one.
Delilah shook her head, trying to get some sense back in it. Samantha chewed on a lock of her blond hair as Delilah opened the cooler she kept her tools in. She used to keep them in the house, but after her mother confiscated sage for the fourth time and then had Delilah take a drug test, Delilah decided her tools should be a bit more hidden. Unfortunately, she couldn’t explain to her mother—who still called John’s mother before every game party to ensure adequate supervision—that she had a better use for spices than cooking.
“So,” Samantha said. “What do we do now?”
Delilah was wondering that herself. “Well, step one, we’re going to need to figure out what kind of power you have. Immortal power is sometimes called elemental power, since it tends to fall into one of four forms: earth, air, fire, and water. They link in different ways to mortal power.”
She wasn’t sure why her voice was wavering.
Suddenly, a piece of advice Ryan had once given her came to mind: When you find yourself about to raise power, and you realize your heart is racing and you’re shaking and pale, stop. We have instincts for a reason. They warn us when, for example, something is trying to eat us.
“What’s wrong?” Samantha asked.
Delilah looked beyond the circle again. Of course she felt hunted; the shadows were thicker out there now, swarming and hungry. But they couldn’t get in, and after this, hopefully Delilah would have the power to banish them forever instead of just holding them at arm’s length.
“How dangerous is this for you?” Samantha asked when Delilah still hadn’t responded.
Delilah shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “I know what I’m doing.” She did. “I’m going to start with fire, since that tends to be the most common and the easiest to invoke.”
Samantha nodded, once again sucking on her hair. She looked nervous, which actually made Delilah feel better.
Delilah took a deep breath, and then began building the fire. That was the easy part; she had a basin in the circle, along with kindling and small logs kept dry under a tarp. She kindled a small but steady flame, and then stared for a couple seconds at the very sharp edge of her pocketknife. Fire elementals were bound in blood, which meant that’s what she’d need to offer to invoke them.
She could always tell the girls on the squad she cut herself during set construction, and tell her friends in the drama department she hurt herself during cheerleading practice.
She set the knife on the upper side of her arm. The cut hurt more than it would have on the fleshy side, but it would suck to accidentally send herself to the hospital trying to become immortal.
Holding her arm above the fire, low enough to feel the heat but far enough away not to get instantly burned, she focused her power into the blood and spread her attention to Samantha, trying to detect any change—
The instant her blood and the fire touched, the fire flared so high that Delilah had to fling herself backward to avoid the flames. Simultaneously, she heard Samantha cry out, and watched in shock as the fire collapsed into itself with a whumph that made the edges of the circle shudder. All that was left behind was cold, black ash.
For an instant, Samantha’s form rippled and darkened. When she solidified again, she looked frightened. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, and her clothing had become monochromatic.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“A response,” Delilah replied, though she wasn’t quite sure what kind. It wasn’t what she had expected. “Are you all right?”
Samantha hesitated before nodding. “I guess so. I don’t think I like fire.”
Delilah looked up as a raindrop fell on her head. “That’s good, since it looks like the weather isn’t going to let us try that one again.” She was about to suggest that maybe they should go inside until the weather had cleared when the obvious occurred to her.
The rain wasn’t a coincidence.
In fact, she suspected she knew the reason why the entire summer had been unusually wet.
Ryan said that water was the hardest of the elemental powers to invoke or control. Water-based powers were bound in tears, and therefore usually came from grief.
From death.
If Samantha’s element was water, that would explain why she had appeared after a devastating accident that had caused two deaths. It would explain why she had attached herself to an individual who was experiencing so much pain and frustration.
It also meant Samantha was far, far more powerful than she could possibly know. Delilah had assumed that Samantha was the remains of a sorcerer who had found a way to survive death, but even Ryan could not manipulate weather without an incredible amount of ritual and energy.
But Samantha wasn’t a ghost, or a sorcerer, or any kind of human being that was or ever had been. She was power—pure, elemental energy, formed out of human deaths, but without enough mortality to make the shape solid.
Did Samantha know? That was the question. Elemental powers were not self-aware until someone called upon them and gave them will and purpose. It was possible Samantha didn’t remember her history because she had none.
Fog.
Delilah remembered the way the papers described the thick, blinding fog that had caused devastation on an otherwise normal highway.
“Delilah?” Samantha’s voice was soft, troubled. “What happened? Did something go wrong? Are you all right?”
Delilah nodded.
“Yeah. I figured out what I needed to,” she managed to say.
“You look scared.”
Did she dare go through with this?
Did she dare not? No sorcerer had ever bound to and worked with water. It didn’t usually respond well enough to human will to be commanded. But here was Samantha, seemingly willing to cooperate. The chance of Delilah ever again encountering a creature like this, who was apparently ignorant of its own nature, was nil.
If Samantha was lying, then Delilah was probably courting a quick and painful death. But if Samantha simply had no idea what was going on, then Delilah could gain power beyond even le Coire’s dreams, all in the guise of trying to help her. After all, water was the most abundant elemental force on Earth, with the ability to douse any of the others.
She would be a fool not to risk it.
17
The car ride home was short, and set Cooper’s heart to pounding, but he managed. That alone seemed like a big step.
By the time Brent pulled up to his house, Cooper felt able to walk on his own, but Brent hovered by his side, as if worried Cooper was going to fall over anyway. Cooper would have waved him off, if he hadn’t had the same fear.
“Not that I wanted to see Delilah again, but I wonder where she and Samantha ended up,” Brent said as they limped up the driveway. “I hope Sam’s having fun haunting her.”
Maybe … maybe not. Cooper bit his tongue rather than mention what had happened to Samantha after she talked to Brent in his sleep.
“She’s pissed at me for going into Ryan’s when she couldn’t,” he said instead. Of course, that was actually true; she had seemed cross. It wouldn’t be out of character for her to try to make him sweat a little in retaliation. Or maybe she was trying to get Delilah’s attention again like she had at the sandwich shop, now knowing that Delilah was mixed up with witchcraft and more likely to be able to see her.
Cooper’s mom opened the front door before they reached it, looking alarmed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, coming forward.
