Broken Elements by Mia Marshall Read Free Book Online

have felt so happy to hear my old friend would be joining us. I schooled my features into a more appropriate expression of concern. “Same MO?” There it was again, the mouth twist. Something was definitely off. “Sera?”
    “It was suffocation by earth again, if that’s what you mean. The body was found at a campsite on the Nevada side. It looks like the recent storms buried it in snow, so no one found it for a while. There aren’t a lot of campers around in March. Besides, you know what it’s like in Tahoe. Lots of places where no one is around, no matter the time of year.”
    I knew. In many ways, it was the perfect region for a killer to hide. Lots of isolated wilderness and quiet mountain cabins, lots of inclement weather that kept people inside, and a large transient population from the tourists and winter skiers. If we didn’t know where to look, the bastard could evade us for years.
    “Was it another human involved with an elemental?”
    “No.”
    “But that’s always been his prey. Humans that interacted with us. He’s not just killing off random humans now, is he?” That would make our work a lot harder. There were a limited number of humans mingling with elementals in a small community like this, which made them fairly easy to identify and track. If every human was a target, we lost our strongest lead.
    “Not random, no.” She ran a hand through her hair, pulling the curls off her face in an abrupt, frustrated gesture. “It was a shifter.”
    I shook my head, not understanding. “A shifter involved with a human? Did the killer not know what he was?” After all, I hadn’t known shifters even existed twenty-four hours ago.
    “He knew. Calvin—the first man killed, the one before Christopher—he was a shifter, too.” She shook her head. “We all thought it was just a coincidence, because he was also dating an ice. It fit the profile. Only Simon thought it was a targeted kill.”
    “Why was he so sure?”
    “Calvin had been driving home from a costume party. He’d been a lion, of all the ludicrous things, but had washed his face and taken off his mane and tail before driving home. When he was found, he had whiskers painted on his cheeks. We all assumed someone just made a mistake, that he didn’t leave the party with a clean face. But this latest kill wasn’t near any costume parties last night, and someone painted whiskers on his face, too.”
    “That’s fucked up.” Sera nodded in agreement. “And worrying. Why’s he changing it up now? Why also target shifters who date elementals?”
    “That’s the thing, Ade. This guy wasn’t dating anyone. It looks like he was killed just for being a shifter.”
    This was very not good. The killer had always seemed like a deranged, extreme version of an elemental supremacist, so opposed to relationships with humans that he chose to remove the human from the equation altogether. Ten years ago, many humans died before we stopped him—or thought we had. This time, our killer seemed to have expanded that deadly prejudice to include shifters.
    In a horrible way, it made sense. My relatives would believe that shifters were perversions, the unholy offspring of acts of bestiality. The prejudice went so deep that even those who knew about them—as I was sure some of my relatives must—preferred to claim they were mythological rather than admit to their mere existence. It wouldn’t take much for a psychopath to decide that shifters deserved to live no more than the humans who were close to us.
    I thought about the beast currently throwing deck furniture through the forest. “Mac—he’s the other shifter, isn’t he?”
    “Yes. I don’t think he knew the guy who died very well, but he knew his brother, and he’s furious that someone would dare to take out shifters. It sometimes takes him a while to calm down.” That was an understatement.
    “What animal does he shift into?”
    “He needs to tell you himself. Shifter etiquette.”
    Fair