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  Her lips curving up ever so slightly, Brooke replied, “Well, you are kind of good at distractions…” But she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, and whatever might be budding between them she didn’t want to screw up. So she quickly offered an alternative to keep the mood light. “Or you could … tell me your own deep dark secret? You know, make us even.” Personally, she hoped he’d opt for the kiss. But she supposed learning something new and maybe significant about him would be good, too.

  Blake chuckled and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. “Those are my choices, huh?” he said teasingly.

  ****

  He was silent for a long moment after, keeping a loose hold on her shoulders. A dangerous impulse had popped up in his head. Something he hadn’t considered until he’d seen Brooke sitting, so sad and lonely, on the beach. He disliked seeing her that way. But was he really considering telling her his secret? His family’s secret?

  Suddenly, Blake’s lips tingled in memory of Brooke’s earlier kiss.

  Yes, he was considering telling her his secret. Maybe for less than solid reasons, but, his instinct was that he could trust her. And wasn’t that really the only requirement? Trust? That trust certainly hadn’t backfired on him when he’d told his best friend, Jason. Granted, that entire situation had been different. Jason had nearly drowned during a late-night swim and Blake had had to use his powers to save his friend’s life. As a result, Jason was the only one Blake had ever revealed himself to.

  Until now.

  He wasn’t sure how long it took him to work up the nerve to ask a simple, clichéd question. “Can you keep a secret?”

  ****

  Thrown by his question, Brooke angled her head to look up at him. “Yeah, I suppose… What kind of secret are we talking about, exactly?”

  He held her gaze as he replied, “An ancient one.”

  Now thoroughly intrigued, Brooke slowly nodded. “All right … on one condition. I don’t want anyone hunting me down for knowing about it.”

  Blake’s lips twitched and he shook his head. “Don’t worry. It’s not life-threatening.”

  “That’s good.” Brooke reached over to run her fingers along the collar of his shirt and tease his skin. “Because I’m ridiculously curious now.”

  “The best way to explain it,” Blake began, pulling away and pushing to his feet, “is for me to show you. So watch closely.” He offered her a quick smirk before he took two steps backwards, away from her, and held out one hand towards the ocean. The wave, which had been rolling in at its steady, calm pace suddenly stilled, holding the line several feet lower than usual. Then, abruptly, the water reversed, rushing back into itself.

  Brooke was confused as her eyes flicked between her companion and the strangely behaving sea. Was it possible for the ocean to be behaving like that? It must be, her brain told her, because otherwise I have to believe it’s possible for Blake to be doing that.

  As if sensing her disbelief, Blake curved his hand slowly so that his palm was angled towards her, and then swept his arm in almost casually.

  The flow of the tide seemed to return to normal, but as the water came up, a stream separated itself and continued moving forward even as the rest of the water receded. This stream lifted off the ground as it broke free and glided with an unnatural grace through the air until it had curved completely around Brooke’s seated form. It swirled around her, separating completely from the ocean and spiraling up.

  Brooke was wide-eyed, and barely breathing, as she watched the seawater move around her. It was like magic, and she had no idea how to react. The water curved around her one final time before continuing on, this time flying toward Blake. She watched as he held out one hand, palm up, and the water gathered there, forming a type of puddle and hovering above his hand.

  With a flick of his wrist, the water snapped quickly back to the ocean before collapsing, as if the spell that had possessed it had suddenly broken.

  “Wh-what … was that?” Brooke asked shakily as she drew in a ragged breath. That was impossible, that’s what that was.

  Blake stayed put, letting his arm fall to his side, and met her gaze solidly. “That was my power. I have the ability, if you will, to control water. It’s as natural to me as breathing.”

  He said it with such a straight face, and such a serious, calm voice, that Brooke found herself inclined to believe him. Except that it was impossible. She just didn’t know how else to explain what she’d just witnessed. And that was a lot to take in. Did she—could she—really believe what he’d just shown her?

  She tried to surreptitiously look around, to see if there were a more logical way to explain what she’d seen. But no one was there. No boats lingered just off shore. The only explanation was the one he’d offered. No matter how impossible it should have been.

  Blake remained silent as he watched her process what she’d seen. What he’d told her.

  After several minutes, Brooke finally spoke. “Is that … why you like rain so much?” It was such a stupid question that she couldn’t actually believe she’d just asked. And yet it was the only real question she could wrap her mind around.

  His lips twitched again, though he contained the grin this time, and he nodded. “Yes. The closer I am to water, the stronger I am, and the better I feel. Which is why I live in a coastal town, and why I spend as much time outside on rainy days as I can without looking like a freak.”

  “Can you breathe underwater?” The question was past her lips before she had even consciously wondered it, but she managed not to clamp her hands over her mouth in embarrassment. At this point, she figured, it was as legitimate a question as any other.

  Blake allowed the grin to show this time as he said, “Yep. But I can do more than that. If I want to, I can actually become water.”

  Brooke blinked up at him. “I’m sorry,” she began slowly. “You can do what?”

