had immense power, all from that ancient bargain.
“One would think you might have learned something after you were nearly devoured by the scavengers when you were twelve, but no! I hoped that, sometime in the three years you’ve worked with me, I would have imparted some actual wisdom. And I prayed you would learn when you sent three other people into howling madness with that trick you pulled last spring—but by then I was a little less optimistic. Now this!”
He stood up and began to pace. Delilah shut her eyes again, exhausted.
“Do you even know whose flesh you’re wearing?” he demanded.
“What?”
That got her attention. She tried to sit up, only to have pain ricochet through her body.
“Her name was Margaret,” Ryan said. “The last time I spoke to her was in May. She told me she had found a way to bind one of the elemental powers. I can only assume it was based in fire, since the next thing I heard was that her entire family was lost in a pyre so hot it melted the steel frame of the car in the driveway. She managed to make it out of the house. Some hikers found her in the forest two weeks later, battered and savaged by animals. She wouldn’t have survived physically if she hadn’t snagged some power from her elemental, but since her mind is completely gone, the fact that her heart is still beating doesn’t make much of a difference.”
Delilah tried to lift her head to look at herself, but would not have succeeded if Ryan hadn’t cranked the bed up. Even covered by a sheet, she could still tell that this thin and wiry body was not her own. She struggled to lift her arm, and saw that her nails had the remnants of chipped, mauve nail polish on them. When she touched her head, she found dark hair barely long enough for her to pull it forward to look at it.
“Why am I here?” she asked Ryan.
“Your exposure to Cooper probably made you vulnerable,” he answered. “When your body was stressed, you lost control of your tie to it. You’re lucky you were able to protect yourself long enough to find another vessel to keep you alive, since I imagine it would have been impossible to return to your normal form while it was still on the verge of death. I had a hard time purging the extra power from you long enough to clear the water out of your—oh, there they are. Cooper! Brent!”
She managed to turn her head enough to see the guys respond to Ryan’s call. Both were dripping wet, and Cooper was as pale as the sheet covering Margaret’s body.
“They said Delilah is in room—”
“Delilah’s right here for the moment,” Ryan interrupted. “Cooper, would you check Delilah’s room to see if Samantha is there?”
“Wait,” Delilah objected. “What exactly do you mean by that?” It was one thing for her to be accidentally and temporarily in someone else’s body. It was another if the power she had attempted to harness had helped itself to her body.
“Just check, Cooper,” Ryan said. “Brent, tell the nurse on duty that Margaret is conscious.”
Brent and Cooper exchanged confused glances, but then hastened to obey the command. Delilah wasn’t surprised. Brent always did anything Ryan ordered, most of the time without bothering to even ask why.
She hated to ask Ryan for anything, especially given how often she ended up doing so, but she swallowed her pride. “Can you help me stand?”
“No.”
“Just help me up already,” she grumbled. “I want to see my own body, and make sure it’s all right.”
“Given this body has been unconscious for months, I’m not even going to let you sit up completely until a medical professional assures me it’s safe. After that, we’ll need a wheelchair. Or have you not tried to move your legs yet?”
She hadn’t. In fact, she hadn’t even thought of them. The rest of her body was in pain, so her legs had been the least of her worries. Once he had pointed it out, though, she realized the obvious. “I can’t feel them.”
“Margaret’s back is broken,” Ryan answered. “The doctors have told me that it’s a low break, so it doesn’t affect any major systems, but the paralysis of her legs is probably total.”
Cooper returned, and reported, “Samantha isn’t there, and Delilah is still unconscious. They’ve got her on some kind of breathing thing. So, who is this?”
Before Ryan could answer, Brent returned with the nurse, who had a slightly dazed look in her eyes. Ryan or Brent or both of them had probably done a number on her mind, convincing her to let them all in here outside visiting hours.
The nurse checked Delilah’s … no, Margaret’s vitals. Delilah refused to think of this body as herself. She was borrowing it for a little while. That was all.
“When can you get me out of here?” she asked Ryan. “And back in my own body?”
Ryan nodded, though slowly. “Cooper should be able to knock you out of this body. I can keep the shadows at bay so you are not damaged without your flesh. With your own power to guide you, you should be able to reinhabit your own body without trouble now that it is no longer drowning.”
Cooper seemed less calm. “Wait, I can what? Who says I can do this intentionally?”
“You were going to come back to study with me, weren’t you?” Ryan asked. “Consider this your first lesson.”
“I’m not entirely comfortable with having my ‘first lesson’ involve another person,” Cooper said.
Delilah found herself smiling, impressed to see Cooper, who she had always thought of as something of a teddy bear, standing up to Ryan. He did so in his own mellow way, but it was still more than she had ever seen Brent do.
At that moment, for example, Brent was leaning against the far wall with his eyes closed. She could recognize the tension between his brows as a sign of one of his ever-present headaches.
“It’s all right, Cooper,” she assured him. “Sometimes you have to risk a little to learn a little.”
Cooper looked like he was going to continue to argue, but before he could, a flicker of shadow caused them all to turn toward the other side of the room. Samantha’s colorful form looked like crystal as the afternoon sun streamed through it. There were tears on her face.
“I didn’t mean it!” she cried. “I didn’t know what was going on. I got scared! I just—I mean, I—” She broke off as she noticed the figure on the hospital bed, and her face took on an expression of cold horror.
“Samantha. Nice of you to join us,” Ryan said. He looked wary, but to his credit, he stepped between the elemental and the three humans without hesitating. “I gather you have benefited from Delilah’s experiments, since the four of us can all see you clearly now. Delilah didn’t fare quite so well, but she’ll be fine in a few minutes. Cooper, is that the face she has always had to you?”
Cooper nodded, and pushed past Ryan, heedless of any danger the elemental might represent. “Samantha, are you …” She lifted a hand as if to grasp his, but her hand passed through his. They both frowned. “I believe you that it wasn’t your fault.”
“Then you’re the only one in this room who does,” Ryan muttered under his breath.
“What happened to the person who was in this body?” Cooper asked, looking at Delilah.
Ryan swallowed tightly, and for a brief moment, Delilah thought he might actually display a hint of emotion. His words, however, were blunt. “She’s gone. Once Delilah’s essence is returned to its rightful place, this body will once again be inert. Margaret has no blood relations left, so her guardianship has fallen to my family, since we were her mentors. I have been pursuing the process of having her body taken off life support.”
“There’s no possibility of her recovering, even with your magic?” Cooper asked.
Ryan shook his head, though he was looking at Samantha, who had crept toward the bed. Having her so near made Delilah nervous. She might have looked like a pretty teenage girl, but the expression in her eyes as she stared at Delilah was very far away, and not entirely human.
“Then …” Cooper drew a deep breath. “Is there … I mean, this sounds horrible to even ask, but if she’s really gone and there’s nothing else …” He trailed off, and looked to Ryan and Brent for help, but neither offered it. Cooper managed at last to put the words together. “You thought Samantha might have been in Delilah’s body, right? That means you think she could do something like that. What about this body? Once Delilah is back in her own, could this one maybe make it possible for Samantha to be alive?” He winced. “I know this girl was a friend of yours or something, but—”
“Samantha’s an elemental,” Delilah said. “She doesn’t need to use another body to have form. She should be able to create one, once she is bound to a mortal being.”
“She obviously isn’t powerful enough to maintain that kind of connection, or she would have done it
