Water: The Elementals Book Three

Chapter 3

3

Serin tried to let the bickering of the elders wash over her like an ocean wave, but it was easier said than done.

Now that the funeral was over, the entire island of T’Kaieri was in an uproar over the missing artifacts. Some of the elders had only just discovered that the Elemental’s ancient archive repository had been raided. Recriminations had been flying back and forth for hours, but at this moment, Noomi, the head archivist, was facing their collective wrath.

Since the artifacts had disappeared on her watch, they felt she should shoulder most of the blame—and she was. Willingly.

Mother save us from the inconveniently selfless.

Serin and her sisters didn’t hold Noomi responsible. How could they? If anyone was to blame, it was them. Serin most of all…

It was difficult to believe they’d been burgled. T’Kaieri was an impregnable stronghold…to outsiders. But who could have foreseen deception from within? What did human detectives call it?

An inside job.

Breathing deeply, Serin stifled the rush of adrenaline and anger that came with the thought of being duped, but she betrayed her emotions by scowling at the elders. That was against her training as a Water of T’Kaieri. She’d been taught not to flinch in the face of tsunamis, but she couldn’t stop from glaring daggers at the elder Wanat as he called for Noomi’s removal.

The council was out for blood, and they didn’t much care who got the ax as long as someone paid for the theft. But her sisters had already cleared Noomi.

Despite her exhaustion, Serin parted her lips, ready to defend the innocent archivist, but her sister Diana beat her to it.

“That’s not fair,” Diana cut in, her anger flaring as red hot as her hair. “Noomi has been nothing but honest throughout this entire affair.”

The Fire Elemental’s gift was sensitive enough to detect even the minutest fluctuations in body temperature. Combined with her background and years of training, she was like a human lie detector—a nearly infallible one, provided the right questions were being asked.

Diana was just getting going. “The junior archivists haven’t lied either—and I would know. I’ve questioned them all about the missing artifacts. They are innocent of the theft. Place your blame elsewhere. Let Noomi and the others continue their inventory. We need to know how many things are missing.”

“I thought your mate the vampire was doing that.” Wanat sneered, his hook nose wrinkled as if he could smell Alec now. He turned to the others, muttering, “A vampire in the archives. What will this world come to next?”

“Alec is helping,” Diana said. “And he’s compiled quite a list already. But that archive is thousands of years old. It has more scrolls and antiquities than the f*****g Smithsonian, so he needs all hands on deck if we’re going to figure out what’s missing.”

“I agree that a detailed inventory is necessary, and I thank your mate for his help,” Caimen, her father, interjected. “But the archive is thousands of years old, and it has never been violated before now. Someone needs to be held accountable, and Noomi was the one in charge.”

“She was in charge of the archive’s day-to-day running, not its security because you didn’t f*****g have any,” Diana snapped. “It wasn’t deemed necessary because who in their right mind would steal from us?”

Who indeed? Serin raised her head to find everyone but Diana staring at her. The mixture of pity and suspicion in those eyes was too much to bear. She murmured something unintelligible, then left the council chamber.

Outside, the warm night air of T’Kaieri burned her lungs. She walked a few meters to the left, to the tiny spring that ran from deep within Siba, the mountain peak that formed the heart of the island. Splashing inside, she let go of her corporeal form, letting the water carry her all the way down to the beach.

Her heart didn’t calm until she was on the shore sitting on the lava rocks, her feet in the water at the island’s only cove.

That was where Diana found her later. She sat down next to her, her presence silently comforting. “No one blames you.”

Serin stared off at the horizon. “Everyone blames me—my father, my mother. All the elders. They say if I’d given up my position by now, Jordan wouldn’t have done what he did.”

Di put her arm around her, something Serin usually did to her, but only when she thought her sister needed it. The Fire Elemental wasn’t a big toucher.

“You don’t really believe he did it, do you?” Diana asked.

“Gia thinks he did. So does Logan.”

The Earth and Air Elementals were still following leads, trying to trace their missing artifacts, but both had been blunt about their suspicions before they’d found the body. Once they had, his note only confirmed their suspicions.

“You don’t buy it, though.” Diana seemed certain.

“I don’t know what to think.”

Diana shifted, rocking them both slightly. “Yes, you do. You think he’s innocent and his death was a frame-up.”

Serin sighed. “I’m not sure. Jordan might have facilitated the theft. He had the access and knowledge. He’s been accompanying me on missions for years. Many of the missing artifacts are those I recovered recently. But if he did…then what John suspects may be true. Someone made him.”

