by Maria Amor
Dylan let his mind drift off a bit again. There was something that Ruth had started to teach him—an application of his energy—that he thought might help in his current state of anxiety. Dylan took a deep breath and brought to mind the way that Julia’s energy felt to him, the times he’d experienced it before. Every individual person had unique signatures—every person had a particular difference in their expression of the energies. He focused on the way that Julia’s energy had felt to him when they’d been in contact: warm, active, restless, yellow-toned. He focused in on the sensation, on the way he’d felt emotionally the times their energies had interacted.
“Mr. Kelby, perhaps you would like to demonstrate this particular tactic,” Carswell said from the front of the classroom, jolting him out of his thoughts.
“Sure,” Dylan said, trying to find some indication on the board or on the faces of the students around him of what Carswell wanted to demonstrate.
“We’re speaking of diffuse emotional projection,” Carswell told him. “Please stand, Dylan.” Dylan rose from his seat, pushing the concern of Julia’s well-being out of his mind. He took a deep breath and cleared everything else out of his mind, tapping into the essential energy that flowed through him. He’d learned something about what Carswell was teaching before—but he hadn’t actually done it.
Just like manipulating Julia’s energy, but spread it out. He took another deep breath and imagined the energy flowing out of him like a stable, steady flood, pushing out gradually in lapping waves throughout the classroom. He focused on a particular emotion: joy. No reason to use a negative emotion for this. Dylan continued to push out, imagining currents, waves of energy leaving him to flow out over the students, even towards Carswell himself.
“Very good,” Carswell said after a moment. “Very good indeed, Mr. Kelby. You can stop now.” Dylan pulled the energy back into himself, and sat down, looking out over the room. “As we can see, the energies you possess as water-aligned Guardians have strong potential, just by their very nature.”
Dylan caught a few glances directed at him and slumped slightly at his desk, pretending to read the textbook and write something down. Now if only I can find a way to make that useful for dealing with Julia. Dylan twisted his lips into a wry grin to himself. He would have to just wait and see if Julia was handling her classes all right, instead of tapping into her energies, or even truly trying.
Ruth could probably do it, but she’s much more powerful than I am, he reminded himself. Not for the first time, he thought that he would have to call on all new reserves of power in order to keep up with what Julia was doing as naturally as she breathed. He would need to find a way to do what he’d promised Ruth, even with Guthrie’s political machinations.
CHAPTER SIX
Julia left her last class of the day feeling unsettled, but at the same time oddly at peace; she had noticed the way that the other students looked at her both in class and during the recesses between classes. She’d managed to keep her composure as energy flowed more and more violently through her body, but it had been a near thing. For a week—the first week of classes altogether—she had managed, but Julia knew that it was only a matter of time before she had some kind of “incident,” and caused a stir amongst the rest of the students and the population of the school once more.
Dylan would be waiting for her in the courtyard, and Julia headed in that direction, wanting to be around the boy’s calming presence as soon as possible. Maybe I am using him as a crutch, she thought wryly. It was easier for her to manage her energies when she was around Dylan, easier not to worry about a power surge debilitating her. Some of the other air-aligned students had been helpful, relieving some of the energy overflow at least during the hours that they were both stuck in the dorms, but Julia preferred Dylan’s methods by far.
It didn’t help that she’d received four different notes during her last class period of the day, all of them pointed invitations to hang out over the weekend, all of them from boys in her class. Apparently, Guthrie’s move to keep them separated as much as possible had opened up the floodgates in a way that nothing else in the past year had: Julia was suddenly the hoped-for guest for every party, every hang-out in the city, every event that the air-aligned students, fire-aligned students, and earth-aligned students were putting together. It had only been a week, but she already had more invitations than she could possibly follow up on.
“Jules!” Julia glanced behind her to see Keegan crossing the quad to meet up with her. “What are you up to this weekend?” Julia snorted and rolled her eyes.
“If I went to all the things I was invited to this weekend, I wouldn’t have any time at all to sleep,” Julia said. “So, I don’t know.”
“Oh, what a shame,” Keegan said, rolling her eyes as she fell into step with Julia. “How terrible it must be, being so popular that everyone wants to hang out with you.”
“It’s terrible because I have to hang out with someone and if I pick and choose, people are going to get pissed at me,” Julia countered. “I wish my grandmother hadn’t started sending me to all those stupid parties.”
“But if she hadn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten the lead to figure out what Dimitrios was doing last year,” Keegan pointed out. “So ultimately it worked to your advantage.”
“Yeah but now it’s just annoying,” Julia told her friend. “I have all these people who want to hang out and I don’t really want to have anything to do with almost any of them.”
“At least you should want to hang out with your air-aligned people,” Keegan said.
