Chapter Two

warnings for: violence, some gore, implied/referenced child abuse, panic attacks, language

The sound of the gun discharging seems to rattle inside her ears, ringing like a bell. Isabella whips her head up, expecting to watch Hazel’s corpse smash into the floor bonelessly, bullet buried in her skull, nothing more than the memory of a person and a smear of brain matter sprayed across the wall, but instead, the girl—flickers. 

The veins of her skin flare white, and the bullet goes through her body, slamming into the wall behind her, burying itself inside the plaster. Air-user. She didn’t even use a glyph. How did she—? 

For a gasping, scattered moment, the world trembles. Isabella is standing in the kitchen ten months ago, watching Aza drag a blood-soaked corpse out the front door. Terrified desperation wrenches its way from her stomach to her throat. She’s going to be sick with it. 

She blinks. 

The apartment slides back into now. 

“Shots fired!” someone behind her yells, like everyone in the entire world didn’t hear that gunshot. Isabella turns sharply with the noise, looking through the open door, and she watches with horror at the swarm of people that move toward them. It wasn’t a drug deal. It was undercover policía. 

Fuck. 

SUVs pull up in the ice-slicked parking lot, and NAMCU agents clamber from the cars to join the rest of the plainclothes ones. They’re armed to the teeth, with guns, the glowing hands of magic, and scaetel weapons. The dragon-scales are gleaming from a distance, but she knows that up close they must be gritty with layers of blood. 

There has to be at least two dozen of the agents, most dressed in black with tactical half-masks and assault goggles that cover their eyes entirely with dark visors, hoods pulled over their heads and pinned in place, an insignia stamped to the front of their bulletproof vests: NAMCU. 

Isabella makes a faint sound in her throat. She can’t feel any of her extremities. 

Their uniforms are distinctive, layered with their element’s respective color and the glyph of their ability sewn in a patch at the shoulder. Most of them are water-users. Isabella isn’t going to win this fight. They were prepared for her, spilling into the apartment, weapons raised. 

There’s a split-second of nothing. Aza moves for the door, grabbing Isabella by the arm and dragging her up to her feet, like he means to fist a hand in her shirt and haul her like a sack of potatoes. All the guns move with them, fingers shift to triggers. 

“Stand down!” Hazel shouts back to the other agents, throwing herself between them, hands appraised. She’s fine. She shouldn’t be fine. The last person Aza shot in the head didn’t walk away. Isabella stood over their corpse, blood spray smeared on her, shaking, looking up at Aza to gasp what did you do? What did you do?  

Aza pushes her out through the doorway like he wants to run. It makes her want to laugh hysterically. Where are they going to go? The entire parking lot is covered with the agents like an infestation of bugs. 

Something jerks him backward, dragging him several feet deeper into the apartment through the doorway, and he makes a hitching noise of panic, but doesn’t let go of her. "Mr. Alvarez—" Hazel tries again. This time, Isabella can see the white glyph hovering in her hand, reeling Aza closer like he’s being yanked on by strings. It’s loud, humming at a pitching whine that makes it hard to focus. 

They both end up in a crumpled heap together on the floor, Aza clutching at her tightly, rolling himself on top. He shouldn’t do that. He can’t be the human shield, she’s the one who died. 

She can feel his breath in her face, the wide-eyed panic in his face. She needs to fix this. He can’t, it’s out of his control now, and nothing is ever out of his control. Every breath Isabella draws is forced. She’s trembling. If she used the full extent of her magic, then…then what? She burns down L.A. like she did Mexico City? She can’t control it well enough to weaponize it. She can barely get the glyphs to work. 

Mexico was an accident. 

Shoving and squirming out from under Aza, Isabella gets up to her feet, and she raises her hands in panic, trying to get her fingers to settle. She pulls on a little magic, watching her veins glow red, but before she can even attempt the disaster that will be a glyph formation, a new voice with a thin, barely perceptible Japanese accent interjects from the doorway, “Ms. Alvarez, enough. Stand down, please.”

Isabella’s eyes follow the source of the noise, landing on a tall Asian man as he steps into the apartment.

