The Elementalists Page 10

  Ezra left Paul with a final ‘peace out’ nod and steered Chloe deeper into the party. She looked back over her shoulder to catch Liz mouth the words “THANK YOU” as she was sidling up to Paul, and Chloe responded with a little ‘peace out’ nod of her own.

  “Thanks for that,” she shouted up to Ezra in an attempt to be heard over the increasing noise. He smiled and nudged her on past the living room.

  The music was piped through surround-sound speakers mounted in the walls, and an intensely focused DJ bobbed to the beat as he stared into his computer in the corner of what had become a makeshift dance hall. The sofas and coffee tables had been pushed to the side, and a mass of inebriated kids was grinding and flailing along with the mix. Ezra moved with the music and forced Chloe to shimmy with him as they went.

  She tried uselessly to squirm away. “My work here is done; I think maybe I’ll go now,” she shouted.

  “No chance, Lightning, you’re here to party!” he shouted back while leading her down a packed hallway and into the kitchen. The fridge door was open to a wall of canned beer, and two kegs sat in ice-lined trashcans nearby with meatheads manning all stations. The floor was already slippery with spill, and the room was packed with bodies, all jostling to get to or away from the source.

  Chloe could only cringe as Ezra muscled his way into the room with her as his battering ram. With his hands on her shoulders, he smashed her into anyone in his path.

  “Sorry! Excuse me. It’s not my fault!” protested Chloe as she caught elbows and angry stares in response to her forced progression. But most everyone fumbled to make way when they saw it was Ezra behind her. Before long, she was disheveled, but at the front of the throng beside a keg.

  “Three beers,” ordered Ezra after exchanging nods with the nearest meathead.

  “I’m not really much of a drinker,” Chloe protested just before Ezra thrust the first beer into her hand.

  “Start with that,” he said as he took the other two beers in hand and nudged Chloe toward the fridge. There he took two cans and put them in his back pockets, and then took two more and slipped them into the pockets of Chloe’s jacket. “That’s for later.”

  He took Chloe by the shoulder and turned her toward the exit. She shook her head and tried feebly to resist. “Don’t.”

  “Keep your shoulders down and protect the drink,” he said at her ear.

  She could feel his smile hanging there. She sighed and switched the cup to her left hand with a sharp glance back. His unrelenting gaze held to the crowd. “You suck,” she muttered as she turned to the right and put her shoulder down.

  “On the count of one… ONE!” Ezra started pushing and Chloe’s shoulder clipped someone in the ribs. But Ezra kept on ramming her deeper into the herd. “Sorry,” he said to the swaying lad, “she’s very clumsy and terribly rude.”

  “Oh God! Excuse me! It’s not my fault!” yelped Chloe in quick succession as she bumped all those in her way. She tried not to spill the beer, but left a trail of wet, foamy splashes across numerous elbows, butts, and backs.

  They pushed through the crowd to a large back den, equipped with a pool table and a floor-to-ceiling library. Music blared through the wall speakers: a mash-up of hip-hop and an old seventies funk track. A sprawl of hipsters occupied the leather sofa and chairs that commanded the center of the library, and a varied collection of wannabe players surrounded the pool table, waiting to call, “Next!”

  Ezra eyed the table hungrily. “I’m gonna run this table,” he announced to himself as he scoped the competition and decided it came up lacking. “You want to be my partner?” he asked Chloe.

  “No, I’ve never played before. If you want to win, find someone else.” She was still trying to catch her breath.

  “Come on, we’ll still win. I can carry you as you learn,” he offered with a cocky smile.

  “No, really, it’s cool; I’ll go look at the books,” she said, staring at the stacks of leather-bound first editions.

  “Okay, but make sure to drink that beer while you’re at it. After this, we’re gonna hit the dance floor,” he declared.

  “That is definitely not going to happen,” she answered as he turned away with a knowing chuckle.

  Chloe immediately began to second-guess her decision to venture off on her own. She eyed the walls of books, but the other inhabitants of the space awoke the social butterflies that Ezra’s sturdy presence had helped to quiet.

