Elements of Mischief by Tate James
Reg’s mother was even more annoyed at me, if that was even possible, after I made them wait outside the guest bathroom so I could er … mop up a little. What? Girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!
“Master, how can I be of assistance?” the butler asked, popping out from behind a desk and giving us all a blank, glassed over look.
“Golem,” Reg whispered in my ear. “Still don't care what it is?”
Ugh. Curiosity was biting at me, but I couldn't give him the satisfaction.
“Nope,” I lied, “do not care.” But I watched with fascination as Reg's mum rattled off a list of books, then the smartly dressed man sketched a little bow and went to gather them all.
“You're trying to work it out, aren't you?” George grinned. “What it is about him that makes him not human?”
I glanced at the golem's retreating back, quirked a brow and tried not to be bothered about the fact that I couldn't find my panties before we came down here … Honestly, I'm pretty sure they were incinerated by a lightning bolt. Fuck, those were expensive Victoria's Secret ones, too.
“Um, he's too polite to be human?” I asked and heard Billy chuckling behind me, his laughter the sound of leather and chrome, the voice of a motorcycle growling to life. Speaking of … I'd only seen the boys' hideous plumbing van. But four grown ass dudes? They had to have their own rides somewhere right? Like, uh, maybe in the garage of this gigantic mansion?
“He's made out of clay, Ari,” George said, reaching out and putting the end of his leash in my hand. I seriously appreciated the gesture. “Animated with magic; he has no soul.”
“Sort of like Reg's mother,” Billy whispered, and I heard the water elemental growl at his friend … boyfriend … Jesus, whatever. Billy sauntered past us, pausing to glance down at my bare cheeks hanging out of the skirt. Not that it mattered—even with the skimpy panties I'd been wearing, there were cheeks. “By the way,” he continued, lifting the burning color of his eyes to mine. Even though I'd literally just been, um, plowed, I felt a stirring of heat in my belly and my runes shimmered stupidly. Can something even do that? Shimmer stupidly? “Your friend left with the alpha male of the Hudson Valley Pack.”
He shrugged one of his deliciously broad shoulders, like that statement told me anything at all. I knew … zero about packs … zero about alpha males … Well, okay, I knew something about them—they were dicks. And usually had big dicks. Fuck.
“Well,” Reg's mom said from a table near the fireplace, “are you just going to stand there or are you going to come over and take a seat?”
“She'll grow on you,” George promised, letting me lead him by the leash over to the table. That improved my mood substantially. The thing that didn't improve was the look on Joan Copthorne's face.
“I'm sure she will,” I said, and then under my breath, “like a fungus.”
I pasted on a smile and sat prettily in a velvet chair, careful not to flash Reg's mum all my good parts. The boys took seats along the right side, leaving me at the head of the table with Joan on my left. The fact that she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, scarf, khaki vest, and matching pants … that scared me. I couldn't see any part of her body that would have runes on it, so I had no idea if this was like permanent, permanent.
“Kuntemopharn means storm dweller in our language,” Joan said, emphasizing the word our like I was some kind of alien creature invading her planet. “The storm dweller,” she continued, taking a book from the returning golem's arms and dropping it on the table, “was an elemental who absorbed the energy of his sext.”
I bit my lower lip for a second … and then it all started to sink in.
Sext.
We didn't have a sext (hah, sext…), but a quint. Where the fuck was our sixth person?
Warden.
Oh shit.
There really was another one.
My skin prickled with goose bumps and my throat went dry.
I curled my fingers around the edge of the table, but decided not to say anything in front of Reg's mom—she'd enjoy my shock and dismay too much.
The pages of the book swirled in an otherworldly wind as Joan smirked at me. Like, see I can control my powers.
I glared at her.
“Mom, just cut to it, please,” Reg groaned, looking like he wanted to puke. Something about the scene in Shane's bedroom had really upset him. “Storm dweller. Cuntmuffin. Who cares? What's this book gonna tell us about all that?”