His skin is pale and it’s only exaggerated by his wild jet-black hair. It’s styled in a side-swept undercut, and looks strangely out of place paired with a white beanie. There’s a faint growth of facial hair hiding dimples, narrow eyes that are dark but gentle. Judging from the signs of age on his face, he could be anywhere in his thirties to early forties. 

Dressed in business casual, a black turtleneck tucked underneath his long brown lapel overcoat, he doesn’t look anything like the other NAMCU agents, or even Hazel, he looks like someone’s dad. One of the shoelaces to his combat boots is coming undone. 

“We just want to talk,” he continues, spreading his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. Isabella, panting, only flexes her fingers. Watches, with some thrill of horrible satisfaction. as he flinches. “Dr. Williams,” the new agent gives Hazel a sharp look, “at ease.” 

Hazel, with obvious reluctance, lowers her gun. 

Isabella doesn’t let the magic drop, and the smell of ash and smoke fills the air between them pointedly. It only works as a threat because they don’t know her. If they did, all they’d do is laugh. She can almost hear Padre Diaz in her head, leaning in to whisper next to her ear, you sure have a lot of brazen confidence, little girl. 

“My name is Hitori Adachi, this is my associate Dr. Hazel Williams,” the man gestures first at himself then Hazel, “as Dr. Williams said, we’re here on behalf of NAMCU to speak with Isabella.” 

A bubbled, strangled wheeze escapes her. She can’t help the predatory way she jerks her chin in the direction of the door and all the agents beyond, “Talk?” 

Do they think she’s stupid?

NAMCU doesn’t talk to people. She’s heard the horror stories. Aza used to tell her stories about how NAMCU would kidnap kids for their illegal abilities and herd them all together to amass an army. She’s seen reports. Execution orders for magi determined to be too dangerous, the imprisonment, the drugs. Always the drugs with NAMCU. All leading up to their famous ultimatum offered like a troll bridge: enslave yourself to NAMCU, go on magic-restricting drugs for a lifetime, sentence yourself to prison, or die. Tick tock. What’s the right answer? There’s only one guess. 

“You—” Aza starts to snarl from his place on the floor. His fumbling fingers have managed to find the gun again.

There’s a snapping click before the pistol is torn out of his hands, air bending smoothly. The weapon lands gracefully in Hazel’s outstretched hand, breaking the glyph hovering above her palm. The veins along her fingers are glowing. 

Aero-Telekinesis, then. Perfect, Isabella definitely knows how to fight off telekinesis. 

Hazel pointedly thumbs the safety before stuffing the gun into her coat. Her own weapon follows it. “Sit,” she snaps, gesturing at the couch. “We’re just going to keep going in circles if you don’t.” 

Aza bristles, but weaponless, outnumbered, and clearly at a loss of what else to do, he moves toward the couch. Isabella follows him numbly. They both sit rigidly, like the furniture is coated with acid. 

Agent Adachi, of all the things he could do, makes a wordless gesture at all the agents, which makes them leave and then he closes the front door.

“What? You don’t want any witnesses to your graphic murder of a child?” Aza questions with a sneer. “If you touch her—” 

“If the guns make you feel more comfortable, I can open it again,” Agent Adachi offers. Isabella can’t tell if he’s being serious or not, his face is completely impassive. He unbuttons the front of his coat and takes a seat on the coffee table in front of both of them, shoving unlit candles to the side, and sitting on top of the heart diagrams Aza was looking at for work. 

Hazel shifts to stand beside him on his right, like an angry guard dog, arms folded across her chest. 

Without preamble, unhurried, the man withdraws a thick, yellow folder from the inside of his coat, opens it, and drops it into Isabella’s lap. It spills out pages of documents as it lands, some of which drift to the floor. 

It’s her. 

About her, that is. 

Medical records, a newspaper article, her school report card from a few months ago with all its gleaming Ds. Her immigration papers, her Green Card documents, the pseudo adoption papers Aza filed. For a moment, Isabella searches through it fruitlessly for any indication of a birth certificate. Nothing. Again. She’s starting to think she doesn’t have one. 

She looks up, throat dry. 

In answer to the unspoken question, Agent Adachi says, “I’ll be blunt, to save us all the trouble. We know that you’re the Fire Elemental, Ms. Alvarez.”

Aza stiffens. 

