Page 68 of Bound By Earth (The Nature Hunters Academy 1)

Tara tossed the phone to the side, returned to her back, and stared up at the ceiling. Her mind kept replaying her time in the woods with Elias. She couldn’t help but wonder if today would be the last memory she had ofhim.

Thirty minutes later, she heard the front door open and close. “Shelly and her damn key,” she muttered under her breath. She’d yet to move from her position on the bed and probably wouldn’t have moved to open the door if Shelly had knocked. So, maybe it was a good thing her friend had made a copy of Tara’skey.

“Honey, I’m home,” Shelly hollered. A few minutes later, she pushed Tara’s door open and added, “And I brought girly sleepover things to help usbond.”

“I think we’ve bonded enough over the years,” Tara said as she sat up to look at her friend. “There’s no need to torture memore.”

“Too bad,” Shelly said as she tossed a bag, no doubt full of her bonding material, on the floor and then plopped herself down next to it. Within seconds, she was pulling out nail polish, a hairbrush, and facial and pedicure supplies. It was like she’d watched every teen movie ever made containing a sleepover scene and taken copious notes for just such anoccasion.

“You need to leave,” Tara said,deadpan.

“Oh come on.” Shelly held up a bag of round colored balls. “I even brought bath bombs,” shesang.

Tara’s eyes widened. “I am NOT taking a bath withyou.”

“I find it cute you think I would want to take a bath with you. You have the personality of an irritatedcrustacean.”

She rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t just call mecrabby?”

“Crabs aren’t the only crustaceans in the ocean. Maybe I was calling you a shrimp,” Shelly said with a grin. “Because you’re verticallychallenged.”

Tara stared at her silently for at least a minute and then said, “If we do the bonding crap, will you stoptalking?”

“Absolutely.”

An hour later, Tara picked up the bath bombs, snatched her phone, and locked herself in the bathroom. She turned on her favorite playlist, ran a hot bath, tossed in a purple bomb, and enjoyed the fact that the music and bath water were drowning out the sound of her BFFF’s voice. Shelly had maintained silence for all of five minutes and, since then, had not shut up. Hopefully, a twenty-minute bath would be enough time for Tara’s little trick to play itselfout.

“You have to come out sometime,” Shelly yelled through thedoor.

“Did you like that hot chocolate I made for you?” Taraasked.

“It was hot chocolate. What’s not tolike?”

“So, you drank itall?”

There was a pause and then Shelly cursed in Latin. “What did you do toit?”

“I might have dissolved some melatonin tablets in it. Sleep well, BFFF. I’ll see you in themorning.”

“UGHH!” Shelly growled. “It’s so hard to be mad at you when I respect your sabotaging skills somuch.”

* * *

Zuri sat in the branches of an oak tree across the street from Tara’s house. She leaned back against the large trunk and idly fingered the handle of her dagger. The air was still, not even the sound of a dog barking broke the night’s silence. Covered in a camouflage spell, she was completely invisible to passersby. Though she might not admit it, Zuri secretly hoped someone would show up to accost Jax’s Mark. Zuri hadn’t had a good fight inweeks.

The hunter perked up when a car pulled into the driveway. She relaxed, however, when the Mark’s friend emerged—a teenage girl, tall, skinny, and bubbly climbed out of it. She was singing at the top of her lungs, not even bothering to glance around to see if she was being watched.Oblivious. Was I ever so clueless?Zuri shook her head.Surely not.The girl skipped up to the porch and went inside. The street returned to the peaceful quiet ofbefore.

As soon as the sun slipped below the horizon, alarm bells went off in Zuri’s head. Elemental power was nearby—either an elemental or an acolyte, she wasn’t sure yet. She watched the lawn closely, trying to detect any shift or change in the atmosphere that might suggest a cloaking spell. Then, she saw it, a figure creeping up the front drive. Zuri registered it as a young human male.Damn.If it were merely a dark elemental, she could simply kill it outright. But with the acolytes, there were certain rules.Humans have to be captured. They can still be redeemed from the dark side, and blah, blah, blah. Ridiculous.The spell covering the human was rudimentary. It would have fooled the average human glancing in the acolyte’s direction, but it didn’t fool Zuri. She slipped silently from her perch and began to stalk toward the intruder. As soon as her feet hit the ground, the acolyte froze. He crouched slowly and spun in a slow circle. Though he was searching hard, Zuri saw his gaze pass overher.

“I know you’re there,” said theboy.

Zuri considered ignoring him. But she thought it might be better to see if she could coax some information out of the young one. “Do you?” she asked. “I could have slit your throat a dozen times bynow.”

The boy started and turned in her direction. “Showyourself.”

“Of course,” she purred. “It doesn’t become an elementalist, all this slinking around in the dark.” Zuri dropped her glamour, and the boy jumped as she appeared not three feet in front ofhim.

“Stay back!” He was the one who jumped backward, however, and held up his hands. Invisible orbs of force appearedthere.

---