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  To Ash’s disappointment, Sig acted as though they had never met, and that made him wonder how much he was crossing the line by doing private investigator work for both him and Brian Clegg. He was obviously an elementalist, and Brian could probably tell even if Sig seemed blissfully unaware of the fact. Ash wondered whether it was possible to drain off the power of an unaware elementalist, vampire-style.

  The thought made him grow cold within.

  As Cooper pressed a cold beer in his hand, he leaned over to Ash and whispered. “What’s with Sig?” Of course, Cooper was one of those straight shooters with no sense for intrigue.

  “Come help me get something,” Ash said as he headed upstairs, to Hank’s guest room.

  He closed the door, shutting the rest of the world out, and turned to Cooper. “I think that double-agent idea might’ve been a bad one,” he said. “I mean, the work Sig is doing for us isn’t even real-estate related, not in the sense of ousting the homeless and the users out of abandoned buildings. The information he’d already sent back on illegal fracking waste dumping looks promising, though.” Ash paused. “I don’t want to do anything to endanger his position. I think he might be vulnerable to exploitation, especially if some of Clegg’s gang think they need more power.”

  “Sig certainly isn’t suffering from any kind of a drainage,” Cooper said. “I shook his hand. He’s as explosive as before, but those meditations he comes over for, I think they’ve been helping some.”

  Ash couldn’t help but notice a certain fondness in Cooper’s tone when he spoke of Sig. He thought he should be jealous, but in all honesty, his feelings toward their new P.I. were all warm and fuzzy and tangled into a protective mess.

  He was hardly the one to point fingers.

  Before Ash could open the door again, Cooper set his hand on his shoulder. “The other guy looked familiar. Shorter, built like a fire plug, with hard-to-miss platinum spikes on his head?”

  “Yeah, and no wonder,” Ash said with a sudden grin. “It’s hard to forget someone you fought in a life and death match. Remember the wind elementalist from last fall? When we contained the node?”

  “No way. That’s him?” Cooper bit his lip. “Honestly, I don’t remember much. I was too focused on you, and on our task while all that was going on. But dammit, I wish I was better at connecting names and faces!”

  “Connect through power signature, then. Make sure to shake his hand and memorize what he feels like.”

  ONCE THEY MADE their way downstairs, Cooper reintroduced himself to one David Rhea, another private investigator in Brian Clegg’s employ and a colleague of Sigmund Harte. When they shook hands, Cooper read the thinly-veiled windstorm of power within David Rhea, just about howling to get out. How out of control were some of these guys, really?

  “David, right? I’m Cooper,” Cooper said cordially as he handed their guest a fresh beer.

  David had winked. Winked. “Hard to forget you, Cooper. That was one hell of a fight.” He had said it without rancor in his voice, and with none of the allegations that Brian Clegg had made about his power being stolen.

  David’s power was, in all likelihood, as strong as ever.

  Once again, Cooper wracked his brains about the connection between the ley lines, the node, and individual elementalists who accessed them. How did that all work? If he used a node too much, could the flow of power become a two-way street? If so, an empty node that hungered could consume an elementalist who had worked with it in the past.

  He shuddered at the thought and retreated to the back of the room.

  “What?” Ash hummed by his ear.

  “Later,” Cooper said in a low, slightly bored voice. “I think we’ll have to check on some of your theories of things with my family.”

  “What, Cooper?”

  Cooper groaned at the insistent urgency in his lover’s voice. “I’m an architect, and earth-sense is a useful tool for building more secure structures. That’s my true vocation, and that’s what I cared about, you know?” He shuffled uncertainly and met Ash’s gaze with self-conscious hesitation. “When it comes to all those pesky theoretical whys and wherefores, though, and whether a node can turn vampiric, that’s totally your thing. I just want mentally check out and retreat into my latest building project.”

  Ash laughed, and Cooper felt himself relax. He knew Ash liked the theory. He relished the speculations with the others as much as he delighted in snagging a tidbit of new knowledge, of fresh understanding.

