Author’s Note: The more I wanted Cress’ reasons to make sense, the more convoluted they and his past became, and I finally hit a point where I decided I didn’t want to know.

“Cress, please tell me you’re wrong about that.”

He shook his head. “I wish I could, Enya, but as I was trying to fight that storm, I realized that when I made it rain that night, when Oceana was flooding the house from the water main… Someone was fighting against us. I haven’t felt that kind of pushback in a long time—we don’t get a lot of rogue water elementals—but today I felt the same thing.”

“Oh, hell, I did, too, but I never wanted to believe, even as two-faced as they were with everyone outside of the house, that they were that evil,” Occie said, biting her lip. “I always wanted to think they were just… Just harsher with us because we were their own, that they had impossible expectations—especially when it came to Cress—but they were worse than I ever imagined.”

Cress held out a hand, and Occie took it, sitting down next to him. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her. He closed his eyes, and no one spoke for a while, letting them have their moment.

Enya shivered. She didn’t want to think about this. She wanted to ignore his words, and she wanted to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about or that he was just crazy or something. “I always wondered why no one went for my parents or my brother, why I was the only one pulled out of there.”

“Cress told me to continue with the water, and he got you out, but he was too exhausted to go back, and you were so hysterical that if he hadn’t calmed you the whole thing could have started again.”

He lowered his head. “If I’d known they were hindering us and not helping, I would have gone back. I would have risked it. I could have gotten Enya calm after it was over, but I thought… I thought they were helping. I don’t know why I trusted them.”

“Everything they’d done before was always about elementals. They never once gave us any reason to think they had some weird water supremacy going on or anything, not even when they were talking arranged marriages.”

“Dad told me that we seek our counterpoints as marriage mates. We all had that in our heads, that like sought out like. We never really thought they were doing it to for any other reason. At least, I didn’t. I just assumed that was why your parents were trying to push that on you.”

“I guess. And the marriage thing was after Enya’s family was gone, anyway. I think part of that was them wanting me to stop having anything to do with Hannah, though if they’d been patient, it wasn’t that much longer before it was over, so they kind of jumped the gun there.”

“Yeah, but not by much. They had to know that their control over all of us was slipping. If they were going to get you to do what they wanted, they had a very narrow window of time left to do it.”

“They couldn’t have forced either of us to get married. We would never have agreed, and if they’d pushed me far enough, I could have made sure they weren’t an issue.”

Sherwin shuddered. “Are you saying you actually contemplated killing them?”

Cress looked at him. “What, just because I’m calm on the outside I never get angry? Never feel threatened enough to kill? I do. I have. I always envied how Enya could turn away from what she could do and not get drawn in by any of the ‘cool’ parts of what we could do. That was never cowardice, turning away from our kind of power. That was the kind of strength I never had. I keep wondering if half the reason I became what I was when that mirror broke was because of what that man said to me about water. I know a lot of the reason why I made sure I had control and tried more and more things with it was because I never wanted to be where he had me. That was cowardice. I was so afraid that I turned myself into a monster. On purpose.”

“Cress—”

“I convinced myself you were safer far from us, and I didn’t… I thought I was right. You convinced yourself I was, in the end, to get through it, but you weren’t the monster, Enya. I was. Occie told me I needed to be the one to go, and when she did… I finally understood what I’d asked of you, what I’d done to you, and it wasn’t right. Nothing I’ve ever done was right—”

“No.” Enya shook her head. “I didn’t have to break a mirror in more than twelve years. I missed everyone, but I didn’t have to live in fear of hurting any of you.”

“Is that really worth what you went through? You didn’t want to go, and some of them hated you for something that wasn’t your idea in the first place, and it wasn’t enough of a protection. The agency or whatever they are went after you because of me.”

She crossed over to him. “You gave me a life. I doubt that was in your parents’ plans, and I know you never got what you wanted. What happened to all your plans with Hannah? I know she wasn’t right for you, but you wanted something a whole lot simpler than this, didn’t you?”

He let out a breath. “There were things my parents said about the rogues that had me worried. I didn’t figure there were too many to deal with, and before the agency got involved, I… It looked like it was just about finished. It had already taken a lot longer than I thought it would, but the only people who could stop the rogues were people like us. Of course, if I had known the truth and not what my parents fed me, if I’d known that we were all being manipulated…”

“How much of their plans did you throw out when you took over?”

“Almost all of them. I held onto the money. That was one of few things I took from them. I had to build so much on my own, and I knew I was doing the wrong thing, but I didn’t know what else to do. They had a list of other elementals, ‘friendlies,’ that I was supposed to help everyone pair up with, and I was supposed to keep us all on Eden Drive and… I was supposed to let the fire burn itself out…”

Enya stared at him. “They thought you’d actually let me die the next time I broke a mirror? Or is that referring to not breeding me with another fire elemental?”