  Stan occupied one of the reading thrones, staring a little too intently at his own hand. His accomplice, Brian, was sloppily making out with a hipster girl at the edge of the sofa. Chloe didn’t know the others… Kirin and Cynthia were nowhere to be seen.

  Against all better judgment, she sipped the beer and tried to quell the initial impulse to gag. She kept her head down, but couldn’t help but glance over at Stan as she rounded the outskirts of the room. He tried and failed to hide his wounded interest in Brian’s lascivious display.

  Stan’s gaze flicked up and met hers for half a second.

  Damn! She buried her face in the cup and took a gulp without thinking. Her mom never drank beer, but Chloe remembered how her dad had always said that beer was “an acquired taste.” She shuddered and coughed—not there yet.

  Her hurried step brought her to the stacks, where she deliberately turned her back to the group sitting nearby. She imagined for a long hushed moment that Stan’s eyes were locked on her, and she waited with a ready wince for the embarrassing bellow that was sure to come…but didn’t. The tension in her shoulders eased and she let her eyes take in some of the titles that lined the shelves before her.

  Her jaw actually dropped as her fingers found the leather spine of what appeared to be a first edition of Treasure Island. Then her fingertips drifted, passing over equally pristine copies of Watership Down and The Wind in the Willows.

  The shelf was marked with a little golden placard labeled “CHILDREN’S BOOKS.”

  Chloe had loved her tattered and stained copies of all those books and many of the others beside them, though she didn’t really see all of them as books solely meant for children. She thought it a little sad that these treasures were so neatly arranged and seemingly untouched here. She was more of a random pile-in-the-corner sort of organizer, and found herself oddly disconcerted with the rigid and unloved collection before her.

  Still, she was also keenly aware that a few of them could probably have paid for an entire year of her college tuition. Just one of the shelves was worth more than the yearly take-home from her mom’s two and a half jobs combined. Her gaze climbed the stacks… There were hundreds of them, maybe a thousand.

  She had a strange urge to smell the pages, but feared that an alarm might sound, bringing the party to a screeching halt with only her to blame. Instead, she sipped the beer again and glanced back to the pool table, where Ezra had claimed one of the sticks, chalking it with a focused study of the layout of balls before him. He cracked his neck and lined up his first shot.

  Chloe turned back to another shelf that carried priceless copies of Brontë, Dickens, and Faulkner and shook her head in bewilderment that so much wealth could be displayed so casually. She wondered if Paul had an inkling of how amazing this small corner of his house was, let alone the vast grandeur and privilege of all the rest. She leaned in to examine a string of silver-framed photos on the next shelf.

  The first picture showed an attractive older man in his best golf attire with one arm around a ten-year-old Paul Markson and the other draped across the back of Mr. Roberts as he gripped the shoulders of a smaller, less developed Kendra. Both Paul and Kendra wore T-shirts that said “Daedalus Group Family Field Day: 2010.”

  The next photo showed the same two men, twenty years earlier, standing in full mountaineering garb at the top of a snowcapped peak. Another little gold-engraved placard was fastened at the base of the frame: “Captains of the World, 1992.”

  Chloe snorted and rolled her eyes until they landed on a crystal statue prominently
positioned on the next shelf. It was in the shape of a swooping angel’s wing that emerged from an engraved base that said:

  DAEDALUS GROUP

  VISIONARY’S AWARD

  (For Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Bioengineering)

  Dr. WILLIAM “Wilkie” MARKSON

  The “ENGINEERING” section was cleverly positioned on the shelf above, and the extensive “BIOLOGY” section was on the shelf below. This time, she couldn’t stop her hand from shooting out and snatching a book: a reprint of John James Audubon’s, Birds of America. She put her beer down by the award and opened the creaking leather-bound edition with reverence. Every page held a beautiful full-color painting of a different bird, and Chloe absorbed each of them, turning the pages with a growing smile.

  She’d seen one of the prints before at a museum in Washington, D.C., where a much larger first edition of the book was displayed beneath a thick glass box. The freedom to casually flip through the almost five hundred pictures seemed almost dreamlike. A flutter of butterflies climbed in her gut as she flipped the heavy paper, scanning over paintings of owls, loons, marsh hens, and herons.

