V

  The world tore asunder to a deafening orchestra of gales foreign to the skies above Pennsylvania. From the low, mournful howls of the Mojave to the humming of Saharan dunes and the relentless fury of the North Sea, a thousand winds sang together to presage the coming of glory of their champion. Hark! They said, Hark and bear witness! She comes!

  Marina wobbled her way through the hole in reality at a jogging pace, her shoulders slumped with exhaustion. Adding insult to injury, the sun was past its zenith – her jaunt through the Elemental Air had taken her longer than flying commercial, longer even than buying a ticket, getting to the airport, and waiting for a flight.

  “You get free first-class seats, Marina. Please, girl,” she said, wanting to scream.

  It had been a confident, driven Marina Serova who’d left Los Angeles behind. She may have been a mediocre acting talent in LA – yet another flying blonde – but Hollywood was always meant to be a side thing. Before she’d ever been Lift-Off, she’d been a Bridge, a living manifestation of Storm and Thunder. That was her calling, not acting, and those were the skills that mattered to her. She'd done the bare minimum in the way of networking and acting lessons, of course, but she could never commit to training for the camera like she could for firefighting. Being able to lift a van full of people out of the way of a raging wildfire would always rate higher than learning to toss her hair just the right way.

  And yet, she'd gotten lost. It was humiliating. Before she'd settled down in Los Angeles, Marina had made a hobby of making trips to cities across North America just for the sake of traveling. At her height of navigating extradimensional shortcuts, there were days she would start in a Montreal café, take in a movie with friends in New York, and end at a Miami nightclub. The Elemental Plane was a shifting, chaotic place, and the Domain of Air more so than most, but she had prided herself on her ability to shift and change to match its ephemeral currents. That was what it meant to be a Bridge. It was more than just wind manipulation; it was an esoteric connection to something greater than human comprehension. A dog or a snake could taste a breeze and know from where it had come and what scents it carried; Marina could tell you where it was going, what its thoughts were, and to which spirits it owed debts. To be a Bridge was to carry a sliver of your unique dimension within you. Marina was the Elemental Air, and it should have been more a home to her than Earth.

  Four hours into searching the Cloud Sea for the correct eastward current, the realization that her skills had atrophied had come on heavy and was followed by a deep sense of personal shame. It made sense. What did she think would happen? You couldn't take a half-decade break from something and expect to be as good as you were, but still, it hurt, especially so with the fate of Salem Cooper hanging over her head. One week late for a rescue mission was not the time to find out how unprepared you were. And the hits hadn't stopped coming.

  In order to get her bearings, she cast away the remainder of her pride and asked for directions, which was yet another mistake. Marina had filled her balance sheet with quite a few owed favors over the years. It wasn't usually an issue if you were in and out of the Elemental Plane regularly – your creditors felt no urgency when they knew they could easily track you down, but she'd only been sparingly of late. There had been neither need nor desire. Airlines offered different benefits to LSRs depending on how useful they were in an emergency, and Marina was in the highest tier. They gave her free seats, free drinks, special lounge access, etc. – basically anything and everything short of actually paying her to fly with them. There were other reasons to visit the Elemental Air, of course, but in general, she'd been too burned out from Hollywood networking to do the same with fickle spirits and Wind Gods on her off days.

  Word of her arrival made its way to an Ifrit she owed for the fire-resistant hair wax she used liberally during her missions. The djinn, in turn, waylaid her on the route out of the Cloud Sea, demanding that she act as an unaffiliated mediator for two of his friends/hated rivals who were locked in a heated argument over the possession of two human souls and a fancy magic dagger. As a Bridge, she was considered nobility of sorts, and along with the respect and adoration of elementals, came certain expectations. There was no way to refuse the request. She'd tried to be quick, not particularly concerned with the fate of two fire elementalists' souls – the maddest of an already insane group of occultists – but the Ifrits weren't having it. Their argument had been going on for years, and if she was to arbitrate, then she would hear both sides in detail or they would freak the fuck out.

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  It had gone on and on and on, only coming to a halt after she threatened to summon a hurricane wind, fling them to the border of Water and Air, and find a nice glacier to trap them in for a few centuries if they did not shut up and let her speak. Unfortunately, by then, the hours-long public arbitration had drawn a crowd of curious spectators, including a Sylph Marina had persuaded to clear the rain at her sister's wedding for a minor favor. Said Sylph delightedly requested her presence at a party she was throwing, eager to make waves by having a visibly busy and annoyed Bridge take time out of her schedule for her.

