Ash

From within the small cave came a snorting grumble and then Norm stepped out, his big blue-green eyes blinking against the sun. Of course, he was used to the very brightest of days, living where the sun rebounded off the brilliant white snow of the Himalayas.

“Where are we going now, friend? That prank wasn’t very good.” He shook his head and scrunched up his mouth. “And can we eat? I’d like to eat.”

Eyes still stinging a bit with the light, I stood and led the way down the thin edge of the beach. The waves on our right were sloshing happily as if they hadn’t been trying to kill us only hours earlier.

Norm jogged to catch up to me but said nothing. He looked around us, frowning and smelling the air.

I kept the hood of my cloak up, and my eyes forward. Ahead of us, I could see a pathway cut into the cliff that would allow us to climb to the top. An hour later, that’s where we were, and an hour after that, we found ourselves in a downtrodden pub that looked like it had been hammered hard by the hurricane, yet it still stood.

We ordered food and went to the furthest corner of the pub. Norm seemed to understand this was serious business and kept his mouth shut. Our food was brought to us, but I kept my eyes glued to the small TV above the bar.

The few humans in the pub muttered about the fairies causing the hurricane. Norm nudged me and snickered. “Not fairies, Sylphs.”

I glared at him and he stuffed a meat pie into his mouth, chewing solemnly as he tried to speak around the mouthful. “Sorry.”

I ended up with splatters of flaky pastry on my face from him. I wiped it away and dug into my own food as I kept an ear and half an eye on the TV. Finally, the world news came on, or I suppose what passed for world news.

As it stood, the hurricane had killed eleven people in the flooding around Dublin. I shook my head at the waste of life, that the banished Sylph and Undine had been able to go that far with their rampage. But it could have been worse if they’d not been stopped. Much worse.

That information, though, was not what I was looking for. I needed another sign, something that showed where the world was off kilter and wobbling because of Cassava’s presence. The anchor spoke about a few things I took note of, a few fires burning in southern Italy, but they’d already been tamped down.

The announcer cleared his throat and blinked at the papers in front of him before he went on. “Vrancea, Romania, has been experiencing some low-grade earthquakes. Though there is no evidence of anything more damaging on its way, the number of quakes and their positioning have scientists wondering if there is a previously undiscovered fault line.”

Bullseye.

There it was, that was what I was waiting for. I wiped at my face and stood, tossing some of the American money onto the table to pay for our meal. “Norm, time to go.”

The Yeti shoved the last of his food into his mouth and grabbed my scraps too before he slid out from around the table. “You know where to go?”

I nodded as I strode from the small pub. There were whispers from the humans as we left, wondering about the odd pair and how they were dressed. For a moment, I wondered what they saw when they looked at the Yeti. Just a tall man in a white coat?

Or did their eyes dart away, fearing that they might be seeing things in their alcohol-induced stupors?

I reached for the chakram that would cut through the Veil. Strapped to my side, I’d not thought to look for it before now.

The leather strap was broken, sheared at some point in the tussle with the two banished elementals. “Mother goddess, no.”

I spun and stared back the way we came. Would I be able to find it? I closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my hands into them. For the first time, anxiety flowed through my body, the fear that I would not be able to accomplish the task in front of me. That I would fail Lark as I’d failed her when her mother and brother were killed. That I’d lose Peta on my watch too.

“NO.” The word exploded out of me in a rush of emotion and sheer denial.

I would not fail her, no matter the cost. No matter the time it took, I would do this right. I spun on my heel and broke into a run back toward the cliffs.

CHAPTER 11

ll the way back to the cave where we’d rested, I thought that I’d dropped the circular blade, that it had come loose on its own. Not once did I think it could have been taken from me.

More the fool was I for thinking that no one else had a stake in the game that had been laid out at my feet.

I rounded an outcropping in the cliff at top speed, my cloak fluttering out around me and a few splatters of rain hitting my face. Norm ran behind me, doing his best to keep up.

The scene in front of me made me slide to a stop.

Crouched in the water was a man I didn’t know, except that I could see he was an elemental. He had dark hair that was cropped short, and he wore the clothes of a human, but I didn’t think he was human, not for a second. He held the chakram up, while his back was still to me. At first, I thought it was Raven, but he was too big. And Raven didn’t have the build of a fighter.

This elemental did. Even if he was hiding as a human.

“Missing something?” he asked.

I had a sword and dagger free of their sheaths before my cloak had time to even settle around me.

“Drop it,” I said.

“Well, that’s rather rude, considering I took it from an Undine who’d been banished.” He stood and slowly turned to face me.

I supposed some women would find him handsome. His eyes were a blue that bordered on violet, and his mouth seemed prone to smiling. But under that, I saw the truth.