Cal heldthe woman over the water but didn’t pull her back to safety.
She was smaller than him, but he guessed she was slightly above average height for a human. Her hair was blonde — a deep, dark gold that curled when water touched it. She had a strong, athletic frame and sharp features liberally sprinkled with freckles. Big eyes, perhaps dark green or brown or hazel, stared up at him from underneath a fringe of blonde-tipped lashes.
She was pretty, but if he wanted to, he could let her die.
It wouldn’t take any effort to simply slacken his grip. She would plunge into the cold water of the Bay and be gone in an instant. The temperature would shock her system, keeping her immobile and triggering her reflex to suck in a lungful of salt water. As she fought off the paralysis of cold, the current would already be working to take her out to sea, where predators wouldn’t hesitate to strip flesh from bone.
He’d seen it happen more times than he cared to remember. Luckily for this mad witch, he had no desire to see it happen to her, either.
Carefully, Cal used his much greater strength to pull her back onto the deck. The skin of her forearm was warm under his palm, just as her magic was. Even now, when she was no longer daring to influence his fog, it hummed between them like the aftershock of a lightning strike.
He ran the tip of his tongue along the backs of his teeth, tasting the ozone and power of her scent. It had a bite to it that tantalized as much as it aggravated.
When she was firmly on her feet, Cal released her to ease back into the comfort of his domain. He didn’t retreat entirely, but he was sorely tempted to. No matter how many people he interacted with over the centuries, he never could get used to the prickly, exposed feeling that came with being observed. Best he get whatever this Elise wanted out of the way, then.
“Why did you summon me?”
Elise hurried to step away from the edge of the dock. He watched the exposed skin of her throat bob as she swallowed. A bead of moisture — mist condensed on her warm skin or sweat, he couldn’t tell — traced the contour of her cheek and jaw.
“I didn’t summon you,” she argued, drawing her narrow shoulders back. She peered at him with open curiosity. He’d seen the look before and he didn’t care for it.
Cal had no desire to be gawked at, least of all by a madwoman who thought she could tell his fog what to do.
Curling his fog in close, he lunged toward her suddenly, bringing them nearly nose to nose. He knew from past experience that humans tended to feel unsettled when he moved unexpectedly or in ways they couldn’t, and he liked the idea of this composed, foolhardy woman feeling a little unsettled by him. Perhaps it would teach her a valuable lesson in caution.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Elise stood straight and tall, her eyes locked on his. She didn’t even blink when he accused, “You touched my fog. No one touches my fog. I can only imagine you wished to summon me, or else you wouldn’t have dared. It’s either that or you don’t have any sense in that head of yours.”
“I’m a weather witch,” she calmly replied, unruffled, “and fog is weather, isn’t it? There’s no law that says I can’t make contact with it. Besides, it’s not like you own it.”
No, there wasn’t. Not that he gave a single thought to laws on the whole, of course. What did he care for laws? For social contracts? For politeness or imaginary authority? He was weather.
While she was right that he didn’t own the fog, it was an extension of himself as well as his steady companion. It was the only home he had. No one got to influence it except him. Full stop.
He scowled. Circling her slowly, just to put her on edge, he said, “So you deny that you were trying to summon me? In this place?”
This place. Cal felt a familiar twinge of bitterness when he thought of the Aerie and its rookeries, its featureless rooms and its stern-faced acolytes. It was the closest thing he had to a real home, surely, but it brought him paltry comfort.
The acolytes might have taught him his letters and guided him through his first clumsy year of physical life, but they’d also feared and admonished him. They took him in not because they loved him, but because they felt it was their religious duty. He was a hard lesson dropped in their laps by Loft himself — punishment and teaching wrapped up into one confused, shaken man.
Cal swept his gaze over the witch, taking in her form fitting clothes and her flushed cheeks. He would bet anything that she had a real home. She looked like someone who came from a family, who knew love and bonds and what it was like to live. It was in the air around her as surely as her magic.
Unlike me.
He and this willful creature were separated by more than the fact that he was an elemental, born of sky and power and chaos. A vast gulf of understanding existed between them.
He hated it.
“Well, I’m not going to start off by lying. I did want to meet you. I just have a problem with the word summon. I wasn’t trying to conjure you for some nefarious purpose.” A smile quirked the corners of her lips upward. Cal dropped his gaze to examine that little smile. The witch had lovely, full lips but a sardonic expression that turned what might have been a sweet face into something… more. Something clever and arresting.
When he lifted his eyes back to hers, he found her watching him with a peculiar expression, as if she didn’t quite know what to make of him.
He knew exactly what to make of her, though. He knew what she was and what she was after. Not even that compelling little smile could blind him enough to miss it.
Anger simmered under his skin. The fog, always attuned his emotions, rolled in agitated waves over the water.
“I see,” he murmured, pushing his half-corporeal form into her space once more. Up close, he could make out every individual eyelash and sun-made freckle. He could even smell her. Below the familiar scent of brine and water, she smelled clean and fresh, like soap and flowers — exactly how he imagined a loving home would smell.
Elise blinked, but otherwise didn’t react as he hovered nearer still, drawn in by the desire to unsettle her and something else he couldn’t name. Perhaps it was the way her magic radiated through him, familiar and yet pleasantly foreign. Perhaps it was the warmth of her skin he could feel filling the spare inches separating them. Perhaps it was the way her tiny, nearly imperceptible gasp made the muscles of his abdomen clench.