“It’s become something of a legend. They say there are dangerous creatures who roam these passages and enchantments that confuse and muddle the brain, making it even harder to find a way out. It’s connected to the Underground tunnels, and, as far as I know, that’s the only way out.”
“Dangerous creatures, huh?” I squint into the darkness beyond my light and remind myself that I’m trained to fight creatures of all kinds. The thought of facing one down here shouldn’t bother me.
“Yes, but I’ve heard these tunnels were abandoned after the Destruction, so hopefully we won’t come across any.”
“Okay, so no creatures, but we’re still lost in a labyrinth of tunnels.” I swallow. “We need to start walking.”
“Don’t bother.” Chase removes his amber from his coat pocket. “We’ll never find our way out.”
Despite my best efforts to remain calm, my breathing is definitely becoming faster. “Well then, Mr. Optimistic. What do you plan to do?”
“I’m not above asking for help.” He writes quickly across the surface of his amber. After putting both amber and stylus away, he looks at me. “I’ve asked Gaius to send tracking owls to the labyrinth entrance. It shouldn’t be too hard for him to call in a favor or two and find out where it is. Once the owls are in the tunnels, they’ll easily track us down.”
“And they’ll be able to find their way back to the entrance?”
“Of course. They’re tracking owls.”
“Right.” I send heat to my hands before running them over my arms a few times. “And until then?”
Chase lowers himself to the ground and leans back against the tunnel wall. “We wait.”
Wait. In a confined space. That might run out of air. “If it’s all right with you,” I say, “I’d prefer to keep moving.”
Chase peers up at me. “Uh, okay.”
I pick a direction and Chase follows me. My conjured ball of light comes with us. I increase its glow, hoping that by lighting more of the tunnel, the space will feel bigger. It doesn’t. What does grow, though, is the silence. I say nothing, Chase says nothing, and soon enough it feels as if it’s too late, too obvious, to attempt to begin a conversation. Besides, the thought of the tunnel walls narrowing until they crush us to death is occupying too much of my brain. There isn’t space left to come up with anything to say.
Focus on something else.
It’s the logical thing to do. After all, you can’t stop thinking a thought by telling yourself not to think it. You have to think a different thought instead. Such a simple piece of advice, yet so difficult to execute. The first time I tried it, I was at my third junior school and wanted to go down the blue twisty tunnel slide all the other kids loved so much. I focused on the thought of flying. It worked until I got to one of the bends and stopped moving. I thought I was stuck. I panicked. That was also the day Incident Number Two happened. It wasn’t—
“Calla.” Chase puts a hand out and stops me. I look up and, in the moment before it disappears, I see a playground scene with a shattered blue slide and children running away in terror. Then it’s gone, leaving nothing but the empty tunnel ahead of us.
“Ugh, I’m sorry. That was me.” I rub my temples while mentally reinforcing my mind’s brick wall. “I’m not sure how that image slipped out. Maybe I’m not being as careful as I usually am because you already know what I can do.” I drop my hands to my sides. “But how did you see that? I thought you could shield your mind from me.”
“I can,” he says as we begin walking again, “but I haven’t since you returned the bangle to me. I wasn’t expecting any more mental attacks from you. What I have been wondering, though, is how you’ve managed to keep your ability a secret from the Guild all this time.”
“Probably because I’ve only been there one week.”
“What?” He leans away as he examines me. “It’s possible I could be wrong, but you don’t look like a thirteen-year-old first-year trainee.”
“I’m not. Thanks for noticing.” I explain my lifelong desperation to be a guardian, Mom’s determination to keep me away from the Guild, how it all blew up when she discovered I’d been training behind her back, and then her sudden, strange change of heart. Which reminds me that I need to ask Ryn if he’s discovered anything else about the person named Tamaria. I file the thought away for later. “Yeah, so after proving to the Guild that my skills were up to scratch, they let me begin in fifth year instead of starting at the bottom.”
“And why, Miss Goldilocks, do you want to be a guardian so badly?”
