[image error]The Seventh Element releases tomorrow, yay!! Stay tuned for a big paperback giveaway to celebrate tomorrow’s release! Until then, here are some early reviews:

“Ms. Lario’s writing is along the lines of Kim Harrison and Laurell Hamilton. There is magic all around and danger sprinkled in throughout, with a strong willed kick-a$$ character. I highly recommend this book.” ~ Leslie S, Goodreads Reviewer

“Loved the book! Definitely a page turner and a quick read. I am so glad it is a series and can’t wait for the next one to come out!” ~ Liza K, ARC Reviewer

Today I’m posting the third chapter in the series. If you missed them, the first chapter is HERE, and the second chapter is HERE!

The Seventh Element is currently available for a special preorder price of only 99 cents!

Available at: Amazon / Kobo / Barnes & Noble / Amazon UK / iBooks

MY MORNING class had already ended, and since I was sure Deme would be wondering why I never turned up, I trudged through campus to track him down. The lawn was packed with students now, people milling in and out of the surrounding brick and stone buildings. Every now and again I’d see someone move their hands like Luc and the guy in black had earlier. It made me wonder what was going on, but whenever I looked closer, there was nothing to see. It was weird, but that bit of strangeness was the least of my concerns right now. I couldn’t stop thinking about the hallucinations I’d had.

They seemed so real.  Even now my brain replayed them over and over again, the image of the man in black dissipating into smoke so vivid in my mind. I remembered the feeling of the white, hot light shooting inside my abdomen.

Why did it seem like it had really happened?

Even though the sun was shining down onto the green lawn that served as the center of campus, highlighting the varying shades of orange and red in the surrounding trees, the biting breeze made me snuggle deeper into my coat. I tried not to think about Luc’s hands being on it just a short time ago.

Luc. Even the name sounded sexy … and so out of my league.

Oh, I was no slouch in the looks department; any old mirror could tell me that. Dark tan skin and turquoise eyes made for a striking combination, as many people I’d met throughout my life had told me. And my hair, which was generally stick-straight—though not so much now thanks to the unfortunate incident this morning—was one of my best features.

My appearance came from my mother. She died in a house fire when I was just a baby. Dad was a doctor, and it had been one of those rare days when he was actually off. He’d taken me to the park to give my mom a rest, and by the time we’d gotten back, it was already too late. All the pictures of her had gone up in flames, along with everything else that day. I had nothing tangible to remember her by and no family either, since she’d been orphaned when she came over to the States. All I knew was she was Hawaiian, hence the tan skin and dark hair. The eyes must come from my father’s side, although his are a more washed-out shade of blue.

So no, it wasn’t the way I looked that put Luc out of my league. It was the fact that I was so damned awkward when it came to guys. Always had been. And he seemed like the type who appreciated a confident woman.

That wasn’t me, not even on my best day.

About twenty feet from the building housing the science department, I heard my name being called.

“Jewel. Yo!”

I stopped mid-stride and turned toward the sound of Deme’s voice. He was speed walking toward me, his face a mixture of concern and annoyance.

“What the hell,” he said the moment he was close enough to speak without shouting. “How could you blow off class? You know now Professor Montgomery’s gonna have it in for you next time he sees you. That man is way too crazy about biology for his own good.” He shuddered. “For anyone’s good, really—”

“Deme.” I grabbed his arm, cutting him off in midsentence because man, could he go on when he was in a mood. “Something happened.”

He knew me better than anyone, and he could tell by my tone that this was serious. “What? What happened?”

“Um …” I glanced around. “You remember the guy from art history? The cute one?”

We were also in that class together, and there were no secrets between us … at least not on my side. Not when Deme could read me like a book.

A strange expression crossed Deme’s face. “I told you, I heard that kid gets around. He’s no good for you.”

“No, it’s not anything like that.” When Deme raised one thick eyebrow in question, I continued in a hushed tone. “I kind of got in the middle of a fight he was having, and I got knocked out.”

Deme’s eyes grew wide. “What?”

He snatched my hand and dragged me over to a nearby stone bench. Given the frosty temperature, there was no one else around as he pulled me down on the seat.

“Argh!” I shivered as the icy cold of the stone froze my ass through my jeans.  “It’s cold.”

He shook me. “Focus. Now tell me, what happened?”

As I relayed the morning’s events to him, his expression went from amazed to dismayed. But when I told him about the hallucinations, about how I’d imagined being injected with a mysterious substance, his concern for me was palpable. And when I mentioned imagining a white light heating my belly, his face took on an impassive expression.