  The puzzle of energy-sucking nodes sat across the room, frowning at a slice of stale pizza. Ash crossed over, and Cooper followed. “Brian,” Ash said quietly.

  Slowly, Brian met his gaze.

  “Brian, I need to know more about this energy-stealing thing. Did this happen just to you, or to others as well?”

  Cooper didn’t like Brian Clegg’s expression as he shrugged. “Like you don’t know,” he snorted. “You think you can pump me for intel by playing stupid, go ahead. But I won’t tell you two anything you don’t already know.” He paused, then schooled his expression into a stoic mask. “I owe you my thanks, I suppose. Thank you for not letting me bleed to death.”

  It occurred to Cooper that the man truly seemed to see the world only through his own lens. “If you have to thank anyone, it’s Hank, actually,” Cooper said, nodding in the silent giant’s direction. “He was grounding you throughout, so you wouldn’t fry the hospital equipment.”

  Brian Clegg’s eyes widened.

  Ash nodded. “That’s right. He can do that. And he did it so we all didn’t get discovered. It wasn’t a personal favor, it was more an act of enlightened self-interest.”

  Brian Clegg didn’t say anything. He took a timid bite of the crust instead.

  “You want me to warm it up for you?” Cooper asked. “There’s a microwave.”

  A sullen head-shake preceded a hesitant admission. “I can’t eat dairy.”

  “Allergic?” Cooper said. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “Neither did I, till last year,” Brian said bitterly. “Shit just happened fast, I guess.”

  Hank stood up as though out of nowhere. For a man his size, he had an uncanny ability to disappear. “How about a turkey on rye with mayo and mustard?”

  “No mustard.” Brian’s eyes brightened into a fairly amazing green, and as he smiled for the first time in Cooper’s memory, he suddenly resembled a pleasant person. Maybe it was true that a way to a man’s heart was through food.

  When the turkey sandwich disappeared and not even a crumb was left on the standard paper plate of the sort Hank used when the horde invaded, the door opened, and a very pale Paul walked in, followed by a very mother-hennish looking Russ.

  As soon as Russ scanned the area, his eyes landed on Brian Clegg. “You! What are you doing here?”

  “Eating a turkey sandwich,” Brian Clegg said sullenly. Then he gave Paul a once-over and shook his head. “You look like shit. Didn’t anyone ever teach you the basics of transmutation?”

  Cooper watched the exchange with keen interest.

  “What’s transmutation?” Paul asked, all serious.

  “Geez, kid! They let you out of the house without even a basic understanding of who you are and how you work?” Brian Clegg sounded appalled more than judgmental, so Cooper decided not to react to the dig at his family’s training methods. They hadn’t done much for him either, after all.

  Paul fluttered his hands in a helpless gesture. “They kind of tried, but I kept stunning them since I was little. Only Mark here could take it, and that’s because we’re twins.”

  “Our folk are mostly water people,” Mark supplied. “Water and wind. Paul was one of those unusual surprises.”

  “Oh.” A cunning look crossed Brian Clegg’s face. “Maybe if I help train your little disaster maker here, you’ll help me figure out how to get my power back, okay? It’s not just me I’m concerned about. I have three people who’re being drained so bad, they can hardly keep awake.”
>
  A truce. Hadn’t they wished for a truce just weeks ago? They didn’t have to be best of friends, but there was much to be said for sharing resources, and for working together to create a reasonably harmonious community of elementalists.

  To Cooper’s relief, Ash turned to his cousin. “Paul?” he asked.

  “Would that be okay with you?” Paul asked right away, which told Cooper how desperately he had been working to get a grip on his powers.

  “I think we can work something out,” Ash said. When he looked around, his six group members watched him with wary eyes. He recognized their concern even before anyone said a word. He nodded at them. “Let’s put it to a vote!”

  CHAPTER 29 - Epilogue

  The Solstice Celebration took part over by the “high biodiversity” area, where the crater of the formerly exploded node still yawned from the ground like the deepest fire pit Russ had ever seen. He looked around, covertly taking in the mowed grounds around the crater and the carefully arranged logs and wooden seats covered in loomed blankets. Trays holding cups of wine and snacks marked the end of the day-long fast, and their group of seven mingled well with the horde of over twenty that came visiting from the distant north.

