Guardian Academy 2: Prisoner Of Magic (The Mystery Of The Four Corners)

by Maria Amor

  “That was amazing,” he said as they made their way down the hall. Julia smiled in spite of how tired she was; it had only taken them about half of the lunch break to get the information from Egan, and she could grab something from the dining hall, and figure out how to get off campus to go to the address Egan had gotten for them.

  “We need to figure out how to get off-campus,” she told Blake. “I don’t think the standard pass is going to cut it—and they’re not even giving me that anymore, after what happened at Central Park.”

  “You could compel Guthrie,” Blake pointed out. Julia shook her head.

  “I’m not doing that any more than I have to,” she told him. “But we need to convince her.”

  Blake ducked into the dining hall and grabbed them both sandwiches while Julia paced for a few minutes in the courtyard; the dean would be out of her office soon, to check on things before the final lunch shift ended, and Julia wanted to corner the woman and give her little chance to avoid her.

  Blake came out with two sandwiches and two bottles of water, and handed one of each to Julia. “So we’re just waiting for her to come out?” Julia shrugged.

  “Got a better idea?” She still felt agitated, restless, energy returning after the sustained effort of compelling answers out of Harris Egan. Julia took a deep breath and ate half of her sandwich—chicken, turkey, and bacon with avocado and spinach—in four quick bites, chasing them with gulps of water. It wasn’t a big lunch, but it would be enough to tide her over until she and Blake could stop on their way to the place where Dylan and the others were being held.

  “Not as such,” Blake admitted. Julia kept scanning the courtyard, waiting to see Guthrie emerge from the administration offices. She owes me. She owes me this chance, Julia thought, trying not to exhaust the energy she still had left over from before by pacing. When Guthrie came out Julia would be persuasive, but she had no intention of using the compulsion ability on the older Guardian.

  Just before Julia knew the bell would ring, sending the last shift of students back to class, Guthrie came out of the administration building, headed towards the dining hall. “Dean Guthrie! Dean Guthrie!” she called out.

  “Julia, I’m very sorry but I need to make sure that everything is going all right with the students headed back to class,” the dean said. Julia glanced at Blake.

  “We just received information about Dylan Kelby and the other abducted students,” he said quickly.

  “What?” Guthrie stopped mid-step and stared at them both.

  “We just got information about where Dylan and the other students are,” Julia said.

  “How?” Guthrie scowled at them.

  “I think this would probably be better as a conversation in your office,” Julia pointed out.

  “I’m sure just this once you don’t have to be in the dining hall—it’s the juniors and seniors at lunch, they’re probably not going to create much trouble going back to class,” Blake added.

  Guthrie looked at the two of them suspiciously for a moment, but then relented, and Julia followed in the dean’s wake as she headed back towards the administration offices. Once they were alone in the older woman’s office, Guthrie sat down and looked at them both intently. “Tell me what’s going on—slowly, and in detail, please.”

  “We have reason to believe that we know exactly where Dylan and the other students are being held,” Julia said. “We were given an address by someone involved in the conspiracy.”

  “How on earth do you know they were involved in the conspiracy and that you can trust the information they gave you?” Julia held the dean’s gaze for a long moment.

  “I know that they’re involved, and that’s the important thing,” Julia said levelly.

  “She used the compulsion ability on one of the conspirators to get the information,” Blake said, matter-of-factly.

  “And you knew for sure they were involved in the conspiracy before you used that ability on them?” Guthrie looked doubtful.

  “We knew,” Julia said. “So we know this is a correct address.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Close to the Canadian border,” Julia replied. “We need to leave ASAP.”

  “Absolutely not,” Guthrie said immediately.

  “You have people at this school who aided and abetted the kidnapping of six students out from under your nose,” Blake pointed out. “Why can’t we go?”

  “You’re students,” Guthrie said. “You’re both under the age of eighteen, and even if you were eighteen, have you forgotten that someone attempted to kidnap the both of you?” Guthrie crossed her arms over her chest. “Give me the address and I’ll pass it along to the right people on the council.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Julia told the older woman. “There are people on the council involved in making this happen.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Guthrie insisted. “I cannot let the two of you off-campus during the school day, and definitely not to go haring off after kidnappers.” Julia scowled.

  “You let Dylan, Eliza, Keyne, Tal, Suzanna and Azhar get kidnapped,” Julia said. “You let it happen—you’re the dean of this school and it happened right under your nose.”

  “Insulting me is not doing your cause any favors, Julia,” Guthrie countered.

  “I’m stating a fact,” Julia told her. “You are going to go down for this. And I will make sure you go down for it if you don’t let me and Blake go and do something to fix this.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You’re a child still, Julia,” Guthrie said. “You know people on the council—and you may absolutely be right about me going down for what happened to those students—but you are still a child, and I am doing what’s best for you.”

  “Come on, Julia,” Blake said. “She’s obviously not going to budge.”

  “Both of you get back to class,” Guthrie said. “I hope that upon further reflection, you’ll decide to do the right thing. You can get a pass from Mrs. Halpern.” Julia glared at the older woman, but when Blake grabbed her arm—surprisingly gently—she let him lead her away.