  “Just watch,” Blake replied. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and after a moment water began dripping from his fingertips. And then, without warning, Blake disappeared entirely. His clothes collapsed, no longer supported by a body, and it wasn’t until they landed that Brooke realized there was a puddle of water where he’d been standing.

  The puddle moved as she watched, pulling away from the pile and somehow gliding along the top of the sand. It stopped after moving only a couple of feet, and turned in a strange circle, like a ribbon of water being spun around by an invisible pole, almost as if it were showing off. Then it reversed course, returning to the pile of clothes. When the pile was entirely encompassed, the water shifted, pushing against the fabric. Filling it, giving the clothes an odd three-dimensional effect on the sand. The water seemed to thicken for a moment, and then just as suddenly as he’d disappeared, Blake was back, kneeling in the sand.

  Brooke opened her mouth reflexively, intending to say … something … but she quickly found that she had no idea what, exactly, she would actually say. So she snapped her jaw shut and watched silently as Blake pushed to his feet.

  He released a heavy breath and adjusted the collar of his jacket, before brushing some loose sand off of his jeans and letting his hands fall back to his sides. “Believe me now?” he asked with a lopsided grin.

  ****

  Over the course of the next hour and a half, Brooke learned that Blake was not as unique an individual as she’d first thought. His ability was, quite literally, in his blood. For as far back as his family could trace, the mother of the family always gave birth to five children: quadruplet boys and, later, one girl. The first-born boy was born with the ability to control water; the other three were born with the ability to control air, earth, and fire respectively. It was the sister who would eventually birth the next generation.

  At one point, Brooke had asked how their family had come to possess powers like that. It sounded convoluted to her, like trying to puzzle out the idea behind the chicken and the egg. And Blake admitted he didn’t have an answer.

>   “We weren’t always the only family with these powers,” Blake explained. “Rumor has it that there used to be dozens of families like ours. But over the centuries they’ve died out, and so far as we know we’re the last ones.”

  “So you don’t know your own origin story?” Brooke asked, surprised. “That sounds sort of messed up.”

  Blake shrugged and leaned back on the beach, resting his palms on the sand behind him to hold himself up. “There are lots of theories that have cropped up over the years,” he said. “But all we know for sure is that by the time of our earliest official record, our ancestors already had these powers.”

  Intrigued, Brooke shifted to better face him. “Tell me some of the theories.”

  “All right,” Blake said, pausing a moment before a slight grin curved his lips again. “Apparently my great-grandmother had decided that our ancestors were actually born from the elements themselves. For whatever reason, each of the four basic elements came together and gave birth to a human who had complete mastery of that element. She said she suspected that Mother Nature was angry at man, and these elementals were supposed to somehow remind the people of their time to respect the world around them.

  “And according to her theory, there was one spot of overlapped space where each of the four elements had gathered. It was from that spot that the fifth sibling—the female—was born. And since each of the elements had equal influence over the space that had created her, she was not able to be a representative of any one element. But neither could they allow any one being to control all of the elements, so Mother Nature intervened one final time and gave the female a different power. A different purpose. She was to protect and nurture the other four, and to ensure that there would always, from that day forward, be four elementals to fight for the planet.”

  It was so much like one of the old Greek mythology stories Brooke remembered reading back in high school that she couldn’t help but smile. In a strange way, it was exactly what she’d expected. But she was still left with one new question. “Okay, but I’m still confused. I get the ‘ensuring a future generation’ thing, from what you already said, but how is your little sister supposed to ‘protect and nurture’? And what if she just doesn’t want kids?”

  Blake stared for a beat before shrugging. “Then we’re the last generation, I guess. As for your other question, she has a power, too. She can’t manipulate any of the elements, but she can heal herself and others.”

  “Heal?” Brooke repeated in disbelief. She couldn’t quite wrap her brain around that one. Though how someone being able to heal someone else seemed more unbelievable than someone being able to turn into water, she wasn’t sure. And then another, much more disturbing, thought popped into her head. Even as she chastised herself for watching one too many episodes of The Walking Dead, she asked, “So, can she … bring people back from the dead?”

  Blake valiantly attempted to muffle his laughter as he shook his head. “No, no. Death is impossible to reverse, even for her.”

  Brooke breathed a sigh of relief. “That kind of works for me.”

  Blake grinned knowingly, but before he could say anything, his phone began ringing from his jacket pocket. Grin shifting to an apologetic smile, he dipped one hand into the necessary pocket and pulled his phone out. “Hey, bro.”

  Brooke watched as Blake listened to the man on the other end, her calm patience turning into concerned confusion as his expression changed. In the space of a few seconds, he went from easygoing to angry, sitting upright and almost as quickly springing entirely to his feet in alarm. And he hadn’t even said anything yet.

  “I’m on my way,” he finally replied, before disconnecting and dropping his phone into his pocket.

  “Blake?” Brooke asked, standing carefully.

  “I have to go, I’m sorry,” he said, already shrugging out of his coat. He paused, tugged his car keys free from his jeans, and tossed them to her, adding, “Could you take my stuff to my parents’ for me? It’s okay if you have to leave my car here.”

  Brooke blinked at him, entirely thrown. “What’s going on?”