Reginald's mom opened to a page with a really creepy Alice's Adventures in Wonderland type ink drawing of a large dragon-esque creature. It vaguely resembled the boys in their dragon forms, but there was just something off about it. It smiled with a gaping maw, teeth sharp and tongue lolling. Honestly, it looked like some sort of creature from one of Britt's hentais (you know, the pervy Japanese cartoon porn).
“The storm dweller,” Joan said again, like she simply enjoyed having information that I didn't, “is an anomaly, a mutation. It's what happens when a single elemental uses their connection with their unit to absorb every ounce of magic.”
“Yeah, duh,” Reg said, pulling a Billy-esque hissy fit. “So what?”
“So for there to even be a storm dweller alive today, the last one would've had to have been resurrected from the dead.” Joan paused to give a genteel laugh, like this was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard in her life. “Or a new one would've had to have been made.”
Her eyes snapped up to Reg as he stood up and knocked his chair over.
“We know where you're going with this,” he snarled as his mother took the rest of the books from the golem and placed them in a stack in front of me. “So let's just go down there so we can go home.”
Home, he said. Hmm. I wasn't sure how to feel about that.
“Down … where?” I asked, getting a little tickle at the base of my spine. I didn't like this. I didn't like it at all.
“There's an entrance to an underground tunnel on the back of the property,” Reg said carefully, tapping his fingers on the glossy wood surface of the tabletop. “It used to be part of the city's sewer system, but when they upgraded in the sixties, it was closed off and left to rot.” His mouth twitched and he sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “Along with the last storm dweller's skeleton. I used to play in there as a kid.”
“In the sewer?” I asked, but Reg just shrugged, his mouth twitching, like he was recovering some of his usual cocky attitude. “You played with a skeleton in the sewer?”
“He evaded the nannies and snuck down there,” Joan said with a sniff, standing up from the table and pointing at the stack of books. “I'll take you to see the corpse so you can be sure that you're wrong,” she emphasized, “but I want you to read these. If you don't learn more about who you really are, you're not going to last long.”
Speaking of ... I wondered vaguely if this was the right time to bring up the whole adopted pure-blood argument. The boys had thought I was a mere one percent? Huh. Guess even in death, Gram's spell was slow to fade. Wonder if knowing I was an elemental through and through would wipe the twisted scowl off Joan's face?
“Mom,” Reg warned, but she wasn't done.
“You'll end up another storm dweller that we'll have to—”
“Mom!” Reg shouted, slamming his hand on the table. “Stop it,” he snarled, giving her a look that was almost scary.
“Without Warden ...” she continued, flicking a glance my direction. Clearly, she didn't intend to finish that thought because she turned on her heel and headed for the back doors of the library.
“Let's get this fucking over with,” Reg growled, stalking off after her as Billy shook his head and lit up a cigarette with magic.
“Warden is our sixth,” I said carefully, looking George straight in the face. Of all the guys, he seemed the most likely to tell me the truth. His brown eyes met mine and held steady. “Warden's another elemental,” I confirmed and George smiled softly.
“Yes, Warden is an energy elemental,
“What happened to make him leave?” It had to have been something big. From the little I had seen so far of this ... community? Species? ... they tended to stick together like glue. Their bond was something I was borderline envious of—or would be, rather, if I didn't already have a foot in the door myself.
“He used to be the leader of our quint,” George started and I frowned.
“But, I thought Shane …?”
“Now, yes. But back then it was Warden. He was the strongest of us, and our leader is always the strongest, not the oldest.” George shrugged and then smiled softly. “Like you are now.”
I quirked a brow, but I didn't know how I felt about being anyone's leader—I could barely manage to keep my dresser stocked with clean socks. But I decided to keep my mouth shut and let George continue.
“None of us know exactly what happened, but the two of them got into it about something or other and the next thing we knew, Warden had packed his shit and taken off. We just sort of left him for a while, thinking he would come back eventually but then months turned into years and … here we are.”
