Elemental Thief Read online

  Well. That was even better. Ridley would confront the murderer on his own. He’d have no one to hide behind. She walked forward. The glass doors slid silently apart, and the hostess looked up, her welcoming smile already in place. Ridley strode right past her. “Oh, excuse me, you can’t just—”

  Ignoring the woman, Ridley weaved her way between the tables and slid without pause into the chair opposite Archer. “I can’t believe you’re letting someone else go to jail for you,” she snarled.

  “Ridley?” Archer looked around, as if someone might be standing nearby to explain her sudden appearance. All he saw was the anxious hostess, hovering at a respectable distance.

  Ridley gripped the edge of the table, leaned forward, and said, “I saw what happened. Shen was nowhere near that alley. You know he didn’t kill that man.”

  Archer nodded to the hostess, who gave him a relieved smile before turning away. Then he faced Ridley. “If you saw what happened,” he said calmly, “then you know it wasn’t me either.”

  “Really? And how do I know that? I know I saw someone else running away, but I didn’t see whether you did it or he did it.”

  “Well it wasn’t me, so—”

  “Then why haven’t you said anything?”

  “Do you know who it was that ran?” Archer countered. “Did you see his face?”

  “Yes.” Ridley gritted her teeth. “I saw Lawrence Madson’s pasty face.”

  “Then you know why I haven’t said anything. He’s untouchable.”

  “No one is untouchable if they’ve murdered someone!” Ridley hissed. But as the words flew from her tongue, she had to wonder if they were true. If Archer’s lawyers could get him out of this mess, then Lawrence’s lawyers could do the same.

  Archer leaned back and looked around, probably to check whether anyone had noticed the hostile girl sitting across from him. Or perhaps to see whether his allies—his mommy and sister—were on their way back yet. “Just stay out of this, Ridley.”

  “I can’t stay out of this. My friend is currently in jail because you and your friend have enough money to do whatever the hell you want.”

  “Lawrence Madson is not my friend,” Archer growled, fixing his gaze on Ridley once more.

  “Then tell the truth about him being there!”

  Archer crossed his arms, his momentary anger disappearing behind a polished veneer of composure. “I have other things to worry about right now. Other things that are, believe it or not, more important than this. So if you saw what happened and you so badly want the police to know the truth, then how about you tell them yourself.”

  Ridley gaped for a moment, then shut her mouth as she drew herself a little taller. “Fine. Maybe I will, if you’re not going to do the right thing.”

  He made a sweeping gesture with his hand, as if to say, Be my guest.

  She couldn’t help it. Her mouth fell open again. “You’re seriously just going to stand by while your lawyers tell lies for you and an innocent guy goes to jail?”

  With his jaw set, Archer said, “Looks like it, doesn’t it.”

  She shook her head. “You’re unbelievable.”

  “Yes,” he muttered, his dark gaze focusing somewhere on the table between them. “It would appear that I am.”

  Ridley pushed herself abruptly to her feet, causing a fork to slip off the side of a plate and the slim vase at the center of the table to wobble. She had plenty of other questions. What were you doing in the alley? What did that man say to you before he died? Do you have any clue what Lawrence Madson was doing there? But she couldn’t trust herself to stay here a moment longer without launching across the table and attacking Archer. As satisfying as that might be, it wouldn’t help Shen, and it might even land her in a cell next to him. Dad would be furious.

  She marched away from the table and back toward the sliding doors. They parted for her, and she continued forward without a glance at anyone else. Tears stung her eyes as she crossed the park, but she pressed her lips together and blinked until they were gone. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long for an elevator. Within seconds, one of them opened, revealing an empty interior. She hurried inside and shut her eyes until the doors slid closed.

  She was alone in here. Completely alone. She knew for a fact that the Aura Tower elevators had no interior cameras. Cameras were trained on the outside of every elevator on every floor, but there’d never been anything inside. The Aura Tower residents wanted security, but they also wanted privacy. Which meant it didn’t matter what Ridley did in the time it took the elevator to reach the ground floor. No one could see her.

  And so she let go of her tightly wound control. Breathing out long and slow, she looked down at her hands. Vibrant blue pulsed through her veins, visible through her translucent skin. She raised her eyes to the mirror on the opposite side of the elevator, and there it was, staring back at her: the reason she would never go anywhere near the police, despite what she’d told Archer.

  Magic.

  Bright and brilliant and blue, it glowed in her eyes and shimmered beneath her skin. It rushed through her blood, flickering visibly in her veins. The same magic that existed in the elements. The same magic that should not exist within her own body—and yet somehow always had.

  She exhaled and watched the blue glow rise beyond the surface of her skin. In the space of a heartbeat, it became like the air itself, enveloping her in complete nothingness. And by the time the elevator doors opened on the ground floor and Ridley moved forward, it appeared to the confused security guard standing nearby that no one was there.

  7

  Ridley was five years old when she discovered she was a complete freak. She’d been watching the flames in the giant fireplace of her old home, completely mesmerized. Of course, she’d known that fire was dangerous and she shouldn’t touch it, but she’d held her hands close to the warmth, imagining what it would be like if it were possible to actually hold fire.