“Ay, Dios,” Isabella breathes, squeezing her eyes shut. A cold shiver whispers up her spine.

It’s been a decade since the first time she heard it in reference to her, but it doesn’t get any less horrifying. She was almost six when they realized, nearly an entire year after she first manifested. The orfanato thought she was just a magic-user, and her single ability was Spirit. That was bad, and it got her shunned by everyone as the crazy ghost girl, but it wasn’t until she showcased all five of fire’s abilities across the span of several months that Padre Diaz realized exactly what level of abnormal Isabella is. He hadn’t been pleased. 

Up until that point, no one had seen a trace of the previous Fire Elemental, Wraith, since the Lendarian War ended. Any of the Elementals, really. Isabella knows now that, as the years passed, everyone was hoping that they wouldn’t get another set of Elementals. God would have mercy, and Emperor Todenhöfer’s set would be the last. 

God didn't. 

She guesses that’s why Padre Diaz dragged her into the bathroom to drown her, snarling elemental de fuego. That burning pressure of water searing the inside of her lungs—the sensation inside her now is the same. That same squeezing ache.  

NAMCU knows. 

Self preservation has her denying it before she even realizes she’s talking, “No. No. That’s ridiculous. I’m not an Elemental. I’m just some stupid kid who happens to be a fire-user, and that’s not illegal—yet—so you really have—” 

Agent Adachi pointedly reaches forward and grabs a piece of paper off the floor—a incident document—and puts it down on top of the folder. Isabella flinches. It’s the car accident report a paramédico filled out a year ago. Mierda. When she looks at it for help, Aza’s face is stormy. He says nothing. 

“I, uh. That—” Isabella starts. “Agent Adachi, you have the wrong person.” 

“Hitori, please.” 

“You have the wrong person, Hitori.” 

Hitori sighs, like the fact that she’s trying to deny all of this so she won’t be killed is disappointing to him. Isabella doesn’t want to be the next person that they string up in the streets, and if another Elemental is publicly known, she would be.

Being a magic-user is dangerous, being an Elemental is a sentence worse than death, because they’d never let her die. Humanity didn’t get to do anything to Lendaria’s Elementals, and everyone has pent up frustration; they'd like to get out on the closest thing. The Dread Daughter has only ensured that.  

“We’ve done some research,” Hitori says, snapping her focus back to him. Some? Her entire life is in this folder. “You got into a fatal car accident last June. You were T-boned. You were announced DOA at the hospital. You were legally dead for over ten hours, but when the M.E. went down to start an autopsy, he had unfortunately misplaced your body.” 

Hawes. His name was Hawes. He went looking for her, tracked down her address to find out what happened. He was worried about her. Aza shot him between the eyes. I had to protect you, her guardian insisted, but Hawes was one of the nicest people she’d ever met. 

Her mind blanks.

“Yeah, um.” Isabella can’t lie her way out of this. What does she do? Stare at him with big eyes? Her hands are trembling. She wraps them around herself to hide that. 

Aza’s voice is sharp, finally offering input, “She was not as injured as the paramédicos had thought. She woke up, alone and afraid, and I came and got my fifteen-year-old from the morgue.”

It’s the truth. He did get her. They’d left her phone in her personal effects, and he tracked it to the hospital, like he tracks her everywhere. 

Hitori ignores Aza, doesn’t even look at him, holding Isabella’s gaze easily, “This isn’t a publicly known fact, but it has been documented throughout what history we have of the Elementals that there’s a…regeneration effect, for lack of a better term. You can’t die. You’ll suffer through any injury, but you’ll always wake up.” 

All she can think, for a long, blank moment is how the hell do you know that? Then what happened to Lendaria’s Elementals? Finally, that makes a lot of sense. She doesn’t have another explanation for what happened during the accident. For…other things, like the bathtub when she was five. 

As a result of the Lendarian War, most of what Isabella has heard about Elementals are conspiracy theories coated with paranoia about another mass enslavement via magic-users. Someone was convinced beyond reason that there used to be a fifth element, Void, which was received with mockery. There’s rumors about mind control, about godhood, reincarnation, limb regeneration, that story from the Ming Dynasty. 