Ignoring the nickname, I say, “I want to help people. I want to fight the bad guys and rid the world of evil. All that honorable stuff.”
“You know you can do all that without being a guardian, right? You don’t need guardian weapons. You don’t even need magic.”
“I know, but that’s the way I want to do it.”
“Fair enough. So if you’ve only just joined the Guild, what school were you at before?”
With a humorless laugh, I say, “Where should I start?”
Chase eyes me. “That many, huh?”
I pull a loose thread off my jacket and slowly twist it around my finger. “That’s what happens when you have an overactive imagination and keep accidentally sharing it with everyone else.” I unwind the thread, then wind it again, tighter this time. “I left my first junior school because I projected an image of a troll in a tutu after the two girls I was with decided a dancing troll would be the funniest thing ever. I left my second junior school because I imagined a boy’s hair was on fire after he pushed me into a door, and three people saw the imaginary fire. At my third junior school, all the kids on the playground saw an exploding slide. It was the twisting tunnel type, and I got stuck inside it and freaked out. In my head I kept wishing I was strong enough to break my way out. I guess I ended up projecting an illusion of me smashing the slide apart and climbing out. That was the, uh, projection you saw back there.” I wave awkwardly over my shoulder.
What the hell are you doing, Calla?
I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m telling him everything.
No. That isn’t true. I do know the reason. I’m telling Chase everything because he’s the only person it’s safe to tell. I’ve had to keep quiet my whole life, but I’ve finally found someone I don’t have to be quiet around. He already knows what I can do, and he won’t tell the Guild.
“I got through my fourth junior school without any incidents, as my mother calls them. I wanted to join the Guild, but Mom said no. She suggested a healer school, so, like a good girl, I agreed. There was a boy in my class who’d heard about all the schools I’d left. He’d heard the rumors about how I was … abnormal. Even dangerous. He made sure everyone knew what a freak I was. Soon after I started there, I’d had enough of his taunting. He just wouldn’t stop. On day ten, he arrived at school on one of those winged bicycles just as I got there. He swooped right by me, knocked me over, and shouted out, ‘Score! Ben: one, Freak: zero.’ So I let the wall down and showed him exactly what I wanted him to see: He was inside a maze being chased by a harpy. She’d already eaten the wings off his bicycle so he couldn’t fly away. He had to keep riding or she’d eat him too.”
Chase snorts, then covers it with a cough. “It, uh, sounds like he got what he deserved.”
“Yes. As it happens, that’s exactly what everyone said about me when I was asked to leave.”
Chase’s smirk vanishes. “I’m sorry, Calla.”
I shrug and drop the loose thread. I’ve wound it so many times around my left forefinger that the skin is covered in fine lines. “That’s life, right?” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “Everyone has difficulties they have to deal with. My difficulty just happens to be one I’m not supposed to tell anyone about.” Chase nods slowly, not looking at me. “So then Mom suggested I become a chef,” I tell him. “I wasn’t too excited about that idea, but the Guild still wasn’t an option, so I said okay. I was there for two months, and then …”
<
br /> And then …
No. Don’t think of it. Just keep pretending that one didn’t happen.
“Wait, why did we take this tunnel?” I ask. I vaguely remember turning left at a fork just now, and I’ve suddenly noticed how low the ceiling has become.
“No particular reason,” Chase says. “It doesn’t matter which way we go. I thought we were just walking because you can’t sit still.”
“I can sit still. Just not … here. Let’s go back and take the other tunnel.”
“What’s wrong with this one?”
“It, um, smells weird.”
Chase gives me a bemused look, but says nothing.
“Uh, so then I decided I wasn’t interested in cooking or baking. Mom still wouldn’t let me anywhere near the Guild, and the only other thing I could think of was art. So I joined Ellinhart Academy of the Arts. Visual, literary and performing arts. I picked visual.”
Chase stops walking. “You’re an artist too?”
“Yes. Well, sort of. Not in the same league as you.”
