The Elementalists Page 23

  “The girl doesn’t know anything. She’s in high school, for God’s sake… Yes, I knew her father. He was a nut-job and a troublemaker, and I had to get rid of him. If it comes to it, I’ll take care of this girl and the mom the same way—trust me, these people are totally unconnected and poor as dirt. For now, you just worry about getting the tower operational and the data flowing in. Everything relating to this Loch Ness Monster, or whatever it is, can wait…”

  What did he do to my father? What could he do to mom? Now Chloe’s arms were shaking, too.

  “Honestly, I’d say we only have a month or so before Mr. Allen shows. I’ve stalled for as long as I can… All right, I’ll set it up, but I need that tower up and running again next week.”

  Chloe’s nose started to itch terribly.

  “I know it’s impossible; that’s why I have you.” Chloe heard the hang-up beep of the cell phone.

  Please leave! Please leave! But as the footsteps moved back toward the door, she heard him start to dial again…

  “Have Mr. Duncan bring the car around and get me Mr. Allen on the phone as soon as possible,” The door’s hinges screamed in protest again and Chloe all but collapsed onto the tile floor.

  She put her back against the stall and tried to still the trembling throughout her body. She didn’t care about the wet spot on her skirt clinging to her leg or the stink of lemon-scented ammonia that surrounded her. Chloe was deeply rattled. I have to protect mom. I’m only fifteen. Curiosity did not reward the cat… I have homework to do.

  And with that, she picked herself up and fled.

  Chapter 18

  The Gauntlet

  Chloe tried to force the jagged-edged shape of her life back down into the neat little hole of high school. Before, she’d struggled to hold on to every nuance of her encounters with the dragon only to have them stripped away in her sleep. Now, her failed attempt to suppress those same memories left her sullen and irritable. She’d worn the mask of scholarly focus for a few days without incident, but today was Halloween and her attempt at assimilation was derailed before she even got through the senior parking lot to her homeroom class.

  First Ezra came bounding toward her wearing the white-sheet toga and golden oak leaf crown of a Caesar. “You can’t ignore me forever, Lightning,” he bellowed from twenty paces out.

  Chloe scrunched lower as more than one pair of eyes swung to watch her response. She forced a weak smile. “Don’t count on it, Your Highness.” She’d managed to steer clear of him for the better part of a couple weeks, and a public confrontation was the last thing she needed right now. She headed for the side entrance to the school, knowing before she’d taken two steps that her evasive tactics were futile.

  He drew his cardboard legionnaire’s sword and blocked her path. “What are you supposed to be?” he asked.

  She grabbed the fake sword by the blade and pushed it aside. “I’m an angry high school student.” She eyed him up and down and kept walking. “Let me guess, you’re a premature frat boy with a weakness for jailbait.”

  He looped around and fell into an exaggerated step beside her. “What, you plan to avoid me until I graduate?”

  “I hadn’t really given it much thought,” she muttered without looking at him. “How about you? You plan on robbing the cradle until June?”

  “Chloe, come on!” he shouted, stopping her in her tracks.

  She flinched and turned to look up at him.

  He looked at her in a way that made it seem like they were the only two people there, despite all the eyes and ears that had turned their way. “What’s really your problem with me?” he challenged. “You’re the one who’s in love with that surfer dude and always running around with the stoner doofus!”

  Chloe shriveled as her gaze danced between multiple sets of watching eyes. “Why are you shouting at me?” she asked in a harsh whisper.

  “’Cause you’re too damn thick to listen otherwise,” he answered in a more reasonable decibel. “I’ve gone out with your presumed enemy a couple times—so what? She’s actually pretty cool and hilariously sarcastic once you get to know her, but despite popular belief, I’m not actually all that sleazy,” he proclaimed. “I’m not pretending or hiding anything. I’m just having fun when I can, and I don’t apologize for that… But YOU are my homegirl, Chloe. I’d move the earth for you.”