Hitori looks between Isabella and Aza for a long second, then waves a hand, dismissing them. “You can continue to deny this if it will make you feel better, but we both know the truth. Regardless of that,” Hitori picks up the rest of the papers, straightening them out and tucking them beneath each other with a precision that seems a little unhealthy. “We didn’t come here to arrest or torment you. We need your help.” 

“With what?” Aza snarls. 

Hitori meets Isabella’s gaze evenly, his tone calm. “Isabella Alvarez, you’re going to kill the Dread Daughter for us.”

“Qué de—no!” A surge of energy propels Isabella off of the couch like a released spring, has her wanting to sprint for the front door. She wouldn't reach it before Aza grabbed her, if Hazel didn’t shoot her first. “No! I can’t—she’s killed millions of people, and I—look at me!” 

She gestures to herself, hair rumpled from sleep, still wearing the same set of clothing she has for the last week, sleeves stained with Sawyer’s blood. Oh god. Sawyer. He was still bleeding. Aza was going to help him. She forgot. How the hell did she forget? 

“I assure you, this wasn’t an impulsive decision—” Hitori starts, unbothered in the face of her panic.  

“Sawyer,” Isabella blurts, and Hitori blinks once. It’s the only sign of confusion or startling that he shows. Isabella’s eyes raise from him, to Hazel, because she was there. The air-user works for NAMCU, she’s a government authority, why the hell didn’t she do anything? “My neighbor, he needs help. You saw what they did to him.” 

Hazel grimaces. Hitori’s mouth gets tight, and he looks at her. “Dr. Williams?” 

“The kid,” the girl says, between her teeth, “from the donation center. I’ll call Sergeant Winston, unless you want to spare Morozova?” 

“No,” Hitori says.

Isabella doesn’t even let Hazel take a step away. “You could have stopped them.” 

Hazel stills. When those dark eyes land on Isabella, they look like the pelted shoreline of a stormy sea. The words are equally sharp. “Why didn’t you? My assignment was to follow you.” Isabella wraps her arms around her chest. The shame swallows any indignation. Your fault. No one has needed to say it out loud for it to be true. Hazel’s words are softer, but only barely when she adds, “You know as well as I do what would have happened if I tried, Alvarez. Better him maimed than dead.” 

Even Aza only interfered after it was over, and he’s Aza. Maybe they were all helpless. 

“What do you mean follow her?” her guardian’s voice is thick with tension. He sounds horrified, scared. 

Hazel looks somewhere between amused and annoyed. “The last three days. Such interesting lives you lead. Tell me, Mr. Alvarez, is your employer aware you’re a demon? Or do cartels not discriminate?” 

The blood drains from Isabella face. They know? NAMCU has exorcists, they were formed to handle ghost possessions. Emperor Todenhöfer may have been the first person to spread the wide-use of tax-free exorcism with Lendaria, but NAMCU has picked up the practice hungrily. If they have an Exorcist with them, and they banish his spirit from the host body, then Isabella will be alone. Aza won’t come back a second time. 

Aza’s teeth set. He keeps staring at Hazel like he can’t quite believe she’s real. “You don’t know anything about me, little girl.” 

“You think so?” Hazel looks like she wants to go for the kill, teeth bared. “There are so many things you can learn by listening.” She’s an air-user, she has enhanced hearing. Isabella balks. 

Hitori rests a hand on Hazel’s arm, and she quells. “Talk to Winston about their neighbor. Now.” 

Hazel makes a thin sound, but she complies, and steps outside. Isabella wonders, vaguely, distant, in that part of her brain that isn’t caught in a horrified loop of denying this as reality, if that girl is aware she’s so intense.

Hitori turns back to her, and his face is perfectly composed. He continues, like nothing happened, “We’ve already found the Air Elemental. We’re locating Earth as we speak. All three of you will work to kill her.”

Shit. Mierda. Isabella shakes her head mutely. The Water Elemental’s body count is at what? Six million now? Isabella will be killed by her. Immediately. They’ll step into the same room, and particularly well-aimed glare will do it. 

The woman didn’t get the moniker Dread Daughter from nowhere. Her predecessor was Siren, Todenhöfer’s Water Elemental, a faceless entity that wiped out city after city and brought half the world to its knees. This is Siren’s blood-thirsty heir, here to finish his uncompleted work. 

