by Cecily White
“Crud!” I swore. “Monkeycrud!”
“I’m no expert,” an amused voice said from behind me, “but ‘monkeycrud’ doesn’t sound like an official Guardian command.”
I whirled, heart hammering.
A guy, maybe three years older than me, lounged in the doorway, arms laced across his chest in an easy slouch. He was tall, at least six-three, and dressed in the typical staff uniform— pressed black button-down, black slacks, and tough-soled boots. A leather weapons belt draped in a double loop across his hips, with two glyph-carved swords and a few slim daggers tucked at the sides. Despite his school garb, the guy looked way too young to be a trainer. And waaaay too hot. His tousled blond hair glinted in a soft halo around his face, and with the flames reflected in his charcoal eyes, I’d swear I was staring at the downtown sky at sunset.
Zing. Major zing.
“Looks like you could use a hand,” he observed. “Or maybe a bucket.”
“A bucket?”
“Of water. I hear that’s what they use on fire.” The guy smirked. “Unless you’ve got a better idea.”
I blinked at him, momentarily speechless. He hadn’t said anything insulting, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being mocked. I managed to snap myself out of the hormonal trance long enough to glare at him. “Look, can you go get a fire extinguisher? Or do something…useful?”
“Sure.” He kept lounging in the doorway. “Take a deep breath.”
Okay, not to be rude but what kind of idiot, when faced with a room full of paper and flames, instructs the arsonist to take a deep breath? “Are you insane?”
“Never diagnosed,” the guy said. “How’s that deep breath going?”
My cheeks flushed with heat as I huffed in and out. “Satisfied? Now go get me a fire extinguisher.”
“Not yet,” he said. “I want you to try the ‘sine lucé’ command. It’s a forty-rohm energy draw. Hefty for a newbie, but you should be able to manage it without a bonded Watcher.” He flicked a glance at the growing fires. “Quickly, if you don’t mind.”
My eyes narrowed. “You want me to channel.”
“Yes.”
“A mid-level command.”
“Correct.”
“In an un-warded room with no Watcher.”
He smiled again, and I had a nasty flash-forward to the ten o’clock newscast—scenes of carnage as the New Orleans Fire Department broke down Smalley’s door, drenching the school in foam.
I shrugged. “It’s your funeral.” With another deep breath, I held up my palms, faced the fire, and gave the command. “Sine lucé.”
I was fully prepared for it to fail. Anything over twenty rohms usually did with me, unless I could time it to a mold spore outbreak, in which case it succeeded in surprisingly destructive ways. So when I felt a firm yet controlled tug at the back of my chest, the zip of Crossworld power bouncing between the guy and me, I nearly fell over with shock.
It was like the stars had aligned just for this moment. A swirl of energy shot out of my fingertips, engulfing the flames in a soft white fog. Instantly, the fires went black…along with the hall lights, the office lights, and the torchiére lamps at the edge of the stairway. Before I knew it, we were plunged into utter darkness.
“O-kay,” I said, trying to recover the use of my toes. “That was new.”
“I’ll say,” he agreed, equally stunned. “You sure you haven’t done that before?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Huh.” He paused. “Sit tight for a sec.”
I heard him fumble at the wall, then the shallow clang of metal on metal sounded as he opened a circuit panel. After another click, the lights came back on and I stood.
The damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it’d looked when everything was aflame. In fact, apart from a few singed box tops and a ream of charred paper, there wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed with five minutes and a roll of wet paper towels.
“What did I tell you?” Mr. Fantastic reappeared in the doorway, dark eyes alight with amusement. “Much cleaner than a fire extinguisher, and no need for an incident report.”
My jaw dropped. No incident report? Well, that settled it. If I wasn’t in love with him before, I definitely was now. The knots of panic in my belly slowly unwound themselves.
“I don’t know what to say. Thanks, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“No, I’m sure. Thank you,” I said. “I’m already on probation. If this got back to Smalley…”
He raised an eyebrow. “Probation? On the first day of school? What’d you do?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.” I waved his question away. “I’ll clean this up, I promise. Just let me know what was damaged. I can pay for it out of my allowance.”
