Turning Tides Read Online Free PDF Page A

opened the last cabinet. It was a temperature controlled wine cellar, fully stocked. We wouldn’t need to be sober for the next month, if that was our wish.
    “Good news is I found the booze. The bad news is it’s all wine.”
    “And so my punishment begins. Is there a cab, at least?”
    I pulled out several bottles until I found a big Australian cabernet sauvignon. I uncorked it, grabbed two glasses, and returned to my spot by the fire. Sera grabbed the bottle from me and took a hefty swig. She grimaced, finding the high-end wine vastly inferior to cheap tequila, but she still filled her glass.
    “So, you want to talk about what happened or do you want to get drunk?”
    “I can multitask.” She took another long gulp. “What the hell happened out there?”
    I shook my head, helpless to offer any plausible explanation.
    “Could this place be bugged?”
    I had no idea. I knew nothing about how the island was run these days. I supposed anything was possible. “Doubtful, but I can’t say for sure.”
    She nodded, and our eyes met in silent understanding. We could talk about the murder, about Sera’s involvement, about possible explanations, but we couldn’t say a word about my fire side. It wouldn’t take much for someone to put the pieces together—a single throwaway comment, a flash of rage darkening my eyes—and I wouldn’t even be given the time to defend myself. I’d be too busy being dead.
    Sera took another hefty swig of wine and topped up her glass. The bottle was already half empty, but that meant nothing. Fires can burn off any excess booze, meaning Sera could maintain the perfect level of intoxication as long as she wanted to. “So, I narrowed it down to three possibilities, each less likely than the last.”
    I took a sip of my own glass, much smaller than Sera’s. “You’re ahead of me. I’m leaning toward the island housing an invisible dragon at the moment.”
    “One, I lost control for the first time in my life and somehow failed to notice it happening.”
    I wrinkled my nose. An invisible dragon was more plausible than Sera losing control.
    “Two, there’s another fire hidden somewhere on the island. There were several buildings within magic range of the council. Someone could have hidden there.”
    “Someone who snuck on the island without anyone noticing them, who will need to continue to hide now that all transport off the island is shut down?”
    “I didn’t say these were good theories,” she reminded me.
    “And the last?”
    She lowered her voice. “There’s another fire somewhere on the island, hiding in plain sight.”
    Our eyes met in silent understanding. In the sea of blonds on the island, there was no chance one of them was a fire—unless they were, like me, a dual magic. Neither of us wanted to even speak the words, lest anyone overhear, but we were both aware of the possibility.
    It was unlikely. Dual magics were extremely rare. They only resulted from the pairing of two different full-blooded elementals. Full-bloods were uncommon enough, and they weren’t especially fertile. Plus, any full was well aware of the risk of bearing a dual magic. Immediate death to the child, and a century of imprisonment to any parent who concealed the abomination.
    Once, there’d been many more dual magics. However, when elementals are capable of producing floods, tsunamis, ice storms, earthquakes, avalanches, rock slides, and forest fires, it really helps if they’re in their right mind. The previous dual magics weren’t, and one after another they were slaughtered. Now, there was just me, and a sad man locked in a mental hospital on the California coast, and the two others Josiah found after a long search.
    And yet, another dual magic was the most plausible explanation for Lake’s death.
    It also meant, if someone else was using fire on the island, I had a way to find them. It wasn’t a method Sera would approve of, I knew, and I tried to school my thoughts into a neutral