Shimmering Chaos (Enchanted Chaos Series ) Read online

  Max gives him an amused look and Foster sighs, steering me across the kitchen and out the door. As we enter the foyer, he hands me my plate then slips on his jacket and collects his car keys from the end table near the door.

  “Isn’t your mom coming with us?” I ask. “To check me in or something?”

  “She has a couple of things to do this morning for work, but she’ll meet us there.” He zips up his jacket then takes my hand again.

  I should pull away. It’s weird holding hands with a guy I barely know. Yet, that’s the thing. I feel like I do know Foster, perhaps from all the times I spent observing him from afar. Not that my covert gawking ever really let me discover much about him, other than he went to the auto body shop all the time. And I’m still not even sure why he was ever there.

  Maybe I should just ask him. He’s been so helpful with all the other questions I’ve had.

  “Random question,” I say as Foster opens the front door. “Why were you always at that auto body shop in Honeyton?”

  His hand stiffens in mine, and the sky, which was the bluest I’ve seen it in a long time, abruptly becomes a grey overcast.

  “I went there to pick up parts for my car,” he mutters, then releases my hand and hurries down the stairs as if the house is suddenly on fire. Which, I guess, considering what we can both do …

  I peek over my shoulder, grateful no flames are visible. However, that doesn’t explain why Foster abruptly started acting like … well, the Foster I first met.

  Sighing, I trail after him down the path and to the garage where his car is parked and Easton is waiting in the back seat.

  Foster ducks into the driver’s seat then shuts the door and starts up the engine.

  Balancing the plate of waffles in one hand, I open the passenger door and lower my head to glance in the cab at him. “Let me eat this really quick first.” I hold up the plate of waffles. “I don’t want to get your car sticky.”

  “I don’t care if you get my car sticky.” He avoids eye contact with me, cranking up the heat. “We need to go or we’re going to be late.”

  I glance at the plate, and then at his nice, clean leather interior. “Maybe I should just leave the waffles here.”

  Shaking his head, he finally looks at me. “Sky, just get in the car. With how much you’re going to be using your powers today, you need to eat or you’re going to be weak. And I’d rather you get my car sticky than for you to come off as weak on your first day of school.”

  Easton lets out a snicker. “You guys should really start paying more attention to what you’re saying. All this sticky talk sounds so dirty that it’s starting to make me feel sticky.”

  Foster rolls his eyes. “If you don’t cut this whole jokester shit out, I’m going to tell Sky why you were blushing in the kitchen and why the water turned on.”

  Easton’s smile quickly dissolves. “Shut the hell up.”

  “Then you,” Foster quips, catching Easton’s gaze. Easton glares back at him but smashes his lips together and remains silent.

  Foster’s gaze settles on me, his expression softening. “I promise I don’t care if you eat your breakfast in here. It’s just a car, Sky.”

  “Oh, fine.” I climb in and shut the door, balancing the plate on my lap while I strap on the seatbelt. “A very pretty car, though.”

  A smirk curls at Easton’s lips as he digs his phone out of his pocket. “A girl who’s into cars? Dude, I think Foster just crea—”

  “Don’t finish that sentence,” Foster cuts him off, throwing Easton a sharp look. “I swear to the gods, I’ll tell her.”

  Easton pulls a mocking face. “Whatever. I’m just saying the truth. And this is payback for the many times you gave me shit about the girls I hooked up with.”

  Foster’s lips part then shut, his shoulders slumping. “Fine. But just lay off it for a while, or else I’m going to tell her.”

  “I’ll try.” Easton hammers his fingers against his screen as he types a message.

  They grow quiet after that as Foster turns back around in his seat.

  “So, you’re really not going to tell me what embarrassed Easton?” I ask as the secrecy starts to taunt me.

  Foster shakes his head, his gaze skating to me. “Trust me; it’s better if you don’t know.”

  I crinkle my nose. “I’m not so sure I agree with you.”