  She froze on a painting of two peregrine falcons tearing into a couple of bloody ducks, but started to feel like she was being watched. She glanced up toward a blinking red light in the corner. A small security camera was pointed right at her. Her smile faded, and she gently closed the book.

  “Don’t worry about it,” cut in Stan as he stepped beside her. “The real one is downstairs in a vault.”

  “Sorry! I, I was just…” she stammered while fumbling the book back on the shelf.

  Stan reached out and gently took the book back out, opening it up to a picture of a red-breasted woodpecker. His lids were half-closed over bloodshot eyes, and he wore a little smile. “No, really, it’s cool. I’ve known Paul since like the first grade; his dad loves to show off this collection. He keeps the really valuable ones in the basement.”

  Chloe breathed again, eyeing Stan carefully. “Some of these books would be worth thousands of dollars.”

  “Yeah, but the first-edition copy of Birds of America is worth like ten million,” said Stan with a little laugh.

  “Seriously—and it’s downstairs?” Chloe whispered.

  “Yup,” answered Stan as he slid the book back on the shelf with unexpected respect.

  Chloe retrieved her beer and took another drink. “Are you into books?” she asked, a little surprised.

  Stan laughed again. “No, not really; I just like birds. My mom’s an ornithologist.”

  Stan’s eyes flashed back over to Brian. Chloe could see the muscles tighten in his jaw as his smirk faded. He looked back at her, trying to play it off.

  “I think I’m gonna take a walk,” he declared. “You want to go see it, the original?” he asked with his mischievous smile returning.

  “In the vault?” Chloe asked. “That doesn’t seem like such a good idea.” She looked back to the pool table, where Ezra was beginning to dismantle his opponents. “Plus, I’m kind of waiting for a friend.”

  Stan laughed. “Dude, Ezra will run that table for an hour, and I promise to bring you back safe and sound before then.” He pointed toward another exit and nodded. “Trust me, Cool Chloe, there’s stuff down there that’s worth seeing!”

  “How?”

  “Paul likes to show off by leaving the vault open at parties. There are so many cameras that no one could steal anything anyway.” He reached his hand out toward her expectantly.

  Chloe hesitated and sipped her beer.

  “I promise to take good care of you, under penalty of a severe beating by Ezra Richardson.” Stan put up his other hand, as if taking an oath. “Scout’s honor.”

  “You were a Boy Scout?” she asked skeptically.

  “Eagle Scout, actually, so you know you’ll be safe with me,” he winked, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “And your boy, Kirin, is downstairs, too.”

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, failing to hide the sharp rise in her voice and the sudden flush in her cheeks. She tried to look uninterested and hid behind her cup.

  “Yup, he’s totally wasted,” Stan answered with a sad glance back at Brian.

  Chloe coughed with the last unnecessarily large gulp of beer and smiled.

  • • •

  From the top of the stairs, Chloe could smell the distinct reek of pot smoke rising from below. She paused on a step midway down and considered turning back, but the warm buzz of the alcohol had kicked in. She needed to see Kirin, needed to see how he would act when he saw her. Her curiosity would not be denied.

  Stan clomped ungracefully down the stairs ahead of her. “Come on,” he called back with an encouraging wave, followed by a discouraging chuckle.

  The overhead lights in the basement were set to a dimmed orange haze, and strings of Christmas bulbs ringed the wood-paneled walls. The room was thick with smoke, and an assortment of random kids were sunk into the sofas or splayed across the plush carpets. A senior boy who she recognized from the soccer posse was manning a fully stocked bar; he sported sunglasses and had an unlit joint behind his ear. He passed a shot of something brown to a girl who looked like she was already having trouble standing. The dance beats from upstairs were piped through speakers here too, though thankfully not quite so loud as above.

  “You want a drink?” asked Stan at her ear.

