Page 37 of Veiled By Smoke (The Nature Hunters Academy #5)
“They are not,” he answered simply. “My name is Ra,” he continued.
He stepped further into the room, walking slowly with measured steps to the only other empty chair, next to Penny and directly across from Aurora.
His movements were graceful for someone so large.
He looked like he should lumber about, but he moved fluidly as he took a seat, as if he was one with the environment around him.
“I am a friend of Penny’s.” He motioned to the woman who was currently studying her like you might a strange bug.
“Are you a member of the coven too?” Fern asked, her voice more confident than Aurora felt.
“I am not,” Ra said as he turned his dark eyes on her foster mom. “I am a member of an academy. It’s a special school for special people.”
“I knew Hogwarts couldn’t be made up,” Aurora whispered, her mind seeming to grasp for anything that felt familiar to ground her in the here and now.
And she’d read that series about a million times.
Whatever Ra was about to say might feel less scary if she could compare it to Hogwarts.
Wait, that was sort of stupid considering the bad guy in that series was pretty freaking awful.
If real life was anything like that, things were about to get bad.
“No,” Ra shook his head. “It’s not a witchcraft school. It’s an elemental school.”
“Oddly,” Penny interjected, holding up a finger, “elementalists work with nature and so do witches. It’s strange that we aren’t allies.”
Ra shook his head, his face going completely blank. “Witches work with more than just nature, and what they do work with, they twist.”
Penny’s head whipped around, and she stuck a finger at Ra. “Hey, you cannot go holding what my idiot coven members did over my head. I was not a part of that. And neither was Cordelia. We’re on team good guys. Besides, who’s the one with demon eyes?” Penny pursed her lips. “Not me.”
Cordelia raised her hand. “Not it.”
Once again, Aurora felt the need to throw in her two cents. “Not me either, or her,” she pointed to Fern. “We’re demon-eye free. Have been my whole life. Can I get off the train now?”
Penny looked back at her. “Train?” Her brow furrowed.
Aurora nodded. “The crazy one you brought me on when you invited me back over.”
Cordelia and Penny both laughed, and Ra’s lips twisted ever so slightly, as if he was amused as well.
“My Shelly will like you,” he said, his voice softer.
“Your Shelly?” Aurora asked. “Is she like, your pet? And if so, why on earth am I going to meet her?”
“Oh snap,” Penny laughed again, this time slapping her leg. “I can’t wait to tell your bonded that she was called your pet.”
Ra glanced at the brunette. “She will find it amusing and turn it into something inappropriate.” This time Aurora thought she heard exasperation mixed with amusement in his voice.
“So, not a pet?”
“No,” Ra shook his head. “She’s my,” he paused and seemed to struggle to find a word to describe what she was. “Well, I suppose until you understand everything, I should call her my wife. It’s a weak description of what she truly is to me, but it will suffice for now.”
“Weak is putting it mildly considering she houses part of your soul,” Penny muttered.
“I feel like we need to regroup and focus,” Cordelia said, motioning her hands in a way that encompassed the room. “We invited them here for a reason. Let’s get to it.”
“Right,” Penny nodded, getting more serious. “What we’re about to tell you may seem impossible, but we are going to show you some things to help back up our claims. We need to ask you for two things.”
“What things?” Fern asked.
“Don’t panic, and give us a chance to explain before you dismiss us and leave,” Penny said, her brow raised expectantly.
Aurora looked at her foster mom. Fern’s eyes narrowed as they bounced from Cordelia to Ra and then to Penny. Finally she nodded. “Okay then. We will be calm,” she reached over and took Aurora’s hand. “And we will wait for an explanation.”
“Excellent,” Penny smiled. “Okay, so, I’m actually a witch, and so is Cordelia. We can do magic. Ra is an elementalist. But I’ll let him speak for himself. Just please know that we don’t mean you any harm. We just want to help you and keep you safe.”
“As she said,” Ra spoke up, “I’m an elementalist and one of my elements is fire.
He held out his hand and flames suddenly appeared.
They didn’t just move like fire–the flames took on a shape and suddenly she was watching a cat, made of fire, walk around Ra’s palm, circling until it curled up and seemed to go to sleep. Then it vanished.
“What the what?” Aurora breathed out, the air feeling like it had been sucked from her lungs.
“Oh dear,” Fern said, her hand resting over her heart.
“My other element is a little harder to explain. It’s a fifth element, not known to humans.
It’s called a soul bond. It means I have a soulmate–Shelly.
With that element come certain responsibilities and abilities.
I’m still learning about them, and I’m afraid I don’t really have a way to show you what that looks like, not like I can with my fire. ”
“To recap,” Penny said, sounding very much like a teacher. “Witch, witch,” she pointed to herself and Cordelia and then Ra, “Weird elemental dude with some morally grey tendencies despite his good heart, hence the black eyes.”
Ra glanced at Penny, who simply blinked at him and shrugged. “What? I’m just speaking the truth. You don’t have to like it.” Then she looked back at Fern and then Aurora. “So, how we doing? Want to go screaming out into the storm yet?”
Fern just stared, her eyes blinking a little comically, her skin a tad pale.
“To be honest, I’m still stuck on the fire cat,” Aurora said, looking at Ra.
“Fair,” Penny sighed. “That’s a little cooler than me saying I’m a witch. But, I can actually do some pretty cool spells.”
Ra sat back in his chair and laid the ankle of one leg on the knee of the other. “It’s not a competition.” Then he added, “But if it was, I’d win.”
Penny sputtered. “Did you just make a joke? Does your soul bonded know you have jokes? I feel like this is something we should get on video. Can you say it again? Like the whole thing.” She started to pull out her phone until Cordelia snapped her fingers.
“Focus, Penny. Geeze. Did you take your medicine this morning, or are you drinking those energy drinks again?”
Penny rolled her eyes. “I’m not drinking anything. You’d understand if you’d been around Ra for more than a couple of hours. His sense of humor leaves much to be desired.”
“Moving on,” Ra said, ignoring the two women.
“Aurora, Cordelia mentioned to Penny that when she met you, she felt strange energy coming off of you. Not quite a witch energy, but not something she could put her finger on, either. I have a theory of what it is. It’s a bit of a long story, but will you hear me out? ”
Aurora nodded. Again, her trust of this man baffled her, but it seemed to override her fear of him. So for now, she’d roll with it.
He began to tell her about this unseen world: elementals, the royals of nature, Mother Gaia, the kids whose parents were killed and how they were Marks for the elementals, light and dark.
These kids grew up and had power over whatever element they possessed.
His academy trained them how to use that power.
On and on he spoke, and Aurora’s eyes widened, her heart sped up, and her palms began to sweat.
She’d lost her parents in a terrible accident.
Was she like the kids he spoke of? Was that why he was here now?
Was it why she felt drawn to know about the witches, because the magic in them called to some sort of magic in her?
When he was finally done speaking, he stared at her, waiting. She wasn’t sure if he expected her to freak out, or tell him he was crazy. Neither of those things were her reaction. To her surprise, even Fern was calm, though there was a slight tremble in her hands where they rested in her lap.
“Would that explain why I feel like I’m split in two?
Like there’s a part of me somewhere else, and it’s calling for me, and I can almost hear it?
” Aurora didn’t know why those were the words that came out of her mouth, but she’d been dying to ask that question to someone.
Until now, there’d been nobody that she could, not without sounding insane. “Is my soul torn?”