Author’s Note: All that time in Cress’ past… Like navigating a minefield, and not just for me, but for everyone else as well.

“Cress?”

He pulled his knees up to his chest and put his head on them. “I should have known I was water long before those bullies cornered me in the bathroom. He told me that was what I was. He said a lot of things that I didn’t understand until later. I thought… I was convinced he was just some kind of… pervert, and I did my best to forget about it.”

“The swim lessons,” Oceana said. She felt sick, uncertain how much her brother had suffered at that man’s hands. “That’s why you quit, why you freaked out when they tried to take you back there. He was there?”

“Yeah.”

“None of the rest of us knew anything about this, though.” Moira shook her head. “Cress, why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“There was nothing to tell. The first time was too weird for me to explain since none of us were aware of that kind of thing, and I couldn’t say I’d been frozen, that some strange guy had held me in place while he babbled on about water. My parents later said he was a rogue, that he had been dealt with, that I shouldn’t worry about him.”

Sherwin frowned. “All this time, though, we all assumed the first anyone knew about the kind of stuff we could do was when those bullies cornered you. You knew before, though.”

“No. My parents didn’t explain what he was to me until after I could manipulate water. When I broke the mirror and gave those bullies the swirly they planned on giving me, the bathroom was flooded, wrecked, and I got suspended… Everyone thought it was weird how calm Mom and Dad were about the whole thing, but they weren’t calm. They were… excited. They started telling me all about what I could do and what I should not do. They told me about the rogues, and when I told them about that man, they said that was one of them, and they left, like the parents used to do back then. When they got back, they told me they’d dealt with him. That was the end of the discussion.”

Moira rubbed her forehead, looking like she had a headache. Oceana didn’t blame her. No one wanted to hear this. “Why would they lie?”

“I don’t know. I trusted them, but I don’t know that I should have. None of us should have. They knew before we were born what we might be capable of, but they never warned us or trained us. I learned all I could because I didn’t want to be helpless, ever again, didn’t want to do what I did before and cause so much damage, have so little control…” He ran a hand through his hair. “They may have betrayed us all, and I think I helped them do it.”

“Cress, you’re jumping to conclusions here,” Sherwin said, trying his best to be optimistic, the only one of them that was most of the time. “Maybe they did think they’d dealt with him, but he survived. We all thought Stone was dead, so why couldn’t your parents have been fooled?”

Oceana swallowed, putting her hand on her brother’s shoulder. Her stomach’s disquiet was getting worse as her mind ran through her memories, and she shook her head. “I hate to say this, but I think I agree with Cress. So many little things seem to make a horrible sort of sense now that always bothered me before. I mean, the way they reacted when Cress dated a normal…”

He grimaced, but like everything that had hurt him, he pushed it aside. “We all know water can alter moods. Our parents were attuned to it, and maybe they manipulated a lot more than we knew back then. Maybe I did the same thing. I… They did their best to make sure I ended up in charge, and we all had a bad feeling about where the money might have come from…”

“You really didn’t have a choice, did you?”

Cress shook his head, not looking at the woman who’d spoken. “No, Enya, I might not have seen it, but we all could have walked away. I was the one that led us down the path my parents started me on. Maybe it’s the clarity of hindsight, but I know how wrong I was. I can see what I overlooked and what it cost and—Damn it.”

“What?”

“We have to go. We didn’t use that money often, not if we could help it—”

“But they know about it and they’re watching that account. They know we used it, and they’re coming.” Moira reached for the keys and passed them to Oceana. “Here. You’ve had more rest than most of us. You drive.”

She shook her head. “Enya’d better do it. I’d be too distracted by Cress, even if I wasn’t draining myself like the rest of you.”

“It’s too late. They’re here.”

Oceana frowned at her brother. “How do you know that?”

Cress pointed to the window. Rain pelted against the glass. “I didn’t start that. I also can’t stop it.”

Author’s Note: Theories, twists, and lots of unpleasantness.

“Any progress in here?”

“Not much,” Terra said. She shook her head. “It should have been me. It should have been me that got taken because Stone could find me. I can’t find him.”

“Take a break, then,” Oceana said. “Enya thinks she’s found something, and she wants everyone in to hear what she has to say before we go any further.”

Moira was tempted to laugh. “So the internet is more powerful than the elements.”

Sherwin frowned. “Imagine if there was internet on the other side of the barrier. If there was…”

Terra gave him a shove. “We don’t know that there isn’t. All we know is that it bleeds through into our world and because of it, we can manipulate the elements. We still don’t know how that works. Cress knows more than any of us about what he can do, but even he admits he doesn’t understand it.”

Cress pulled himself up from the bed, walking down the hall. “I don’t think we should understand it. I think we were never meant to know what’s on the other side of it, and I don’t think we should have the abilities that we do. If you think about it, we might have been engineered to do it.”

