A giant bed of sand and gravel lifted me a foot above the surface. I gasped and coughed up water as I pulled in a lungful of precious air. The water reached onto the bed of earth, grabbing for me. My element countered with a wall of sand, protecting me. The two elements battled, the water trying to get around the earth’s protective barrier, the earth slapping it down each time. Eventually, the water hissed and growled as it slowly receded.
I glanced up as a shadow slowly came into view, figuring it was Leo. But he didn’t have long chestnut hair. Or hazel eyes. Or curves. As the shadow came into focus, I had to blink several times. “Mom?”
“Katy!” Leo yelled as he came rushing over. I blinked again.
The shadow had disappeared.
“Babe.” He dropped to his knees and pulled me into his arms. “Are you okay?”
“What happened?”
“I have no idea. The water just swallowed you. I tried calling it, but it resisted. It’s never done that before.”
Just like my calls when Spencer had stolen them. I sat up and glanced out at the water. It was calm, even serene, and nothing like the angry element it’d been moments ago. I pushed my hair off my face and frowned. Dammit. I’d lost my hat again.
That didn’t bother me nearly as much as seeing my mom right after the earth had rescued me. The only thought I had…
Did my own mother just attack me and with an element she couldn’t control?
19
I didn’t say anything as we Ubered it back to the academy. Leo insisted on staying with me, but I convinced him I was fine and just wanted to rest alone in my room. He’d no doubt tell the guys what happened, and they’d all start texting me, popping into my room, or both. That left me little time to sneak to the ruins and talk to Cressida. Maybe she’d know what happened.
After quickly changing into dry clothes—it was surprisingly hard to walk in jeans that had been elementally dried—I teleported to the ruins to save time and hurried inside. “Cressida?”
No answer, which was weird. She’d been trapped in here for weeks.
“Cressida?” I called out louder.
Still nothing. And still weird.
I didn’t feel her presence either. Frowning, I walked along the stone walls of the gutted structure, past the curved staircase leading up to where the watchtower used to stand, around the large square stones that used to be part of the walls, and finally paused at the large opening facing the water.
Shuddering at the memory of how the element had tried to take me, I shook my head. “What did I ever do to you?” I asked the water bitterly. “I thought we’d moved past the whole spell thing. I told you I was sorry. You seemed to accept my apology. But then you did what you did today. How could you?”
The waves crashing against the rocks below fell silent as the element slowed, proverbially hanging its head.
“You should feel bad. You almost killed me.”
Water droplets that had collected on the surrounding grass merged together to create a puddle. It shuddered and then stilled.
“Stop trying to apologize,” I snapped.
It shuddered again. And then stilled again.
“I said stop. Can’t you even follow a basic command?”
It began to dance, shooting up mini streams as if I’d just shouted out bingo.
And it clicked. “You didn’t have control, did you? Someone else commanded you to attack me.”
The puddle went crazy, mini waves crashing down. It then stilled again, waiting.
I knelt and placed my hand on the surface, closing my eyes and concentrating on connecting with my element. It didn’t want to do what it had. I couldn’t be mad at it when it didn’t have control over what it had done. It was ashamed. I sensed it. “I understand.”
The puddle dispersed, returning the droplets of water to the grass. A few held back and crawled up my hand. They wrapped around my fingers, hugging me. I smiled and played with them as they rolled around, moving my hand this way and that before releasing them to the grass, where they returned to their original position on the blades.
I dropped my smile and whipped around when I heard feet scraping against the dirt, my hands at the ready to call whatever element I needed to protect me.
“Whoa.” My mom had her hands up as well. “It’s just me.”
She had on robes, a lot of robes of all different colors that ruffled in a weird-smelling, nonexistent breeze. It reminded me of burnt human hair. Speaking of…her hair seemed different. Longer, somehow. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she looked just like the woman I came to here to visit.
Mom? Or Cressida? Why couldn’t my brain make any sense of reality? It couldn’t be my mom. First, I saw her shadow at the jetty. Now here in the ruins when it was clearly Cressida. Something didn’t work in my brain. It felt heavy, if that were even possible.
“How’d you know to find me here?” Instead of at the café where we were supposed to meet?
“It’s where I always go to be alone. You know that.” She entered the ruins and glanced around. “It’s my home.”
“Cressida?”
“Who else could it be?” She smiled, though the warmth never reached her eyes as it usually did. And she wouldn’t look directly at me, which was something else that didn’t fit. Cressida usually held uncomfortably long eye contact.
“I thought you couldn’t leave the ruins.”
She kept in constant motion, pacing around the inside of the shell, touching the stone walls, running her fingers along the seams. “I can do what I can do.”
Like that was an answer. “Where’ve you been?”
“Watching.” She turned to me. “Always watching.”
Clearly, I was losing my marbles. She looked like Cressida. She gave cryptic answers like Cressida.
