how the elementals chose to wield their power. Besides, water magic wasn’t as common as Fire power was, and I was willing to bet that I’d been in close proximity to this elemental before. If I was right about her identity, well, things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated for me.
Since I had no hope of catching her, I tucked my knives up my sleeves and hurried back to the main deck. It looked like a tornado had swept through the area. The gaming tables, the chairs, even the cooking station Sophia and I had manned. Everything was turned over on its side and had been trampled into a splintered, broken mess. All those precious chips the students had been vying for earlier now littered the deck like forgotten bits of confetti. Oh yes. The party was definitely over.