God, I hated that poker face. It felt like I saw it all too often lately. Considering I wore all my emotions openly, it was really starting to piss me off.

“That’s crazy, chica,” he said bluntly.

“I know.” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyelids, trying to alleviate the sudden pressure building there. “I know, but … Deme, it seemed so real.”

“It wasn’t.” He pulled my hands off my face. “You sure you don’t have a concussion?”

“You sound just like him,” I said with a giggle. “I mean Luc, the Art History Guy.”

His expression told me he wasn’t at all amused by the comparison.

Sobering, I lifted my hands to my head and felt around. “To be honest, it doesn’t hurt anywhere. If I hadn’t been knocked out, I would have a hard time believing I’d been hit at all.”

“You must be Superwoman,” he said dryly.

I shot him a dirty look. “Smartass.”

“Seriously Jewel, just be thankful you didn’t get hurt. And next time keep an eye out for things going on around you. I’ve never met someone so lost in their own world.”

When I merely stuck my tongue out at him, Deme rose and held out his hand. “Come on, woman. Let’s get out of the cold. My ass is freezing.”

Night had fallen by the time I made it back to my dormitory. After hitting my other two classes, I’d met with Deme again so he could catch me up on what I missed in biology. As I’d feared, it took hours to feel like I got a grasp of what Professor Montgomery had gone over that morning. Inwardly I cursed Deme for talking me into taking that class with him. Surely there had to be easier professors.

After a quick shower in the shared bathroom on my floor, I threw on a towel and brushed my teeth, then headed back to my room to change into my pajamas. For some reason I was exhausted, like I’d run a marathon or something. More than that, throughout the day, I felt like I caught the occasional flash of something strange in the corner of my vision. But every time I turned to look, it was gone.

“Maybe I should have gone to the infirmary,” I murmured as I stepped into my flannel bottoms. I grabbed my t-shirt and slid it over my head. When the fabric grazed my neck, I recalled the feel of being pinched with something.

God, it had felt so real.

On impulse, I headed to the mirror above my short, wide dresser. As I pulled back my hair to look at the spot on my neck, I almost half expected to see a needle prick. But there was nothing. The skin there was smooth as ever.

“Just a hallucination, Jewel.”

Even if it did seem like it truly happened.

There was no mistaking how real the dark circles under my eyes were, though. I stifled a yawn. Jeez, I hadn’t felt this tired since Senior Grad Night, when everyone in my class had gone to a late-night theme park and stayed up until after sunrise.

I stumbled over to turn off the light switch, then barely made it to my bed before deep exhaustion claimed me.

The sky was dark, and I floated on a cloud. Lightning flashed all around me, illuminating my figure in the darkness. I moved my fingers, and a trippy ribbon of light trailed after them.

I’m dreaming.

The realization came swiftly. What was more, I’d had this dream before. Countless times. Only I’d forgotten until now.

I opened my hand, and a small glowing ball of light appeared in the center of my palm. It didn’t surprise me. Somehow, I knew it would happen. Before my eyes, the ball grew bigger, until it was about the size of a basketball, lighting up the sky around me. Dark shadows danced just outside the perimeter of my light. I could see them, though logic dictated they should be invisible. The fingers of my other hand wiggled, and the shadows danced in time with them. I laughed at the sight, feeling pure joy over what I could do.

But then the shadows began to distort, growing wider, bigger. More frightening. I waved my fingers, trying to get them to leave, but it only made their movements more frenzied. The shadows formed into monstrous figures with jagged teeth, snarling and writhing in the air.

“No,” I whispered.

At once the shadows lunged through the air, heading straight for me. I screamed and raised my hands to shield my face. Then I stumbled backward, directly off the cloud. Air buffeted my body as I fell. The ground raced up to meet me …

I gasped and shot up in the bed, the remnants of my dream swirling around my head. What the hell?

The images were vivid in my mind, along with something deeper. Some niggling remembrance of things forgotten. It hovered just beneath the surface, out of my current realm of comprehension. My hands trembled as I lifted them toward my face. I stopped in mid-motion.

“What. The. Hell?”

There it was. Faint, but unmistakable.

My skin was glowing!

Panic clawed at me as I wrangled out of my twisted bed covers and staggered over to the mirror. My own face looked back at me. Black hair hanging straight over my shoulders, turquoise eyes shining with anxiety. The dark circles beneath them had faded to a light purple. Everything was the same as it ever was.

Everything save one …

Just beneath the surface of my skin, an unnatural radiance highlighted the sparkly shimmer in my eyes.

“What is happening?” My whisper cut through the air, reverberating throughout the quiet room.

