Supernaturally

“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.

And absolutely gorgeous.

“Evie!” He threw his arms around me, picking me up off the floor in a grip so tight I was suddenly aware that I had, in fact, sustained some serious bruisage.

I laughed through the pain, happy that at least I got some extra Lend time out of this whole mess. He put me down, holding me at arm’s length and examining me. “Are you okay?”

“Just some bruises. I’m fine, though, really.”

“How did you get away?”

Oh, crap.

Raquel and David gave me matching puzzled looks. “How did you get away?” Raquel asked. In their eagerness to bicker they had neglected to ask me. I kind of preferred that.

I bit my lip. “I, well, we were high? Really, really high. And it was this weird cloud and lightning and faerie thing. I didn’t know where it was taking me or why, and I was so scared I did the only thing I could think of.”

“Which was?” Lend prodded, worry shadowing his face.

I shrugged, a small, guilty gesture. “I took some.” Hating the concern in his eyes, I rushed on. “Only a little bit—not enough to hurt it, really, just enough to surprise it, and then we fell, and it tried to drop me, but I grabbed on and some trees broke my fall. And afterward the Cloud Freak was okay, really, it was. Just kind of pissed. And then it flew off.” I didn’t mention the erratic flight pattern. It was probably woozy.

My story was greeted with dead silence. And suddenly instead of feeling guilty, I was downright mad. Who were they to judge me? It’s not like I was going all Vivian, sucking the life out of everything around me. “I didn’t have any other options! You should be glad I had a way to defend myself.”

Lend quickly shook his head, squeezing my hand. “I am. Really. I just remember what it did to you before, and I worry that—”

“You don’t need to! It was barely anything. Promise.” Vivian had gone crazy and sucked the souls out of every paranormal she could find, under the guise of “freeing” them from this world, but really because she liked how it made her feel. Having all those souls in me after I took them from her—for a few minutes I was an immortal. It was strange and wonderful and dizzying to be that powerful, that disconnected from my mortal life. For a terrible moment I was tempted to abandon mortality entirely … to take Lend’s soul away from him. I didn’t like to think about it too much.

“Is it still inside you?” Lend asked.

I hadn’t even thought to look. A nervous pit formed in my stomach as I held out my arms, searching for anything under my skin. Nothing. But there—a tiny spark under my palm. And then it was gone. It was probably nothing. Definitely nothing.

“Nope,” I said with certainty. “Must not have taken enough for it to have an effect. Can’t see anything but plain old Evie.”

Lend grinned, pulling me in closer. “You’ve never been plain.”

David cleared his throat. “Well then, as long as you’re okay, that’s what’s important. Why don’t you two go get something to eat?”

Raquel’s lips pursed in annoyance. Apparently driving her crazy was a father-son thing for the Pirellos. Lend had the same knack for it. “I haven’t finished speaking with her,” Raquel said.

David looked ready to argue otherwise, so I jumped in. “Relax, it’s okay. She can tell me what she needs to; what’s it going to hurt?”

Lend and David wore matching frowns. There was no way Raquel and I would be able to have an actual conversation. And, unlike Lend and his dad, I liked her. A lot. I wanted to know how she’d been, find out how things went after I left, stuff like that. Suddenly my old life was sitting in the room with me, and I realized I missed parts of it.

Lish, especially, but she was gone forever.

I turned to Lend. “Why don’t you go see your mom? Ask her if she knows anything about the sylph.”