Grayson scowled at him. He met her eyes without blinking. Their relationship had always been strange—half professor and student, half ex-Guardian and wilder. It meant she pushed him harder than she did other students in her classes. It also meant he wouldn’t let her pull rank in situations when she didn’t have it. The Guardian who first encountered a problem had precedence, unless someone else with relevant experience came in. And no one had experience with this.
“Fine,” Grayson said at last, biting the word off. “Ask him what the Unseelie were trying to do, and what they’ve tried in the past. Ask him what the Seelie and our own kind have done to oppose that. And try to find out how far we can rely upon them as allies.”
“I can already answer most of that,” Julian said, then cut off her attempted question. “But I’ll tell you later. Neither Kim nor I have eaten yet today, and I seem to remember you also suggesting that keeping myself fed might be wise.” Then, without letting her respond to that, either, he nodded politely and opened the door. “Good-bye.”
Then he led Kim inside, and shut the door on Grayson without another word.
~
I kept my mouth shut while we were in the serving lines, since even the buffer zone that tended to exist around Julian wasn’t the same as real privacy. But once we got back up to his room with our food, I let out the words I’d been swallowing. “I can’t believe you spoke to her like that.”
Julian grimaced as he set his tray down on the floor. “I was taking some of my irritation at Falcon out on her. But I can’t blame it all on that. I’m just sick of this, I guess. Sick of being questioned—like a lab rat that can talk.”
I could sympathize with that. “She’s on our side, though.”
“I know.” Julian scraped his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t exactly intend that.”
You have yourself well under control. Grayson had seemed to think Julian was all right. But looking at him, I could see that he was still frayed, still not quite himself again. The Julian I’d known these past two years wouldn’t have let his emotions slip like that.
The Julian I’d known also wouldn’t have admitted these mistakes to me. But that was one change I was happy to see.
Grayson wasn’t the only one he’d reacted to, though. Julian had admitted as much a moment ago. “What is it between you and Falcon? If you’d been cats, your fur would have been standing on end.”
Julian gave the apple he was cutting a sour look. “He blames me for the failure of the changelings.”
Hearing him use the word shocked me all out of measure. It wasn’t the worst slur out there, but it was bad enough that I almost stuttered in asking my next question. “What failure?”
“It’s a long story.” Julian eyed me and wisely chose to continue anyway. “When our worlds were about to separate, the Unseelie imprisoned all the human-sidhe crossbreeds in the Otherworld—there weren’t that many of them—and wiped the memory of their existence from the rest of humanity. They were trying to make sure that when they returned, we’d be completely ignorant of magic, and therefore vulnerable. I think they might even be responsible for why we remember so little of the truth. They may have worked some kind of block, that would send our theories askew.”
I hoped that was the case; it would help us save face. Even allowing for the thousands of years that had passed since that prehistoric event, we’d forgotten a hell of a lot. “The crossbreeds must have gotten back, though, or none of us would be blooded.”
Julian nodded. “The Seelie managed to free them, right before the split happened. They sent all the crossbreeds back into our world, to keep the truth alive and re-teach humanity what it had lost.”
My intuition made a sudden leap. “They dumped them in the British Isles, didn’t they.”
Pleasure warmed Julian’s expression. “There’s no way to prove it, since the sidhe have no concept of human geography, but that’s what I think, too. It would explain why the Celtic legends retained more of the truth than others did.”
“We’re still missing a lot of information, though. Falcon blames you for that?”
“More or less.”
“But that’s stupid,” I said, putting my fork down in annoyance. “You’re not at fault for what happened however long ago—it had to have been thousands of years, at least. You can only work with what you have, and you weren’t given much.”
Julian shrugged wearily. “I know that. You know that. And even Falcon knows it. But the ones who failed in their duty are out of his reach, and I’m the most accessible target he has.”
“Even though the crossbreeds were set an impossible task.” I wished the sidhe were there right then, so I could vent my fury on him.
“Yes. The Seelie laid a magical injunction on them, a geis. There are no excuses for failing a geis. None.”
I opened my mouth for an angry response to that, and then stopped. A geis. On the crossbreeds. “Is that what makes wilders behave the way they do?”
Julian went very still, and for a long moment he did not respond. I bit my lip, less certain than when I’d said it. At last he nodded, very slowly. “It might be.” He shook his head in amazement. “They were instructed to keep alive the true history, and to ensure magic remained controlled, so long as it continued to function. Gods.” One hand raked through his hair again. It seemed to be a nervous gesture of his. Was he doing it more lately because of the situation, or because he was willing to show me he was stressed? “It makes a great deal of sense.”
Given what he had told me about wilders, yes. They were spiritually bound to the Otherworld, much more than the rest of us. If the geis were to fall to anyone, it would be them.
Making that connection didn’t prevent me from being irritated at Falcon, though. “Still, I’d like to smack some manners into that green-eyed bastard.”
Julian came back to earth and smiled wryly. “I’d like to, myself. He’s spoken down to me ever since he realized how little we managed to remember.”
“Are they all that bad?”