“So when you broke into my house, you actually were admiring my art?”
“Yes.” Then I add, “Along with looking for something to steal for a stupid initiation thing.”
An amused smile turns his lips up. “Of all the villains I thought might find a way into my home one day, an art-appreciating, guardian trainee thief is the one I least expected.”
I tuck my hair behind my ears and smile at him. “Glad I could keep your life interesting.”
We begin walking again, and he asks, “Did you enjoy Ellinhart?”
“It was … okay. Just like with the healer school and the chef school, I didn’t entirely want to be there. But I enjoyed drawing and painting, so I decided if I couldn’t have my first choice, then I’d have to make the art thing work. The rumors followed me there, of course, but I managed to make a few friends. They said they weren’t the kind to pay any attention to rumors. In the end, though, everyone listens to rumors. How can they not when they’ve all seen things around me that can’t be explained.”
And with that, the story of all my schools and incidents comes to an end. In the silence that follows, our footsteps sound overly loud. I swing my arms at my sides, suddenly feeling insanely awkward that I’ve spilled all this information to someone I barely know. “Anyway,” I continue, “that’s me. What’s your story?”
Instead of answering me, Chase says, “I’m amazed the Guild didn’t hear about any of your … what did you call them? Incidents?”
I nod. The tunnel makes a hairpin bend to the left, and we continue following it. “My parents always explained things away somehow. Or, as I’ve recently discovered, they bribed people to keep quiet.”
“Bribes? That’s always an interesting conversation to have with one’s parents.”
“Oh, they don’t know that I know. It’s something I overheard my dad saying during one of my time traveling trips. I’m not sure my mom even knows. He might have kept it from her too.”
“Well, everyone has their secrets.”
I nod slowly, chewing on my lip as I consider Dad and his secrets. I wonder if he has others. Maybe he doesn’t simply take care of the business side of the private security company he works for. Maybe he’s actually one of their bodyguards.
“Can you hear that?” Chase says, stopping suddenly.
I halt my steps and listen. “Trickling water?”
“Sounds like it.”
“Maybe we should turn back. I would normally assume that a trickle of water is harmless, but that’s probably not the case down here.”
“Probably not.”
We turn around and walk in the opposite direction. I push my hands into my jacket pockets to keep from swinging them around or plucking more threads from my clothing. “So,” I say, “now that I’ve spilled all my childhood dramas, why don’t you spill yours?”
“My childhood didn’t have any drama.”
“Come on. Everyone’s childhood has some kind of drama in it, even if it’s just your parents refusing to buy you that toy everyone else has or that kid who calls you unicorn poop.”
He looks at me. “Someone called you unicorn poop?”
“The Destruction!” I say. “If that doesn’t qualify as drama, I don’t know what does. Where were you when that happened?”
He looks away. “At home. At least, it wasn’t exactly my home but it’s where I lived back then.”
“Wait. Listen.” Instead of getting quieter the further we move away from it, the sound of trickling water is getting louder.
“How strange,” Chase says after a pause. He starts walking again, and I hurry to catch up to him. We reach the hairpin bend and keep going. Around the other side, we find the source of the noise.
Water, sparkling as if every drop contains a different colored gem, runs in tiny streams from the center of the tunnel ceiling, down both sides, and meets in the center of the tunnel floor, where I assume it seeps into the ground.
“This definitely wasn’t here a minute ago,” Chase says.
“I’m aware of that. I was walking right next to you.” It’s beautiful, though, this rainbow colored water. I move a step or two closer to examine it. Perhaps if I splashed every color paint I have onto a canvas and left it in the rain, I’d achieve a similar effect. And for the twinkling sparkles where the water catches the light, I’d capture sunlight and sprinkle droplets of it onto the canvas. I’d need a charm to keep the paint and sunlight moving, to mimic the effect of—
“Are you kidding me?” Chase grabs my arm and pulls me back. “Don’t they teach you at guardian school not to go around touching random stuff? You could get yourself killed.”