The guy’s lips curved into a grin that sent tingles down my legs. “How about we call this a training session. On the house, so long as you keep it contained next time. Deal?”
“Deal,” I breathed, and stuck out my hand. “Wow. Thank you. Seriously, I owe you one.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Then he took my hand. And quit smiling.
I should have known right then I was in trouble. As soon as our fingers touched, an electric shock zipped through me, ice and fire and everything in between. I couldn’t let go. I didn’t want to. Every nerve ending ignited as he tightened his grip but all I could think was, Yes. More. Closer. Like if he didn’t kiss me in the next six seconds I might shatter into pieces.
I shuddered when he finally broke contact. Faint threads of yellow light swirled near his chest like a glittery swarm of fireflies. As I stared at them, my heart began to thud.
“What’s that?”
He glanced down and, for a second, I swear he looked as rattled as I felt. His fingers fumbled as he drew a pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on. It was like watching the light come on in a dark room. As soon as he looked at me his eyes sparked, first with recognition, then with something else.
“You.” He frowned. “Please tell me you’re not Amelie Bennett.”
“I’m not Amelie Bennett,” I repeated after an uncomfortable silence.
His breath came out in a whoosh of relieved laughter. “Thank goodness. That could have been really awkward.”
“Yeah, totally.” I tried to mimic his laughter but only succeeded in sounding like a choked goat.
This was just weird. My brain clamored to make sense of the past few minutes. The light strands. That burst of power. The only times I’d seen anything similar was in bonding ceremonies or battle footage, and neither of those seemed applicable. You had to have serious experience to draw that kind of residual. I’d never even met this guy before. No way could it be bond-related.
Before I could think of anything that wouldn’t add to my sin tally, the light-strings curled into a tight fist, their tails whipping like a nest of wild snakes. They twitched angrily for a second, then dissipated in a puff, as if they’d never existed at all.
Around me, the world seemed to clarify, and I was suddenly aware of warmth on my skin where he’d touched me. But it wasn’t the kind of warmth that came after a channel. It was different. More ordinary. The kind of effortless human magic I’d always wanted but never thought myself capable of.
“Okay, not that I’m admitting to anything,” I said, poking at my arm where the light had vanished, “but if I was Amelie Bennett and happened to be lying to you about it right now, would I be looking at expulsion, suspension, or just some friendly detention time? Hypothetically, of course.”
The guy stared at me for a long second before he sighed, carefully removing his glasses. “Well,” he said. “Monkeycrud.”
Chapter Three:
Any Other Monday
“Miss Bennett, stop following me.” The office door whooshed shut in his wake. I managed to wedge my foot in just in time to get it smushed.
“Ow! I’m not following you. Smalley ordered me to deliver these to D’Arcy’s old offi
ce. That’s what I’m doing.” I trailed after him, still lugging my tower o’ boxes.
He snatched them out of my hands. “Okay, you’ve delivered them. Thank you. Good job.”
“No problem.” I wiped my palms on my skirt. “So how do you know me, anyway? And what was that weirdness before?”
His lips tightened as he shifted his weight. “Just a normal side effect of the channel. And no offense, but everyone in the Guardian educational system knows you. You don’t exactly keep a low profile.”
I caught one of the boxes from his stack as he scurried to add them to another pile. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Let me think. Overturned locker banks, doors ripped off their hinges, Headmistress Smalley’s desk on the front lawn covered in ectoplasm?”
“None of that was my fault.”
He gave me a meaningful look. “Every violin in the orchestra hall re-tuned to a minor key, every book in the library shelved binding side in? Reanimated eels in the cafeteria Kool-Aid dispenser?”
Okay, maybe a few things had been my fault.
“At least you read my record,” I noted. “That’s flattering.”
