Spark of Fire Read online

  How could he be real?

  And how had I captured his image flawlessly, from that greasy hair curtaining his narrow face, to his pale, pasty complexion, all the way down to the full-length black trench coat and heavy boots?

  Forget that.

  How could he be real?

  “Hello, Katy.” Although he stood on the other side of the busy lobby, I heard his gravelly greeting as if he’d whispered it in my ear. I shuddered from his icy breath brushing over my senses. How’d he do that from fifty feet away?

  The world hung in suspension as everything slowed like a movie scene playing in slow motion—everything but us. I glanced around, trying to process how everyone else barely moved. A high school kid in a sweatshirt was in the midst of tripping over another kid’s deliberately placed foot, Sweatshirt’s binder now in the air as it sluggishly ejected from his hold. The mean girls barely moved, phones in hand, laughing as they captured the preplanned scene on video.

  God, was I so glad to be out of high school. Three years ago, I was the kid in the sweatshirt.

  I returned my attention to Onyx as he waved his hands, and everything returned to normal. Sweatshirt fell to his hands and knees and kept his head down as those around him laughed.

  Assholes.

  “You can’t hide from me,” Onyx muttered, and again, I heard it like he’d whispered it right in my ear. I shuddered from the feel of his breath rolling across my skin. My pulse drummed in my ears as disbelief rattled me to the core. I shuddered again as the same question ran through my mind.

  How can he be real?

  Maybe I doubled up on the meds I took for my Ignecryo Disease by accident, and it caused hallucinations. Or maybe I forgot to take them, which wouldn’t be the first time. It would explain why my symptoms surfaced. The hot flashes. The cold sweats. The feeling that something was crawling on me.

  The meds were supposed to help keep that all in check, which in turn was supposed to keep my body temp from either spiking or dropping. Regardless of the direction—up or down—if my body temp got out of control, I’d die. It sucked having a disease so rare, even Google had nothing on it.

  Yet another thing I had to thank my mom for giving me. She had the same disease and put me on the same meds she took to regulate her body temp. It was her parting gift to me before she disappeared.

  Out of nowhere, my old high school science teacher suddenly appeared. I wasn’t all that surprised. Ms. Wilkerson and I had kept in touch after I graduated, meeting up for coffee from time to time and the like. Still, I didn’t expect to see her more after high school. She was the one to recommend I attend Professor Raine’s physics class at MCU after I’d taken a couple of gap years to find myself.

  The only thing I’d found were a lot of pink slips in envelopes holding my paycheck when weird shit would happen I couldn’t explain without sounding completely insane. It’d been easier to lie and lose the job than blame a world most never knew existed.

  Ms. Wilkerson hurried toward me, the worry in her expression not helping my anxiety at all. At least it broke me from my paralysis. I finally sucked in a sharp breath and tore my gaze from Onyx as I worked to get my heart rate under control.

  “Katy, we need to go.” She invaded my personal space and reached for my hand.

  I jerked back. She knew I didn’t like to be touched. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s no time to explain.” She reached for me again.

  “There’s always time to explain,” I retorted, annoyed by that bullshit answer.

  She glanced around, seemed to catch her attention on something, and gave a slight nod before regarding me. “If I promise to explain later, will you go with me now?”

  “Go where?”

  “Katy, please. Just trust me.”

  I did trust her, more than anyone. She’d filled the void left when my mom had chosen painful abandonment over raising a daughter in the middle of her awkward teenage years. Mom of the fucking Year, ladies and gentlemen.

  Right now, however, I wasn’t so sure. I’d never seen Ms. Wilkerson this rattled. I didn’t like it, didn’t trust it. Rattled people made rattled decisions. I wasn’t about to go anywhere with her until she told me what the hell was going on.

  She stiffened and looked past me, her movement rigid and swift as she shook her head. “Oh no.”

  “What?” My heart now firmly planted in my throat, I stood and spun around, searching the lobby for whatever had her frozen in shock. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, I whipped back around. “What is it?”

  “I’ll explain on the way to your extraction.”

  “My what?”

  “Your extraction.” A deep, velvety baritone voice stroked over my senses from behind me. I turned and lost the ability to breathe as the world tilted. It was him, the beautiful stranger, looking even better up close.

  Hello, tall, dark, and delicious.

  The term ruggedly handsome came to mind. I loved the five-o’clock shadow dusting his square jaw, the deep-set dark eyes hooded by a heavy brow, and the firm lips tipping upward at the corners like he knew some secret about me. Okay, so maybe I didn’t love that last part and wanted to know what he knew. In the worst way. His sculpted muscles and tight abs straining his T-shirt made it a little hard to breathe. Why was it so hot in here again?

  When he took my hand, I let him. The warmth from his touch bathed me like I’d just stepped into a hot shower. He led me away from the fountain, toward the opposite direction of the entrance. I couldn’t stop myself from staring at his backside. It was like his pants were tailor made to cup his ass.