I pull my arm out of his grasp. “I wasn’t going to touch it.” But I realize that my hand was raised, and it seems I was standing far closer to the water than I thought.
“Oh really?” he asks. “Is that what you told yourself before you picked up a stranger’s enchanted jewelry and put it on?”
I cross my arms, keeping my hands pinned beneath them so they can’t betray me again. “Yes, that was my mistake. But this …” I nod toward the water. “This is something else. Let’s keep going the other way.”
We turn back—and the hairpin bend is gone. Instead, the tunnel stretches straight ahead and the ground appears to be covered in moss.
“Now I’m freaked out,” I whisper.
Chase says nothing. He looks over his shoulder, then forward again. “Someone or something is messing with us.” He slips a hand inside his coat and produces a knife with a curved blade. “Whoever it is, they’d better hope we don’t run into them.”
Fear tingles at my fingertips. “I thought you said these tunnels were abandoned.”
“I did. It would appear I was wrong, though. This labyrinth is definitely in use again.”
“Fabulous.” I wrap my hand around the air and think of my dagger. It appears in my grasp a moment later. “Well, my friendly mentor keeps telling me to practice, and there’s no time like the present, right? So. Shall we brave the water or the moss?”
“Neither.” Chase raises his free hand, squeezes it into a fist, then opens it. A single flame burns above his palm. He leans forward and blows the flame toward the mossy side of the tunnel. Fire streaks through the air and lands on the moss. It ignites immediately, growing quickly into a blaze of light and heat. As the roaring of flames rises to a level that threatens to deafen us, Chase raises his arm as if to shield his face. The temperature drops immediately, as does the noise, and I know he’s placed a shield between us and the fire.
The inferno explodes, sending flames rolling toward us with alarming speed. I jump back with a yelp, but the flames slam against Chase’s invisible shield and go no further. Then, as if the explosion is happening in reverse, the flames are sucked backward in one quick rush. A moment later, they’re gone, leaving no evidence of moss, flames or smoke. The tunnel is completely bare.
Chase lowers his arm. “Okay. Th
e way’s clear. Let’s go.”
I hurry after him, never letting go of my dagger or the strand of concentration that keeps my ball of light glowing above us. “That was an impressive fire.”
“Thank you. I’ve acquired a number of useful pyro spells over the years.”
“I see. Tattoo art must be a dangerous business.”
His eyes remain trained ahead, but I see the hint of a smile on his lips. I shake my head and smile to myself. I wonder if I’ll ever find out what he really does. Probably not, since I doubt I’ll see him again after we get out of here. Well, unless I get a tattoo. Or several. Mom would hate that. She wouldn’t be too keen on me spending time with someone like Chase, either. The thought makes me pleased. Or perhaps it’s the thought of not saying goodbye to Chase just yet.
“You’re doing it again,” he says without breaking his stride.
I raise my eyes and see the image that just played through my mind: the moment Chase shook my hand in his tattoo studio. That moment before I opened the door and found Saber there.
“Dammit,” I mutter as the image vanishes. The tunnel curves sharply to the left. We keep walking, and I smack my fist against my forehead a few times, as if that could help keep the projections inside. “Sorry.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I did. I’m supposed to have this perfectly under control, and now I’m slipping up. That can’t ever happen at the Guild, which means I need to make sure it doesn’t happen in private either. I—” A vibration shudders through the ground and up into my feet. My first thought is that I’m about to be whisked into the past, but then the ground trembles again, and again, like the heavy footfalls of a giant. “What now?” I murmur.
“Now,” Chase says, turning to face the sound, “it’s time to play.”
The shuddering footsteps grow louder and closer. Part of me wants to run, but the rest of me feels the shot of anticipatory excitement that always brings life to my veins in the moments before I’m about to face a foe. I let go of my dagger and feel for my bow and arrow instead. Arrows first, then throwing stars, then blades. That’s my plan.
A Faerie's Secret (Creepy Hollow Book 4) Page 15