“Yeah, but it’s not just them,” Julia explained with a sigh. “It’s also a bunch of earth-aligned students, and some fire-aligned folks as well.” She made a face; there had been a point in her life when she’d found the fire-aligned students to be exciting: full of energy, with the kind of personalities that amplified her own abilities. But apart from Keegan and Magda, and maybe one or two other close friends who’d been with her all along, Julia had largely started to find the fire-aligned Guardians in particular to be annoyingly demanding, dramatic, and forceful.
“Since when are you so down on fire-aligned Guardians?” Keegan grinned. “Too cool for me these days, now that you’re some savior to the air-aligned kids?” Julia rolled her eyes.
“I would have to be cool to be too cool for anyone, first of all,” Julia told her friend. “Second of all, I couldn’t be too cool for you.” They were getting closer to where Dylan and she agreed to meet up at the end of the school day, and Julia couldn’t help but wonder if the fact that they met up daily—and went home together on weekends—was managing to reinforce the idea that she and Dylan were dating.
“You’re pretty damn cool,” Keegan pointed out. “It’s been six months and there are still people talking about you going up before the council and telling them off.”
“I wish they wouldn’t,” Julia said, pressing her lips together. She was glad that she’d been able to help her fellow air-aligned students, but considering how much the council had demanded her time over the summer, she could do without the fame.
She spotted Dylan sitting in the usual spot in the courtyard and closed the distance between them, starting to feel better already. He looked up from what he was scribbling in his notebook and half-smiled. “You’re late,” he said playfully.
“Keegan held me up,” Julia said, giving her longtime friend a mock scowl. “Telling me I should be more grateful for how popular I’ve become.”
“More invitations? We’ll barely have time to sleep this weekend—much less get any homework done,” Dylan said.
“We’ll just have to get as much done as possible tonight before the car comes for us tomorrow,” Julia told him. “I don’t want to go to Rory’s party, but Jeran’s laser tag thing looks like it might be worth it.” She handed Dylan a handful of notes she’d received from people in different classes throughout the day for him to pick what sounded good to him. She sat down, letting her backpack fall to the
bricks of the courtyard ground.
“What’s Jessica doing in the park?” Dylan frowned at one of the notes, waving it at Julia slightly.
“No clue,” Julia admitted. “But it’s probably going to be boring and pretentious, knowing her.”
“So I’m guessing you’re a no on that,” Dylan said blandly.
“Depends on how tired I am after Jeran’s laser tag thing,” Julia replied, grinning.
“How does anyone expect you to manage a decent GPA when you’re getting invited to freaking everything under the sun?”
“They expect her to pick and choose,” Keegan pointed out. “Which is what any sane person would do.”
“But they also expect me to be fair and pick an equal representation of all the elemental alignments,” Julia countered. “And if I do that then I’m going to need a PA just to run my social life.”
“And to do your homework,” Dylan added. Julia sighed.
“My parents sent me the initial guest list for my birthday,” she told her friends, grimacing. “There’s going to be like fifty people there, and that’s not even counting my actual friends.”
“Where are they renting out for that?” Keegan smoothed her skirt against her legs and knelt on the ground; she had always preferred that to sitting on a bench, though Julia had never been curious enough to find out why.
“They haven’t decided,” Julia said with a shrug. “They asked me to come up with my own list of the people I actually want to be there, and they’ll figure out where we’ll have it, and all that other stuff, then.” Her birthday was still about two months away, but it was going to be a big, annoying affair with formal dresses and servers passing hors d’oeuvres, and all the subtlety of a debutante ball.
Julia knew that she couldn’t avoid it—she would have to participate—but she hated the idea of being forced to dance and smile politely for hours while she talked to people she didn’t particularly care about, and tried to spend as much time with the handful of people she did, on what was supposed to be her night. It’s my birthday. If I wanted to spend it going to the movies with friends and eating terrible New York Chinese food, that should be fine.
Her parents had pointed out to her, when going over their plans, that she was—in the supernatural world, at least—no longer truly a private person. Outing Dimitrios had made her public; so had appearing before the council, and of course she couldn’t blame people for their interest in her after the performance she’d put on at her audience. It wasn’t fair, but Julia thought to herself—hoped, at least—that there would be a powerful earth-aligned Guardian, or a fire-aligned Guardian, who would eventually take the focus off of her.
“At least I negotiated to get like, half of the catered food to my taste,” Julia said, brightening slightly. The adults at the party would have wine and champagne and cocktails, and Julia had insisted that there be at least as much variety available for the underage crowd to drink; she’d also insisted that in addition to the fusty, fussy appetizers her parents wanted to include, there should be fun, interesting things—things she liked—on the menu.
“And you’re going to have the best freaking dress in the world,” Keegan pointed out. Julia rolled her eyes again.
“Ruth pulled too many strings there,” she said. Her grandmother had insisted—absolutely insisted—on having her dress made by fae dressmakers, who had access to materials that just didn’t exist in the normal human world. It was lucky that the event was going to be supernatural-only, with no regular humans on the guest list; otherwise, Julia knew, she would have a difficult time explaining some of the guests, and some of the outfits, to her friends. But the dress would stand her in good stead for at least a few years, made of the fine faerie materials. Except that the fittings are the most annoying thing on three planes of existence, Julia thought.
