Elemental Read online

  Sterling did that amused little head-tilt at him again.

  “What?”

  “You. Offering to help. Taking all this…” One hand, not the one being held—which hadn’t objected—gestured at the universe and the whole night and the existence of the entire supernatural world. The rain murmured, curious as a herd of aquatic cats, sliding along windowpanes. “…and just sort of being cool about it. It’s nice. Did I say nice already? It is. You are.”

  “I’m not cool,” Dan said. He wasn’t. Never had been. Daydreams and heroics in his head; average and middle-of-the-road in reality. Grades, athleticism, even appearance: hair midway between brown and blond, eyes midway between green and brown, unremarkable height and build. Nothing at all next to effortlessly flamboyant style and impossible fantastical power. The only thing he’d ever been good at involved the invention of unlikely stories.

  And lately not even that, his laptop reminded him from the study. He pretended not to hear it. Besides: magic. Palpable and in his hand. Which tingled with glee. “I’m jumping up and down and screaming about magic being real and in my living room. You’re hurting. Tell me what to do.”

  “Seriously,” Sterling said, “you are so the best person ever, have you met you? If I thought you’d say yes, and if I didn’t have like five hundred incorporeal drummers inside my skull, I’d totally be climbing into your lap right now. On your extremely friendly sofa.”

  “You—wait, why wouldn’t I say—”

  “Never mind. Okay. We won’t get to everything tonight, but I can relieve some of the pressure in this building, and on me, I think. Can I use this table?”

  The adorable magic person wanted to use his coffee table. Dan, barely keeping up, said, “Of course?”

  Sterling’s smile went sideways, bittersweet. He picked up the cumin with his spare hand, turned it around, set it down. “Of course. Right.”

  “You asked,” Dan said. “And you need to do…whatever it is you need to do. With my spice rack.”

  “And you trust me.”

  “Should I not?”

  “I mean, yeah, I’m totally trustworthy, but I would say that. You should—look, not all practitioners are good. You need to be careful. Half the time when someone goes rogue—” Sterling hesitated, fiddled with the jar some more, bit a lip: oddly vulnerable, none of those reactions concealed. “I don’t mean anyone in my direct family ever did. You don’t have to worry about corruption with me. You don’t, I swear, I’ve seen—I wouldn’t—”

  He stopped himself, visibly and with anguish; Dan squeezed his hand. Not knowing how else to offer comfort, tried, “I do trust you. Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “No, I can, it’s just figuring out how. It’s not a secret, everybody knows the story, pretty much, so I don’t have to tell it a lot.” Sterling looked at herbs, clearly not seeing them. Rain flung itself at walls and windows and slid down, beating against glass and brick and the world. “My cousin Victoire is—um, she was part of the last major showdown, about ten years ago, when the, um, renegade warlock tried to throw all of Paris back to the eighteenth century. Which didn’t work, obviously.”

  Dan had questions. Now was not the time. He held onto all of them. Waited for the explanation; listened to the words that meant something to his visitor. That meant a reason, a past, a promise of doing no harm.

  Sterling finished, awkward and honest, “They—I wasn’t there, I was too young—they stopped him. She’s, um, she’s been in a—a hospital, I guess you’d call it, our sort of equivalent, ever since. Her mind—no one can find her. I’ve tried, I try every time I’m home, I’m the best psychic we’ve got, I just can’t—she’s splintered. In time. I can’t find enough of her. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I swear I never would. Not on purpose.”

  His gaze ached with the memory, with the reality: a wounded family member, nothing he could do, an ability that meant he’d kept trying anyway. That injury and loss met determination like youthful sword-blades, committed to shining in the face of battle.

  Ten years ago, Dan thought. And twenty-three now, which meant Sterling had been thirteen then; too young to be part of that fight, he’d said. But trying to heal other people’s psychic wounds ever since. Confronting the aftermath.

  He said, quietly, “I’m sorry,” and meant it. “I, um, did you say garlic, earlier? I think I do have some. At least the kind that’s pre-chopped and lives in a jar. Could you use that?”