  Then all of a sudden, her hands were made of fire. She was so terrified it took her several moments to realize she wasn’t in pain. The flames had vanished then, leaving her hands looking normal—except for the glowing blue light that pulsed through her veins. Her parents had raced into the lounge after hearing her scream, but they didn’t seem surprised when she showed them her blue hands. They explained it was magic. Magic she didn’t have to pull from the elements like everyone else did. Magic that somehow existed inside her.

  “The scar behind your ear is just a scar,” her mother told her. “There’s no amulet embedded beneath your skin.” That explanation hadn’t done much to help Ridley’s fear. Even at age five she’d known she was supposed to be protected from outside magical influence. With no arxium implant, anyone could do anything to her, couldn’t they?

  Dad had quickly added that she was protected by her own magic. A special doctor had told them this when Ridley was born. Back then, before the Cataclysm, magic hadn’t been outlawed yet, but her parents insisted she keep her magic a secret. She wasn’t like other people, and they didn’t want anyone taking her away and experimenting on her. She’d done her best to obey them, and the only time someone had ever come close to finding out was when she’d accidentally used her own magic at a friend’s house. Fortunately, no one had seen her glowing blue skin.

  At school, she learned to pull magic from the elements the same way everyone else did. She memorized the movements for basic conjurations exactly the way her teacher taught her. But sometimes, when she was alone at home, she didn’t bother pulling. She used her own magic along with the required hand and finger motions to pick up the TV remote or heat the kettle. It was just easier.

  Then the Cataclysm happened. Mom and millions of other people died. And almost overnight, magic-use became a forbidden practice. The law for the second arxium implant was put in place, and scanner drones swarmed the air above the streets. Dad took both implants that should have been embedded beneath Ridley’s skin—the new AI2, and the AI1 they’d secretly removed when sh
e was barely days old and her magic was reacting horribly to the arxium—and rolled each into a tiny cylinder so they could slide onto a chain. He put the chain around Ridley’s neck and told her never to take it off. He also told her never to use her magic ever again, but his warning wasn’t necessary. She knew what had killed her mother. She knew what had ripped her world out from beneath her feet.

  Magic. It was a wild, destructive thing, and back then, she’d hated it with an intensity that threatened to erupt into actual flames. So she pushed it deep down within her, and it didn’t surface again until two years later. That was the day things changed again.

  That was the day she became a thief.

  Still appearing to be made of air, Ridley crossed the foyer of Aura Tower. No one looked in her direction as she exited through the grand entranceway. It seemed darker outside than when she’d entered Aura Tower, which probably meant another storm was getting ready to drop a buttload of rain on the city. She glanced up at the threatening clouds and the white lightning and blue magic flickering within them. If she looked hard enough, she could just make out some of the panels hovering way above the city beneath the clouds. Close enough together that combined, they would reflect most magic away, but far enough apart to allow sunlight to shine through—on the rare occasion when the clouds parted.

  Ridley passed another opulent apartment building, slightly smaller than Aura Tower, then Wallace Academy on the next block. She walked several more blocks down the road and waited until she was inside one of the stalls of a cafe restroom before rolling her shoulders, relaxing, and pulling her magic back inside her body. She examined her hands—normal—before leaving the stall and stopping in front of the mirror to check her eyes—also normal.

  Back out on the street, she walked with her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her jaw clenched. She had to do something about Shen, she just wasn’t sure what. She couldn’t go to the police with her eyewitness account. She couldn’t risk them discovering that the scars behind her ear hid no amulets, and that her body was basically a vessel of the most illegal substance on earth. But she refused to let her friend remain imprisoned for life for something he hadn’t done. After all, he was the first person she’d ever stolen for. There was no way she wouldn’t help him now.

  She clenched her fists tighter beneath her arms as she stalked toward the bus stop, remembering her very first theft. She’d been ten at the time, and she and Dad had lived above Kayne’s Antiques for almost two years. Shen, her friend for most of that time, had contracted some kind of sickness that required expensive treatment. He’d been to the local clinic, but they sent him home when it became clear his parents couldn’t afford to treat him.

  Ridley and Dad had visited Shen at home. Dad gave Mr. Lin some money and said he wished he had more to give. Mr. Lin tried to give it back, but Dad wouldn’t let him. Ridley had been hopeful then. She thought maybe the money Dad had given the Lins would be enough for Shen’s treatment. But she’d watched Dad closely as they left, and her hope withered. He blinked tears away and hugged Ridley tightly against his side, reminding her repeatedly how much he loved her. And Ridley had understood for the first time that her friend might actually die.

  A day later, as Shen lay in bed across the street growing weaker, Ridley had gone with Dad to meet someone in the Opal Quarter. A potential buyer who was interested in an Art Deco emerald brooch from Kayne’s Antiques but who couldn’t be bothered to come to Demmer District. The three of them sat together on white loungers beneath umbrellas on a deck at Cafe Riviere while Dad showed the brooch to the client and Ridley tried to hold back tears every time she thought about Shen.

