Kiersten White - Supernaturally

Fine, though. If IPCA wanted to play it like that, so be it. I stretched my hand and smiled, a vicious, smug thing. I could take care of myself now.

I shuddered, shaking out my hand to get rid of the tingles. No. I was never doing that again. Ever. I liked it too much.

My inner compass was better than I gave it credit for, because I managed to pick the right direction on the road. Practically crying with relief, I saw the turnoff to Lend’s house. My old house, before he moved out and I moved in with Arianna to avoid the awkwardness of living with my boyfriend’s dad. I ran up the long, winding drive and burst through the door into the family room.

Raquel was sitting on the couch.

“What the crap?” I shouted.

She jumped up and grabbed me before I could think to block. I tensed. And then I realized she was hugging me.

“I haven’t seen you in months and you go and get kidnapped first thing! I thought you were trying to be normal!” She pulled back, looking at me with tears in her eyes.

“You mean you didn’t send that thing?”

“Goodness no!”

“What was it?”

David stumbled into the room, a phone in his hand and a relieved look on his face. “You’re okay!”

“Besides being kidnapped by a living cloud and dropped thousands of feet to the ground? Yeah, I’m peachy.”

“So it was a sylph!” David pointed triumphantly at Raquel. “I told you they existed!”

Raquel’s lips tightened, and it was all she could do to hold back a sigh. “Yes, it would appear you were correct.”

“Wow.” David ran his hands through his thick, dark hair, eyes lit up with excitement. “Wow. A sylph. I think that’s the first confirmed contact ever!”

I raised my hand. “Umm, hello? Girl who was kidnapped by said sylph? Anyone want to fill me in on what it is and why it decided to give me an aerial tour of our fine state?”

“Sylphs are air elementals.” Raquel spoke quickly, shooting a perturbed look at David, like she wanted to prove that even if she hadn’t believed in them, she still knew more than he did. “Thought to be distantly related to faeries. It was commonly believed that they either never existed or had simply ceased to be, but this is because a sylph would never willingly touch the ground, thus making finding one impossible and looking for them an enormous waste of time.” She shot another one of those looks at David.

“Oh, come on, just because my specialty was elementals and you focused on common paranormals like unicorns and leprechauns.” David winked at me as if I were somehow in on this joke. “She’s always been jealous that I know all the really cool ones.”

Now I was the one holding back an annoyed sigh. “Air elemental, got it. Great. Now does anyone know why? You said they were related to faeries maybe?” All my annoyance squished itself into a ball of fear. I didn’t want the fey back in my life.

Neither one of them said anything. Then Raquel cleared her throat, her voice strained. “We could always ask Cresseda if she knows anything.” She said “Cresseda”—Lend’s mom and the resident water elemental—with a strange emphasis.

“No, we can’t, actually.” David shuffled his toes into the carpet. “I haven’t been able to get her to surface for a couple of months now. Ever since Lend moved out.” His voice was soft, but the pain underlying his words was obvious. I wanted to hug him. It was bad enough that he fell in love with an immortal water nymph, worse still that she only stayed human with him for a year. But now for her to abandon him entirely because Lend was gone? I couldn’t imagine the pain.

Actually, I could imagine it. I frequently imagined it. Some days it was all I could do not to imagine it. Being the mortal in a mortal/immortal duo was something I understood all too well.

I still hadn’t told Lend he was never going to die, though. The thought that he might give up this life—the one here, with me—to figure out how to be an immortal terrified me. I’d tell him, though. Soon. Soonish.

Eventually.

Raquel straightened, looking pleased. “Well then, this is something I can help with. I’ll get all my researchers on air elementals. It’s strange that it would show up now, especially given recent upheavals in elemental populations. We’ll figure it out. But it’s not why I’m here.”

I frowned. “Exactly why are you here?”

“IPCA needs your help.”

David’s voice was low and annoyed. “Evie is not going to get sucked back into IPCA. What was the point of telling them she was dead if you come here six months later and bring her back in?”

“I told you, the situation is different now.”

I held up my hand again, tired of them talking around me. “I can take this one, thanks. I miss you, sure, but I don’t want to come back to IPCA. You sterilize werewolves!” That was one of the many crimes I had discovered the International Paranormal Containment Agency committed in the name of keeping the world a safer place.

Raquel got a tight look around her eyes. “That practice is no longer in effect. As I’ve already explained to David, things have changed drastically in the time you’ve been gone. Our policies toward nonaggressive paranormals have undergone serious revision, including greater werewolf rights. Any and all eugenics have been done away with entirely. There was a lot wrong with IPCA—there still is—but you and I both know how much good it does. And I’m a Supervisor now, which means I have final say in most policies.”

I folded my arms, frowning. “I won’t work with faeries.” I hadn’t seen Reth since he had come to visit me in the hospital after I released the souls, and I never wanted to again. Him or any of the other creepy, manipulative, amoral, psychotic, insert-further-negative-adjectives-of-your-choice-here faeries. Especially after today, if the sylph was with them. I wasn’t about to draw their attention to me by holding hands through the Faerie Paths.

She smiled. “I understand. In fact, one of my first initiatives was weaning IPCA from faerie magic dependency. I think you’ll be pleased to find that we now use them a mere forty percent of the amount we used to.”

“Forty percent, huh? That’s still about one hundred percent more than I’m happy with.”

“We’ve got a way for you to be effective without any faerie interaction whatsoever.”

“Effective doing what?”

She glanced at David, who scowled. “I’m not having any part of this.”

“With that in mind,” Raquel said, a haughty lift to her eyebrows, “I’d appreciate it if you left the room. I can’t give classified information to two dead people, after all.”

I was confused until I remembered that David had worked for the now defunct American Paranormal Agency eighteen or so years ago, at which point he faked his own death to get out. That seemed to be a popular option around here. Of course, I didn’t fake mine; Raquel fabricated it for me, so that they wouldn’t come looking after I disappeared.

David huffed. “You seem to forget that I’m Evie’s legal guardian.”

“And you seem to forget that there’s absolutely nothing legal about your guardianship, considering all the documents were forged.”

“Don’t start with me about legality! An international organization acting with absolute impunity on American shores, not to mention—”

The front door flew open and Lend ran in. My heart did a happy flip in my chest, like it did every time he surprised me. His usual look, a dark-haired dark-eyed hottie, shimmered over his actual appearance, which was like water in human form.