  Sterling’s smile lit up the night: a lightning-flash, a shifting tide, a mutual understanding. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “I’ll just…get that,” Dan suggested, and fumbled his way to the kitchen.

  Once there he put palms on the counter and leaned over and took a deep breath or two. He could handle this. He was a writer. He knew stories.

  He had a magician—a psychic, at least—in his living room. On his sofa. Conjuring light and casually talking about spirits and supernatural battle-wounds. And magic was real. It was all real.

  Thunder burst loudly over the cityscape. New York City, painted in wet glowing hues—and, now, impossibilities. A half-moon, though it hid behind clouds. A conjunction-night, to borrow phrasing. Elements coming together. Merging into new.

  He shivered. He tried to process.

  Sterling was real. On his sofa. Able to conjure up bits of light. He accepted that.

  And so he had to accept more: Sterling was also petite and precocious and colorful, and serious as grief when explaining his family, when offering bits of his own soul as reassurance about a lack of evil. And in pain, with that visible headache and exhaustion.

  If everything was real, then that was real too. And Dan couldn’t not help. Not when magic needed him, and oh his storyteller’s soul swung on flying trapezes at the thought; and not when another person, a flesh-and-blood bit of flirtation and compassion, could use his garlic.

  He exhaled. Found the jar. Came back out to the living room. “Is it like an anti-vampire thing or—is that blood?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re squeamish.” Sterling had pushed up both sleeves, baring smooth forearms; one arm bore an elegant spiraling tattoo of vines that ran up under vivid orange fabric, leaf-green and black against fairness, and the other had a new shallow nick across the back. “It’s only a couple of drops. I’m working with your dried stuff here, so it’s less potent, so I need to throw in something living.” He caught those drops with fingers, stroked them over the knife’s blade: blood and steel. “Got a Band-Aid or something? It’ll stop in a minute.”

  “What the hell,” Dan said, and practically threw the garlic at him, and went and found the first-aid kit under the sink. “Hold still. If I’d known you were going to hurt yourself more—you could’ve used my blood, if you needed some—”

  “Seemed like too much to ask for on a first date.” Sterling tossed that wicked sparkling smirk at him again, the one that startled butterflies into swooping flight throughout Dan’s body, head to stomach to toes. And held the arm obediently out for care. “I try not to open with, hey, handsome, can I have three drops of your blood, I swear I’m not evil, you know? Kind of a mood-killer. Oh, thanks, you’re good at that.”

  “You,” Dan said, sitting back, hands resting next to a new unmatching bandage over fragile skin, “asked whether you could have half the contents of my kitchen. And then nearly passed out on my sofa.”

  “I did not.”

  “And you look like you still might. Tell me how to help.”

  “Oh, hell,” Sterling muttered, apparently to the rosemary, “he’s hot and bossy and also super-smart and way too nice, and this is, like, so unfair.” The rosemary refused to answer.

  Dan, unsure whether he should pretend to have not heard this—surely the beautiful extraordinary person wasn’t interested in him; Sterling plainly flirted like breathing and could have anyone in the universe and anyway was rubbing that spot between his eyes again—glanced down at his feet for a second. At his tastefully color-coordinated rug. At his floor
boards, dark and normal and serene. At his coffee table, presently occupied by magical mundane cooking supplies.

  He reached out and opened a jar, for lack of anything better to do. Maybe Sterling needed jars opened.

  “Still being helpful,” Sterling said, and the words came out wistful, not flippant but soft. “Look, this is going to get a little weird, so if you don’t want to be here for—”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Um…probably not?” Swirls of rosemary and cumin and garlic joined smudged blood across steel. “Not for you, not unless I really fuck something up. Which I generally don’t, I told you I’m good at this, but there’s always a first time and I’d hate to see bestselling author Daniel Rose end up possessed by the ghost of a Victorian housewife. Actually, no, that’d be hilarious, and I’m almost a hundred percent sure I could fix you, but also I’d feel terrible about it.”

  Dan resolutely did not think about that. More important concerns. “Is it dangerous for you?”

