I got to my feet and faced my mentor. She might not seem intimidating as tiny as she was, but I knew better. From the day I’d first met her, she’d shown me just how fierce she could be. I knew by that look in her eyes, today would be no different.
She switched to air, sending a surge of wind at me. I countered with enough fire to consume the air, twisting the two elements together and sending the firenado at her. It spun around her, closing in as Spencer had done to me. She didn’t fight it, and I knew she had enough power to, so I didn’t intensify the call.
She shot water straight up out of the ground and doused the fire, turning the tornado into a waterspout and sending it right back at me. Using earth, I broke the spout apart. It came crashing down and soaked the ground.
When she brought her hands up, I braced myself for her next attack. “I think it’s safe to say she passed. I don’t sense any misplaced element in her, nor did she display any signs of being magically enhanced. Katy Reed is not dark.”
Oh, thank God it was over. The guys ran onto the field and congratulated me. I hugged and laughed and slapped backs right along with them. It was cause for celebration. Not once had my hand throbbed. No weird glow.
I turned to smile my thanks to Stace. She returned the gesture. I then searched the crowd of Council members for my mom, not surprised when I didn’t see her. But definitely disappointed. Somewhere in the middle of me battling it out with three strong elementals, she’d taken off.
Again.
17
By Friday, tribunals had come to an end.
As the student levels advanced, the occurrence of magically enhanced elementals disappeared. The first and second years were the only ones that had any concentration of them in their midst.
The Council members had taken their toys and gone home, including my mom. How’d I find out she no longer lived in the infirmary, you might ask? I’d stopped by her room to talk to her about why she’d called me out on the field like that. Only it was no longer her room. She’d found another place to live and never told me. Oh, but she did leave me a note, so…yeah.
Thanks, Mom.
I’d visited with Cressida every day after curfew so no one else would see me. And every day, she looked a little worse. Her eyes more sunken. Her skin ashier. Not being a part of the school was literally draining her of her life force. She was dying all over again.
I hadn’t told anyone else about the ward I created. Not out of fear of being in trouble for creating something that potentially broke the barrier and was killing its founder, but because I couldn’t find it. I’d returned to where we’d created it and it was just gone. If it no longer existed, it couldn’t be the cause of the barrier weakening.
Back to the drawing board.
I sat at my desk, doodling in my sketch pad now that the latest webisode had been uploaded. Detective Nigel Brandt had a rather nasty murder to solve and called upon Amethyst to help. While they were at the crime scene, of course Onyx crashed the party and tried to take them out.
“I knew this would draw you in, Amethyst! Now I have you!”
“Can’t you see I’m a little busy, Onyx? Take a number. I’ll be with you shortly.”
I smiled as I scrolled through the first panel and moved on to the next, with Onyx attacking with fire and Amethyst countering with an airfield around Nigel and herself.
“When are you going to learn you can’t beat me, Onyx? Pick on someone your own size for a change, you bully.”
“What a great idea. Detective Brandt, I believe it is? I am Onyx, and I’m here to kill you.”
The final panel of this webisode had Nigel with his hands up trying to defend himself against a firenado, courtesy of Onyx, and Amethyst shielding her eyes as she tried to get to the detective before it was too late.
“Amethyst! Help me!”
“Nigel! Hold on! Damn you, Onyx!”
“Good-bye, Detective Brandt. Ha ha ha!”
The caption at the bottom: Will Amethyst save Nigel in time? Find out in next week’s exciting webisode of The Elements. I closed the browser with a satisfied sigh.
I thought of Trevor, my number one fan. Would he still be able to follow the webcomic from his cell? Did they allow inmates at Carcerem to have computers? Did the magically enhanced elementals qualify as inmates? Or did the Council have them in some type of concentration camp away from the truly dangerous criminals there?
I kept drawing what I recalled of the ward. I didn’t know if I had it right since I’d only seen it briefly. It looked right. I think. Maybe if I drew it enough times, it’d come back to me. It killed time until my date showed up. I glanced at the clock on my desk. Only thirty more minutes of doodling to go.
Now that the Council had lifted the weekend suspension, this was the first weekend of freedom since returning to the academy, and here I sat. At my desk in my dorm. On a Friday night. Waiting for a date with my earth elemental so we could—what else—do homework. Our primary professor had wasted no time piling on the work to make up for the classes we’d missed.
Clay and Rob had taken Leo out to work on his new fire element, leaving Bryan and me to deal with the mountains of homework the professor had assigned. We didn’t have any homework in primary when I went with Rob to fire or with Clay to air. I couldn’t believe