“And Shane never told you what it was about?” I prompted as we fell into step together, following behind the others as they led us out of the warm library and into a cold New York night. George and I kept our voices low as we walked across the wet lawn, supposedly heading toward some ancient fucking dragon skeleton. Insert eye roll here if you will.
“He won't speak about it, barely even tolerates us saying Warden's name.” George's mouth pulled down at the corners in a mournful expression. “We all miss him though. Bad.”
“That doesn't make sense, George,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes. “You must have some idea what caused their fight?”
“Of course.” He smiled with those full lips of his, their lushness the only thing keeping my eyes away from the rounded curves of his biceps and that beautiful tree of life tattoo. If I was going to get anything done around this man, he was going to have to start wearing a shirt. “We're plumbers, not stupid.” He winked at me, but it was a playful one, not a pervy lascivious slut shutter like when Billy or Reg did it.
“Well?” I prompted, seeing as we were almost at the edge of the property already and I was pretty desperate to hear the rest of this story. If there was a fifth dude out there that I was fated, or whatever, to be with … well, I kinda wanted to know what the deal was!
“We always suspected it had something to do with ... a girl.” George paused and ran his fingers through the nut-brown color of his hair, the starlight above highlighting natural streaks of chestnut and darker strains of mahogany. He was limned in the light coming from the house, emphasizing the near perfect shape of his body, trimmed and toned, muscles in places I didn't even know muscles could grow.
“Warden met her in school,” he continued when I stayed silent, stirring up memories of my own ill-fated college romance. “He came back for summer break totally different, and then a week later he was gone.” George gave me a sympathetic look. “I know it wasn't right of us to keep this from you, but … it's sort of a nonissue now. None of us would even know where to begin looking for him—even if we wanted to.”
“And you don't?” I challenged, holding his gaze. “None of you have any interest in tracking him down now?”
“He's made it pretty clear he doesn't want us to find him.” George's brow dropped in a frown and he broke eye contact with me. “Come on, let's go look at skeletons in sewers.”
“Is that a euphemism for something?” I waggled my eyebrows at him suggestively, trying to lighten the mood as I grabbed his leash and continued across the garden to where the others were already waiting.
“If it is, Blossom, it's a bad one.” George chuckled and I saw a bit of the tension drop out of his shoulders. This Warden had really done a number on my new husbands … er, boyfriends. Or whatever.
Mental note: grill Shane further when he's feeling vulnerable.
Maybe another blow job from Reg was in order …
“Here we are,” Joan said as we caught up, giving George a warm smile that most definitely was not extended to me. She waved her elegant hand at the vegetation growing halfway over a metal grate lodged into the side of a small, grassy mound. If I hadn't known to look for it, I'd have probably missed it completely. Even now, the only reason I could see the slight shine of metal through all that green was because Billy had a dancing bundle of flame in one hand, casting brilliant orange and yellow light across the darkness of the yard.
That must be the poop shoot—er, sewer entrance—we're looking for, I thought as George shifted into his dragon form and carefully coaxed the vines and weeds covering the gate out of the way with a single breath. He simply leaned forward, exhaled, and swished the tree bark brown length of his tail and it all just ... gently peeled away.
George took a step back and shifted into human form with a sigh, casting a glance my way, like his being human was more for my benefit than his own.
“Why did he need to dragon-out?” I asked Billy, who stood closest to me. “Seems like a sort of easy task?”
“It is,” he nodded, “but we used an absolute shit ton of magic grounding you earlier and he's probably exhausted. Using our dragon or elemental forms gives us an extra boost of magic. I'm barely keeping it together as it is.” He twirled the flame around and had it alight on the tip of one finger.
“Oh.” Well shit, now I felt bad. I hadn't even considered what toll that ritual in Shane's bedroom might have had on the guys, but now that Billy mentioned it, they were all looking a bit rough.
“Don't sweat it, doll face.” Billy smirked. “It's our job to keep you alive now.”
