Elemental Shining (Paranormal Public Series) Read Online Free PDF

was even hard to hear my friends talk about their own mothers. Lisabelle’s mom might drive her crazy, but at least she was there to do so. I couldn’t go to my mother to talk about my best friend trying to stab me to death in a dream, and there wasn’t anyone else I felt I could go to either. It was definitely not a normal thought for a college sophomore, but then again I was anything but a normal college sophomore.
    “You okay?” a familiar voice called out to me.
    Mrs. Swan was the best dorm mother ever, mostly because she left me alone, but I didn’t want her worrying about me. She and I lived alone in Astra, since the dorm was for elementals and I was the only one left. I had once made the mistake of telling her not to worry, and she had laughed so hard she had fallen out of her chair, while my face went as red as a cherry.
    “I’m fine,” I croaked. My throat felt dry and brittle, like sandpaper, and I stared harder at my stomach in the layers of darkness, trying to reassure myself that it was okay. It would have been weird if Mrs. Swan had walked in and seen me doing that, but I couldn’t help myself. I often did odd things, but my stomach was not a part of my body to which I ever gave much scrutiny.
    “Goodnight then, and don’t forget, your friends get here tomorrow,” she yelled through the door in a cheery tone. The door muffled her clear voice, but I could still hear the undertone of worry. She wanted to come in.
    I lay back and listened to her walk away down the hall. It didn’t take long for her footsteps to recede on the plush carpet outside my room. She knew when to let me be, which was good, because now was definitely a time when I wanted to be left alone. I had to think.
    Had I just dreamed what I thought I had? Lisabelle going crazy and trying to kill all of her loved ones? It was a strange irony that Sip was the one she always argued with and Sip was the one missing from the dream. Sip would probably say it was poetic justice. Not even in a wild Lisabelle dream would Sip die.
    “It was just a dream,” I murmured to myself. Over and over and over again. The words echoed like drumbeats, oddly reassuring. I clutched my soft dark blue blanket closer to my body, looking for reassurance.
    Tomorrow everyone—Keller, Lisabelle, Sip, and Lough—would arrive, and the semester would start. I wasn’t even going to pretend that it would be a normal semester, because I knew it wouldn’t.
    As the only elemental, I was aware of pressures that I wouldn’t have thought possible a year ago. Demons were everywhere trying to kill me, and the word throughout the summer had been that instead of the unorganized mass of darkness that they had always been, they were now organizing into a cohesive unit, whose head was the former President Malle.
    Fear pulled at my heart as I thought about it.
    “Charlotte, get a grip,” I ordered myself. I scrubbed my hands across my face, willing my heart to slow down. Lack of sleep wasn’t going to do me any favors. Dacer could always tell when I hadn’t slept; it made me just a little slower than usual. And I hated letting him down.
    As I lay trying to sleep again I thought over every element of the dream. It had felt so real, I could feel the early evening sun on my skin at the beginning and Lisabelle’s eyes burning into me at the end. I shivered. Even the thought of those red eyes gave me chills. I couldn’t imagine anything so crazy.
    I tried to sleep again, but I didn’t manage it. Normally I would have been upset that I wasn’t getting enough sleep, but tonight I wasn’t. At least I wasn’t dreaming.
     

Chapter Six
     
     
    I woke the next morning to my bed bouncing violently. Beds didn’t bounce. They weren’t supposed to bounce unless stuff was going on in said bed that had certainly never gone on in mine. I opened one eye a crack. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because there in the bright shining sunlight of my room was a tiny blond head, and