“I read the summary sheet of your record,” he corrected, “and it was terrifying. You should be in juvenile lock-up. By the way, when I said, ‘Thank you’ and ‘Good job’ before, what I meant was good-bye.”
“I gathered. Can I call you Jack?”
Two more boxes clattered against the back wall as he muttered something un-angelic. “How did you know—”
I pointed at the gold nameplate sticking sideways out of his garbage can. Jackson Smith-Hailey, Resident Guardian. “I’m guessing you’re D’Arcy’s sub. Unless you’ve knocked the poor guy out and stashed his body under the couch. I wouldn’t narc if you did.”
Jack flushed but said nothing.
While he continued to brutalize box piles in the name of organization, I took the opportunity to glance around his office. The place looked more like the sub-basement of a Quickie-Mart than an actual workspace. Cardboard boxes lined every wall. The couch was draped with a sheet and shoved in a corner. Even D’Arcy’s cool ninja books were gone, replaced by texts so boring they made my dad’s DVR owner’s manual look like J. K. Rowling. All that remained of our former R.G.’s Chuck Norris obsession was a squashed Texas Ranger hat and a few pale wall outlines where Chinese throwing stars used to hang.
“Hey, Jack,” I said. “Have you heard of Ikea?”
He gave me a decidedly dark look and set the last box down in the corner. “It’s Mr. Smith-Hailey. And my office decor”—his frown deepened—“is none of your business. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to—”
“Assembly, I know. I’ll walk with you.”
“That wasn’t what—”
“It’s okay, I’m going that way.”
I held the door open and gestured to the hallway. He still looked vaguely anxious, like the slightest breeze might make him reach for his broadsword, but at least he wasn’t glaring at me anymore.
After an impossibly awkward pause, he sighed. “All right, but hurry up. I don’t want to be late.”
…
One of the things I love about St. Michael’s is that it doesn’t look like a regular school. Wooden wainscoting and sage-colored silk paper lined the main hallway. Tasteful settees snuggled against the walls. Scrolled metal sconces cast warm strips of illumination toward the ceiling, where puddles of light collected like rainwater. If not for the distant clang of lockers, I could almost believe we were strolling through an antebellum mansion. Jack kept his head low and mumbled a lot as we walked. It reminded me of my last visit to see Aunt Verna at the mental hospital only Jack smelled more like marshmallows than liniment oil.
“So,” I said, hoping to normalize things, “what’s someone so green doing filling in for an old guy like D’Arcy? Shouldn’t you be off killing demons with your bondmate, or something?”
He gave me a strange look and mumbled something unintelligible.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said, I graduated from Monroe two years ago,” he repeated, annoyed. “I’m not green.”
“Ah, residential. I almost got sent there after my mom died. It was really…” I grappled for an adjective that wasn’t a synonym for “craphole” but nothing surfaced. Like every other memory surrounding Mom’s death, my recollection of St. Michael’s north Louisiana campus was fuzzy at best. Still, I’d be hard pressed to find any word beyond “dismal” to describe it. Rows upon rows of isolated concrete blocks, broken only by the occasional chain link fence. The place was like Danté’s ninth circle…with a playground.
“It looked sturdy,” I finished. “Y’all probably watched a lot of television.”
“We didn’t have TV.”
“Nintendo, then?”
He shook his head.
“Fantasy football? Xbox?” I frowned. “Please tell me you had Angry Birds.”
“We had a library,” he said, “and a few educational magazines.”
“Huh. Well, that’s just tragic.”
Jack ushered me into the Hall of Angels and tugged the heavy door shut behind us. Technically, it was a shortcut to the assembly hall though students rarely used it. Too intimidating, I suppose. Antique furniture lined the walkway, the deep mahogany stain perfectly matched to the vaulted eight-foot doorways on either end. Tulip-shaped torchières hung on the walls and Italianate crystal chandeliers dangled above, framed at the ceiling by hand-carved medallions. Gorgeous, in a chilly, you-break-it-you-buy-it kind of way. But what separated this room from any of St. Michael’s dozen other breathtaking halls wasn’t the decor.