  She felt like she was supposed to say yes, but the beer she’d drunk had already taken her well past her comfort zone. Coolness was probably not in the cards. “No, I’ve got a beer,” she said, taking one of the cans from her pocket and opening it with a foamy spurt. She slurped at the suds and pretended to like it. “You want one?”

  Stan shook his head. “No, thanks; I don’t really do well with alcohol. Plus, I’m driving.”

  Chloe hadn’t expected that.

  “The vault’s back here,” he said, continuing to move through the maze of hunting-lodge furniture and inebriated bodies.

  Chloe followed and sipped at her second beer, hiding behind the can in the hopes that the others wouldn’t see her for the faker she was. She scanned the crowd for Kirin’s jet-black hair and casual posture, trying hard to avoid eye contact with all the non-Kirin faces she passed. She barely recognized any of them. Do all of these people go to my school?

  Stan led her into another room where a long leather sofa faced a beautifully lit tropical aquarium that was set into the length of the wall across from it. The crystal-blue water was stocked with a wide array of multicolored fish, darting about in little schools or sliding casually through the coral maze. Chloe was temporarily mesmerized by the sense that she was underwater with them as the ripples of light shimmied across the walls and ceiling all around her. She saw little lobsters crawling along the rocky floor and sinuous eels slipping among the slowly dancing weeds. A cluster of brilliant blue fish moved as if with one mind as a larger red-tinged fish with jutting teeth followed in lazy pursuit.

  “Cool, right?” Stan said with a nod of appreciation. “It’s like Dr. Markson’s meditation room, designed so that if you sit in the center of the sofa, you can only see water and fish in your peripheral vision… It’s a totally awesome place to get high,” he added as he lit a joint beside Chloe and took a long inhale. He held it in with his mischievous grin returned and offered the joint her way.

  She tensed as the white, musky smoke spilled out of his nose and his chest slowly deflated. “You want some?” he asked with a pinched voice.

  “I thought you said you were driving?” she challenged.

  “Yeah, no alcohol; weed is fine, though.”

  “I see… I’m gonna stick with beer for now,” she answered with another nervous gulp of the nasty-tasting stuff. She turned away to hide the latest shudder and saw a watery ripple of light dance across a familiar blonde ponytail with blue-dyed tips at the far edge of the sofa. Chloe’s heart started pounding in her chest.

  Cynthia Decareaux was straddling someone, making out furiously whi
le enveloping the unidentifiable figure with a heavy onslaught of her considerable sexual attention. The unknown participant’s tanned fingers held tightly to Cynthia’s jean-covered butt, though to Chloe it didn’t look like the clothes would impede them for long.

  Chloe’s mouth was suddenly very dry. She wanted to turn and run the other way, but found herself taking a step forward.

  Stan followed her shell-shocked gaze to the compromised twosome on the sofa. “Ah, yes, we all saw this one coming,” he chuckled with a roll of his eyes. “Another hapless victim of Sin-D.”

  Cynthia shifted as she kissed down his neck, and Kirin’s bright red face came into view as his heavy head lolled back against the headrest of the sofa. His eyes were shut, and he looked disheveled and hopelessly drunk, but then her lips found his again, and he joined her willingly in the hungry pursuit. Chloe’s breath caught in her throat as she imagined the aquarium glass exploding and thousands of gallons of water and sea life flooding into the room. She wanted to scream and rage, to grab the blue-tipped ponytail and yank. Instead, she stormed away with a last ravenous gulp of beer.

  She pelted the empty can at the floor and opened the third beer without thinking.

  She was chugging it by the time Stan caught up to her at the foot of the stairs. He touched her wrist gently. “You like him. I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” he stammered. “If it’s any consolation, I know how it feels.”

  The room shimmered oddly, and Chloe’s scalp was tingling. She was drunk, and she wanted to get drunker. She reached out and swiped the joint from Stan’s hand, holding it before her face as the destructive urge took control.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. If you’ve never smoked before, this is kind of—”

  Chloe took a long, hard pull and felt the smoke go deep into her lungs.

  “—strong for beginners,” Stan finished, as Chloe’s ill-advised foray into drug use devolved into a barrage of hacking coughs.