allow me to stay on the floor.
I’d lost. I spared a moment of silence for all the buff, naked men I would never see, then accepted my fate. Mostly.
“I thought there weren’t any singles in Willow.”
“There aren’t. You’ll have a roommate. It was the only available option, Aidan.”
“Fine,” I muttered, though I didn’t mean it in the slightest. “Who’s my roommate?”
Looking pleased by my graceless acceptance of the inevitable, he withdrew a paper from my file. “Sera... something. She’s from Hawaii. Here we go. Sera Blais.”
My head snapped up when I heard the name. Elementals were born from the earth’s original magic, giving us the ability to control one aspect of nature. Over thousands of years, that original magic had been diluted with human blood. Only the most powerful old ones, those who only had one or two human branches on their family trees, used the original surnames. Brook was one of those names. Blais was another.
I’d never met a fire in person, but I knew they craved warm environments. Lake Tahoe definitely was not warm, at least in winter. I’d never thought to meet one here. For the first time, I was intrigued about my change of circumstances.
It looked like my education would extend beyond naked men, after all.
2
“Room 213?” I asked the woman studying in the lounge. With her perfectly pressed clothes, straightened hair, and flawless skin, she looked like a walking Banana Republic advertisement, the sort of respectable woman who would know where I was supposed to be. There was a small potted plant near her. Her left hand rested against the soil, suggesting she was either an earth or a dirt fetishist.
She glanced up from her laptop, masking the annoyance that flashed in her hazel eyes. I didn’t blame her. I got the same look when someone interrupted me when I was writing in my journal. “Down there,” she told me, pointing to the eastern hallway. “Follow the noise.”
I murmured my thanks and headed in the direction she’d indicated, struggling under the weight of two oversized suitcases.
The woman hadn’t been kidding about the noise. As I approached the room, all I could hear was discordant guitars struggling to keep up with manic drum beats. It was music, I supposed, in the same way men who played spoons on the street wrote songs.
I released the handle of one suitcase and knocked on the door. Then I knocked louder, and finally I pounded. At last, the music stopped and the door was wrenched open. My suitcase, propped against the door, fell over. The woman in the doorway ignored it.
Sera Blais stared at me for a long time, and I returned the favor. She wasn’t a tall woman, but something about her filled the room. She had the classic coloring of the fires, eyes and hair so dark they were nearly black, and a body made of well-muscled curves.
She’d apparently performed the same study on me. “You’re a skinny bitch, aren’t you?” The words contained neither jealousy nor malice.
“I prefer lithe.”
“I prefer to think The Clash never broke up, but that doesn’t make it true.” She stepped back, letting me into the room. She still watched me closely. “Aidan Brook. Where are you from?”
I knew what she was asking. Humans weren’t supposed to know elementals existed, so we’d long ago established a series of coded questions, our version of a secret handshake. It didn’t matter that I had one of the old names and a water’s coloring. Sera still needed to be cautious.
“An island in the San Juans. My whole family lives there.”
She relaxed when I confirmed her suspicions. There aren’t many elemental enclaves, and only one in the northwest. I might as well have worn a pin that read “I’m a child of magic. Ask me how.”
“You a full?” Sera asked.
I shook my head. I looked it, with my blond hair and gray eyes and the unimpressive curves she’d already commented on, but my father had been human. “Half.
I’d lost. I spared a moment of silence for all the buff, naked men I would never see, then accepted my fate. Mostly.
“I thought there weren’t any singles in Willow.”
“There aren’t. You’ll have a roommate. It was the only available option, Aidan.”
“Fine,” I muttered, though I didn’t mean it in the slightest. “Who’s my roommate?”
Looking pleased by my graceless acceptance of the inevitable, he withdrew a paper from my file. “Sera... something. She’s from Hawaii. Here we go. Sera Blais.”
My head snapped up when I heard the name. Elementals were born from the earth’s original magic, giving us the ability to control one aspect of nature. Over thousands of years, that original magic had been diluted with human blood. Only the most powerful old ones, those who only had one or two human branches on their family trees, used the original surnames. Brook was one of those names. Blais was another.
I’d never met a fire in person, but I knew they craved warm environments. Lake Tahoe definitely was not warm, at least in winter. I’d never thought to meet one here. For the first time, I was intrigued about my change of circumstances.
It looked like my education would extend beyond naked men, after all.
2
“Room 213?” I asked the woman studying in the lounge. With her perfectly pressed clothes, straightened hair, and flawless skin, she looked like a walking Banana Republic advertisement, the sort of respectable woman who would know where I was supposed to be. There was a small potted plant near her. Her left hand rested against the soil, suggesting she was either an earth or a dirt fetishist.
She glanced up from her laptop, masking the annoyance that flashed in her hazel eyes. I didn’t blame her. I got the same look when someone interrupted me when I was writing in my journal. “Down there,” she told me, pointing to the eastern hallway. “Follow the noise.”
I murmured my thanks and headed in the direction she’d indicated, struggling under the weight of two oversized suitcases.
The woman hadn’t been kidding about the noise. As I approached the room, all I could hear was discordant guitars struggling to keep up with manic drum beats. It was music, I supposed, in the same way men who played spoons on the street wrote songs.
I released the handle of one suitcase and knocked on the door. Then I knocked louder, and finally I pounded. At last, the music stopped and the door was wrenched open. My suitcase, propped against the door, fell over. The woman in the doorway ignored it.
Sera Blais stared at me for a long time, and I returned the favor. She wasn’t a tall woman, but something about her filled the room. She had the classic coloring of the fires, eyes and hair so dark they were nearly black, and a body made of well-muscled curves.
She’d apparently performed the same study on me. “You’re a skinny bitch, aren’t you?” The words contained neither jealousy nor malice.
“I prefer lithe.”
“I prefer to think The Clash never broke up, but that doesn’t make it true.” She stepped back, letting me into the room. She still watched me closely. “Aidan Brook. Where are you from?”
I knew what she was asking. Humans weren’t supposed to know elementals existed, so we’d long ago established a series of coded questions, our version of a secret handshake. It didn’t matter that I had one of the old names and a water’s coloring. Sera still needed to be cautious.
“An island in the San Juans. My whole family lives there.”
She relaxed when I confirmed her suspicions. There aren’t many elemental enclaves, and only one in the northwest. I might as well have worn a pin that read “I’m a child of magic. Ask me how.”
“You a full?” Sera asked.
I shook my head. I looked it, with my blond hair and gray eyes and the unimpressive curves she’d already commented on, but my father had been human. “Half.
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