Promises to Keep - By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Page 0,65

the new world painted this day would be better than the one before, or even the one that would have resulted had they not interfered with Shantel’s plans. He heard the thought, pondered, and then said, “I need a nap.”

Brina nodded. Others could clean up the mess left behind … whatever was left behind. They had done their job.

CHAPTER 27

JAY COULD NOT rest until he had made several phone calls ensuring that those he loved were still alive. Some were in critical condition, but if there was a spark of life left within them, he trusted the elementals to save them.

For their own purposes, perhaps, but the elementals would save them nonetheless.

Next, he decided to sleep for a week. Unfortunately, the rest of the world insisted on getting in the way of this triumphant hero’s nap—including Brina, who he had thought would be on his side.

She shook him and demanded he stand up because she wanted a model right now. He had no idea where she had found the materials. When he looked up with every intention of telling her to come back in another seven days, he had the irresistible desire to kiss her instead. So he did. And then he modeled.

Brina painted in a new way. She used her brushes and her oils—with windows open despite the frigid winter air—but occasionally she reached for the canvas and caressed it, sliding fingers over wet or dry paint. The image would shift, lines and tones responding to the pictures in her head in a way that normal paint could not.

Strangely, she was neither disturbed by this development nor delighted. She merely considered it a new tool, one she was happy to get to know, but she never questioned it. Jay would say that she took it for granted, but he might as well have said that she took everything for granted.

For Brina, each moment was new, as it is, and perfect.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one asking for his time. Some of the people who insisted on bothering him brought good things, like food. Others wanted things from him.

Jay, what’s going on? Jay, our magic is doing odd things. Jay, so-and-so has recovered from the flu but now keeps shapeshifting into a chicken.

Okay, he hadn’t heard the bit about the chicken specifically, but there had been reports of unexpected shapeshifting, especially among those who had been in the circle when the elementals had been summoned. Powers that people had long controlled were gone, but others spontaneously manifested. Some of those new powers were gifts. Some were darker, ranging from empathy like Jay’s—but without a lifetime to learn how to use it or control it—to power over life and death, healing’s inverse.

Individuals who before had only needed to eat as humans did found themselves needing to feed, while others who had fed on blood or power for centuries now had entirely different hungers.

The world had changed. Jay still didn’t know how many of Midnight’s trainers and traders had survived. Most of the vampires he knew had no interest in updating him, and having just barely saved the world from his last series of best intentions, Jay believed that it might be best to let this sleeping dog lie. For now.

He had other priorities.

Jay stood next to Jeremy as the groom waited, struggling not to fidget or wipe his sweaty palms on his tuxedo pants. Something to do with saving the world, or at least Caryn’s life, or maybe just the super-flu leaving much of the original wedding party feeling under the weather, had caused them to promote Jay from usher to groomsman.

The human looked good—though, these days, human might not have been the most accurate word. Jeremy had been born human, but he had also been in the circle when the Shantel elemental had been summoned. No one knew quite what had touched the doctor-in-training, but Jay knew Jeremy’s eyes had a phosphorescence visible when the room was dark, and he tended not to notice anymore when no lights were on. So far, that was the extent of his manifested power; maybe that was all there would be.

Whatever he was, Jeremy could still sweat. He looked to Jay anxiously. He had all the faith in the world that Caryn would appear and walk down that aisle … but what if she didn’t? What if she had changed her mind? What if she was …

The music rose. Caryn had chosen “Colors of the Wind” as her wedding march.

It was beautiful; the bride