  The woman—Ridley didn’t remember her name, though she recognized her from their old life when Dad was respected and well-known among the upper class of Lumina City—ended the conversation quickly by telling Dad she didn’t believe the brooch was genuine. After complaining about her time being wasted by a con artist and a cheap forgery, she opened her purse and placed her commscreen inside. That was when Ridley saw the fat wad of cash within.

  At that moment, the injustice of the world hit Ridley squarely in the chest. How could some people have so little that they couldn’t pay for medical treatment, while someone else could probably buy a whole clinic with the petty cash in their purse? She made the decision right then to take that money. She knew it was wrong, but she didn’t care. In fact, in some ways, thinking about stealing that money felt right. It would save her friend’s life. What could be so wrong about that?

  The woman stood, pulling the purse’s leather strap onto her shoulder, and Ridley knew the only way to get her hands on that money without getting caught was with magic. It was a thought that terrified her. Nature’s magic had become wild and deadly, an entity not to be trusted. What if the magic inside her body was just as uncontrollable? She didn’t know, but Shen was dying and the woman was walking away and Ridley was running out of time.

  “Wait!” Dad called out to the woman. He stood and hurried after her. “The brooch is genuine. It was verified by an expert when my father acquired it. I have the paperwork.”

  The woman stopped and turned back toward Dad, and Ridley didn’t hesitate any longer. She pulled her sleeves down to conceal the blue light pulsing across her skin, then hid her hands beneath the edge of the side table between the loungers. Her hands formed the quick movements for a conjuration she hadn’t done in years. A conjuration that would send her magic into the air in an invisible form that could lift, carry, move. As the woman said something about no longer trusting Dad, a strong gust of wind whipped past and flipped the top of her purse open. The woman shrieked as her skirt blew up. She clutched at the billowing folds as Ridley’s magic wrapped around the bundle of notes and lifted the money from the purse. Serviettes flew off a nearby table as the money dropped to the floor and disappeared beneath the overhanging edges of a tablecloth.

  The freak gust of air vanished, the woman spun around, and everyone in the restaurant looked up to see what all the commotion was about. Dad, his face burning with embarrassment, gestured to Ridley and hissed, “Come on. We’re leaving now.” She’d jumped up from the lounger, then mumbled something about needing to tie her shoelaces. As a waiter demanded to know what Dad had done to upset one of the restaurant’s most valued customers, Ridley’s hand shot beneath the table, grabbed the money, and pushed it into her pocket. She stood, took hold of Dad’s hand, and huddled against his side, keeping her gaze fixed on the floor.

  Dad managed to keep his temper to himself until they were out of the restaurant. Then he spent the whole of their journey home grumbling about how fickle people were and how they blindly followed everyone else instead of coming up with their own opinions. Ridley kept quiet and listened while trying to ignore the stolen money that felt hot and heavy in her pocket.

  She knew where the Lins hid their spare key, so that night after Dad fell asleep, she snuck out of their home, across the street, and into the Lins’ apartment. She left the money next to the kettle in the kitchen where Mrs. Lin would see it when she made tea the next morning. Which was exactly what happened.

  And so Shen had received the treatment he needed. Ridley never told anyone what she’d done, but the idea that she could help other people in the same way she’d helped Shen stuck with her for a long time until eventually she stole again for someone else. Then again and again, always from people who had far too much to start off with, and always to help someone who had almost nothing. Part of her hated the fact that she relied on the same power that was responsible for killing her mother. But she told herself this power was different. Her magic wasn’t the same as the magic out there in the wastelands. The cruel, destructive power that had ripped away so much life. Her magic was good. And so she continued to use it.

  But as she strode down the street now, she knew in the back of her mind that she couldn’t keep breaking the law to help people. Eventually she’d have to ‘grow up’ and find a more legitimate method of balancing the scales
. Which was why she hoped to end up at The Rosman Foundation after graduation. It was a private organization dedicated to helping those who’d lost everything after the Cataclysm. Even now, a decade later, there were still thousands who needed help getting their lives back on track. But the foundation didn’t hire anyone who hadn’t at least finished school, so for now, stealing was the only way Ridley could make a difference. And if she had to break the law again to help her friend, she wouldn’t hesitate. The law certainly wasn’t going to do anything to help him.

  She slowed to a halt at the bus stop and squinted at the schedule and the digital clock above it, calculating how long she had to wait. Only a few minutes, if there were no delays. She looked around as the emotive tones of the world anthem reached her ears over the sounds of vehicles and drones, and saw a large screen across the road on the side of an office building. It was playing one of those cheesy, uplifting highlights reels from the Secretary-General’s first speech after the global unification vote.

  Ridley clenched her jaw as her hands balled into fists beneath her arms. Seriously? Almost ten years on, and they had nothing better to throw up there than ads and that same stupid speech that was supposed to make everyone feel better about most of their world being obliterated? It was the last thing she wanted to listen to when she’d just been harshly reminded of how unfair the world truly was.

  Archer Davenport and Lawrence Madson had both been in that alley last night, and one of them was a murderer. That’s what she needed to focus on now. She needed to figure out how to get whoever was guilty to admit what he’d done. She pressed her forefingers to her temples, trying to ignore the SG’s magnified voice, but now that she’d noticed it, she couldn’t block it out.