Hitori releases a soft breath through his nose. “I understand that this is a lot to process, but we don’t really have a choice, Ms. Alvarez.”

“You don’t, or I don’t?” Isabella demands. Tears of frustration are pooling at the corners of her eyes.

She should be used to this. Dios, how she should be used to this. How many times has she been dragged into things she doesn’t want to? When did she consent to go with Aza to the United States? With Padre Diaz before that, to his orfanato? Isabella doesn’t have choices. She gets put places and told to be happy about it. 

“The Dread Daughter has no interest in resolving this peacefully,” Hitori explains. “We may not understand as much as we want to about how Elementals are made, but we know that the god-like power you hold transfers to someone else after death. Her execution will end the Freeze. Isabella, the only way to kill an Elemental is with another Elemental. I don’t mean that metaphorically or euphemistically. The four of your life forces are all intrinsically tethered to each other. Only you four can end each other. That is why this car crash didn’t kill you. It wasn’t death by the hand of another Elemental.”

Oh.

Mierda. 

They want her to kill someone. Like Aza did. When he dragged Hawes out of the front door with his blood-stained hand. She's not a killer. Not like this. Mexico was an accident, this—this is murder. Assassination, sure, but the hell is the actual line between the two? 

“I can’t. I’m not…I’m shit at magic. I couldn’t beat her in a fight.” Isabella protests. She’s scrambling for excuses, but it’s also true. She sincerely doubts she could win a reasonably dedicated duck. Isabella may be one of the four most powerful magic-users on Earth, but that doesn’t mean that she’s good at magic. Aza made sure she can hold herself in a street fight, but not even he could fix the gaping, yawning hole of what the hell does one do about Isabella Alvarez: the worst fire-user anyone has ever seen?

“It’s not a matter of power levels,” Hitori is unbothered, shaking his head, “it’s just you. If all else fails, we’ll just give you a gun. As long as you, Air, or the Earth Elemental are behind the trigger, it will kill her. You could do it with a paper cut if you had to.”   

A paper cut. It’s not funny, and it is all at once. Laughter is building in her. 

“But…I…school,” Isabella says in a last ditch effort, rather than shout the desperate, frothing no’s making rounds screaming in her skull. “I have…homework. Tests.” 

Hazel said she stalked her through it today. She saw Isabella scribbling on her English homework, her and Sawyer working out details on how to ditch the bus and make it to the donation center. The thought makes her bite back a shudder. Isabella didn’t even notice, or maybe she did, and that’s why she recognized her. 

“We’ll take care of it,” Hitori promises, a little flat. “You’ll be given credit for the rest of the school year.” 

School year? It’s the end of April. Isabella has to force herself to speak. “How…how long is this supposed to…?” 

Hitori took the folder back at some point, and he must have done that before she stood up, but Isabella has no memory of this at all. He flips through his folder, withdrawing another page to show them. It's today’s headline from The Washington Post reading: DREAD DAUGHTER AGREES TO MEET FOR ARMISTICE ON JUNE 2ND. Hitori says, as Isabella numbly looks over the paper, “The Dread Daughter agreed to meet in D.C. in six weeks. This will be the first time that we’ll have a confirmed location for her since the Freeze started. We plan to kill her before she gets there.” 

They made contact with the Dread Daughter? It’s been fourteen months since the Freeze started. What made her reach out now? 

“She finally agrees to talk peace,” Aza’s irritation weighs down the room, “so now you’re going to kill her?” 

Hitori says, almost scoffing, “Do you really think that she’s going to come to D.C. and end her winter and apologize? We don’t even know what she wants. This is a ransom without any demands. She’ll come to the conference and murder everyone there to make a point.” 

That’s all everyone seems to want to do these days. 

“You don’t know that.” Isabella whispers, digging her fingernails into the scar on her forearm. Part of her has always harbored a wishful hope that the Dread Daughter isn't doing this for fun. That underneath, there’s some understandable, sympathetic reason behind the winter, and it’s not “just because.”

Elementals have to be more than their history. More than their legacy as enslavers. The death, destruction, and restructuring of the social order. They have to be more. Isabella has to be. Her legacy can’t be her fate. It can’t. 