  Paul’s family was, to say the least, interesting.

  “Here, pass the torches, will you?” Paul nudged him as he secured a citronella tikki torch for their location and set it in the ground behind their nest blankets.

  Russ carried the armful around, trying to connect the names and the faces in the firelight as he dispensed his armload.

  It shouldn’t have surprised him that Nikko Anneveinen argued with Cooper, his son, about the stupidest things, and that he played a set of soothing drums.

  It shouldn’t have shocked him to see Uncle Owen strum the guitar as they all began to sing songs both familiar and strange.

  The fact that all of Paul’s family regarded him as some kind of a miracle worker, however, totally floored him. He’d saved Paul’s life. He held a talent which was new to the rest of them, and he had made it possible for Paul to survive in the city without wrecking it–or without exposing their existence to the formidable authorities.

  They trusted him, and they held him in high regard.

  And, no, he wasn’t crazy.

  Except, just maybe, crazy in love as he watched Paul show off, making little lightnings dance on the tips of his fingers to amuse the kids in the group. This was a time for celebration, for helping Cooper and Ash break in their new house with the laughter of cherished guests and the smell of festive foods, and for the ponderous discussions about the nature of ley lines, and nodes, and the way they do or do not connect to talented people who use them.

  Sig was the only one of Brian Clegg’s group who had accepted their invitation and showed up, and as much it was great to see him again, Russ shared Owen’s frustration that those whose power got somehow drained away didn’t come.

  They needed data, if they were to help. His absence was conspicuous especially because Brian Clegg had met him and Paul three times at the energetically-neutral Allegheny Cemetery, and taught them meditation and control techniques that were unique to bioelectric people. They had, in turn, passed those on to the rest of the group.

  “Maybe he’s embarrassed,” Grandma Olga had said. Her words were just an opinion, free of that ponderous pronouncement which generally heralded a serious premonition. Embarrassment was normal, human. Everyone relaxed at hearing such a mundane explanation.

  The truce still held.

  PAUL SWAYED TO the beat of his uncle’s drums as he joined the chorus of a bawdy Irish drinking ballad. He had missed all this as a youth – the gatherings, the festivities, all the merriment in the woods which his clan took for granted.

  Now that they all knew about Cooper having a serious earth talent, and about him not being out of control anymore and thus safe company, they had brought the party to them.

  He basked in the energies raised by them all together like that, singing, their power signatures like beacons in the darkness within the warded circle marked by the festive tikki torches. Even Cooper, who pulled out the old, lava-ruined katana that was now Jared, took obvious joy in unsheathing the sword and taking it around so that family members could hold Jared’s hilt, and talk to him.

  Paul didn’t know whether this was just bunk, or wishful thinking, but he supposed it couldn’t do any harm. After all, people in a coma were reputed to hear the voices of loved ones at times. Right now, the voices of Jared’s family might be the only connection he might have to the outside world, or to his own sanity.

  The dark-clad, spiky-haired figure of Sig faded into the darkness even though he was still inside the circle, as though he wasn’t keen on being seen. The puzzlement on his face reminded Paul how strange, now cultish, this would appear to the regular people who lived only a block or two over.

  A bunch of aging hippies, singing around a fire, and talking to a sword.

  Preposterous.

  Just then, the sword came to him. Cooper gave him an encouraging smile. “Wanna say hi?”

  Paul nodded. Then, carefully as though he might send an unplanned surge into the blade, he set his hand onto the hilt, right next to Cooper’s tightly curled fingers. “Hi, Jared. We miss you and we think of you. I’m less random now so you’d be proud of me. Oh! And I hit Cooper with a lightning, and he has a lightning scar.” He paused. “Never mind, you already know that, he was holding you at the time. Sorry about that.” His eyes met Cooper’s, and Cooper grinned. “But what goes around, comes around. I got hit by another electrical dude, and now I have a lightning scar too! Weird, huh?”