  That was when Kendra zipped into the parking lot in her brand-new sweet sixteen BMW. Sleek and fire red, it slid into an open space a few cars ahead. She emerged with a cackle and pranced into Chloe’s line of sight with a wicked grin. She was wearing a hospital gown and booties, and her hair was clumped with artfully placed twigs and leaves beneath a golden makeshift crown. She wore makeup that made her face look dirty and pale, but still she couldn’t keep from looking beautiful. Her wild eyes met Chloe’s in open challenge. “Look at me, everybody; I’m the Lightning Girl!”

  Chloe shot a hard look back at Ezra. His face had gone slack. “Right, good speech,” she said before moving on toward the door as steadily as she could.

  “Christ!” Ezra muttered behind her. He gave Kendra a disgusted look and stormed off in the other direction.

  Chloe kept walking. She could feel her blood starting to boil as she got closer, but she didn’t even glance over as she stepped past Kendra’s theatrical display of hostility.

  “Stay away from him, freak!” Kendra hissed at her back.

  Okay, bitch, that’s it! Chloe stopped and turned slowly. “Happy birthday, Kendra. Looks like Daddy bought you a good one.” Her calculating eyes moved to the license plate: HAWT-16. She burst out with a cold laugh. “Wow, congratulations! Now you’re one big moving advertisement for pedophilia.”

  Kendra snorted. “Better than being a walking billboard for Paxil.”

  Touché! Chloe hadn’t expected that. She stopped laughing and dropped her death gaze to scan the costume. Kendra had used an impressive attention to detail: complete with fake abrasions and bloody bandages on her hands and knees. “I like your costume.”

  “Yours sucks,” Kendra retorted. Without warning, she held up her phone and snapped another surprise picture of Chloe. “You dress like a fifth-grade boy.” She bent her wild-haired head to examine her digital work and grinned.

  “Gee, maybe you could take me shopping with Daddy’s credit sometime?” spat Chloe.

  “Yeah, that’d be so cute, just like an after-school special. Except, as we’re leaving from the big clothes spree with tons of bags, I suddenly push you in front of an oncoming bus and we learn that the moral of the story is ‘don’t fuck with Kendra!’”

  Chloe couldn’t tell if she was furious, embarrassed, or impressed. Part of her wanted to burst out laughing, and the other was on the cusp of lunging across the distance and tearing into Kendra’s throat. Instead, she just stood there mutely.

  Kendra waved the picture in front of Chloe and then dismissed her. “Run along and have a good day. I got your number from Ezra; I’ll totally CC you this time.”

  Chloe turned her back on the scarlet nightmare and kept walking as Kendra’s victorious cackle rang out across the parking lot. Chloe cinched her backpack straps tighter and picked up the pace. She felt the press of eyes on her from all directions and sank her head into her shoulders. The rumble of thunder sounded in her inner ears.

  She didn’t even hear Stan calling out to her until he caught her at the side door. Still she latched on to the handle with a death grip and swung the door open with enough force to smack it into the brick wall with a loud echo down the hallway.

  “Stupid door!” shouted Stan with an angry point. He was wearing a hooked bird beak over his nose, and his eyes were already bloodshot.

  “I hate this place!” shouted Chloe with steam trailing behind every word. “This is all a monumental waste of time!”

  “Happy Halloween to you, too,” answered Stan with an undaunted grin.

  She turned on him and narrowed her eyes. “Are you high already?”

  He
shrugged.

  “That’s really sad.”

  “I have no sound argument to dispute that,” he said with a nod. “But dude,” he continued with a dramatic hush to his voice, “did you hear about the missing livestock?”

  Chloe shook her head.

  “It’s been all over the local news today—more than ten cows, a few goats, and a pig have all gone missing over the course of the last couple months with only a few specks of blood to show for it.” Stan flared his eyes for dramatic effect. “They finally gave the culprit a name…The Charlottesville Cow Thief. It’s gonna be bigger than the Chupacabras!” He was nodding his head with a knowing look. “Police say there’s no sign of entry or struggle at any of the sites; it’s like the animals were plucked from the ground and carried off into thin air.” He winked. “Sound like anything to you?”

  Chloe felt like she’d been slapped back into reality, or perhaps back out of it. “Really?”

  “Dude, Google it.”

  Chloe stared off through the wall, trying to decide what she thought of this information. Self-preservation told her to forget the whole thing, but to do so would be against her nature. Her eyes drifted back to Stan’s waiting grin. “You believe me?”

