Page 34 of The Elementalist
“I doubt it will matter.” She swiped at her hair, pulling it off her face so she could see withbotheyes.
“Wait… aren’t they weaker or something in the day?”
“Yes, but they’re not going to be outside, are they?” She gestured at the trail stretching off ahead of us. “They’ve been living in this place for years. It’s rather likely all the windows are boarded up to keep it dark inside.”
“Great.” I eased off the brake and let the truck roll forward. “So they become weaker when exposed to the sunlight, not based on what time it is?”
“Precisely.”
“Does that mean they never sleep? Geez, no wonder they’re insane.”
She chuckled. “I’m afraid I don’t understand it exactly, but I do know they sometimes do something that looks like sleep. How often or for how long, I haven’t a clue. But it isn’t tied to sunrise or sunset.”
“Maybe we should approach on foot so they don’t hear the truck coming?”
“They’ll hear us on foot, too. It’s like trying to sneak up on a paranoid cat. You might as well drive the whole way. It will give them less time to prepare.”
I nodded and accelerated a little, pushing the truck up to around twenty-five. “Just need to be careful I don’t get us trapped in a burning house.”
She glanced at me with a flat expression. “You can create fire out of nothing. Can you not send it back where you called it from?”
My brain got stuck. All the time I’d spent with Michael trying to learn how to work this elemental thing, not once had I even considered the notion of ‘un-making’ fire. Sure, I’d put it out with rain, but ‘reverse-creating’ the fire directly hadn’t even occurred to me. I’d been too awestruck at being able to summon it… like a small boy who’d discovered matches for the first time. “Umm. Yeah, that makes sense, but I haven’t tried it.”
“Unless you are looking forward to a drawn-out fight and possibly death, I suggest you learn fast and use fire on them.”
“What are you going to do?”
She shrugged. “Improvise, I suppose.”
The long, winding driveway ended at a giant dirt parking lot overgrown with weeds and untamed grass. An enormous three-story house that had clearly seen better days sat on the left. To the right, a particularly dense forest came right up to the edge of the dirt. The second and third floors had balconies bordered by wrought-iron fencing well into the process of falling off. Every window had boards covering them, except for a handful of giant bay windows on the ground level, which had been blocked off from the inside by heavy curtains. Ivy crept up the walls, though the plants gave off a sense of sickness, no doubt objecting to the dark energy within. In fact, the entire property gave me the feeling of a necrotic lesion gradually spreading decay into the woods.
“Yeah… they’re definitely here,” I whispered, peering up at a gauze of cobweb in the closest of the bay windows.
I decided to park on the right side, as far away from the front of the house as I could get, and backed it up until the rear bumper poked in among the trees. If things wentreallywrong in there, I didn’t want the house collapsing on top of my Ford.
Crystal got out of the truck first—and promptly shimmied out of her skirt.
Whoa. Okay, that I wasnotexpecting. I blinked in astonishment at her red lace panties. She didn’t seem to care one way or the other if I stared, and calmly pulled off her boots before rummaging around in her purse. As if the sight of her perfect, albeit pale legs hadn’t stalled every thought in my head already, watching her pull a pair of jeans—and sneakers—from a purse too small to hold them pretty much caused a complete mental shutdown.
She hurried into them, moving like a VHS tape playing on fast forward. Before I could pick my jaw up from my lap, she had her sneakers on and appeared ready to go inside.
“What…” I gestured at her, unable to make the words work or move from the driver’s seat.
Crystal stuffed her fancy boots into the purse before tossing it on the passenger seat, chucked her abandoned skirt on top of it, then shut the door. “One thing I’ve learned is toalwayscarry a change of clothing.”
“Um. Expecting you’ll need to dress practical at a moment’s notice?” I raised an eyebrow.
“No. I hate being stranded in the nude. Not that I’m embarrassed, but it tends to attract unwanted attention.”
“Didn’t think nudity bothered you.”
She smiled. “It doesn’t. However, when I’m trying to sneak around all inconspicuous like, it has the exact opposite effect of being unnoticed.”
“How often has that happened to you?” I finally hopped out, pushed my door shut, and walked around in front of the truck.
She fell in step at my side on the way to the front porch. “Are you asking about intentional episodes, accidents, or emergencies?”
“Do I even want to know?”