“If that’s true, who would it be? Who could get to an Elemental’s mate?”

It was an excellent question.

Serin picked up a stone, then sent it sailing over the water. It skipped over a dozen times before sinking. “I don’t know. All I keep hearing is what John is repeating—that Jordan wouldn’t leave me. That he loved me.”

“He did love you.”

Blinking, Serin turned to her sister. A corner of Diana’s lips pulled down knowingly.

“I didn’t talk to the man much, but the few times I was around him, he, well, he was being Jordan. Needy and a bit whiny, but demonstratively affectionate in a way that was weird to me before I met Alec.” She put her hand on Serin’s shoulder. “Jordan was always telling you he loved you. I would have known if he were lying.”

That was true. But it didn’t make her feel any better. There were so many things she could have said, but Serin chose the most expedient, the truth. “I wish I could say I was certain he’d been coerced, but I can’t. I’m in the dark. I have been about this whole affair. I keep thinking I should have seen it coming, known he was in trouble and needed help.”

“Well, there’s a lot we haven’t seen lately,” Diana said with a tightening of her lips.

She was right. A black coven had risen in their midst, and they’d been none the wiser. The reason was disquieting.

Elementals were intricately tied to the world and what happened in it. The Mother had designed it that way. They were charged with keeping the balance, the ever-shifting dance between good and evil. Too much bad and the wheels that turned the world as they knew it began to slow and stop. It was their job to make sure that didn’t happen. Through their actions, they kept Atabey, the Mother of them all, happy and healthy. She, in turn, gave life to the world.

Theoretically, an unbalance in the other direction was possible. Too much good and the balance would be threatened—in theory. Funnily enough, that hadn’t ever been a problem for them. No, the ever-shifting tide was always in one direction.

“With the Mother falling asleep, it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Serin said.

They had all noticed Her inattention. In years past—long before Serin’s time—Atabey had fallen asleep. It was cyclical. These long, terrible periods were characterized by an uptick in natural disasters and violence.

Diana frowned. “That’s not the Serin I know. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as cynical as the next b***h, but now that we know there’s a problem, we’re going to fix it. Between the four of us, there’s nothing we can’t handle.”

She leaned back with an involuntary yawn. “Listen to me being upbeat. I think we pulled a Freaky Friday personality swap. I don’t know when I became such a f*****g Pollyanna.”

Serin couldn’t resist a little smirk. “I think it was shortly after you met Alec.”

Shrugging, her sister snorted. “You may be right,” she admitted with a surprising lack of argument.

Diana tilted her head up, checking the angle of the moon in the way they were trained to tell time. “Speaking of Mister Fanged and Fabulous, I better go check on him to make sure he’s eaten one of the blood bags we brought along. The last thing I need is for him to lose track of time… then realize he’s hungry around the archivists.”

“He won’t eat one of them.” Alec was old enough to resist the urge to snack.

“I know that, but they don’t. And as much as I like Noomi, she’s the only one of the lot with balls. If you even glance at one of the others cross-eyed, they run for cover.”

“They only run from you, and only because you set that junior archivist’s robes on fire.”

Diana tsked. “It was his notepad. And he was the one who decided to try to put it out with his robe instead of stamping it out with his boot like a normal person.”

Rising, Diana eyed Serin with a frown. “You’re going to leave again the first chance you get, aren’t you?”

It was more of a suggestion than a question.

“As soon as we have another viable lead, I am.” It was that or stay in the bosom of her family. Serin didn’t think she could take more of her parents’ rigid and restrained comforting.

Her sister shook her head. “If I had to bite my tongue around those old council farts the way you do, I’d be out of here like a shot, too. But the elders made it clear—Alec can’t stay unless I’m here with him, and we need him down in the archives now.”

“Yes, they’re not too trusting at the moment.”

“They were like that before the theft. Renown scholar or not, there’s no way they would have let a vampire have access under any circumstances if he wasn’t my mate.”

She had a point. “Thank Alec for his help again.”

Serin had done so briefly, right after she arrived, but with the demands of the council and her extended family, there hadn’t been time for a deep conference.

“Don’t worry about him. He’d have given his right nut for access to the archive, and now he has it without begging or jumping through the Elder’s endless hoops. He’s as happy as a pig in muck.”

That picture clashed with the mental image Serin had of the debonair and handsome vamp. “Thank him anyway. And if he finds something that needs to be checked out immediately…”

Something that would give her an enemy to take down and hopefully m**m. She owed Jordan that much.

Diana held up a hand. “I know, I know. You have dibs.”