  Foster gives me an apologetic look, then shifts the car into reverse and starts to back out of the garage. “This is sort of random, but I’m curious; have been curious about this for a while.” He pauses as he turns the car around and drives down the driveway. “That day you approached me and asked about my car. Did you really know what year it was or did you look it up on the internet?”

  “I knew what year it was … My dad, he’s really into classic cars.” I stab the fork into the waffles. “If I hadn’t known, I wouldn’t have taken the time to look it up.” I pop a bite of waffle into my mouth. “I wasn’t that eager to impress you.”

  “Sure you weren’t.” He tosses me a teasing smile.

  “I actually wasn’t. My friend Nina convinced me to do it, and I only did it because she pointed out that you weren’t from Honeyton, so the outcome wouldn’t matter because I probably wouldn’t see you again.” I stuff another chunk of waffle into my mouth, mostly to distract myself from my internal embarrassment. “Go figure you ended up being the son of my new guardian. Seriously, it’s like fate hates me or something.”

  He slows to a stop as he reaches the edge of the driveway, staring ahead at the road. “Does it hate you, though?”

  I’m not even positive if he’s talking to me or himself. Still, I almost reply with a yes, especially after he got so irritated with me for no damn reason when I asked him why he was at the auto body shop. But I can’t bring myself to say so.

  The truth is that me ending up with the Everettsons isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m starting to see that now. In fact, I feel more weightless than I ever have, able to embrace my powers instead of despising them.

  Chapter 5

  The three of us remain quiet as Foster drives toward the shallow hills that border the town. As we drive, Easton has me rest my head on the console so he can put eye drops into my eyes after I announce I’ll go with water as my element.

  “Please don’t play with my eyes again,” I tell Easton as he leans over me. “I hate my eyes being touched.”

  The edges of his lips quirk. “But they’re so pretty. I just want to touch them all the time.”

  “That is seriously the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard,” I say, wiggling around to get comfortable.

  He presses his hand to his chest, mocking being offended. “I tell you your eyes are pretty and all you say is that my compliment is creepy. Wow, that’s cruel.”

  “Touching eyes is creepy,” I insist. “Although, I doubt you think so since you have a bunch of eyeballs in your fridge.”

  “Hey, I do think that’s creepy,” Easton gives an exaggerated shudder. “If I had my way, Hunter and Holden would keep their science supplies in another fridge, way, way far away from the house. Preferably in another world.”

  “Remember that one time they put a jar of demon tongues in there?” Foster says, his face contorted in disgust.

  “Wait…” My eyes nearly bulge out of my head. “Demons exist?”

  “Um…” Foster trades a look with Easton, who gives a shrug.

  “Don’t look at me.” He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. “You’re the one who said it.”

  Foster sighs. “I know.” He looks at me. “Yeah, they exist. But there’s not a lot of them around, so you don’t need to worry.”

  “Are there some in this world?” I ask worriedly, acting the opposite of what he told me to do.

  “Yeah, but elemental protectors have a sixth sense that lets them know when a demon is present, so demons tend to avoid being near us,” he explains, cranking up the heat.

  I still don’t feel any better. I mean… Dem
ons? Demons? “What do they look like?”

  “The ones that are here in this world take on a human form,” Easton replies, unscrewing the cap off the eye drops. “But in their true form, they come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors. Some have scales. Some have slimy skin. It really depends on what kind of demon they are.”

  “Gross,” I mumble, causing Easton to chuckle.

  “Yeah, definitely gross,” he agrees then wiggles the bottle of eye drops in front of my face. “All right, we’re almost to the school, so it’s time to get those pretty eyes of yours hidden.”

  Pretty eyes? Is he for reals?

  As if sensing my thoughts, he grins. “Your eyes or gorgeous whether you think so or not.” He holds my eye open with his fingers. “Now hold still.”