Shane hauled the metal grate open, his thick pipes bulging as he pulled at it, and we all paused for a moment, no one really offering to go first.
Hey, don't blame me! There was a skeleton in there for fuck's sake!
“Come on then,” Reg growled. “Billy, the light?”
Billy's eyes tightened a little but he stayed in his sexy leather clad human form as several little balls of fire ignited from nothing and bounced through the air to line the tunnel, lighting our way as we followed Reg through the foul smelling slosh.
At least it smelled more earthy than old shit to me. That, and Reg went see-through on us, using his elemental magic to push the water away from my six inch stilettos. Didn't do a lot to remove the slippery sludge though. Let's just say—if the cuntmuffin guy wasn't out to kill me, the shoes probably would.
“Are you okay?” I whispered to Billy, noticing the slight sheen of sweat on his forehead.
He nodded tightly, but took my hand in one of his.
“Fine. Just … let's be quick.”
“Ah hah!” Joan yelled, her voice echoing sharply down the sewer tunnel. “See! What did I tell you? Exactly where it's supposed to be.”
The 'where' she was talking about was a wide opening in the middle of the tunnel, a circular room with a stone slab raised in the center like an altar. On top of the slab was, as promised, a skeleton. The bones of the skeleton were shackled to the stone with several rusty looking chains and even had metal spikes hammered between the wrist and ankle bones. However this Kuntemopharn had died, it hadn't been pleasant.
“Huh,” Reg muttered, clearly not expecting to have found the skeleton where it was supposed to be.
“I don't get it.” I frowned. “Why would Gram say this dude was trouble if he's, you know, not. I mean, the mighty cuntmuffin's just a pile of old bones for fuck's sake.”
“Maybe she lied?” Joan rolled her eyes dramatically. “Ghosts have been prone to mischief before, you know?”
“Something … doesn't feel right about this …” I was murmuring mostly to myself as I took a couple of steps closer to the skeleton. There was a heaviness to the air that smacked of magic, but maybe that was whatever had protected this … ah
One foot, in deadly stiletto boots, slipped on fuck knows what and I almost ended up with my bare coochie in a pile of old shit.
“Careful,” Billy hissed, catching me just in time and placing me back on my feet. “It's bad enough our shoes are getting destroyed; you do not want that fine ass in this crap.”
“Thanks.” I smiled wryly, then continued forward to the altar, stopping just a foot from the remains.
“Does anyone else feel that?” I asked, looking around at my four new husbands … and shiny new mother-in-law. Of all of them, she seemed to be the only one who knew what I was talking about. Her brow was drawn low and her lips were tight as she looked around the room, almost as if she suspected someone else were here with us.
Not knowing why, I reached out my free hand to touch the skeleton. Right as my finger should have met bone, the whole thing just flat-out disappeared. The chains dropped to the stone with a clang, and the sound of Joan's bloodcurdling scream bounced through the room.
“It's just a fucking glamour!” Billy said, right before his foxfire went out, and in an instant, I felt something sweep through the tunnel at me, a force of energy, like a warm gust of wind. It knocked me flat on my ass, my head cracking against the wet cement floor.
“Mom!” I heard Reg shout as I struggled to stand up, long fingers curling around my wrist and yanking me to my feet.
Based on smell alone, I knew it was George—that night-blooming jasmine and musky wet earth scent of his was unmistakeable. Even in the middle of a reeking sewer, I was sure of it.
“Stay close,” he warned me, putting one of my hands flat on his shoulder. Beneath my fingertips, I felt him shift, his smooth skin roughening, limbs elongating. Considering the fact that I hadn't known shifters even existed a few days ago, the whole thing should've freaked me the fuck out.
Instead, I found it comforting.
“Climb up,” George said, but he didn't wait for me to try. Instead, I felt the rough, muscular length of his tail curl around my waist, hoisting me up and onto his back. I mean, I'd ridden dudes before, but I was so not used to this.