“It couldn’t be out of the goodness of my heart?” she replied sweetly, batting her eyelashes. He didn’t deign to respond, and at last she glared at him instead. “I’m not one of le Coire’s lapdogs, but I respect him. He’s going to blame me for this mess, as usual. I don’t want him to have to clean it up.”
Brent hadn’t thought that Delilah worried about anyone’s opinion.
Then again, she was captain of the cheerleading squad, house director for the drama department, and practiced sorcery in her spare time. That drive for success had to come from somewhere.
“Anyway,” she said, “I’m pretty sure I can summon Samantha. According to Ryan she’s not very strong, and I think she’ll be even weaker now that she’s condensed herself in order to occupy a relatively normal human body—no offense, Brent. That’s kind of like saying she’s a relatively weak hurricane, though. I can get her here, but I’m not going to be able to control her if she fights us.”
“Is it just me, or did she react a little too strongly to the idea of taking Margaret’s body?” Brent asked, recalling the strange scene.
“Maybe she didn’t like the idea of going from an immortal power to a wheelchair,” Delilah suggested.
Cooper shook his head. “Do you know how many times she told me over the last few months that all she wanted was to be alive? When I first woke up, the doctors weren’t sure if I would ever be able to walk. It was Samantha who convinced me that my life wasn’t any less valid just because I couldn’t do everything I used to be able to do. I don’t think the possibility of a disability would have kept her from accepting a chance to live, and even if it did, that wouldn’t explain how strongly she reacted.”
“Maybe your connection to Samantha is actually kind of coincidental.” Delilah paced the room as she spoke. “Does anyone remember a fire around here? Ryan said a whole family was killed. I don’t remember it, but I don’t watch the news a lot.”
Cooper sat heavily in one of the guest chairs next to the bed. “Yeah, it was all over the television, just a few days before … before the accident. My mom was pretty freaked out. She went around checking smoke detectors and bought a second fire extinguisher and a fire ladder for my room. You don’t think Samantha caused the fire, do you? And killed all those people?”
“I think we have a sorcerer named Margaret, who was trying to summon an elemental, but burned down her house and then was found in bad shape right around the time that Samantha appeared. A water elemental wouldn’t have started the fire, but they’re drawn to grief and bound in tears. Margaret accidentally slaughtered her entire family. A sorcerer with that much power and that much emotional pain might have been able to create something like Samantha.”
Delilah’s words made some of the puzzle-pieces fall into place. “Ryan seemed to recognize Samantha when Cooper and I came to his house,” Brent said.
Delilah looked straight at him, with the wide-eyed excitement that had attracted him to her in the first place. “Of course!” she exclaimed as if suddenly everything made sense. “When I was in Margaret’s body, I picked up on some of her memories. They make sense now. In all the memories I picked up, she was trying to get to someone. She didn’t care about saving herself, but she needed to save this other person, who was screaming.”
Brent hadn’t been able to track Margaret’s memories as well as Delilah obviously had, but when Delilah started to describe them, he remembered the nightmares. “Her sister,” he said.
“It had to be Samantha,” Delilah answered, gripping Brent’s hand for a moment before realizing what she was doing and dropping it. “Not our Samantha. Her Samantha, her sister.”
“Didn’t we already establish a while ago that Samantha isn’t a ghost?” Cooper asked.
“She’s not,” Delilah answered excitedly. “She is an elemental, but she’s shaped the way Margaret made her. Margaret couldn’t control the fire elemental she tried to summon, but she would have raised so much power to do so that when things went wrong, a water elemental was attracted to the chaos. Margaret named it, so it took the personality and form of the being she wanted to see. It all makes sense!”
Brent and Cooper exchanged a glance. Cooper’s dazed expression said he was equally confused. Brent knew without a doubt that he was right about Margaret’s relationship with Samantha, but he had never understood sorcery and elemental powers. He had to trust that Delilah knew what she was talking about.
One thing still didn’t make sense. “But if we’re right, why did Samantha try to kill her sister?” Brent asked. “Twice.”
“Guilt,” Cooper suggested. “Our Samantha isn’t the real girl, right?” He looked at Delilah, who nodded. “She’s what Margaret created. Margaret had to blame herself for her sister’s death. That guilt—self-hatred even, I’d guess—could have been part of what she put into the Samantha we saw.”
“If we know all that, then now what?” Brent asked. “Samantha’s some kind of baby elemental impersonating a teenage girl. Do we—”
“Not impersonating,” Delilah interrupted. “The elementals are just raw power on their own. They have no memories or senses of self until mortal minds create them. What Margaret gave her is all Samantha knows.”
“Ha!” Cooper shouted a little too triumphantly. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “But I was right. She’s not evil.”
“She walked off with my body,” Brent pointed out.
“She’ll give it back,” Cooper said confidently. “If she is the girl that I’ve known for months—and according to Delilah, she is—then she doesn’t mean to hurt anyone. As soon as we find her, I’m sure I can convince her to do what’s right.”
This time it was Brent’s and Delilah’s turn to exchange a skeptical look. But what else could they do?
“I’ll summon her,” Delilah said with a shrug.
I hope you’re right, Brent thought, still not entirely convinced. He might not understand sorcery, but he had picked up enough hints over the last few days to know that if Samantha wasn’t on their side, she was more than powerful enough to drown them all.
22
Two hours later, Cooper watched as Delilah spoke to a nurse in low, even tones. She had already convinced Cooper’s mother to go home and take care of his sick father. Now, she had a hand on the nurse’s shoulder. Their eyes were linked, and there was sweat on Delilah’s brow.
“So you see, it’s very important that we’re not interrupted,” Delilah said.
The nurse nodded. “I will speak to the others on the floor.”
“Good,” Delilah said with a nod, finally breaking eye contact. “Thank you, nurse. We really appreciate this.”
“Well. Religious observances are important,” the nurse mumbled, as if struggling to recall what she had just been doing.
“Yes. Thank you.” Delilah patted her hand, and as the nurse went about her way, Cooper followed Delilah back into Margaret’s room. “I convinced her that we’re doing a Native American healing ritual that is very important to Brent culturally and religiously and we must not be interrupted.”
Curious, Cooper said, “I assume you did a little more than talk to her, since she didn’t even question the fact that no one in this room looks remotely Native American.”
“I have some talents.” Delilah ducked her head before saying with obvious pride, “You should see what Ryan can do. I have to work with what people are already thinking and inclined to do. You heard the nurse ask if we were going to be lighting candles or incense? If I had said yes, we probably would have had a problem. Ryan could have convinced her to light herself on fire, without even needing to say it out loud. And Brent—”
“Keep me out of this,” Brent interrupted.
Delilah stuck out her tongue at him, though the expression was playful this time, and less hostile than before. “Modesty is not a trait I admire.”
“‘Creepy’ is not a trait I admire,” Brent replied. “And thought control falls in the realm of creepy in my book. I only let Ryan teach me what I could do so I wouldn’t do it accidentally.”
Cooper resisted the impulse to take a step away from both of them. “So, we’ve got the room to ourselves,” he said. “What now?”
“Now … now,” Delilah said with a shaky breath, “I try to remember that, if something goes wrong, at least I’m already in a hospital.”