Hitori's expression is resigned. "I do. Trust me. The Dread Daughter's body count is almost unfathomable, Ms. Alvarez. It’s her life versus millions more, and not just American. She’s caused worldwide climate and economic issues. She’s pushed our hand in this regard, we have no other options, we’ve tried everything else.” 

Maybe Isabella is stupid, but she doesn’t think she can ever understand how taking a human life can ever be the answer. Humanity as a whole is generally a little too happy with wishing death on each other. People can go to prison. They have drugs that stop magic. She doesn’t want to be the reason someone is dead, even if it is the Dread Daughter. The idea alone makes disgusted hysteria build in her chest. 

She doesn’t want to be like Ludwig Todenhöfer's Elementals—Reaper, Siren, Wraith, and Anemoi were monsters. They weren’t people, they don’t have names, they don’t have faces, the only pictures they have of them, they’re wearing masks or it’s blurred and unfocused, like their stilted images in a haunting. They were a set of sanguinary animals that Todenhöfer put into muzzles to hold back their gnashing teeth. She can’t be them. She can't be rabid like that. 

The remorse on Hitori’s face deepens the longer he stares at her. “I’m sorry. You’re still a child. You shouldn’t have to get dragged into our mess. But as I said, you won’t be alone. The Air Elemental has already agreed to help.” 

Isabella doesn’t really think she processed that. They already found Air. She’s not the first Elemental they approached but the second. 

That makes sense. Sure. Nobody has seen an Elemental since they vanished three years into the Lendarian War forty years ago, but NAMCU can solve that in a weekend? Isabella nods sarcastically, scraping her hair out of her face. “That’s convenient. Worldwide governments just happened to give you all their files so you could figure out who got killed and didn’t die?”

“No,” Hitori sounds amused at the idea. “Elementals are drawn to each other subconsciously. That tether I mentioned, it makes it impossible for you to be apart. All the Elementals are in the U.S., that we’re positive of. Air is, so is Water. And you. Given what we know, it stands to reason that Earth will be too.”

Oh, so long as it stands to reason.

“I don’t want to do this,” Isabella breathes, clutching at her forearm.

Hitori’s gaze ripples with darkness. For a moment, it’s like she’s staring at a different person, but why would she be? NAMCU only hires callous, violent people, not ones who gently try to coax you into killing with them. 

“I know,” the man says at length, “but we don’t have the luxury of letting this be your choice. You can come with us, or we’ll discuss other options.” 

Other options. 

That fucking troll bridge. 

A lifetime of ULTIM, imprisonment, or working for us. She wants to laugh. She really, really wants to laugh. She got lucky, NAMCU not showing up on her doorstep at sixteen, ready to force her to legally enslave herself. Magi are adults at sixteen, it’s one price in many they paid for what Lendaria did. 

“You can’t do this,” Aza snaps, getting up to his feet, “she’s sixteen. You’re going to get her killed. It’s not safe for her location to be documented in NAMCU’s files—” 

Hitori levels a stare at him. “I don’t recall asking your permission.” 

Aza bristles, but he’s panicking. Isabella can see it in the rigid tendons of his fingers. “Fine. Then I’m coming, too.” 

“If that would make you feel better,” Hitori says mildly, looking down at his phone when it chimes with a text message. His face sets, and he answers it before returning his attention to her. “Your friend isn’t doing well. The medics we brought are looking after him, I’m going to instruct the remainder of the LA field agents to do the same.”

The consideration, maybe even kindness, startles her. Hitori doesn’t know Sawyer. This isn’t the type of behavior that NAMCU is supposed to do. If the stories everyone tells about them are true, then they should have just left Sawyer alone to bleed out and patted themselves on the back for another execution order carried out. One less problem in the future. 

“An RA unit will be here for him shortly, I’d like to leave before then. If you have anything personal you want to bring, grab that now. Everything else will be provided for you, including clothing.”

Isabella’s throat tightens. “Now? You want to leave…now?” 

“Yes.” 

Hazel comes back into the apartment before Isabella manages to convince her feet they want to hold her weight. The girl’s expression is grim, and her eyes are blazing, but she still stalks Isabella down the hall, because apparently she’s gotten attached to doing that. 

It’s like being followed by one of the hermanas for bed checks. That same gnawing tension. 