  Sterling made a face at him and said, “That’s what all this is for, they’re all protective components,” which wasn’t an answer.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “You would notice that. Being a writer. Last chance to go hide in another room or behind your sofa.”

  “I’m not,” Dan told him, “going anywhere,” and shifted closer across couch-cushions for emphasis.

  Sterling looked at him for a second, smiled more—a smaller private sort of smile, simple and surprised and happy—and said, “Okay, then, here we go,” and stuck fingers into the tangle of herbs and blood and steel.

  For a moment nothing happened. The table did not stir. The storm hammered down more furiously, maybe. The wind whistled. The living room held its breath, poised.

  The lights flickered. That happened, of course, during storms—power might come and go—

  They flickered again. Dan’s skin turned itself into goosebumps. Ice slid into the air.

  The familiar shadows of his apartment, the shapes of bookshelves and his television and the tall lamp in the corner, got blacker somehow. Which wasn’t right, couldn’t be right, shadows didn’t change—

  They did. They stretched and shook themselves out and sidled toward the sofa’s beige placidity, ominous and slouching and slow. They crept along the edge of his rug and turned cream-colored fuzz into languid ink. A tendril meandered up toward Dan’s feet.

  He couldn’t move. Frozen. Heart slamming into his ribs.

  “Ah,” Sterling said, supremely unconcerned, “hey, there you are, it’s been a seriously long time for some of you, hasn’t it? Let me see what I can do about that…”

  Night redoubled. Presences loomed. Every wall, every crevice, became home to uncanny glimmers; Dan’s apartment, once familiar, surrendered itself to gloom.

  “Oh, come on.” This time Sterling sounded more amused. “You’re just doing what’s expected, aren’t you, with all that? Well, why are you, then? Aren’t you still yourselves? Independent enough not to bother with playing the role? Come talk to me.” His fingers shifted, nestled into herbs and blood. His eyes got brighter: more silver, less grey, sparkly in a different and less human manner.

  One of the shadows, a spiky ball like a deep-sea fish from lightless oceans, came over and sat on his foot. Right next to Dan’s foot. Okay. That was happening. That was possible. Dan tried to remember to breathe.

  The others waltzed mid-air. Gavotted above his coffee table, his rug. Splashes of the unreal, except they were real: here and visible. In his apartment. Blotting out everything he’d thought he’d known.

  “They don’t really remember being human,” Sterling went on calmly. This, Dan realized, was meant for him: explanation and confidence. “Especially the older ones. They’re here because something kept them here—some tether, some reason—but mostly after so many years they’ve forgotten why. They’re lonely.”

  “They’re…people?”

  “Mmm. Sometimes animals. Anything with emotion. The building itself, in a way. It soaks up all those feelings. Saturated. You’ve had a lot of people move in and out of here, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He regarded the onyx puffer-fish beside his foot. Got easier if he imagined it as a person. As someone looking back. “Some people love it, some people hate it, a lot of people say they’ve felt something. Being watched. I liked the idea of living in a haunted building. The history.”

  “You would.” Affection twinkled along that voice. “Writer. They like you, by the way. Which is why they’ve been kind of leaving you alone. Not wanting to disturb you. These ones, anyway. They say there’s something much nastier around the eighth floor…”

  Dan glanced over. Sterling was looking paler, probably from effort, but his hands were in motion. Herb-smudged and red-sticky. Sketching something in the air. Leaving trails of glimmering gossamer light.

  The light spun into a circle, a wheel, glowing. It wasn’t complicated. No runes or mystic sigils. Simply white and clear and optimistic. A vow, an opening, a reprieve given presence.

  “Hey, guys,” Sterling said to the gathered splinters of the past, holding all their attention: a fluffy-haired youthful psychic with shoved-up orange shirt-sleeves and power at his fingertips and eyes that’d seen both scars and selflessness. “It’s been so long, and you deserve a chance to rest, and I’m here now, okay? You can go. You can find whatever’s waiting for you. Go on.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “I don’t know.” Two twisted black curlicues ventured up to the twirling portal, peered in, dove forward. They flared with light, and vanished. “I think it depends on them. I’m just a conduit.” A few more tiptoed up. Inched onward. Gave themselves over to a future. The living room got more defined, clearer, sharper somehow: as if emerging from a veil.