  I almost went with him and his beautiful ass until I remembered I had no fucking idea who this guy was. When I snapped out of my lust-induced daze, I slowed and tried to take my hand back. His grip tightened as he glanced over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” I countered and yanked my hand out of his grasp. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Rob Emmett.” He gave me a curt head bob, like that was some sort of greeting, like telling me his name explained everything. When I didn’t accept his offered hand, he looked at me. “There’s no time for this. We need to go.”

  “Make the time.” I had no intention of going anywhere with him and widened my stance, emphasizing my point. Gorgeous or not, he was being a dick. A gorgeous dick, but a dick nonetheless.

  “Katy.”

  “Rob,” I fired back when he didn’t say anything else. “Now that we’re on a first-name basis, I feel I can be honest with you. Forcing a person to go with you against their will has another name. It’s called kidnapping.” I returned to the fountain and grabbed my stuff, tucking my sketch pad under my arm and slinging my backpack over my shoulder. No way was I going to stay here and let the perfect stranger drag me off to God only knew where.

  “Let me teleport us out,” he said to Ms. Wilkerson.

  What? That was a thing? Popping in and out of reality at will? Sign me up.

  “No, teleporting in front of Nelems is forbidden.”

  Of course, the teacher would be the fun sucker in this situation.

  “It’s the fastest way.”

  “I said no. Until she’s safely at the academy, she’s still my responsibility.”

  Rob thinned his lips and shook his head. “Fucking watchers.” He then regarded me. “You can control the elements. There, I explained. Now, let’s go.” He took advantage of my stunned paralysis and grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the crowd.

  2

  “You can call more than one element,” Rob continued to explain as he dragged me toward a narrow hall at the back of the science center, his hand firmly gripping mine. “I’m not sure how many others you can jump to. That’s what we call those of us with the ability to control more than one element—jumpers. I’m a trio. I can call three elements—fire, water, and air. Fire is my primary since that’s my strongest element.”

  “You’ve shown signs of being able to call four, which would make you a quad,” Ms. Wilkerson said. She led us around a corner and down a narrow hall. I’d never been back in this part of the science center since it was off-limits. We blew right past the sign that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in giant red letters.

  “Where are we going?”

  She nodded for us to keep moving. “Warded room. Every high school and college campus has one. We’ll be safe there until we can get you to Clearwater.”

  “What’s Clearwater?”

  “The Academy of Elements,” she continued. “It’s where you’ll learn everything you need to know to live as an elemental.”

  When I blinked, unable to comprehend what she was trying to explain, Rob squeezed my hand, drawing my attention. “That’s what you are. You’re an elemental.”

  I dropped my jaw as the words sank in. A spark of hope flickered to life deep inside me. Maybe I belonged in the elemental world after all. “I am?”

  “I’m not sure why your powers are waiting so long to manifest.” Ms. Wilkerson hurried ahead. “You should have been sent to Clearwater long before now. It’s going to be tough getting caught up to everyone else your age.”

  Great. I was back to doubting whether I had enough power in me to belong in the elemental world. “When did your powers manifest?”

  “When I was thirteen.”

  Now I felt even worse. Thanks, Ms. W.

  She glanced behind us before slowing. “I think we’re good.”

  “I don’t sense the others,” Rob added and loosened his grip, though he didn’t release my hand. We stopped at the end of the dimly lit deserted hallway, in front of a set of double doors.

  Ms. Wilkerson stepped up next to Rob. “I haven’t seen you call earth, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. Since I’m not an ea
rth elemental, I wouldn’t be able to sense it if you could. That’s where the academy can help.”

  I’d only heard of the Academy of Elements through whispered conversations between my mom and dad. It was how I first learned about a whole other world. When I’d asked my mom about it, she’d only given me clipped explanations. The brief glimpses had been enough for me to want to belong in that world. “Are you sure I’m an elemental?” I bounced my gaze between them. “It’s not a fluke or something? Am I really going to be sent to Clearwater?”

  “You have to learn how to control your calls. The academy is specifically designed for elementals once they come into their powers. Some of the students there are barely in their teens. Others start out later, like you.”

  Like me. Those were two words I hadn’t heard in a very, very long time. No one was like me. Only, apparently, I was about to attend a school designed for others like me.

  Please don’t let this be a trick. I desperately wanted to believe them, wanted to believe I was indeed an elemental and about to be whisked away to a school where I’d learn how to control my powers. I wanted it more than anything.

  I also knew better than to believe my powers had suddenly manifested after being nonexistent for the first twenty years and eleven months of my life. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” she said in a stern, far too motherly voice. I half expected her to use my middle name. “We knew this day would come.”

  Everything slowed as those words sank in. We knew this day would come. Oh no. Oh God no. This had to be a trap. No way would she use those exact fucking words that kept coming back to bite me in the ass and shatter my universe. My dad had used the same words to justify why my mom had left.

  Thank God I was on meds to dull my emotions. If I weren’t, I’d already be on my knees begging the universe to give me this one thing. I wasn’t an elemental. I didn’t have powers. This had to be some sort of trick. I was being sent somewhere else, somewhere for non-elementals who knew about the elemental world. I was being silenced.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “Because I’ve been your watcher for the past five years.”