“I don’t know.”

She put a hand on his face. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why burden you with that? They were gone; it would only have hurt you.”

“Cress, we all needed to know.”

“Stop it. Just leave him alone,” Occie said, pulling her brother into her arms. She ran her fingers through his hair. “They screwed with your head good, didn’t they? Oh, Cress, I begged you not to, but you did it anyway, didn’t you? There were no rogues that day, were there?”

Author’s Note: Action sequences have never been my strong suit. I did try, and I doubt that I did much justice to the kinds of things they can do with the elements, but here goes…

“I think I can make out four cars, and they’re blocking the road. At least Cress always insists on us driving an SUV even if the gas mileage sucks,” Terra said, frowning as she let the curtain fall back into place. “I can barricade them, but with this much water around us and the kind of vehicles they have, it won’t last for long.”

“Do it,” Moira ordered. She sounded a lot more confident than she felt. Damn Cress for always making this look easy. She had thought she was ready for it, but now she wasn’t sure. “We’ll deal with them breaking out of it after it happens. There’s still a few things we can do on the road if we have to. Enya, you’re still driving. Sherwin, we’re going to need an air shield.”

“Done,” he said, looking at the storm. “We have any idea if there’s more than a water elemental out there? That is one hell of a storm.”

“Thank you.”

Moira turned around, swallowing as she did. Rogues had stopped scaring them years ago, but this one was worse than most. That one had terrorized Cress when he was younger, had sent an army after them, kept sending them. That man had Stone, didn’t he?

Still, the most unsettling part of the whole thing was that he didn’t seem afraid to come up against all of them, that he thought he could take them all on. What made him so damn confident?

“Go,” Cress whispered, his voice strained and almost impossible to hear. “I can’t hold off what he’s doing forever. Get in the car.”

The rogue’s lips curved into a smile. “Yes, you have learned, haven’t you? Still, even you know you have limits.”

“Oh, hell, no wonder it’s so damn cold in here. He’s trying to freeze us.”

“Get in the car,” Moira told her brother, shoving him toward the door. He had to keep up the air shield in case any of the others had been outside of the barricade Terra had created, and the longer they stayed, the more of a chance they gave Cress to falter. He didn’t have the strength to hold off a water elemental that powerful for long.

“One thing you overlooked,” Occie said, her voice cold. She put her hand on her brother and closed her eyes, funneling her energy into his. The ice spread over the man across the room, turning him into an ice sculpture. “My brother’s not the only one who can handle water.”

Cress managed a smile before he stumbled, held up by his sister and Enya. “That won’t hold him for long.”

“It bought us time. Come on,” Moira said, taking hold of him so that Enya could get to the car first. She needed to be behind the wheel. “Drive down to the road. Terra will do her best to even it out for us.”

“Is it me or is that storm getting worse?”

“Just because he’s frozen doesn’t mean he can’t think,” Cress said. “Occie, can you do anything about that?”

“I might be able to shift it out of our path so that Enya can see better. You just rest. You should have grabbed me sooner—none of us would have allowed you to sacrifice yourself even if you blame yourself for us leaving Stone behind and who knows what else.”

Moira pulled herself into the passenger seat, having a bad feeling about what she’d have to do to keep the other cars from reaching them. The barricade wasn’t going to hold for much longer. She’d seen part of it crumbling even as Enya drove away.

Too much water. The whole place would go to mud soon enough. Even if Stone was here, they couldn’t have held off the mudslide for long. She felt Sherwin’s hand on her shoulder even as the car bumped them all, lurching back onto the pavement. She looked back at him and then the road.

The first SUV was closing in on them. Great. “That was fast.”

“Sorry. I was fighting against what that rogue was doing, and the barricade wasn’t good enough—”

“I’m not blaming you,” Moira said, closing her eyes and letting her abilities mingle with Sherwin’s, gusting the air up under one of the other vehicles and knocking it on its side, taking it out of commission. She leaned back against her chair. “Okay, not sure I have another of those in me.”

“Me, either,” Sherwin grunted. “I hate doing that. It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have the memories.”

Unless they had that memory on purpose. Moira shifted in her seat, looking at Cress. How much more was there to his theory? What else hadn’t he told them about what his parents had done or given him? Was there more to him sending Enya away than Moira had thought? She’d always had her suspicions, but she’d just assumed that Cress was playing favorites. Maybe it was more than that.

Terra slumped back against her seat. “I didn’t want to break the road, but those potholes might not be enough to stop them.”

Enya looked in the rear view mirror. “You call those potholes?”

Terra grinned. “I do.”

Moira laughed. Sometimes, this could almost pass for fun. “Keep driving ’til we’re out of the storm, Enya. We’ll know we’re safe to make a plan after that.”

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.”