  He shook his head with a frown. “No time. I’ll call you later.” And before she could even find the right argument to go with he was dripping again. Only it didn’t seem to take as long for his body to liquefy this time, but Brooke couldn’t really dwell on that because the puddle he’d become immediately rushed to join the incoming tide. And then she lost sight of him entirely.

  “What…?” Shaking her head at herself, Brooke looked down at the keys in her hand. Something bad must have happened for him to react like that, she was sure. And in that case, she couldn’t begrudge him his haste. But I don’t know where his parents live. Still, the Hawkes were apparently fairly well-known around town. Georgia would surely know. Although if she asked Georgia, she’d be stuck figuring out a convincing lie, too. Instinct insisted what Blake had revealed to her that day was supposed to be a secret, and no one with a brain in their head shared a secret like that with Georgia Clarke.

  Sighing, Brooke pocketed the keys and gathered up Blake’s clothes. Maybe she could unlock his phone and find the address that way. Otherwise she’d be stuck bringing it all home. And all the way up the sandy slope she kept rounding back to one ridiculous thought: she was attracted to Aquaman. She was really attracted to Aquaman.

  Chapter Six

  Angela was walking home from a friend’s house, her purse hanging over one shoulder and her earbuds tucked securely into place, attached to the iPod resting in her pocket. The weather was fairly mild, as winter was finally coming to a close, and there was barely a cloud in the sky. It was an almost beautiful Saturday, and it made her hopeful for the rest of the weekend.

  Maybe me and Eric can do something more interesting than going to another movie, she mused with a small smile. They always scheduled a date for Sunday afternoons when they weren’t saddled with family plans, and if the weather was anything like this tomorrow, she intended to suggest doing something outside. Like going to the park. The park was her favorite place in town, even over the beach.

  She was about halfway home, having taken her favorite scenic route in order to prolong her time outside, when her iPod made a strange static-like sound. Stopping, she reached into her pocket and pulled the slim device out, as if looking at it would tell her what the sound was. But the music had already resumed, and nothing on the screen indicated any sort of problem. So she shrugged and slipped it back into her pocket.

  A particularly strong gust of wind kicked up, blowing her long, dark hair into her face and dragging a sigh from the teenager. She reached up to move her hair from her face, but paused with her fingertips just barely brushing her skin when she heard a strange crackling sound. It wasn’t coming from her iPod this time, but from somewhere up above her. What—?

  The question hadn’t even formed in her mind before there was a flash of blinding light off to her right. The flash had barely faded before she registered the sound of a nearby explosion, which was followed almost immediately by more crackling and a sudden surge of heat.

  Angela spun, wide-eyed and confused, and felt her breath catch in her throat. She was on an old paved path that ran alongside a steady stream which eventually curved into the ocean. In the spring and summer, the trees that were scattered alongside the stream were in full bloom and brought a sense of serenity to the area, which was why she loved it so much. In the winter time, of course, the trees were barren, the branches craggy outcroppings of wood. And now, as Angela stared at the quickly building fire only a dozen or so paces away from her, those barren trees were nothing but fire accelerant.

  It was at this point that Angela realized what that flash of light had been. Lightning, her mind supplied. In her memory, she could see that the flash had started in the sky above her before extending down, out of her peripheral vision. Lightning had struck the ground, and since the ground was dry and covered with burnable twigs, the lightning strike caused an immediate fire. And now Angela was
trapped between the growing inferno and the cliff overlooking a rushing stream.

  She immediately moved backwards, away from the heat of the flames, and thrust her hand into her pocket to pull out her cell phone. Her fingers automatically found the speed-dial button she needed, and she put the phone to her ear. Fortunately, her brother answered almost right away.

  “Dean,” she gasped when she heard the line connect. “I’m trapped between a fire and Darien Creek.” She was trying to keep her voice steady, to get out all the words he would need to know, but the more she thought about it, the more the reality of her situation settled in. She wasn’t sure that even Dean could drive that fast.

  ****

  Fortunately Blake’s phone lock was only a swipe-lock, and Brooke had easily located his parents’ address. Since she didn’t know how to work his GPS, however, she’d taken a couple of wrong turns before finally winding up on the correct street.

  And what a street it was.

  The homes were set widely apart from each other, and deep driveways coupled with tall shrubbery and tall fences of brick or steel added a heavy level of privacy. These homes weren’t houses but mansions. It was no wonder Blake thought nothing of the size of his house! The gate to the first home on the street was open and a large moving van was parked in the drive, its back open. Brooke couldn’t stop herself from gawking at what she glimpsed of the property. It looked like the owners were moving, and for a brief moment she wished she could afford a place like that. Would she ever even feel the need to lock her front door again?

  You’re being ridiculous. Sure, it’d be nice to have enough money to live comfortably—let alone lavishly—but that was the last thing she should have been focusing on. What she needed to do was navigate the magnificent piece of machinery she was sitting in further down the lane until she found the correct number. Returning Blake’s belongings, which he had so valiantly entrusted her with, was much more important than lamenting her lack of finances. She was a working college student—wasn’t she pretty much required to be broke?