  Stan shrugged. “You’re real moody and pretty weird, but I’m fairly certain you’re not crazy… If you say you’ve seen a giant flying reptile hanging around and now a whole bunch of animals have gone missing, then it seems to check out, right?”

  “Thanks, Stan.”

  He leaned closer. “So what are we going to do?” he whispered with conspiratorial glee.

  All the drama of the parking lot was a distant memory. Chloe’s eyes thinned and a smirk crept closer. “We have to find it before anyone else does.”

  • • •

  But even though she should have been focused on the renewed hunt for the improbable beast, all the petty pains of high school returned when Kirin didn’t show up again for homeroom. Chloe hadn’t really talked to him since he’d given her the ride before the dance, and she began to fear that he might graduate before she got a moment alone with him again. She pondered the possibility of having to slog through the rest of the semester without his active presence in her life. What if Ezra is right? What if I do love Kirin?

  She stared at the back of Liz’s head while she expertly thumbed yet another text exchange with Paul Markson from under her desk. Somehow, even with her back turned and head down, Liz seemed to radiate bubbly joy. It had been a full month since Liz had entered this constant euphoric state, and in her lower moments, Chloe had actually started to hide from her sight in the hallway.

  Though she wouldn’t admit it, Chloe was jealous. Not of being with Paul Markson—who had on occasion proven to be as much of a dullard as his father was brilliant—but more of Liz’s simple ability to embrace happiness.

  Mr. Jacobson waxed on with his back turned and his mind on his next cigarette. Chloe turned her gaze to Kirin’s empty desk as her fingers thrummed quietly on her textbook. A few other students about the room were also mid-text, and two boys in the back were blatantly watching some hyper-violent Japanese cartoon with shared earphones and a high-def tablet screen between them. Just when Chloe was about to start an internal diatribe against the wrongs of modern communication, her own pocket started to vibrate. She tried not to smile as she fished her three-year-old flip phone from her jeans and slid it into her lap. Please be Kirin. Please be Kirin.

  The text was from an unrecognized number, and it took a moment for the picture to render. Kendra was true to her word—there was Chloe, looking angry and ridiculous in the middle of the parking lot with a bold-faced message beneath.

  BREAKING NEWS: Local Homecoming Queen and lightning enthusiast ALSO suspected Cow Thief! Keep the animals in the barn and your man locked up tight… Have a happy AND SAFE Halloween from KR.

  Chloe glanced around and saw the picture popping up on multiple little screens around her. A boy near the front snickered and looked over his shoulder. Directly ahead, she heard a sudden gasp before Liz turned around with wide, angry eyes.

  “I’m going to kill her,” Liz whispered.

  Chloe dropped her gaze back to the unflattering picture in her grip as the phone started to get hot. She felt light-headed and her fingers tingled. Her hand began to shake as the picture on the screen wavered with bands of static. The phone sparked with a loud POP! A whiff of smoke climbed from the ear hole. Chloe gasped and dropped it to clatter across the floor as all eyes in the room spun around to find her.

  “Everything okay, Ms. McClellan?” asked Mr. Jacobson amid an undercurrent of stifled laughter throughout the class.

  Chloe leaned over and cautiously picked up her dead phone as the scent of burnt plastic filled the room. It was totally fried, and everyone was still looking at her. She held it up for all to see and forced a little smirk. “Sorry, my phone blew up…must have been a bad text.”

  The class erupted into a joint guffaw that Liz quickly steered into an infectious cheer. After twenty disruptive seconds, Chloe took a little bow, which only added to the problem. Mr. Jacobson couldn’t get the noise under control for a full minute, and the story had spread throughout the school before class had even ended.

  • • •

  Throughout the rest of the day, random students yelled “Cow Thief” whenever Chloe walked down the hall. Some people openly laughed or cringed away with a snicker as she made her way through the cafeteria. Kirin wasn’t waiting for her at the table in the back as she’d secretly hoped.

