Secret (Elemental 4)

“Hey, dickhead, I’m helping you—”

“Shut up,” said Quinn. Nick shut up, but she was really glaring at Tyler. She was twisted on the seat and jabbing at him.

“You don’t get to be nasty to him. You don’t get to say anything to him. Do you understand me? If you want to talk to Nick, if you want to talk to my friend, the first word out of your mouth better be I and the next words better be am sorry. Otherwise, shut the f**k up and drive.”

“Don’t waste your breath,” said Nick bitterly, though he appreciated the sentiment. “He’s not sorry.”

Tyler met his eyes in the rearview mirror again, and Nick expected him to snap back with something vicious, but he held the eye contact for a second, then looked away.

He cleared his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was rough. “Can you do that again?” he said. “The pressure wave?”

Nick hesitated, wondering if there was a trap in the question.

“I don’t know.” He paused and glanced down at Adam’s fingers linked with his. “I didn’t know I could do it in the first place. It wasn’t on purpose—sometimes power takes over when we’re in danger, and we can’t fully control it.” His voice turned sharp and mocking. “Know anything about that, Tyler?”

“You covered a lot of ground,” Tyler said, ignoring his tone.

“At least two miles. Could you do something smaller scale to warn your brothers somehow?”

Nick wasn’t sure. He thought of his connection to Gabriel again, tried to focus on it, to imagine what his brother was doing right now.

Was this a typical twin connection? Or did it have something to do with his element? Did the air know Gabriel, know their bond? All this time, was it just a matter of feeding power into the atmosphere?

He had no idea.

“Open the windows,” he said.

Tyler pushed the button, and wind streamed through the truck’s cab. Nick listened to the air, threading his power among the currents.

Danger, the wind whispered.

No kidding, he thought back. But then he paid more attention, focusing on the source of that danger. The clouds overhead were shifting, darkening in the south, promising a storm sometime in the future.

A storm. Rain.

Chris.

But Nick didn’t sense Chris’s power in the storm. Feeding energy into the wind might get them nowhere.

Tyler came to a stop sign at the end of Magothy Beach Road.

“Still going to your house?” he said.

“Wait,” said Nick. “Just wait.”

They were half a mile from the house now. The air here was calmer: the storm was a few miles off yet.

Gabriel, he thought, sending power into the sky.

For an instant, nothing.

Then he felt it, his brother’s presence, like a blazing beacon in his mind.

“Fire,” said Tyler.

“Where?” asked Quinn. Nick didn’t sense it, either—but then again, he wasn’t a Fire Elemental.

And then he felt it, the reason danger rode the wind. It had nothing to do with the storm in the east.