“What?”

He stopped, leaning against the wall. Moira grimaced, knowing that Occie would have something to say about his condition later. “Two elemental parents, attuned to the same element, just happen to meet, marry, and produce two children attuned to that element. The perfect set, all four elements, all in one place. Seems a bit convenient, doesn’t it?”

Sherwin shook his head. “Cress, I know you’re a bit messed up right now, but don’t you dare start implying things about our parents. That’s too far, and you know it.”

“Is it?” Oceana asked, crossing into the dining room. “Not long before Mom and Dad died, they set him down and gave him a long talk, told him all about the money they’d ‘saved,’ the things they expected of him, dumped all that on him when he wasn’t even eighteen, and a couple months later, they died, and we were all so dependent on him…”

Enya frowned, looking up from the computer. “What are we talking about?”

“Ignore it. You don’t want to know.”

Moira looked at her brother, shaking her head. “Sherwin would like to bury his head in the sand, but I don’t know that we can afford to ignore Cress’ theory, even as unsettling and unpleasant as it might be to acknowledge the reality of it.”

“What reality?”

“That it was no accident that our parents were together, that they were the same element, that they had two kids that were also that same element, and then stopped,” Moira said, taking a seat at the table, exhausted. Their search was useless. She hoped that Enya’s was more successful. “Please tell me we have something better than that to go on with the agency.”

“We do,” Enya said, though she gave Cress a long look. He shrugged, leaning against the back wall. Occie went to his side and dragged him to the chair. She sat him down next to Enya. “Occie told me these men here were a part of the team that you met before. I don’t have advanced facial recognition programs that a law enforcement agency would be able to use, so I just did my best with as many news articles and pictures as I could get a hold of and look at, but I got something off the id.”

“We’re up against the government?”

She shook her head. “No. This is a private organization, which is what I figured after Cress told me about it. I can’t imagine a small government agency would have the resources to track you—or the budget—not when you have pretty much no digital footprints—but a private corporation would have the money to pursue this kind of… agenda. They could hire mercenaries—there are so many of those companies out there thanks to the war on terrorism—and maybe those mercenaries know what they’re up against, maybe not, but they were just hired guns.”

“Great.”

“Well, the id badge that was clipped to that man’s belt said he belonged to this corporation. I like the irony of it. Aether Industries. Some call aether the fifth element.”

“Some call that a movie.”

Enya rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Sherwin. I’m trying to keep this simple. You had former military or paramilitary officers after you, impersonating a government agency. This is not something to laugh about. We’re all in trouble, and we have no way of knowing what they might do to someone like us—to Stone. We assume that they’re after the barrier, but we don’t know that. They might be after something we can’t begin to comprehend.”

“No, they’re after us.”

“Cress?”

He swallowed, pointing to the screen. “That’s the owner of the company?”

“Yeah, but Oceana said he’d never been there when you crossed paths with the ‘agency.’”

“That’s not how I know him. The name isn’t ironic, Enya. He’s one of us.”

Author’s Note: Changes are coming. The balance of power has shifted. Probably for the best, though it’s hard to say right now.

“Terra’s still sleeping.”

“Then we should wait for her. We don’t make decisions without consulting the whole team.”

Cress snorted. “That’s not true. I do it all the time, and while you might argue with them for a while, you always accept it in the end, even when I’m wrong. Every time I’m wrong, you let my mistakes pass. Is it the water? I lure you into a false sense of calm?”

“Cress, what are you doing?”

“Thinking. Reasoning, trying to gauge how much damage I’ve done over the years.”

“Just because I told you it was time to stand down does not mean that you can start second guessing every decision you’ve ever made,” Oceana told him, but he did not look at her. Sherwin frowned. Occie had told Cress to step down? When did that happen? And why?

“I think we need more information on the agency that’s been chasing you,” Enya said. “If we knew who they were, where they were based, that might give us a better idea of where to look.”

“Look?” Sherwin frowned. “I thought we were going to discuss how to help Terra deal with her grief because it’s really becoming an issue. Why are we discussing the agency? Who cares about that right now?”

“We all do—if Terra is right and Stone is still alive.”

Moira stiffened. “Alive? We left him behind? How could we do that? That’s not… We’re not… We all saw him go down, we heard Terra scream that he was gone, but now he’s… alive?”

Oceana nodded. “According to the earth after Cress gave her the clarity to listen to it. I don’t know what to think, but if there’s even a chance that we can get him back, we’re going to do it.”

Cress moved toward the door. “Or we could just hand me over to them because I’m probably what they want and the one that got us all into this.”

