“What’s a dilute?” I asked as I broke down empty pizza boxes and stacked them.
“What?” Rob and Bryan barked at the same time. Rob immediately grew as red as Clay as he tensed. His expression hardened, and now he looked ready to cut a bitch too.
Bryan, the most levelheaded one of the group, turned to regard me from over the back of the couch. “Where’d you hear that term?”
“Jess.” Clay practically spat her name and curled his lip. “She called our girl a…that.”
Rob, the hothead of the group until Clay somehow began to morph into one himself, shot to his feet. “She did what? Where is she? I’m going to remove her ability to speak.”
Apparently, the rule about boys hitting girls didn’t apply when said girl called someone a dilute. I still didn’t know what it meant and asked, “And a dilute is?”
“An elemental with a Nelem parent,” Bryan explained.
“What’s the big deal about having a non-elemental parent?”
He sighed, like explaining this was the last thing he wanted to do. I got it. Bryan was our tie to the dark side. Most of his family had gone dark. Those who hadn’t had either died defending the family name or were marked, meaning one misstep and they were out, like Bryan. It was why he walked the line, followed the straight and narrow, and a plethora of other sayings that meant he wasn’t allowed to screw up, like, ever. “It’s an offensive term used for those with Nelems in their direct lineage. They consider that diluting the bloodline. Only pures use that term.”
It didn’t take a dictionary for me to figure out that one. “So because my dad was a Nelem, that somehow makes me weak?”
“In some’s eyes, yes.”
“The fact I beat the grand poohbah of the dark elementals means nothing?”
“It just means another dark elemental will take his place, step in to challenge you. They firmly believe the purer the lineage, the stronger the bloodline.”
That was just freakin’ peachy. There were always going to be dumbass dark elementals willing to die for the cause in the hopes they’d be the one to beat me.
“I never thought I’d ever hear it again,” Bryan muttered. “I thought we’d evolved beyond using words like that. My granddad used to say it all the time.”
“It’s a disgusting term,” Clay snarled, again surprising me. He’d lost his spark of fire. I missed my carefree air elemental.
“Hey,” I said in a cheery voice. “Why don’t we get in a training? You know, burn off all that pizza?”
Rob brought up his hands. “I’ve got a paper due.”
“I’m in the same class,” Bryan added. “Who assigns a paper due the first week of class?”
“Professor Burkhardt, that’s who.” Rob approached and kissed me on the cheek, his dark whiskers poking me. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Reed.”
“Text me when you get back from whatever adventure you and Clay are about to go on,” Bryan said with a kiss on the other cheek, his clean-shaven face and soft lips a direct contrast to Rob’s five o’clock shadow and firm mouth. “But definitely go on one. I can feel how unstable he is right now.”
“Bite me,” Clay growled at Bryan, earning a salute from the earth elemental. But he didn’t deny it.
“Hey,” I called out after them. “Text Leo and let him know he doesn’t need to walk over.”
Bryan nodded and waved as he and Rob left the house. I turned to Clay. “Ready?”
“For?”
“You’ll see. How about we practice teleporting?”
“No, Montana. I still can’t—” was all he got out before I grabbed his arm and focused on a bluff I discovered over the summer, one isolated enough, we wouldn’t be discovered. For what I had planned, we needed privacy.
It didn’t make a difference who initiated the teleport, the feeling of my insides changing positions with my outsides as we flew through the void remained constant. When we landed, I held perfectly still in case we hit too close to the cliff.
“Montana,” Clay said softly. “Don’t move.”
My heart leapt to my throat as I froze, trying not to freak out. Did I teleport into a giant beehive? Or into a pit of snakes? Did they have pits of snakes on Whidbey Island? “Why? What is it?”
“Walk toward me, nice and slow.”
Now I was freaking out. “Clay?”
“Just a few steps to your left.”
I slowly turned.
“Your other left, Montana.”
Crap. I’d always had a hard time with my right and left ever since they’d taught us to write with our right. I was left-handed, so I’d chanted the mantra that I write with my right for years before I realized I had it wrong.
“Don’t look down.”
Why did people say that? The very first thing a person did was look down when someone said that. So of course, that was exactly what I did.
“Holy dammit.” My heart shot to my throat. I was now floating two feet past the edge of the cliff. It was a good fifty-foot drop to the jagged rocks below. The thunder of the crashing waves, like the water was somehow angry, kicked up the wind. It swirled around me, causing my hair to whip against my face.
“Take my hand.” He pulled me to him. I fell into his arms, shaking at how close I’d come to plummeting to my death. Granted, I had the ability to call air, so the likelihood of that happening was pretty small, but that reasoning didn’t stop me from shaking any less.
“Maybe we should work on your landings,” Clay offered after we moved away from the ledge. Way, waaay away.
I didn’t plan to teleport again any time soon. Once we were a safe distance away from the edge of the cliff and hidden in a small grove of trees, I dropped to my knees and worked my fingers into