Methodically, Isabella opens her door and for long seconds, she just stands there digging nails into the scar on her arm, overwhelmed. It’s not the first time she and Aza have had to drop everything and run, but it’s like she’s processing every fifth thought. 

Isabella grabs the purple backpack stuffed under her bed and hauls it onto the mattress. Her go-bag already has clothing packed, so Isabella shoves on her shoes with one hand, grabs her phone, and hunts down her measly art supplies. She starts looking for her sketchbook before the spiral notebook is shoved into her face, outstretched.

Hazel had it when they came into the apartment. She’d searched Isabella’s room. The violation comes back, and it’s so much worse. 

Isabella takes the notebook from her reluctantly. Hazel watches all of this from the doorway, silent. She’s looking at the drawings Isabella has plastered all over the wall above her bed. It's impossible to tell what she’s thinking.

“You’re good. That’s the Maho, isn’t it?” Hazel asks, gesturing up with her chin. 

The entire wall above Isabella’s bed is dedicated to sketches of Tokyo’s magic school. Isabella nods with reluctance. She’s always felt drawn to the tragedy for reasons she’s never been able to articulate. Maybe it’s the idea of a fellow Elemental causing a mess as monstrous as Mexico City. Not that Japan or anyone else has been able to confirm that the Earth Elemental was even there when the massacre happened eleven years ago, even if that was big why everyone lifted up to explain it. 

She gets up and follows Hazel back into the hall. She and Aza have been here for over a year, which is the longest they’ve stayed in one place since they came to the United States. It’s been cold and miserable, but still home. Better than the homeless shelters, at least. Is she ever going to see it again? 

Aza’s door, down the hall, is still open, flickering candlelight casting dancing shadows onto the wall and the bathroom door. They still don’t have power. They won’t until next week, the mandatory blackouts are marked in pen on the calendar pinned to the fridge. Two weeks on, two weeks off. She digs her nails over her jacket where the scar is. 

“Does it hurt?” Hazel asks. 

“What?” 

Hazel gestures at her own arm in reference, “Your arm. You keep grabbing it.”

Isabella immediately lets go of her forearm. “No,” she says. She tugs the sleeve down further. She doesn’t want Hazel to see. It’s splotchy with scars and bruises, looking more like some sort of vivid mutilation than a human limb. Ever since Isabella got off the morgue table, she’s been unable to stop herself from making the damage worse. 

Hazel frowns, but she doesn’t push, which is good. Isabella definitely would have shouted at her. Emotional restraint is more of an idea than reality right now. They go back into the living room, where Hitori is waiting alone, looking at his phone with dark eyes. 

Aza comes up behind her a minute later and she turns, relieved. He has one of his work duffels slung around one shoulder and a hard, angry expression to match. Hitori nods and moves toward the door. “Let’s go.” 

This is…

This is really happening.

Outside the apartment, the cold is biting, seeps in through her thin jacket easily, making her shiver. The snow drifts lazily from the heavens, a heavy white blanket casting an eerie glow around them. She misses Mexico City’s unbearable summers. 

The other NAMCU agents are still there, weapons in hand and raised as they exit the building, refusing to break their ready stance. The letters “EIS” are stamped to their shoulders, beneath a crude logo of an eye. With this many weapons…Dios, what were they expecting to happen? Did they think they’d have to take her by force? Is that what happened with the Air Elemental? 

She can read between the lines about we found them.  

There are three SUVs and one assault vehicle parked near the door. All are stamped with NAMCU’s logo: a circle divided into four sections with a crudely drawn element per piece. In the center, they combine to make a ring. They had to rebrand, after Lendaria. No one wants to associate with a dragon anymore. No one except Lendarian sympathizers, but fuck them. 

Only seven of the agents peel away from the cluster to follow them. 

Isabella looks back at the door to Sawyer’s apartment. It’s open, and she can see people milling in and out. Is he scared? What will happen when his aunt comes back and finds him like this? She wants to tell him she’s sorry again. Hannah is a conscripted Magi, she has to work for NAMCU when they call for her. 

“Eyes forward, Ms. Alvarez.” Hitori says, gentle but firm. 

With reluctance, she forces herself to look away from the agents and climb into the awaiting vehicle.

-

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