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“Please tell me you have good news,” Finn said.

“If you consider where Gaven keeps the bulk of his stock good news, then yeah, I have some for you.”

Finn put his hands together in prayer and looked up through the white ceiling. “Thank the Star.”

“I’m out of here. You’re on your own with this whole drowned-bodies thing.”

“Be careful, Cassel. And call me when you’re done.”

Darien waved him away. He stalked up to the elevators, poking one of the buttons hard enough to make the light flicker. As he waited for the elevator, he kept his eyes on the tiny black screen, floor numbers flashing in red light…and started thinking.

Blue had managed to escape those men. The core of her aura was blue—according to Max, bluer than any aura he’d seen before. The Fleet had a Special Task Force called Elementals.

Elementals…

Was it possible that Blue had killed those men to escape a hostage situation, and had used her magic to do it? Nothing like this had ever been heard of before, not in the whole of Terra, but…but was it possible that her blue magic was linked to water, and she’d drowned the men with it before dumping their bodies—and their car—in the lake? There were a small number of hellsehers who had the rare ability to bend elements, but no one had ever been able to summon them out of nothing.

He dialed Dominic as he got in the empty elevator.

The line crackled as Dominic picked up. “What’s up, Dare?”

Darien punched the button for the ground floor. “Ask Blue if she killed those men, and ask her how she did it.” The elevator doors slit shut with a hiss.

A beat of tense silence fell. “What’s going on?”

Darien filled him in quickly, and when he was done, the line went silent again. Elevator music tinkled through the speaker as the platform plummeted down to the ground floor. The walls in here were covered in mirrors. Darien avoided looking in every single one of them. If it weren’t for the fact that elevators had mirrors to assist people in wheelchairs, he probably would’ve shattered all of them.

“One second,” Dom said. The one second he asked for turned into seven minutes, and by the time he was back on the line, Darien was out of the hospital and in his car, closing the door on a rare sunny day that heated up the black paint. Dominic sighed. “She’s not talking. Maybe she’s afraid that if she admits to killing those men, we’ll turn her in.”

“Do whatever you can to get more information out of her without making her want to run off.”

“I’m on it. But can you do me a favor and fill me in on what you’re thinking?”

“I just finished speaking with Finn at the General. The autopsies on those three dead hellsehers revealed that they died by drowning, but listen to this: they were already dead before they went in the lake.”

“But they died by drowning?”

“Yes. And the reason I’m asking how Blue killed them is because her magic is blue. What if she has water magic? And what if she can’t just control the element, but can also summon it out of nothing?”

“Holy shit,” Dominic breathed. “You’re a sharp one.”

“It doesn’t always feel like it, but thanks.”

“I think I hear her coming,” Dominic said quietly. “Talk soon?”

“Later.”

38

Loren woke up in her dorm room at the academy and saw a shadow standing by the door. Long limbs flayed about, the ends of them flopping through the air like fins. The head was weird and saggy, and whatever this thing was, it was breathing heavily.

A scream built in her throat, but she swallowed it when the shadow banged its foot against the closet door.

“Mother trucker!” a voice hissed.

Loren sat up. “Dallas?”

Dallas pulled down the twisted hood that was stuck over her head and shoved it into proper position. Her magnificent white wings were rustling; trying to put clothes on with those things in the way would take some getting used to. She’d had to stock up her wardrobe with wing-friendly outfits.