  “We’ll sneak off-campus,” Blake said quietly, in the space between Guthrie’s office and the front desk. “I’ll let you know—we’ll leave as soon as classes are done for the day.” Julia nodded her acceptance of his idea, and tried to compose herself for the patience she would need to get through the rest of the day before she could go after Blake and her other friends.

  CHAPTER 19

  Dylan felt as if the energy that the wards had sapped from him for months had come back with a vengeance, humming through his veins the more he managed to get the wards in his room taken down. Odan had given him the tools he needed to begin dismantling the wards in his room a few days before; he had taken care to start in the bathroom, where there wasn’t any monitoring. With each one of the emeralds and then rubies that he prized out of the wall—carefully handling them with cloth over his hands to protect himself from the raw energy and its effects on him—he could feel the strength of his element-aligned energies returning.

  He’d managed to get the word out to Tal and Suzanna already; Eliza was still weak, and he had yet to let Keyne and Azhar know what was happening—he just hadn’t had the chance. Dylan hoped that maybe Tal or Suzanna had told them, but he couldn’t be sure, and he knew they didn’t have much time.

  Dylan also knew that he had to make sure he wasn’t caught in his haste. The bathroom was slow going because he could only pretend to be showering for so long. Once he moved onto the space under his bed, he had to work even harder to cover up what he was doing from the people observing him—he assumed it was Bernadette and Alistair, or that they had particular deputies other than the elves handling the security and meals to cover that task.

  In truth, Dylan knew that he had very little idea of what the arrangements were at the house where their prison was; but if they didn’t make an escape attempt they were likely to die—or become even more hopelessly lost
when their captors moved them.

  Dylan heard someone unlocking the door to his room and quickly put away the tools that Odan had given him. He had no way to know who it could be—and he had no intention of getting caught by Bernadette or Alistair, who were making their rounds of the cells more frequently since Eliza’s reaction had happened. They’re getting nervous, Dylan thought—the people in charge of the scheme obviously had a particular timeframe they wanted to keep, and they were definitely not interested in having to take the risk of relocating their captives.

  He had just gotten the tools put in one of his drawers when the person at the door came into his room; it was Solange, and Dylan exhaled a sigh of relief. “What’s the news?” Solange put down a tray on the bedside table and turned to look at him.

  “They are going to move you soon,” she said. “Either that or they intend to kill you. The people in charge think something strange is going on.”

  “Well they’re not wrong,” Dylan said, sitting down on his bed. Solange had brought him what he supposed would be a breakfast, though he had no more idea of the time of day than usual. “How is Eliza doing?”

  “She is getting stronger,” Solange replied. “But we still don’t know how she would be able to leave the room she is in.” Solange and Odan were the two elves involved in the counter-conspiracy; the rest of the servants were either keeping their mouths shut or not in the know at all. Odan had insisted on that as a measure, to keep the people in charge of the whole operation from punishing all of the elves involved.

  “How are the others?” Dylan picked at the food on his tray, thinking about the plan—rough as it was—to escape the prison and try and make his way back to Sandrine. They didn’t have a solid idea of where they were, but from what Odan had said, he’d figured out who was in charge, and what the connection was.

  The name—Andrews—had been familiar to Dylan right away, but it had taken a few days’ thought for him to figure it out. Of course, the time he’d spent in the bathroom, dismantling the wards put there, had given him plenty of opportunity for reviewing where he might have heard it before.

  All at once, as he’d been carefully prying an emerald out of the wall to replace with a harmless crystal Odan had given him, it came to him: Blake Andrews had been on the guest list for Julia’s birthday. His parents had been particularly interested in Julia’s developing power and ability.

  It became clear to him, the more he thought about it, that the Andrews family—powerful, fire-aligned Guardians who had always had a reputation for trying to work their way up to the highest ranks of supernatural society—had been the ones to abduct him and the other students, in the hopes that their son, Blake, could charm Julia in their absence.

  Dylan wouldn’t have necessarily prevented Blake from having his chance with Julia, but he had to admit that if he was honest with himself, his presence had made it easier for Julia to avoid having to attach herself to anyone—as had the other air-aligned students’. She didn’t need an ally with him and the other students to help her; so their absence was probably pretty effective.

  Figuring out who it was responsible for their captivity, and knowing what he did about their plans, had only increased Dylan’s sense of urgency to get out. The Andrews’ would want to keep him and the air-aligned allies Julia had cultivated out of the way for as long as possible—and it was clear to him that their plan was on the brink of falling apart even as it began to truly succeed.

  Solange’s reply interrupted his thoughts. “The others are making progress. Do you have a plan, Dylan?” He had insisted that Odan and Solange call him by his first name.

  “Something that’s close to a plan,” Dylan said. “I think we need to put it in action soon.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Solange said. “Odan overheard them talking about moving you—the Andrews’ will be back tonight. They’re going to move all of you to a new place.”