I pressed my fingertips to my temples, willing my heart to stop its frantic racing. To my utter shock, as my heartbeat calmed, the glow began to fade until it was completely gone.

Minutes passed as I stared at my image in the mirror. Once again, I looked utterly normal. But I couldn’t blame the glow on hallucinations this time. Not when the tightness in my gut told me something was off.

Between yesterday and today, something had changed. Something inside me. I knew it as surely as I knew anything. The glow was only the outer manifestation of what had already been done.

On shaky legs, I wobbled over to the window and opened the blinds. The green lawn in the center of campus lay before me. It looked almost the same, but I was seeing it through new eyes, as if a veil had been removed from my vision.

Familiar faces strode here and there, headed to class or to other parts of campus, but even though I’d seen them before, passed by them countless times, they were different now. One guy absently juggled a tiny ball of flame between his ungloved hands as he ambled toward the social studies building. Another was trailed by a child-sized tornado that seemed to follow him like a pet chasing after its owner. A girl I was pretty sure sat next to me in my woman’s studies class partially reclined on the circular stone casing of the water fountain, and as she absently wriggled her fingers toward the water, it magnetized toward her and absorbed into her skin.

I rubbed my eyes, as if that would cure me of what I was seeing, but the vision remained.

“Holy fuck balls.” There was no denying it, no chalking it up to some non-existent concussion. There was magic here.

I didn’t know exactly what was happening or why, but I knew what I saw was real. I knew it deep in my heart. Just as I instinctively knew there was one person who could give me the answers I sought.

After frantically digging out a pair of jeans and a sweater, I grabbed my coat and backpack and left my room. I did have some vanity left, because I stopped in the bathroom long enough to brush my teeth before hightailing it out of the dormitory.

Normally this was where I would go find Deme in his dorm room, if he hadn’t first come to collect me. But my feet didn’t turn in that direction. Instead, I headed straight for the Fellowship Hall, my determined gaze set on where I was going.

It was hard not to get distracted when I now saw the world through new eyes. Every person on the lawn seemed to have some sort of supernatural quirk. A girl walking in front of me disappeared into thin air before reappearing again a moment later. When a stiff breeze shot through the lawn, some guy opened his mouth wide and swallowed the thing whole before emitting a loud burp.

O-kaaay.

I wasn’t even going to touch that one right now.

A loud thump settled in my heart as I climbed the two steps to the Fellowship Hall. I burst through the door, racing down the hallway to the common room. He would be there. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did.

The double doors into the common room were closed, but I could hear the racking of balls behind them, along with some laughter. Without thinking about it, I quietly opened one of the doors and peeked inside.

Just as I’d intuitively known, Luc was standing there at the pool table with a pool cue in his hand. Across from him stood another guy I didn’t recognize. He had bronze skin that hinted at some sort of Middle Eastern heritage and deep brown eyes. His dark brown hair was cut into a short, sleek do, and he was clean shaven, emphasizing the angular lines of his jaw. He wore a black sweater and black jeans, which only served to highlight the deep tan of his skin.

Neither of them noticed me enter and, despite my panic, I found myself pausing at the threshold. I couldn’t help it. The two of them together were striking. One darker, the other lighter, and both breathtakingly gorgeous. Latent hormones went zigzagging through my body.

Where do they make these guys?

Living in the modeling hub of the world, I’d grown accustomed to seeing good-looking people on the streets, but these guys took it to another level entirely.

For one crazy, lust-induced moment, I forgot all about the things I’d just seen. But then the darker skinned guy said something I couldn’t hear, and Luc laughed. He absently lifted one hand off the pool cue and a streak of lightning shot from his fingers, zapping the second guy in the stomach.

“Ow.” The other guy laughed as he reeled a few inches backward. He rubbed his abdomen, and then all seemed to be forgotten as he lifted his pool cue and lined up for a shot.

“Seriously?” I screeched, unable to help myself.

Both men jumped at the sound of my voice, hurling their shocked gazes in my direction.

“Ow?” I waved my hand toward the second guy. “He zaps you with lightning and that’s all you have to say?”

The guy’s brows shot up toward his forehead, and he turned to give Luc a confused look.

Luc, for his part, stared at me with something akin to growing horror. But then, as if just noticing what he was doing, he cleared his throat and schooled his expression into one of bemusement. “What are you talking about?”

This was all too much. A knot of anger coalesced in the pit of my stomach. “I’m talking about what you can do. What a lot of people on this campus can do, apparently!”

Luc traded a loaded glance with the second guy. “Sweetheart, you hit your head harder than I thought.”