  In short, it had been a mess and one firmly of her own making. If nothing else, today, or however long she'd been at this by now, was a wake-up call. She didn't know where she was headed after she settled this Salem Cooper business, but it sure as hell wasn't going to be Los Angeles, not for a few years at the very least. Every humiliation she'd suffered could be directly attributed to LA and its promises of luxury and recognition – the siren call of that gilded cage would not ensnare her again.

  Marina let out a long, calming breath; the certainty in that statement was like a balm for her overstressed soul. She felt lighter, freer.

  Now, just where the hell was she?

  The rounded slopes of the Appalachians stretched on in either direction beneath her, a carpet of brown and green for as far as her eyes could see, the forests just beginning to rise from their winter slumber. A hundred million or more years ago, these mountains had stood like giants, but to her eyes, more accustomed to the sharp, towering peaks of the Rockies, they were barely more than hills. It was empowering in a way – wind had been one of the forces to wear them away – and inspiring as well. Perhaps the next time Marina went exploring the Elemental Air, she’d go looking for a spirit who could paint for her what they’d looked like oh so long ago.

  Marina pulled out her phone and descended into cell tower range. She had five percent battery and no service, but that was fine. All she needed was a glimpse of her location in relation to her destination on a map, and she would be able to follow the landscape from there.

  Five percent with no service was followed by four, then three, and finally two percent with no service, at which point she turned her phone off, giving it up as a lost cause. Instead, she switched tacks, ascending and heading east to look for signs of civilization. Marina would find herself somewhere with coffee and a croissant, and if she was lucky, somewhere quiet she could charge her phone and close her eyes for a cat nap.

  The mountains looked like green waves cresting in slow motion over the first valley town she found, forever frozen in time before the devastating moment in which they swept its meager buildings away. It wasn't until she was a hundred feet or so above the ground that she realized many of the creeks she'd seen peeking out between the canopy were, in fact, roads that had been swallowed by nature. Broken and segmented chunks of asphalt, not water, had reflected the afternoon light back at her.

  The town, connected only by abandoned roads, was likewise empty, its buildings giving off the distinct odor of mildew and rot as she approached the main street. Marina landed at a crossroads and stared helplessly around her, soaking in the eerie silence. It was as though even the birds and insects were in quiet mourning here, only the banging of swaying branches against windows cutting through the ambient noise. About a quarter of the buildings had been boarded up, but the rest were untouched, implying either that those who left last had no dreams of returning or that they'd been in a hurry.

  The latter theory was aided by the ominous fact that the locals had left what looked to be still serviceable cars behind, some with tires that had yet to sag flat. God, that was an abandoned 1999 Mayweather Palanquin – her sister had the same model in blue. This town had died recently. That seemed incongruous with the rot and advanced state of disrepair that afflicted many of the buildings. It felt, not impossible, but unlikely and maybe…unnatural.

  She knew she should keep moving and that there was nothing here for her, but morbid curiosity pushed her to approach the car, hoping to find what, she couldn't say, a clue, perhaps, as to what might have happened here. The hairs on her neck rose as she neared, and she found herself rubbing at her suddenly teary eyes, stinging from weariness or unfamiliar allergens. Strange, with her vision hazy, the green of the Palanquin looked almost exactly like the blue of her sister's. Her reflection in the dust-caked windows looked rough, older and greyer in pallor, wrinkled and haggard, thinning hair hanging loosely around a strangle-bruised neck, a black drop of coagulated blood dripping from her nose, clothes stained brown with—

  From behind her came a rhythmic rattling from a window, a tap, tap, tapping against a pane of part-broken glass. Something wanted her attention, for her to turn and look.

  Marina paused mid-step, her mouth going dry. The sounds had not been sounds in the traditional sense. She didn't know how they'd appeared in her head, but she could say with one hundred percent certainty that they were not vibrations carried by air. As if sensing her hesitation, muffled and ragged wheezing joined the tapping, and when that too failed to turn her gaze, there was a distant, high-pitched whimper.

  She closed her weary eyes, rejecting any sense that was not rooted in her powers. The spell was broken.

  Nope.

  She shot straight into the air and didn’t dare to glance back for a second, the backblast shattering every window on the street in her wake.

  Leave the ghost towns for the ghosts, Marina.