  I do what he says and then he puts the drops into my eyes. Once my eyes are nice and silvery, looking really freakin’ weird in my opinion, I rest back in the seat and work on finishing my breakfast while taking in my surroundings.

  The road we’re driving down is desolate, only a house or two here and there, with mostly trees and spacious fields.

  “Is this the town?” I wonder after I’ve finished the last of my waffles.

  “Nah. The town’s that way.” Easton nods toward the left. “You can’t see it right now because of the trees and stuff, but even if they weren’t there, it’s hard to see.” He rolls the sleeves of his shirt up. “It’s a really small fucking town.”

  “That’s what Max said.” I squint against the sunlight streaming through the clouds. “I want to get a job, but Max said it’d be hard for an out-of-towner to get one.”

  “I think you should be okay now that you have powers,” Easton tells me. “When Max said out-of-towners, he actually meant humans.”

  I rest my arms on the console. “But humans live here, right? So, how do they work?”

  “Most of them work at the factory on the outskirt of town,” Easton explains, combing his fingers through his hair.

  “And they never wonder why they don’t get hired elsewhere?” I question skeptically.

  “They probably would if it wasn’t for us keeping most of the other shops invisible with magic—they don’t even know most of the places in town exist.” Easton winks at me. “You need to stop thinking like a human. Nothing is simply black and white. In fact, this world is like a damn fucking rainbow with sparkles and everything.”

  “I’m starting to realize that, but I’ve also spent most of my life thinking I was human, so it’s sort of hard to break the habit of thinking like one,” I explain then pause. “What I don’t get, though, is how it seems like it’d be so much easier for you guys to just live in your own world. I mean, I know Charlotte said it’s overpopulated, but still, hiding your powers is a pain in the ass. That I understand.”

  “It’s not just overpopulation that makes Elemental so unlivable,” Foster says, downshifting as he prepares to make a turn off the highway and onto a paved road that weaves between the trees. “It’s become corrupt because of overpopulation and the increase of elemental protectors of darkness.” He flips on the blinker and turns onto the road. “It’s like that for a lot of worlds, which is why we came here. Although corruption is spreading here, too, like with the hunters.”

  I swallow the lump wedged in my throat. “Why the increase in corruption everywhere?”

  The air grows so still I can hear the beating of my own heart.

  “In Elemental, it’s because all the gods and goddesses died. Well, except for one,” Foster says, tightening his grip on the wheel. “The god of darkness is still alive, so his power has become more prominent.”

  A shiver crawls over my body. “Really?”

  He nods, his knuckles whitening. “He’s also the god responsible for my grandparents’ deaths.” He shifts the car and decelerates as we reach the trees. “It’s been the god of darkness’s mission to eliminate all the elemental enchanters in our world because, if there were more of us, we could potentially overthrow him and rid the darkness plaguing our world, which he put there. Of course our kind can’t solve the problem of our world dying since only gods and goddesses can feed energy to it.”

  “How did they die?” I whisper, tears pooling in my eyes for some bizarre reason. “I mean, the other gods and goddesses.”

  “No one knows for sure, but some have speculated that the god of darkness killed them so he could rule on his own.” Foster glances at me, a frown tugging at his lips. Then he reaches across the console and brushes his fingers across my cheek. “Sky, don’t cry. I promise nothing will happen to you. You’re safe with us.”

  As he grazes my cheekbones with his knuckles, I realize tears are dripping down my cheeks.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.” Mortified, I wipe my face with the back of my hand.

  “It’s perfectly fine.” He brushes strands of hair out of my face. “You’re handling this better than most.”

  “I doubt that.” I rub my eyes, my heart feeling strange, as if a piece has fallen out. “I wish there was something that could help Elemental. It’d be nice to see it one day.”

  “It was beautiful once.” He steers down the road with one hand, resting his other on my cheek. “My parents work for the elemental protector organization, and they’ve been working on finding a new source to feed our world ever since the gods and goddesses died. They’ve had a couple of findings, mostly in books and folklore told amongst our kind that suggests that, before the gods and goddesses died, they hid power sources that contained each of their own powers. But, so far, there hasn’t been any proof, so it’s mostly just an urban legend.”