It was the art.
Along one wall, seven alcoves had been hollowed out, each holding a statue more glorious than any piece of rock had a right to be. They were the founders of our race: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raguel, Remiel, and Lucifer. They were carved of stone, each holding a forged metal weapon—bow and arrows, staff, trident, dagger, pollaxe, and, at the center, the golden sword of Gabriel. The only angel not holding a weapon was Lucifer. He held a silver serpent, coiled around his fingers and glittering like poison.
“My mom was a child of Raphael.” I pointed at the archangel’s statue. Its cold, white eyes seemed to follow us down the hall. “I guess they’ve told you your bloodline already. I mean, they’d have to, right? For bonding?”
The first assembly bell wailed in the distance, but Jack didn’t look at me. I wasn’t sure if he’d specifically chosen not to look at me, or whether it was just his way of demonstrating what a small, insignificant part of his day I was. Either way, it didn’t bode well.
“So, I’ve heard bloodlines don’t always carry to the next generation,” I continued. “I’m kind of hoping Mom’s will. Gunderman told us in lecture last year the Enforcement Guild recruits heavily from Michael and Raphael’s bloodlines. Gabriel’s, too, though his children are more often teachers or politicals.”
Jack’s gaze flickered to the side. “You know about bloodlines?”
“A little. Because of all the drama with my parents. My mom—”
“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
I shrugged, trying to look casual. “It’s okay. I barely knew her. I mean, I feel like I knew her but the memories are so cloudy. Maybe Dad’s right that I was just too young. No big deal, right?”
When I looked up, he was studying the floor again.
No surprise there. That tended to happen whenever I mentioned my parents. Mom especially.
When Charlotte Lane first graduated St. Michael’s, she was a total rock star in Enforcement—like Lara Croft and Wonder Woman rolled into one. Record levels of demon slaughter, seven zombies in a single bound. Seriously, the woman walked on water. Then, about a year after graduation, she married my dad instead of her assigned bondmate.
Insta-melodrama.
It was huge. Ugly. A scandal unlike anything you’ve read in People magazine. I mean, every Guardian
married his or her bondmate. The Elders practically did somersaults to make sure our bloodlines combined in favorable ways. Marrying outside recommendation was like a steel-toed boot to their collective face.
To make matters worse, Dad chose to defect to the human sector in protest over the whole thing, which made him about as respectable as a garden gnome. The longer it went on, the harder he pushed her to quit the Guardians. Likewise, Mom’s bondmate, Bobby something-or-other, kept pushing her to ditch Dad and hook up with him. By the time Dad knocked her up she must have been an overinflated balloon of hormones. It’s a miracle the accident with Bobby didn’t happen sooner.
“Enforcement might take me even if I’m not Raphael’s bloodline,” I filled in the silence, “but every edge helps. Especially with field exams coming up. I should do okay…as long as the new examiner’s not a jerk.”
“Did someone say he’s a jerk?” Jack opened the door to the external corridor, holding it wide for me.
“No,” I said, “but faculty always are. Not to speak ill of the dead, but even Lutz could have used a personality overhaul. I still think it’s weird that a Graymason would target—”
About the same moment I remembered I wasn’t supposed to mention the Graymason, Jack let go of the door abruptly. So abruptly, in fact, I stumbled right into him to keep from getting hit by it. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the full-body contact hadn’t sent zippy yellow tingles down every inch of my skin. Swear on my life, I actually lit up—like glowed—for half a second.
“Sorry.” He steadied me awkwardly, then yanked his hands back and stuffed them deep into his pockets.
Beyond the hallway, a warm puff of breeze drifted in, chilling the sweat at my neck. The corridor had reached a forking point and, for a moment, I worried Jack might take the north fork to the faculty lounge, where I couldn’t follow.
After a pause, he veered south.
…
By the time Jack left me at the door to the assembly hall, the senior class’s assigned rows had already started to fill up.