  Chloe couldn’t explain what had happened with her phone; there wasn’t a reasonable explanation for much of anything that had happened to her lately. So she faced the wall and kept her attention on her peanut butter and honey sandwich. Stan slid into Kirin’s seat across the table with his eyes even more bloodshot than they’d been that morning. Instantly the high school spell was broken again, and the two sank toward each other with a flurry of whispers and a plan to meet up later that night. Chloe had a race the next morning, but Halloween still carried some cache in the McClellan household, and Audrey would be working the late shift until about eleven thirty anyway.

  “I’ll get the family wagon and pick you up at eight,” said Stan.

  Chloe nodded. “We’ll need costumes—unrecognizable.”

  “Yup,” Stan agreed. “What’s the plan? We can’t go back to the pond and neither can it.”

  Chloe thought about it for a long moment. “You have a video camera?”

  Stan’s smile grew. “My dad is the IT manager at a pretty big law firm. He’s a total tech geek—I’ve got a camera, dude.”

  “Okay…bring it tonight…with a tripod,” Chloe was thinking out loud now.

  “What are we gonna shoot?” asked Stan.

  “You said he’s taking cows most every night?” Chloe asked.

  Stan nodded but raised an eyebrow. “He?”

  “Or it, whatever—it’s taking cows?” Chloe knew just the spot, a pull-off on a rarely traveled country road that overlooked the finest herd of free-range cattle that money could buy in the whole county, which was, of course, owned by none other than local business wizard Richard Roberts. “We need to get the dragon on video.”

  Stan started to chuckle. After looking around for eavesdroppers that weren’t there, Chloe leaned over until the lip of the table dug into her belly. She told him about what she’d seen at the pond on Sunday. Then she added the story of her near encounter with Mr. Roberts in the bathroom, though again she neglected to mention the Tipping Point Prophecy or the extended conversation she’d had with the man/monster on the night of the dance… But she did make it very clear that NO ONE else was to know about the dragon or the Daedalus Group, especially not Brian and the big-mouthed, stoner posse!

  Stan’s hand sprang up by his head. “Mum’s the word, dude, scout’s honor,” he whispered. “I’ll back up whatever footage we get on multiple hard drives and a cloud-based server just in case. I can totally get you your own law-firm-b
randed thumb drive with the footage on it by tomorrow morning. That way, we can both have some insurance and a bargaining chip if one of us gets taken.”

  “Maybe you watch too much television?” Chloe suggested.

  “That’s entirely possible, but I’m gonna do it anyway,” he admitted. “You can never be too careful with these things.”

  “I don’t think the dragon means us any harm. I think it’s just confused and scared,” Chloe offered as she recalled the sadness she’d seen behind Uktena’s gaze.

  “Dude, I’m not worried about the dragon; I’m scared of the Daedalus Group!” Stan announced. “Hell, if I get to see an actual dragon, I wouldn’t even care if it eats me!”

  • • •

  Chloe remained steely and above it all for the rest of the day. She was unfazed by the barbs that followed her throughout gym as Kendra and the hive enjoyed every moment of close proximity. And her mind was blissfully empty during practice that afternoon as the team ran six miles in a cohesive line while the runner in the rear had to sprint to the front at regular intervals. But she was not prepared for what awaited her return to the senior parking lot after practice.

  Angela, the cross-country girls’ team captain, had started to give Chloe rides home most days, even though it was pretty far out of her way. As always, she and Chloe made their trek across the now mostly empty span of asphalt and concrete to the sea-green Dodge that Angela had inherited the year she’d moved in with her aunt after a harrowing immigration process from Ethiopia. Angela didn’t talk about it much, except to say that she’d literally run away from her homeland and that she’d spent much of her youth within the fenced-off structure of varying refugee camps.

  It seemed that every time Chloe rode in the car, something else would fall apart, but Angela would laugh and repair it with makeshift love every time. The bumper was held on by artful spirals of coat hangers, and the interior was a comical patchwork of mismatched fabrics and multicolored strips of duct tape. One of the doors was a muted maroon color, having been appropriated from another car in the junk yard, and the fabric of the roof had been replaced with an old quilt that made the backseat feel like the inside of a gypsy’s tent. The car didn’t like the cold or the wet, and it produced an unseemly roar whenever it switched gears to climb a hill—Chloe dreamed of one day having a car just like it.