“No.” Julian shook his head firmly. “I didn’t speak to many of them, but Flint didn’t seem to care, and Shard was understanding. She’s quite impressed by what we have managed, actually, or so it seemed to me.” He met my eyes and smiled again, with more than a hint of satisfaction. “You put Falcon off-balance, though, which is impressive.” I tilted my head in confusion. “When you snapped at him. You weren’t going to let him treat us like children, and you made him realize it. I felt the same way, but I was trying not to show it.”
I blushed. “I was rude.”
“No, I’m glad you did it. It’s the first time I’ve seen anyone put him off like that.”
“I want to know how their abilities differ from ours,” I said, trying to change the topic before my face caught on fire. “We put together makeshift systems for understanding how magic works, but the sidhe are the real thing. We could learn so much from them.”
“Maybe,” Julian said dubiously. “They’ll make poor teachers, though. You have to understand—they only vaguely grasp what we mean by ‘magic.’ They sort of know, but it’s so natural to them that our approach confuses them. It would be like one of them coming and asking you to teach him how it is you do something like….” His expression revived my blush. “Being in love.”
With any guy other than Julian, I might have tried to capitalize on that opening. But whether it was the geis or just his own sense of duty, I knew he wouldn’t welcome a distraction right now. Not to mention the tension around physical contact— that was definitely a problem for later.
“But how—” I aborted that with a shake of my head. “Never mind. This isn’t something that comes to them only at puberty; they don’t have to train their children. Their control of it is probably instinctive.”
“Pretty much. They refine it—like training to be a better runner, or a singer—but the basics aren’t taught, they’re inborn.”
“Damn.” I sighed. I felt like I was back to
the previous quarter, watching Grayson move through a procedure, her skipping steps right and left, and me wondering if I’d ever be able to do what she did. Except that in the case of the sidhe, I wouldn’t. I was too human. “Well, I’ll just have to learn by observation.”
Julian grimaced, and I made an inquiring sound. “If they let you,” he said. “I understand their need for secrecy, but—they didn’t give me much choice about blanking my memory. And when they gave those memories back, I think they altered a few things. Some events or places are fuzzy, with details missing.”
His voice had gone flat in a way that spoke volumes. They might be allies, but he wouldn’t easily forgive that interference. And those missing details might be important to us. I hadn’t forgotten what Julian said before about needing an edge, so we could formulate some kind of strategy.
Nor had I forgotten our deadline. Barely a month remained until the solstice. In one month, the sidhe would no longer be limited to Welton. They’d be unleashed on the world, and gods help us all if we didn’t have a defense by then.
A buzzing from my pocket punctuated that thought. Pulling out my port, I moaned. “Oh, gods. It’s my parents.”
Julian nodded toward his bedroom. “You can go in there, if you need privacy.”
And give my mother a chance to notice, and ask about, my different surroundings? Not likely. “I should get home, anyway,” I said. “I’ll call them back from there. I’d rather use my screen anyway, since I bet they both want to talk to me.”
The buzzing stopped. Julian’s expression told me he recognized that for the polite excuse it was, but he let it pass. I wondered if I should kiss him goodbye—was he ready for that? I confined myself to squeezing his hand. “I’ll see you at dinner, okay?”
Julian nodded, and I went to face my doom.
~
Back in my dorm room, I stared at the screen as if it were going to bite me. Usually I didn’t mind talking to my parents, but neither of them had been happy when the demands of their jobs forced them back home after my “accident.” They wanted to know every detail of what I’d done since then, down to what I had for breakfast, and even that wasn’t be enough. And I couldn’t afford to give them real answers, nor to tell them why I couldn’t.
Taking a deep breath, I dialed home.
My mother picked up. “Hold on just a moment; let me get your father on.” After a moment, the screen split into two images, one showing my mother in her office, the other showing my father in his.
“Sorry I didn’t pick up before,” I said. “I was in the middle of some PK practice, and didn’t want to blow myself up.” Ouch. Bad choice of lie. I shouldn’t remind them of the summoning debacle.
A pause. I fought the urge to fidget. Then came the inevitable question.
“Have they found your wilder friend yet?”
My wilder friend. She wouldn’t call him a changeling, but she wouldn’t use his name, either. What was I supposed to tell her? Yeah, they did, though me and my friends had to piece his mind back together before he could tell us about how he was kidnapped by the sidhe. But don’t worry, Mom; not all the sidhe are bad. I had a very nice one in my room the other night, except he’s not really nice, he’s just trying to keep all of humanity from becoming the tool of his enemies. Which might happen anyway. Or they might just decide to destroy us. So I hope you’ve been buffing up on your combat skills, Mom, ‘cause you may need them when all hell breaks loose on the solstice.
“Yeah.”
Another pause. I got the impression she was tapping her foot, although the image didn’t go that low. “And?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know much. Professor Grayson has been keeping everything under very tight security.” Maybe I could blame everything on Grayson. If my mother chose to take her on, at least it would be a fairer fight than this one.
“Is he all right?” my father asked.
He’s a lot better since I told him I love him. “I think so. There was some kind of healing circle.”
“Physical healing?” my father asked in surprise.
“No, psychic. I don’t really know details.” Another lie. I hated doing this to my parents, but even if Grayson hadn’t forbidden me to speak, I wasn’t sure I would’ve been able to tell them. My father might not care, but if my mother knew I was in love with a wilder, she’d have a cat. Of course, I’d have to break the news to her eventually.
Maybe I should just wait a month. Once she got a good look at Falcon, Julian would seem downright normal.
“I hope this isn’t disturbing your classes,” my mother said.
“Not really,” I lied. “If it were the end of the term, it might be harder, but it’s still fairly early, so I’m not drowning in work.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done any reading.
“That’s good. I wouldn’t want this to upset your grades.” Of course not; I had a nice internship lined up for the summer, and wouldn’t want to jeopardize that, now would I? If the world was even normal enough for internships six months from now.
“I don’t think it will.”
“How are your hands?” my father asked.
“They’re better. I’ve been careful with them.”
My father nodded in approval. My mother asked, “Is everything else going okay?”
“Yeah. The weather’s been nice. Cold, but not too much snow.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Awkward silence followed. “Well, I imagine you’ve got work to do, so we’ll let you go.”
They were letting me off the hook that easily? I wasn’t about to complain. “Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too, honey,” my mother said, and my father echoed her. “Bye.”
My mother’s image blinked out of the screen. But as I was reaching to hang up, my father raised one hand to stop me. “Kim, one more thing.”
I froze. What did he want?
He glanced around, as if expecting to see someone lurking in the corners of his office, before going on in a low voice. “Be careful, Kim. Your mother didn’t want to tell you, but she had a dream last night.”
“What kind of dream?”
“You were running into a forest, but you didn’t see it was there. And it was very dangerous. That’s all she could get out of it.”
My heart beat faster at his words. My mother wasn’t prone to precognitive dreams, but when she had one, they were usually important. “Okay. I’ll bear that in mind.”
“I mean it, Kim. Be careful.”
“I will. And thanks for warning me.”
“All right. Stay safe.” He hung up, and the screen went blank.
Chapter Nine
Liesel stopped in the doorway. Not by choice; I’d left a box in the middle of the floor that blocked her from the rest of the room.
“Shit,” I said. “Sorry. Let me move that.” I picked up the box and stopped helplessly. There was nowhere else to put it. Practically every book I owned was off the shelf, along with half of Liesel’s. I ended up ducking into the bedroom and leaving the box on my bed.
In the meantime Liesel picked her way across the wreckage and hung her bag from the back of her chair. “What happened?”
“I wish I could say a tornado, but sadly, it’s all me.” I came back into the common room with a guilty face. “I was looking in my books—and yours—for anything useful regarding the sidhe. Then I tried the divination route.” Three packs of tarot cards, four sets of other cards, my focus, and the runes from Julian accounted for a small corner of the mess. Much of the rest was the result of me trying to find the other decks, after my usual one produced nothing helpful.
“What kinds of questions were you asking?”
I shrugged. “General stuff, mostly. What sorts of trouble we might face, and so on.” I kept my shields up as I said it. If I told her about my mother’s dream, she’d only worry. I’d try for some clarification tonight, in my own dreams, and see if I got anything more concrete.
Liesel shifted a stack of books off the
couch so she could sit down. “And?”
“And nothing,” I said, discouraged. “At least, nothing I couldn’t have told you before. We have trouble in our futures. There’s going to be lots of panic when people find out. Some people will probably die. How many, I can’t say.” One reading had indicated huge losses; another, very few. I decided not to quantify it for Liesel, though.
Her hands were tightly clenched in her lap. “What does that mean?”
“It means the future’s too much in flux to read,” I said. The words slowed as I reached the end of the sentence. Liesel knew this stuff already; she’d taken a divination survey course. Why ask me, when she knew the answer?
Maybe she’d been hoping I would give her a different one.
She stood up and began to move about the room. I watched, leaning in the doorway to the bedroom, as she picked up her books and returned them to their places on the shelf, reorganizing the ones I’d disarranged in my search. “Sorry,” I said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to go through your stuff.”
“It’s all right,” Liesel said. Once she finished with her books, she tidied up some scattered papers, then started in on my books. I watched her alphabetize them. My books were never alphabetized.
“What’s wrong?” I asked quietly.
Liesel shook her head. “Nothing. Did you talk to your parents?”
The motion had been small and tight. Her fingers continually brushed strands of hair out of her face, even when I couldn’t see any there. “Yes, I did, and your ‘nothing’ is as believable as Robert playing innocent.” I came forward, stepping over debris along the way. Something was wrong with this, with me trying to read Liesel. Unfortunately, being an empath, she knew very well how to lock her emotions up so I couldn’t catch so much as a trailing wisp.
She also ought to know that such behavior wasn’t healthy.
She paused, holding the anthology from my sophomore year French literature class. I waited, letting her work through whatever was bothering her. “What did you tell them?” she asked at last.
I blinked. “Who? My parents?” She nodded. “Not much. Mostly that Grayson was handling the problems with Julian, and that I didn’t know much about what was going on.”
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