“You’re going to look like a Regina Sylphaea,” Dylan told her.
“Against my will, but yeah,” Julia agreed. She sighed, but she had to admit that in spite of the fact that she knew that the finery would only add to the mythology people were crafting around her, it was beautiful fabric, and the finished dress would be glorious. The fae dressmakers had already shown her the material: it shifted through the colors of the sky, representing her connection to the element of air.
Throughout the night, if they did their jobs properly, Julia would look like she embodied the sky itself at different times of day. They’d even insisted that the gown had to be worn with a tiara, and showed her the sketches of it.
“Are you sure you don’t want the job?” Keegan raised an eyebrow. “I mean—not now, obviously—but eventually? It seems like it would be the best place for you.”
“I want to travel,” Julia told her friend. “I want to go places and see things and learn languages. And if I let the council talk me into going down the path to become the elemental ruler for air one day, I’m going to be locked in council rooms talking to Guardians and just…” she shuddered. “I hate the idea of that.”
“So, what are you going to do instead?” Dylan gave her a searching look. They’d talked about Julia finding methods to go her own way, but she hadn’t found the means—yet—to do what she wanted.
“I’m taking the SAT next weekend,” she said. “I already scheduled it, and paid for it on my card. And the ACT in a couple of weeks.” She hadn’t told her parents about it yet; they were interested in what they called “her future plans,” but they didn’t seem to think that she needed or should even want to go to a regular university.
“There are so many programs out there for gifted witches and supernaturals,” her mother had pointed out. Her father had countered that with her connections, she could get into politics—at least, supernatural politics—right out of Sandrine, working with the fae or the changelings or the sylphs. There were some students in her alignment who planned to do just that, Julia knew; but she also knew that if she accepted a junior post working with the fae, or the other air-aligned creatures that Guardians worked with, that she’d be stuck in one place—likely Manhattan—for years, with only rare opportunities to leave the country the way she wanted.
She could also work with air-aligned witches without the need for a college degree; her grandmother had started working with water witches even while having children, before she’d become the Regina Undinae. But Julia wasn’t sure she even wanted to have that much of a role in the supernatural role. Not that you have much of a choice. Even if you go to college and get a degree—you’re always going to have a link with the other Guardians. You’re always going to have a link to your element.
“Where are you going to apply?” Julia shrugged. One of the downsides of going to Sandrine—at least, at this point in her life, for Julia—was that there were colleges that wouldn’t accept her transcripts. There were only a handful of universities that even understood what the School of Sandrine transcripts looked like; and while the academic subjects were covered at Sandrine, the “electives” as they came across to universities were bizarre.
“Probably NYU, Sarah Lawrence, maybe Stanford,” Julia said, though she hadn’t given it much thought beyond planning to apply somewhere. There was a list of schools that would accept Sandrine transcripts, and the universities that were closer to the school—or to other schools that similarly catered to the supernatural community—were more likely to accept the transcripts. They were also more likely to have supernatural professors: changelings, or shapeshifters, sometimes Guardians, rarely fae or other human-passing supernaturals.
Keegan sighed. “That’s assuming too that you manage to keep away from politics,” Keegan pointed out.
“I’ll find a way,” Julia insisted. She picked at imaginary lint on her skirt. “What are you going to do when I’m no longer in need of constant protection, Dyl?”
“Figure out a way to release music that helps me keep money coming in without having to be some mega-star,” he replied. “There’s got to be a way.”
“What does the council say to
that? It seems like you’ve become more valuable to them since taking up as Julia’s protector.” Dylan shrugged and Julia snickered in response to Keegan’s question.
“The council is starting to back off of me,” Dylan said. “I’m definitely not as interesting as Jules is, so maybe by the time she’s fully in possession of her abilities, and completely in control of her life, they’ll let me go my own way.”
“They don’t want to let anyone go their own way,” Julia said bleakly. “We’re going to have to force them.”
“I feel like the two of you are so down on supernatural stuff,” Keegan observed. “There are kids in schools all over the US who would love to do what the two of you can do, and you’re bitching over politics.”
“Considering you only have a peripheral role in supe politics, it’s not like you can talk,” Julia told her friend tartly.
“Hey!” Keegan frowned.
“I didn’t come here for a sermon,” Julia reminded her friend. “If you don’t want the sharp side of my tongue, you shouldn’t poke me for it.”
“I’m just saying, you get to wear a killer dress, and you get to make demands, and throw your weight around. You’re this super-powerful Guardian for air, and you’ve got respect from a ton of people. There’s a bright side to this,” Keegan said.
“And there’s also a lot of frustration with it,” Julia told her. “You wouldn’t like being told how you’re going to live your life either.”
“So don’t do what they want you to do—but at least be real about it,” Keegan countered. “I’m tired of hearing you complain without having any kind of plan to deal with things.”