  “You knew about this all along, knew what I could do, and never told me?” My fear transformed to anger. She’d witnessed firsthand what I went through after my mom had disappeared. The stares when I’d fallen asleep in the middle of class because I couldn’t sleep at night. The snickers when I’d had to wear the same clothes several days in a row because I didn’t know how to work the washing machine. How dare she never tell me who she really was or what I really was.

  I needed her to talk to me about this when my mom left, not now that we were at the Missoula Science Center accompanied by a perfect, beautiful stranger. “A watcher? You’re not even a real teacher? You’re…what, a babysitter? My babysitter?”

  “Katy, please. Nelems can hear you.”

  “Nelems?” That was the second time I’d heard them use that term.

  “Non-elementals,” Rob clarified. “They don’t know about our world. It’s a watcher’s job to make sure it stays that way.”

  “Now I’m a job?” I snapped as I glared at Ms. Wilkerson, barely holding it together as my world unraveled. “How could you keep something like this from me?”

  “I was instructed not to tell you unless absolutely necessary.”

  That was her reasoning? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You never thought it was necessary before now? And now you tell me in public?”

  “Katy, please understand. I never thought he’d find you.”

  Her comment hung between us like an icy fog. Eerie. Ominous. It killed my anger and replaced it with keen awareness. I followed her gaze to my sketch pad, and it clicked. Onyx. He really existed. And she knew who he was. “Who is he?”

  “He’s the reason we’ve been hiding you.”

  A tingling at the base of my neck alerted me to something. What, I had no idea, only that something felt…off. I glanced over my shoulder toward the entrance to the deserted hallway and frowned, not seeing anything out of the ordinary.

  “What is it?” Rob asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But it’s something.” He didn’t wait for me to answer and pulled me through the set of double doors, blowing through the lock as if it wasn’t even there. As soon as we walked through the doors, I froze, blinking in stunned silence.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” I glanced around and blew out a breath, the steam swirling above my head.

  “What the hell is this place?” Rob asked and held my hand tighter.

  “The MCU cadaver lab,” Ms. Wilkerson explained. “The warded room is over there.” She pointed to a door on the far wall. “They keep it hidden in the lab so no one will accidently stumble across it.”

  This place looked like the morgue on any number of police shows on TV, complete with occupants on steel tables, thin paper sheets draped over their junk. Lab? We’d stepped foot into a literal corpse locker. I now firmly regretted my decision to attend a college with a medical school on campus. Whoever came up with the idea to connect the freakin’ cadaver lab to the science center had a seriously twisted sense of humor. It was the zombie apocalypse waiting to happen.

  And we were standing at ground zero of it all.

  I stilled when my breath vaporized into a puff of steam. That sudden, undeniable feeling of being watched swept over me again. I glanced around, immediately tense from the chills walking across my neck.

  And I knew we weren’t alone.

  “What is it?” Rob asked, tensing right along with me. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not this guy.”

  I froze when I saw what he saw, unable to do anything but blink in disbelief as the creepy asshole I’d caught staring at that group of teens stepped in front of the door leading to the warded room, a sinister curl tipping the corners of his thin lips.

  “Holy mother of pearls,” I muttered. My neck hairs stood on end as goose bumps peppered my skin. I had to get out of here before I died of fright and joined the rest of the bodies on the tables, nothing but a thin paper sheet covering my lady bits.

  Rob squared his broad shoulders, making him even bigger than before. “Get behind me.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I jumped behind his large back, peeking out above his shoulder. Mr. Creepy approached, his beady black gaze fixed on me, and I inhaled sharply, bracing myself for the attack. That was when I smelled it, the scent of rotten copper pipes, decaying from years of neglect. I lived on an old ranch and recognized the stench of death.

  “Smell that?” Rob kept his voice low, for my ears only. I nodded. “That’s darkness.”

  “I didn’t know the dark had a scent.”

  “Not the dark,” he corrected. “Darkness. He’s a dark elemental. The scent of their call marks them.”

  “Is he why you were hiding me?”

  “No. He’s a scout, nothing more.” He said it loud enough for Mr. Creepy to hear, which the guy didn’t much appreciate judging by the way his expression hardened. Rob accepted the challenge and flashed an arrogant smile as he nailed the creeper with a cocky look. “None of the minions are powerful enough to be a threat.”

  “Oh, really?” He waved his hand, and Ms. Wilkerson flew backward, through the swinging double doors, slamming into the far hallway wall and falling to the floor, out cold. Oh God. Please let her only be out cold and not any of the alternatives that would earn her a place here in this lab. Mr. Creepy lifted his eyebrows as if to prove Rob wrong. “Still think I’m not powerful enough?”

  “Not powerful enough to beat me, but you already knew that. Which one are you scouting for today, Franklin?”

  “Franklin?” I asked. “You two are on a first-name basis?”

  He shrugged and didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the fact we were under attack by a portly guy with the ability to toss people into the air with the flick of his wrist. No way should Rob be enjoying this as much as he was.

  “Stay out of this,” Franklin snarled. “I’m here for the girl.”

  “Sorry, dude. She’s already spoken for.”

  “Not for long.” He grinned, showing off a few missing teeth as he regarded me. Attractive, buddy.