  “You and I both know it’s probably just stories.” Easton slides forward and crosses his arms on top of the center console. “If the gods and goddesses left their power sources behind, someone would’ve found them by now.”

  “You never know. We used to believe there weren’t any other elemental enchanters, so …” He shrugs, looking ahead.

  I track his gaze, and my eyes widen.

  Just in front of us, the trees open up to a flat, flowery field that stretches as far as the eye can see. And smack dab in the middle of it is a towering, gothic-like building, three stories high with turrets and everything.

  “Is that the academy?” I gape at the building in astonishment.

  Foster nods. “Yep, that’s your new school.”

  The corners of my lips twitch upward. “It’s actually really awesome looking.”

  Smiling, he steers through the iron-gated entrance. “Just wait until you see the inside.”

  My smile enlarges until we turn into the parking lot. Then my mood nosedives.

  “There’re so many people here,” I note, peering around at all the cars and trucks and the people wandering around. But, are they even people?

  “This is the elemental protectors’ section.” Foster parks in the first open spot available, silences the engine, and then points to the left at a smaller building in the distance that has a domed roof and an arched entryway. “That’s where the humans attend and where you’ll go for your human-related classes, like math and English.”

  “Our building is better,” I remark, unfastening my seatbelt.

  The smile that consumes his face is a combination of amusement and elation.

  “What’s that smile for?” I slip my bag over my shoulder and reach for the door handle.

  “It’s nothing.” He collects his car keys and shoves open the door. “You just referred to it as our school, like you’ve accepted you’re part of it.”

  Wow, he’s right. I hadn’t even noticed.

  Unsure of what to make of that—that I’m beginning to accept this new life of mine and so quickly—I decide not to make anything of it, just let it be, and hop out of the car.

  The instant my feet touch the asphalt, the gawking starts. Everyone within a fifty-foot radius glances in my direction with curious eyes.

  Awesome. This is a socially awkward person’s nigh
tmare.

  Summoning a tremulous breath, I round the front of the car toward the driver’s side where Foster is waiting for me.

  “This is worse than I thought it’d be,” Easton comments as he climbs out and joins us, slinging his bag over his shoulder then slipping his hands into his pockets and glancing around at all the gawkers. “Gods, people need to get a life. So there’s someone new? It doesn’t give them the right to stare like a bunch of nosey fuckers.”

  “Why are they staring?” I ask, sidestepping closer to Foster when a huge guy with bulky muscles and lavender eyes winks at me.

  Ice. He’s an elemental protector of ice.

  “Fresh meat.” Easton winks at me then grins when I pierce him with a look. He chuckles, but then huffs out a sigh. “It’s probably partially our fault everyone’s staring. We have some friends and everything, but we don’t spend a lot of time with anyone outside our family’s circle. And we’ve never brought anyone to school with us before.”

  “Awesome,” I grumble. “I hope they stop soon. I hate being the center of attention.”

  Easton rolls his eyes, his shoulder brushing mine as we walk. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen, sweetheart.”

  “Unless maybe I’m not around you guys,” I point out. Although, the idea of starting this new school without them makes me want to barf.

  “They’re still gonna stare at you even if you aren’t.” When puzzlement dances through me, Easton lightly tugs on a strand of my hair. “You’re new, which draws attention. And you’re pretty.”

  I resist an eye roll. “Nice try, flirt, but I spent my entire life being either invisible or tormented, so I know you’re full of sh—”

  He places a finger over my lips, shushing me. “I’m going to stop you right there. You’re pretty, and I’m sure you haven’t been invisible. You’re just shy. I got that from the first time I met you. But I think your shyness quickly wears off once you’ve been around someone for a bit, especially someone who’s sexy as hell and likes to push your buttons.” He winks at me, his grin cocky.