  “You’re not just anything.” Dan would’ve reached out to touch him, but wasn’t sure that’d be allowed. Sterling’s eyes had become even more unnerving: less recognizable grey, more unearthly glitter. And yet—that glitter helped people. Ghosts. Spirits. “Did you sort of…summon them all up here?”

  “The ones that’d answer my invitation. I told you I wouldn’t be able to rescue all of them tonight. Some, though…” The largest and friendliest coil of intangible obsidian, the one that’d been sitting on his foot, drifted upwards. It hovered, seeming uncertain. “Go ahead,” Sterling said, fingers framing light and possibilities. “You can, it’s safe, I swear.”

  And they did trust him, Dan thought. That genuine goodness radiated, psychic energy being put to use and broadcast outward, and the warmth felt right; even he could feel it, beckoning and soothing and lingering like sunbeams over skin.

  That wasn’t only clairvoyant power at work, though. Anyone with those skills could’ve opened that gate—and he spared a second to silently laugh at himself, because half an hour ago he hadn’t known magic existed—and sent out that paranormal invitation. Sterling, made of paradoxical youth and flippant eyelash-batting and dedication to family and loyal attempts to ease pain, was the person they’d answered.

  “Actually,” Sterling mused, “while I’m here and already sitting down, let’s see what I can do about that eighth floor…” His eyes got more distant, faraway, seeing something not present. His eyebrows got a small crinkle between them.

  Outwardly not much changed. But the air shifted. Grew taut. Gathered up like bowstrings, drawn and ready. A fight on the horizon.

  “Ow,” Sterling said suddenly, “ow ow ow—that is nasty—” and blinked and shook himself all over. His new ghost-companion, the last one left, did a small worried spin above his shoulder, and did not dive through the portal. “Hey, you should probably go, the nasty is about to be here—”

  “It’s what,” Dan said.

  “You know I told you not all practitioners are good? Not all people’re good. They don’t leave good…impressions. This one’s very angry and I made myself look delicious—”

  “You what? Why?”

  �
�Part of the plan.” Sterling delivered this with nearly convincing bravado and a wink; Dan, who’d seen him white-faced and wobbling on his feet in the kitchen, hissed, “You just said ouch! And you’re still bleeding!”

  “And I’ve got your fantastic bandaging skills, so I’m good. Um…you might want to hold onto me, though.”

  “Of course, but why—” He couldn’t grab one of those hands; no interrupting luminous spellwork. He settled for getting a secure grip on the nearest shoulder.

  The shoulder felt nice. Slim but strong, defined muscle under that outlandish—but cuddly, he noticed—orange shirt. His hand looked extra-large and solid there; he swallowed hard and shoved those half-formed desires down under bricks of apprehension. Not the time. Absolutely not.

  Not even with Sterling’s sidelong glance, smirk, and I’m thinking about those large hands too lip-lick.

  Dan gulped. Straightened shoulders, half-consciously. “You didn’t answer me.”

  “Anchoring. For you, for me. Mostly for me, honestly.”

  “For—”

  “Three, two, one,” Sterling said, “boom—”

  Darkness flooded into the room. Drowned out lamp glow and coruscating magic. Took Sterling’s voice and the rustle of rain and gobbled them up and laughed, greedy for more light to devour. Promised the end of the world, a heat-death, an apocalypse.

  The world crumbled. Bookshelves, lamps, tables. Cowering rubble and pain. Every semblance of human terrestrial life. Smothered under hatred of exactly that.

  The darkness had eyes. Had a suggestion of face. Might’ve been a person, once.

  “Hi there.” Sterling gave a half-wave, not detaching fingers from his woven gleaming spiral. “Glad you found me.”

  Chapter 3

  Dan could barely breathe. He knew he was gripping Sterling’s shoulder too tightly, likely enough to bruise, but he couldn’t think, couldn’t move—