“We are not giving anyone to them,” Moira said. Sherwin nodded, not liking the idea of handing their most talented member over to the bastards chasing them. “If those idiots are interested in bringing down the barriers, they won’t get any help from us. We have to focus on the fact that Stone might be alive. We need to know what we’re going to do to find him. If Terra can sense that, then we have to find a way to amplify her ability and get him back.”

Enya cleared her throat. “I still think that we’d do better if we could pin down where and who these people are. We get some of the news coverage about what happened at my house, we find the men from the agency, we determine if it’s legitimate or some kind of private organization that’s hounding you and what they’re after. If Stone’s still alive, there’s a good chance they would have him.”

“We haven’t arranged a trip to town for a laptop yet, and chances are, that mobile broadband you’d want wouldn’t work up here.”

“So I’ll use it in town. That has to be better than following Cress’ suggestion.”

“Yeah, I think we’re done following my suggestions,” he said, reaching for the door handle. “You were never the monster, Enya. I was. I just hide it a lot better than anyone thinks.”

Oceana frowned, rushing to grab her brother’s arm. “Where do you think you’re going? You better not be about to do anything stupid.”

“That depends on your definition. So far, from what I can judge, everything I did was wrong and therefore stupid.”

“Like hell it was,” Enya said, getting everyone to look at her. “If anyone has a right to be mad at you, it’s me, isn’t it? And I’m not.”

“You should be. You’re not because you have the worst guilt complex on the planet. Everything’s your fault. Even the things that are mine.”

Sherwin knew he wasn’t the only one who was confused. “Okay, one, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Two, I don’t know why we’re fighting right now. We have to work together to get Stone back. That is the only thing that matters.”

Oceana touched her brother’s face. “Look at me. There we go, that’s it. When I said you should go, I meant you should leave for your own health. You gave Enya that option years ago when you should have been the one to take it. This is destroying you.”

“It should.”

Moira held up a hand. “Enough. If Cress is stepping down, then I guess I’m in charge, and that means we’re going to focus on what we can do to get Stone back. Occie, you and Enya will go get the laptop and everything else she needs. Dip into some of the old accounts if you have to. I know none of us like doing it because we have no idea where our parents got that money, but do it anyway. Sherwin and I will work with Terra. Cress… you get the unpleasant job of keeping us all stable while we do it.”

He nodded. Oceana shook her head. “No. He’s not up to that. Even if he spent the next week in the water, he wouldn’t be up to that. He can’t.”

“Occie, I have to make up for my mistakes somehow. Don’t take that from me.”

She sighed. “I don’t like this. You are allowed to be as human as the rest of us, to make mistakes, and I know you have, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be punished for them.”

He pulled free of her. “I’ll be down at the lake when you need me, Moira.”

Sherwin rubbed at his ear. “I suppose I have to wake Terra, don’t I?”

Author’s Note: This wasn’t supposed to be even a bit humorous, but the dynamics of the family got in the way, so it’s maybe a little funny.

“Not good.”

“What?” Moira looked at her brother, tempted to smack him for his constant interruptions. All she wanted to do was eat her food in peace. He couldn’t stand to sit still for one moment. He couldn’t resist stirring up the pot, could he? If he could just once let things go, if he didn’t need to show off in front of everyone, if he wasn’t trying to impress Enya, maybe they could have had a decent meal.

“Occie, tell me that I’m wrong,” Sherwin said, and Moira frowned. She set her drink down and closed her eyes, listening to the wind. She could hear Terra crying. She shook her head, not wanting to intrude. She didn’t need to hear that, no one needed to stick their noses right into Terra’s grief. That was private. If Cress was helping her with it, he was a fool, that same generous fool that he always was, but that didn’t mean anything.

“Are you spying on them?” Enya shook her head, setting down her sandwich. “Whatever Terra told Cress is private, and you had no right to listen into it. Were you listening to me and him first? What is wrong with you, Sherwin?”

He held up his hand. “Before you go jumping down my throat, I can’t always help what I hear on the wind, okay? It’s like Cress’ thing with washing away our bad moods. I hear things I shouldn’t all the time. I don’t know how to shut that off.”

“Cress is going to get himself killed at this rate,” Oceana said, walking toward the window. She sighed as she looked out, closing her eyes. “I swear, all I get from him lately is this sense of… emptiness. He’s worn so thin, like a glass with a leak…”

“He said he’d go skinny-dipping later to change that.”

Sherwin frowned. “He goes skinny-dipping? That is not something I’d ever believe of Cress.”

“I could.”

“Moira! You’re not seriously thinking of him… naked, are you?”

She gave her brother a look and then smiled, knowing just how much it would annoy him. Cress was not the best looking man in the world, rather ordinary, in fact, and with his watery personality, he didn’t inspire passion in anyone, but she knew just how much the idea of her being interested in Cress would annoy Sherwin, so she stuck with it. She couldn’t remember when the last time she’d given a man a real thought, not since the agency came into their lives, and she didn’t expect that to change. They got to have incredible abilities because of the elements, but in exchange, they lost the things normals took for granted.