  “How are they going to do that?” Dylan thought about the fact that even with the limited wards in place, he wasn’t quite up to escaping the prison they’d been put in—he barely even had any idea of where they could go, even if they could navigate getting out of the building, and even if they could grab Eliza on their way out.

  “They’re getting a potion to put in the food,” Solange told him quietly. “It will knock you all out, and then they’ll have us carry you out.” Dylan pressed his lips together, considering how that would impact his tentative plans to get all of them out.

  “We could play opossum,” he said quietly.

  “What?” Solange frowned in confusion.

  “We could pretend to be knocked out by the potion—you could keep us from actually getting it in our food—and then when you’re carrying us out, we can make our escape.” Dylan met Solange’s gaze. “We’d create a few distractions on our way to slow everything down.”

  “Are you back to your normal level of power?”

  Dylan shrugged.

  “I have enough power to create a few distractions, to fight a bit,” he said. “I think Tal and Suzanna are game, too.” He’d had a few words with both of the air-aligned students, in code—as close to code as they could get—and they had a loose plan in place that they could implement quickly “If you can get the word to the two of them, we might be able to make something happen.”

  They had discussed creating a distraction using their abilities, that would make it possible for them to at least get out of the home their prison was in and maybe—hopefully—off the grounds it stood on; but they hadn’t worked out how Eliza would be rescued in the process.

  “I can do that,” Solange said. “But we can’t provide any obvious help.”

  “I know,” Dylan said. It was a conversation he and Odan had had multiple times. “I know. We’ll work it out on the fly, based on what we already have ready.” Just the idea that they might make an attempt to get free that very night—after months of being trapped without hope—made Dylan feel better, stronger. The time had finally come.

  “We—Odan and I—want to make sure that you are all safe,” Solange said. “We think you’re in danger if you don’t escape tonight. We’ll do what we can.”

  She left after that and Dylan considered how he could possibly make what needed to happen come about. After months of not being able to use his abilities—or only being able to use them in a limited way, with not-enough-energy, he wasn’t sure what he could actually even do anymore.

  Sometime in the afternoon, one of the other guard-servants unlocked the door to let Dylan out into the sitting area for a while; he hoped against hope that at least one of the other captives would be there, would be ready for what needed doing. Dylan thought to himself that they wouldn’t even have the chance—or the ability—to take anything with them from their rooms. They would have to make a run for it and hope for the best.

  As he sat in the common area, Dylan tried to assess how much energy he had at his disposal. He obviously hadn’t been able to dismantle any of the wards in the common room attached to the prison cells, but the wards in the area didn’t seem to be as strong as the ones in his room, anyway—except for around and on the window.

  He closed his eyes while pretending to play something on the upright piano, picking out a soft, meandering melody. Make room for the prey, ‘cause I’m coming in… He looked up when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the common area and saw that Solange was bringing Suzanna into the room.

  “Good afternoon, Dylan,” Suzanna said, sounding more chipper than usual; Dylan wondered if Solange had already explained to the girl what was going on, or if she had other reasons for being cheerful. Solange turned and left, and Dylan continued playing for a few moments, trying to compose his thoughts, trying to think of a way to communicate with Suzanna without anyone else figuring out what they were saying.

  “Have you heard anything about Eliza?” Dylan glanced at Suzanna, who was busily pretending to flip through the channels available on the TV to find something interesting
to watch.

  “I’ve heard she’s improving, but still weak,” Suzanna replied, giving him a quick look. Dylan nodded to show that he’d heard the same and considered the best way to ask about the progress Suzanna had made.

  “You’ve been working on a project in your room, right?” He paused in his playing for a moment. “Think it’ll be ready to show off the next time we see each other?” Dylan hoped against hope that the air-aligned Guardian would be true to her element, and quick on the uptake.

  “I think by the time I see you again, I’ll be ready to show you what I’ve done,” Suzanna said. Dylan almost sighed with relief—she’d understood, and she was making progress.

  “I’ve been feeling like things are due for a shakeup around here,” Dylan observed, starting to play again. “Do you think that’ll affect the project?”

  “Not really,” Suzanna said, as if bored. “I’ve just about got it done, anyway. If they need to change up our routine, it won’t throw me off very much.” Dylan nodded.

  “Good to hear,” he said. “Have you heard anything from Tal lately?”

  “I think he’s been working on a project too, something in applied linguistics,” Suzanna said. “He wants to graduate strong, when we finally get the chance.”

  “That sounds right up his alley,” Dylan said. “I hope any shakeups in the routine won’t affect him finishing.”

  “I think he’s in the last stages,” Suzanna said. “From what he told me before, it was pretty close to done yesterday, and should be done today.” More relief swept through Dylan. The other three might not be fully onboard, but he thought that at least with three out of the six of them ready for the evening’s attempt, they should be able to take care of things.

  “Dylan?” He looked up from the keys on the piano to see Odan standing at the entry into the common area. “I need to escort you back to your room, I’m afraid.” Odan actually looked regretful—and Dylan wondered if one of the fire-aligned people in charge had caught on.