Yesterday his words alone would have made me question my sanity. But not today. Because I could suddenly sense, deep within me, he wasn’t telling the truth.

I shook my head and crossed my arms. “You’re lying.”

Startled by my blunt accusation, Luc shifted uneasily. “You and I both know it’s not possible to do what you’re saying I did.”

“Another lie.” What the hell? I could tell easily now, like overnight I’d become some sort of human lie detector. “I saw it. I saw other things, too.”

Carefully, as if he was stalling for time, Luc set his pool cue onto the table. “What sorts of other things?”

“Oh, let’s see.” I ticked the items off with my fingers. “How about a man eating the air. A girl absorbing water. A guy being followed by a tornado. And that’s just to start.”

When Luc gave a heavy sigh and exchanged yet another worried look with the guy across from him, it hit me. As I was racing over here, I’d secretly been hoping Luc could convince me everything I’d seen was a hallucination. But he wasn’t going to be able to, because it wasn’t.

It was real.

“Oh my god.” My arms lowered as I processed what I’d just discovered.

Everything I’d seen was real. Not just today, but yesterday.

“What really happened to me yesterday?” I glanced down at his hand and, recalling the way lightning had shot from it, took a small step backward. “What are you?”

Luc bit his lip. The expression on his face made it obvious he was internally at war with himself. Debating what to tell me next, no doubt.

“Dude,” the dark-haired hottie by Luc said. His voice held a note of warning, and he and Luc exchanged some sort of silent communication. I didn’t know what the hell they were doing, but it seemed like they were arguing over something without even using any words.

Finally, Luc took a deep breath and said to the other guy, “Aeron, can you go get the Professor?”

Aeron let out a long sigh, then nodded and headed in my direction.

My stomach gave a few anxious flops as he approached, but not because he was so attractive. For all I knew, he was one of them … whatever they were. It took all I had to resist the urge to cower or run.

In the end, all he did was throw me a look of curiosity and a quick grin before stepping past me and heading out the double doors of the common room.

My gaze stayed on the door until his footsteps receded down the hallway. That was when I turned back to Luc. “Tell me the truth. What’s happening here?”

Luc crossed the distance between us, stopping no more than two feet away from me. He gave me a deep, considering look. Then his lips twisted into a half-smile. “You sure you really want to know?”

Wasn’t that the question of a lifetime.

Part of me wanted to say no and run back to my dorm room to crawl under the covers, pretending all of this was one long, bad dream. But I couldn’t. The memory of the subtle glow beneath my skin prevented it.

“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “I have to know.”

When he swallowed, a trickle of what looked like lightning zipped from his Adam’s apple up into his square jaw. It only served to highlight the perfect angles and lines of his face.

Almost too perfect.

My heart started to beat frantically in my chest as I recalled yesterday, when we shook hands. The trace of electricity I thought I’d saw, that I had felt zap my skin.

Lightning shooting from his fingertips. More than once.

The truth hovered there on the surface. On my lips. It couldn’t be, not based on the reality I knew. But there it was, staring me right in the face.

“Ar-are you magical?”

Luc chuckled, as if he hadn’t been expecting that question. “I guess that depends on your definition.”

He was right. I’d asked the wrong question, and for some crazy reason I’d known it even before I’d asked.

My voice wavered as I uttered the question I’d been too afraid to ask first. “Are you human?”

He barely reacted, but from the way he stilled and his eyes widened the slightest fraction, I could tell I’d surprised him. The silence stretched out between us as he regarded me, taking my measure. At last, he gave a slow shake of his head. “Nope.”

My breath hitched at his stark admission. Even though everything in my logical mind said it couldn’t be possible, there was another, deeper part of me that had already known.

“So …” Somehow, I resisted the urge to shrink into myself. I managed to look directly into those too-perfect eyes. “What are you then?”

A sudden, inhuman stillness settled over him. His lightning-quick gaze bored into mine, as if he was deciding what I should know. His nostrils flared slightly as he drew in a breath. When he finally answered me, his voice was silky smooth. “I’m an elemental.”

“Elemental?” The word sounded both foreign and familiar on my tongue. Had I heard it before? If so, I didn’t know what it meant.

As if he guessed the direction of my thoughts, he nodded. “Simply put … I’m from another dimension.”

***

Hope you enjoyed this preview of The Seventh Element! As a reminder, its currently available for a special price of only 99 cents! The price will go up to $3.99 five days after release, so you may want to pick it up now!

Available at: Amazon / Kobo / Barnes & Noble / Amazon UK / iBooks