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“The elements don’t always want to obey. It’s easy to start something you can’t finish.” His free hand tightened into a fist. He’d lost her in that wave, when the water had been focused on nothing but destruction.
He’d almost drowned her.
“I don’t understand.”
He needed to stop beating around the bush. “We could kill people, Becca. Without meaning to. It’s not as simple as just controlling water or air or whatever. Gabriel can pull power from sunlight to burn someone in the middle of the day. Nick could get pissed and suffocate someone by accident. Michael could have a bad day and trees could rip out of the—”
He stopped. She was looking panicked again.
“Control comes with age,” he said, his voice more even. “Age and practice. I don’t have a lot of either, but I seem to be getting a crash course lately.” He took a breath and blew it out through his teeth. “I was eleven when my parents died, and they were the closest thing to a teacher that we had.”
“But Tyler and Seth—they’re like you,” she said.
He shook his head. “They’re not like us. They aren’t the risk. We are.”
“Like ... when I gave you water. When you were unconscious in the parking lot, and you came up fighting.”
At that, he did look over, meeting her gaze. “Yeah.” His voice was rough. “Or when we’re being shot at.”
She looked away, out the windshield, and now he knew she was putting two and two together.
Stupid. He shouldn’t have said anything.
“Am I in danger?” she said. “Right now?”
Chris shook his head. He didn’t hear fear in her voice, but he felt like a freak anyway.
Now she cleared her throat. “So with Michael—why did the others care that he was a ... a pure Elemental?”
“Because we’re not supposed to be allowed to live.”
She didn’t say anything, so he kept talking, just so he wouldn’t have to sit there with that sentence hanging out in the silence. “According to legend, pure Elementals used to control the others. Apparently it wasn’t pretty. There were battles for territory, uprisings, rebellions, you name it. If you look back through history for natural disasters, I can almost guarantee each one fell around the time of an Elemental war.”
“Like ... tsunamis and—”
“Think broader. How about the great Chicago fire?” He glanced over. “Or the Spanish Flu?”
“You can spread sickness?”
“Nick can control air. That includes things in it.”
“Holy crap.” She was staring out the windshield again.
“It was getting out of control. So about a hundred years ago, a bunch of the strongest got together and started a sort of law enforcement to take down pure Elementals. It’s not like the cops. We all stay the hell away from them.”
“Is that what the Guides are?”
He swung his head around. “Where’d you hear that?”
“From Tyler. He said he’d called them. And then Seth said it on the patio.”
“The Guides are people who were born on the fifth point. They can control all the elements. They’re rare—it’s like hitting the genetic lottery. Just like people are supposed to report a child who shows the potential to be a full Elemental, they’re also supposed to report a child who shows the potential to be a Fifth.”
Her eyes were wide again. “That’s a lot of dead kids.”
“They don’t kill the Fifths. They track them to see if they come into their full power, and then they train them.”
“To do what?”
