“Maybe you should have been a witch,” Shelly quickly interjected.

“We both know witches and warlocks are trained; they’re not born,” I briskly said, my gaze not wavering from the naturi that seemed to be cringing near Danaus’s feet. “No, you’ve got something else in mind.”

“What you’re describing is very similar…to how…light clan members manipulate fire,” Cynnia said haltingly.

I was out of the water in a flash, coming up the hill, but was immediately halted by Danaus’s long knife. He had lurched forward into a squat, hovering over Cynnia as he held the knife to my neck, holding me at bay. I had simply reacted to the horrid suggestion, no real thought crossing my brain. I wasn’t naturi. There was no part of me that held a strain of naturi.

“Mira?” Danaus inquired, his steady voice helping to draw back the veil of rage at the very suggestion. I had no doubt that he would like for it to be true. It would leave me with my own dark secret, much like my dear Danaus and the secret of his own powers.

“It’s impossible.”

“A lot of things about you are impossible,” he said in a low voice. “Why is this?”

Gritting my teeth, I stepped backward down the hill until I was in the water again, letting the cool feeling soothe my anger and ease the tension that hummed through my body. With a wave of both my hands, the five fireballs reappeared in the air. However, this time they were somewhat larger and crackled a little louder, as if matching my lingering anger.

“If I possessed any naturi blood within my system, it would have killed the nightwalkers that made me,” I explained, starting to get my emotions back under control as I logically thought about it. “Naturi blood is poisonous, even in its most diluted form. Besides, you’re saying that it’s possible for a naturi and a human to have a child together, which is not only highly unlikely, it’s impossible. The closest thing to a naturi half-breed is a shapeshifter, right?”

“That’s true,” Cynnia softly admitted, her eyes dropping down to the grass at her feet. “The whole thing is nigh impossible, but you have to admit that the similarity is striking.”

“Striking,” I growled, kicking a rock out of my way. “But impossible. I knew my parents. They were both human.”

“Then it’s just some kind of genetic mutation,” Shelly suggested, clearly trying to smooth over the tension.

I bit my lip, holding in another snide remark. She was trying to be nice, but making it sound like I was a freak of nature wasn’t much of an improvement. “I’m not naturi. Making me into a nightwalker would have killed my creators.” Sadira, Jabari, and Tabor would have been instantly poisoned by my blood, resulting in their deaths. I would never have been turned into a nightwalker.

Shoving both of my hands into my hair, I pushed it out of my eyes as I turned to look at my companions again. “But we’re getting off topic. My heritage has nothing to do with what I want tonight. Teach me how to use earth magic. Teach me how to control the energy that comes up out of the earth.”

“Can you feel the earth’s energy now?” Cynnia asked, starting to scoot back down to the bank again now that I was acting like a rational creature again.

“No.”

“Take off your shoes,” she instructed.

With a huff, I waded to the bank and sat down in the soft earth, ignoring that fact that I was getting mud on the seat of my leather pants. Barefoot, I flinched at the coldness of the water as I returned to the stream. I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses. I could feel Danaus and Shelly near me. I could sense other humans miles away and nightwalkers clustered together to the east, back in my domain. But there was no feeling of energy similar to what I had felt on Crete. The only flow beneath my feet was the cold water in the stream.

“I still don’t feel anything,” I sighed, letting my eyes fall shut as I concentrated harder, but there was only nothingness where there should have been energy.

“What if I fed you some earth energy?” Shelly said, causing my eyes to snap open.

“How?”

She rose to her feet and snapped her fingers, creating a small ball of fire just above her fingertips. She was going to throw the fire at me and I would catch it. It was similar to what had happened to me in London with the earth witch that had attacked me. At that time, I had sensed a flow of energy, but couldn’t identify it or understand it.

“Bigger.”

With a wave of her hand, the ball of fire grew until it was the size of a basketball. I nodded and she flung the fire at me. Reaching out my right hand, I caught it then let it flow down my body like a snake until the fire hit the water and was extinguished. For a moment the connection of the fire and water caused a dull roar in my head. I could hear the flow of power beneath the surface of the earth. It tingled through my toes for a second and then completely vanished. It lasted for only a second, but I felt it.

“There! I felt it! It was faint, but I felt something,” I cried. Stepping out of the water to the opposite bank, I shouted, “Do it again!”

Shelly repeated the spell and I allowed the fire to wash down my frame until it was absorbed by the earth. The feeling was stronger this time, but it was still only a feeling. I didn’t feel a part of it in any way as I had in Crete. It was as if the earth was indifferent to my existence.

“I can feel it, but I can’t tap into the power itself. It just flows right past me.”

“Beneath your feet?” Cynnia asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t feel it in the air?” Shelly inquired, crinkling her nose as she stared at me.

“No.”

“Mira, earth magic users draw their power from the air. Only the oldest and most skilled can actually draw it from deep within the earth, where it is the strongest and hardest to manipulate,” she explained.

“Also, only naturi have been known to consistently draw their power directly from the flows in the earth,” Cynnia added. “The fact that you can feel it means you’re sensitive to only the strongest points of power. The odds of you being able to learn how to use earth magic is extremely slim, if not impossible. Unless you’re at a swell, you won’t be able to sense the magic to use it.”

With my teeth clenched in frustration, I flopped down on the opposite bank and looked over at my companions. Yes, the similarities between my abilities and the naturi light clan were striking, but that’s all it was. I wasn’t a naturi, didn’t have any ties to the naturi, thus I didn’t have any ties to nature. For some reason, the earth could use me as a weapon of destruction, but I couldn’t use it.

“Then teach me a new spell,” I said in a low, weary voice.

“But you can’t use earth magic,” Shelly countered, her gaze dancing from me to Cynnia.

“I saw a warlock do a protection spell. It created a physical barrier between him and his assailant. Can you teach me that? If I can learn to do it using blood magic, maybe I can channel the earth magic into it when I’m in Peru.”

Again Shelly looked over at Cynnia, who shrugged one shoulder. Both women looked skeptical but seemed willing to try.

And try they did for more than four hours. We worked through the night until I was shaking with exhaustion. I had used up much of my soul energy to create this magical barrier that was strong enough by the end to stop Danaus’s blade. Its strength was never consistent, but it was a start. I suspected that it might be easier to manipulate when I had an excess of energy flowing through my frame.

By the end of the evening, I threw the car keys at Danaus and settled into the passenger seat, trying to ignore the mud that was being smeared across the leather seats. But in truth I was too exhausted to care. Danaus drove us back toward my domain, back to the protection of my city and away from the dark, indifferent woods.