“That is so… disgusting.”

She gave Sherwin a dirty look. “Like your flirting with everything female isn’t.”

Enya cleared her throat. “I think someone may have to intervene with Cress and Terra. Sherwin, you’d better carry her inside so she can rest, and Occie, you’d better get your brother.”

“Yeah, I think I’m going swimming. Don’t get any ideas, Sherwin. I’ll drown you if you so much as peek at me.”

“Like I’d want to see your brother even in swim trunks,” he said with a shudder. “No, I’ll just go grab Terra. I’d do it the fun way, but I don’t want to attract extra attention to us with the levitation act.”

“You two still do that for money?”

“Sometimes. When we’re desperate. Why?”

Enya let out a breath. “I thought I’d use a few things I’ve learned over the past few years to help, since I can’t control the other part, but maybe I can still be useful. I just… need money, and I know I can’t access my accounts. They’d have to be watching them.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Moira told her. “Tell me how much you need, what you need, and we’ll find a way to get you it. You and I can handle that while the others are busy.”

“I want to get a computer—a laptop—and some mobile broadband. The power of the elements is impressive, but I think you might just be outdone by the internet.”

Moira laughed. “Maybe.”

Author’s Note: One can always count on Sherwin to take a tense moment and make it a bit… amusing.

Enya had to wonder if the only thing the team did was run, but it wasn’t a question she was going to voice, not when things were this tense. She didn’t know how long she could stay with them, or how she would dare go again. The first time had been hard enough, and if she was honest, she didn’t want to do it now. She had missed being so tangled up with them, had missed the friendship and the sense of family, but she didn’t know that she could justify staying for those things alone.

She was still a liability. She knew that.

She pulled her knees up to her chest. Cress wasn’t asleep this time, but she wasn’t sure that it made much difference. He was just as quiet, and she figured that was her fault. Maybe if she hadn’t overreacted when he tried to talk to her about the fire…

No. She didn’t need to pawn that off on her brother. She wouldn’t.

“Any thoughts on where to go next?” Moira asked, her eyes darting to the rear view mirror as she did. Her hands still gripped the wheel like she expected a rogue to come after them, but then she’d been there when a couple of rogues with more talent for air sent her parents’ car right off the road.

They didn’t make jokes about flying after that.

“We still need time to recuperate,” Oceana said, looking at her brother. He pretended not to notice. Enya rolled her eyes. No one was fooled by that act, and he had to know it. “At least one of us does.”

“More than one of us. All of us,” Enya said, and for once, no one argued with her. She doubted that Sherwin could hear, not with the way he kept pulling at his ear. Terra wouldn’t look at her, ashamed of all her earlier revelations. Moira didn’t argue unless she had to, and Cress didn’t argue unless he was pushed too far. “Is there anywhere you know of that they don’t know to look for? Do these people have something that… tracks you?”

“We think they’ve been monitoring unusual weather phenomena, possibly tracking strange plate tectonics, anything that gives away what we can do to the elements. We’re not sure. They haven’t shown up for every little thing, and Cress seems to have some kind of immunity when he makes it rain. They’ve never shown up after that.”

“That’s because to our knowledge, no one else can do that. We can manipulate any kind of water that’s already in existence, but conjuring it? No, not us.”

Cress glared at his sister. “Don’t say ‘conjured.’ I hate that word. I hate comparing us to magicians because it’s not magic. I am only manipulating the water in the atmosphere. You know that. Just because you haven’t managed to get it down doesn’t mean it’s impossible or that you couldn’t work at doing more. I’ve never pushed you to since I figure that… a part of my problem has always been that I was too curious in the beginning. I couldn’t stop pushing the boundaries, trying each new thing that I could, and now look at me. I spend most of my time unconscious, recovering from a ridiculous display of my abilities. When did I become that pretentious? I didn’t think I was that much of a show off.”

Enya shrugged. “I always figured your problem was boundaries. You’ve never been good at them.”

“It’s not my fault you stole all the good places to be alone in the old neighborhood. Every time I thought I found one that you wouldn’t be in, there you were.”

“Trying to avoid you.”

He smiled. “Well, perhaps if we’d only said something, we both could have had what we wanted.”

“Maybe.”

Moira cleared her throat. “I need to know where I should go. I suppose we could try the mountains this time, since we just did the desert…”

“I want a beach.”

“Shut up, Sherwin. You are not getting any of us in a bikini.”

He turned around. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to see your namesake, Oceana. We need pictures.”

“Would you also like to drown?”

“Fine, no beaches.”