  He paused, pushing just a bit of his power into the sword, as though he was straining to make a connection. There was no guarantee that Jared was even there. This was all, after all, just Cooper’s vague feelings which he had trouble verbalizing.

  His hand tingled, and the echo of Jared’s laughter reverberated in his mind.

  Paul stared at Cooper. “He laughed. Jared laughed! Did you feel him laugh?”

  “Yeah,” Cooper whispered. “But don’t make a thing out of it or else the others will feel slighted.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment warred with excitement. He so wanted to share this with everyone – even with Russ. “I want you to meet my lover, Russ,” Paul told Jared, and let go.

  Russ introduced himself. Paul couldn’t tear his eyes away from Russ’s face, but he revealed nothing.

  After Cooper moved on, Russ pulled Paul into a hug and said, “Come sit with me.”

  They found their little nest. The warded circle had just been dismissed, and the smoke of wood fire mingled with pot and pipe tobacco. Snippets of music and the rise and fall of conversation heralded a time when kids and tired people would retire into the tents scattered around the house. Paul sighed, knowing the new lawn would be all torn up, but if it was okay with Cooper and Ash, well... family came first.

  “Paul,” Russ said intently. “Please look at me.”

  Paul did.

  “You look tired. Are you ready to turn in?”

  “Hungry,” Paul admitted with a slow grin. “It’s the munchies.” He grabbed a fresh-baked cinnamon cookie which one of the aunts brought out of the main house. “You want some?”

  “Sure.” Russ smiled, bit off a corner of Paul’s cookie, and after he ate it, he fished in the chest pocket of his long-sleeve linen shirt. “I got us something.” He pulled out an envelope. “I, uh... I’d like us to get rings. Commitment rings, since we’re still kind of new together, and I don’t want any pressure. I figure if you want to get married, you’ll let me know.”

  Paul’s chest filled with sudden warmth, and so did his eyes. “You got us rings?”

  Russ shook his head. “Um, no. And here’s why – rings are horribly dangerous in my line of work, and metal on your hands wouldn’t go well with your talent. Just think of the burns!”

  Paul nodded. It was enough to have a fractal-pattern lightning scar stretch across hi
s back, from his left hand to his right.

  “So I got us these leather necklaces,” Russ said. “It’s not much, but I talked to Uncle Owen, and he got me thinking.” He pulled out two leather thong necklaces with a large, amber bead woven into the braiding. “The first electricity people knew were by rubbing amber on fur and creating static.”

  “Really?” Paul thought he might pass out from holding his breath.

  Russ nodded. “So this is for us. We will have good days and bad days, and when we have a bad day, remember that we are connected, and we’ll work it out. We can face anything, as long as we face it together.” The hitch in Russ’ voice told Paul how much this meant to him.

  “I would be honored to wear your necklace,” Paul whispered, and bent his head.

  Quickly, Russ fastened its carved bone toggle into the leather loop. “Now you,” he said. “I’d be honored to be your partner in all things.”

  Somewhat clumsily, because he was not familiar with the unique fastenings, Paul affixed the necklace around Russ’ long, slender neck.

  When they kissed, the Solstice fire in the pit flared six feet high for no particular reason.

  “Thank you for doing this privately,” Paul whispered. “My family can make such a fuss!”

  He sneaked a look around, only to see smiling people looking away in a distinctly conspicuous, amateurish way.

  His family was lousy at keeping secrets.

  THE END

  Thank you for reading LIKE A SURGE! I hope you enjoyed it, and I thank you for being enthusiastic fans! Those of you who sent fan mail regarding the previous volumes in the series, thank you for your kind words. You should have already received a reply.

  Please consider leaving a review on an e-book site of your choice.

  For those of you new to the series, this book was meant to read well as a stand-alone as well as a part of the series. If you’re curious to find out more about the perilous lives of Pittsburgh elementalists, the series contain short stories as well. Most are available on audio and in print: