by W. J. May
But as the rest of the boys went back to their flurry of speculation, Simon leaned back with a thoughtful frown. Arturo might be as smart as they came, but he was wrong about one thing. An attack like this had happened before. Apparently, it had happened very recently.
“Tristan,” he leaned forward with a whisper, confident that the fox could still hear, “you know anything about a town called Rockford?”
* * *
“I still can’t believe we’re sneaking in to the library,” Tristan complained for the umpteenth time, fidgeting uncomfortably in his black beanie.
The dark ‘spy-wear’ had been something that Simon had insisted upon. Partially because he thought it would be prudent, as they were sneaking out past curfew in the middle of the night. And partially because ever since he’d seen Jason wearing it to train, he’d been dying to put it on himself.
His reluctant companion, however, had been slightly less enthusiastic.
“I’m serious.” Tristan stuffed flyaway locks of his golden brown hair up under the dark fabric with palpable frustration. “It’s supposed to be the other way around. If this gets out, it’s going to do terrible things for my reputation.”
Simon chuckled under his breath, keeping one ear pressed to the door. When he was satisfied there was no one inside, he fiddled with the lock for a moment before the door sprang free.
“Relax.” He clapped Tristan on the shoulder as he slipped inside. “If anyone gives you shit about it, you can always do a somersault off of Joist Hall.”
“Oh, that’s funny,” Tristan said without inflection, following him into the dark. “You know, it’s really no wonder that people want to shoot you, Simon.”
If it was possible, the library at night was even more unsettling than it was under the sharp eyes of the vengeful librarian. There was something about the stale air and darkened shelves that made Simon feel as though the building itself knew they were trespassing. He stifled a shudder as they walked past a portrait of a retired dean, convinced the eyes in the picture were following him.
“So tell me again what exactly we’re looking for.” Tristan looked just as uneasy as he was. Even with the heightened senses and built-in grace of his tatù, he was still jumping at the slightest bit of sound.
“All I know is they were talking about Rockford.” Simon started drifting towards a section labeled ‘current history,’ losing himself amongst the Rs. “The dean said that he needed to see what was left of a body in Rockford. I’m assuming it’s a town.”
“It is a town,” Tristan confirmed, drifting along behind him. “It’s a little south of here, near Surrey. But I don’t see why they think the two attacks would be connected. I remember hearing something about Rockford on the news a few weeks before the start of term. Some seven-year-old kid got shot. And yeah, it’s tragic and all, but he was just some kid. His parents weren’t inked, and neither was he. Why would they think that had anything to do with you?”
Simon shook his head, coming up empty in the space where any book might be. “I don’t know. I just didn’t know where else to start. I was hoping the place would have some kind of historical significance, or maybe it wasn’t the first attack to have happened there, or maybe they think that the assassin might have been from there, meaning that they have some clue as to—”
“Simon.”
The tone of Tristan’s voice caught him off guard, and Simon whirled around in surprise. His friend had been watching him carefully, growing more and more still as the rant escalated into a rising panic. Now that it had stopped, Tristan’s face softened the slightest degree.
“I really am glad that you’re alright, you know.”
All at once, all the pent-up adrenaline and panic that Simon had been keeping bottled up since the talk in Jason’s office came rushing out of him in a single breath. He felt as if he’d come up for air, and only just realized he’d been drowning. That he’d stepped off of a curb and only just realized that a bus had swerved in the nick of time. It was a feeling of delayed ‘dodged a bullet’ relief so intense that a small part of him was surprised his hair hadn’t gone flying back from the sudden rush of it all.
“Yeah,” he said in a shaky voice. “Me, too.”
It was then he noticed his hands were trembling.
A flash of protective concern that reminded Simon strangely of Jason flashed across Tristan’s face and he took a step forward. For a second, he seemed to be trying to come up with the perfect thing to say. But in the end, he merely set his face with calm determination.
“You said they were talking about Rockford?”
Simon nodded silently.
“Fine. Then we’ll just pull out all the information on Rockford we can find.”
Without another word, he swept off to a different aisle to try his luck. Simon stared after him in wonder. It was the third time that day that he’d been unexpectedly touched by a seemingly casual show of concern. But while he’d expected it from a professor, and even from Jason because he’d come to know him so well, a show of support from Tristan Wardell still surprised him.
But the surprises weren’t finished there.
“Oh, and Simon?”
There was a blur of speed, and the next thing Simon knew, Tristan was standing in front of him—holding out his arm. It took a second for Simon to figure out what he meant, and when he did his eyes grew wide with shock.
“Are you sure?” he asked tentatively.
Tristan gave him a shrug. “Better safe than sorry with you these days. Maybe this way you’ll be able to hear if anyone is coming.”
Four times. Four moments of unexplained, undeserved support. Simon was going to have to start sending out thank-you cards.
With more than a little hesitation, he reached out and gripped Tristan’s arm as delicately as he could. Tristan flinched anyway as the tatù left his body, but was quick to turn it into a casual grin.
“Besides, we’re supposed to be sneaking around here, Kerrigan.” He headed upstairs to check on the top shelves. “I could hear you breathing from ten blocks away.”
Chapter 4
The sound of distant voices flitted in through the oriel, gothic-looking windows, before filtering down over the stacks of books piled high upon the table. The spirited chirps of sparrows and starlings danced back and forth in the air, elated with the rising sun, and somewhere near the cafeteria a bell chimed softly over the wet lawn.
It was another beautiful springtime morning in the English countryside. Only…not everyone was awake to see it.
With disoriented confusion, Simon pushed himself slowly upright from where he’d been plastered against a desk. A topographical map of southern Surrey stuck to his cheek, and he squinted blearily at the windows as he peeled it from his face.
Was that…sunlight? Like the night’s over, and it’s possibly—
OH SHIT!
“Tristan!” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet and stumbling backwards into an unyielding shelf. A copy of Actions and their Consequences struck him sharply in the back of the head, but at the moment he was too panicked to appreciate the irony. “Tristan—get up! We fell asleep!”
How exactly it happened, Simon didn’t know. The last thing he remembered, it was around four-thirty and the two of them were brainstorming back and forth as to the merits of a regular versus a tatùed police force. A fresh pot of coffee had been brewed, and the table was littered with a hundred ripped-open packets of sugar and empty paper cups. They hadn’t found anything useful so far, but they had at least been making progress. Everything had been going great. And, more importantly, they were both still awake.
So what the hell happened?!
“Tristan!” Simon cried again, darting around frantically as he stacked up the books on the table and began shoving them haphazardly back onto the shelves.
But Tristan didn’t hear him.
He was sprawled out across a colossal pile of books labeled Crime and Justice: Volumes 1 through 24, one leg dangling over the edge
and his good arm slung across his face. His heightened senses must have only applied when he was awake, because, as it stood, he was totally dead to the world. Trapped in a research-induced coma.
This was a fact that might have been harmless, except that it left him completely oblivious to the shrewish librarian ambling slowly towards the door.
“Tristan!” Simon hissed again, ducking behind a shelf. Doing the only thing he could think of, he picked up a Spanish-English dictionary and threw it at his friend’s chest.
It hit him in the face instead.
There was a startled cry as Tristan fell off the books and landed on the floor. His broken arm made contact first, and he lifted his head with a violent profanity on his lips. After blinking around for a second as Simon had, his gaze finally rested on the culprit.
“You son of a—”
‘NO TIME!’ Simon mouthed, pointing frantically behind him. ‘LIBRARIAN!’
Tristan’s head swiveled around in panic just as the woman was lifting her key to the lock. A second later she wandered inside, whistling softly to herself as she dropped her keys and purse on the front desk.
It could have been disastrous. It could have been the stuff of Guilder legend. But how long it took her to find the mess left in the back room, or discover that the coffee pot was perched upon an ottoman, the boys would never know.
One of the perks to having super powers? Now and then they really came in handy.
“WHOA!” Simon leapt back into the air the second he’d landed, unable to keep his feet on the ground. “That was AWESOME!”
After more than a little hesitation, he’d just followed Tristan’s lead and jumped out of the third-story window of the library stacks. While the jump itself was scary enough, the fact that they had to do some sort of mid-air cartwheel to dodge an oncoming tree branch had spiked his adrenaline through the freaking roof.
“I mean, we just—so you just—and then that branch came out of freaking NOWHERE!”
Tristan tried to act cool, but he was grinning. “Just calm down, Kerrigan. Act like you’ve done this before.” He smoothed down his hair and nodded respectfully at a pair of professors who cast them suspicious looks as they strolled by. When they were safely out of sight, he turned back to Simon with a bit of reproach. “And about that book you threw at my head?”
“What?” Simon grinned. “I thought you were supposed to land on your feet.”
“That’s cats, you idiot. I’m not a freaking tabby.”
But he was only half-serious, and Simon was only half-listening.
While Simon might have technically used Tristan’s ink before, it was basically just to pound the guy’s face in. There were no acrobatics, there was no finesse. In short, the feeling of catapulting his body weightless through the air? Yeah. That was brand new.
“I just don’t see why you don’t go around like that all the time,” he mused, holding his arms out in front of him and studying them as if he could see a visible difference.
“What?” Tristan grinned and fell into step beside him. “Swinging from tree to tree like some kind of Tarzan?” Simon shot him a look and he shrugged. “The thought has crossed my mind.”
Simon chuckled and curled his fingers into fists. “I know I gave you crap about your tatù before, but I didn’t know what I was talking about. This is just unbelievable. Maybe if I’m careful, I can avoid running into anyone between now and my training, and use it to try to kick Jason’s ass—”
But no sooner had he said the words than a shoulder rammed into his. A head of dark hair whipped around as two sets of book bags went spilling over the ground.
“I’m sorry,” Jacob murmured as he knelt automatically to pick them up. “I didn’t see…” His voice trailed off as he raised his head for the first time and saw Simon.
It was like flipping a switch. His face went pale, and even without the extra help of Tristan’s ink, Simon thought he could have heard his heartbeat quicken.
He stumbled back a step, simultaneously grabbing the strap of his bag and swinging it hastily over his shoulder. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“No, that’s okay!” Simon jumped in quickly.
Sensing the impending awkwardness, Tristan gave both a parting nod and politely disappeared, leaving them to speak, or not, as they wished. As it turned out, while Simon more than willing, Jacob was absolutely not.
“Listen, I’ve actually wanted to talk with you—”
Jacob backed another step away. “Yeah, uh, actually, I’ve really got to get to class.” His face still hadn’t regained its normal color, and he couldn’t get away fast enough. “Sorry, Simon.”
Simon reached out and grabbed his arm. “It will only take a second—”
“Maybe some other time.”
With a mighty tug, Jacob pulled away and disappeared into the crowd of people heading off towards the history building, leaving Simon frozen in his tracks. But it wasn’t the brush-off or the hasty departure that had Simon so thrown. It was the brand new feeling humming just below his skin. One that felt nothing like Tristan’s, though it was just as powerful.
…but not really as welcome.
“What? No!” Simon rubbed the tips of his fingers, as if they had been burned. It stung to take ink just as much as it did to lose it. He wished people would appreciate that. Except, right now he had problems of a different nature. “Perfect freaking timing,” he mumbled as he snatched up his book bag and walked away.
He was due in the Oratory in less than two hours, and, as it stood, he was armed with nothing more than a bewildering clairvoyance that was completely beyond his control. And he’d wanted to do so well today. He wanted prove that he wasn’t thrown by the assassin. Come back just as strong, if not stronger.
Maybe there was still time to catch up with Tristan, although he didn’t think the one-time offer in the library last night was really an open door invitation to ink-sharing. Maybe Jason would lend him his own ability before their session. That thought warmed him through and through. He had yet to really play around with the falcon. In some ways, it was even more exciting than the fox—
“Simon!”
Before Simon could come to any sort of decision, a freckly-faced boy with bright blue eyes came bursting out of the crowd. He caught Simon firmly by the arm and pulled him off the main walkway with a surprising strength for one so young.
“So that’s just it, huh?” Argyle demanded. “You eat lunch once at Tristan Wardell’s table, start training in the Oratory, and suddenly I’m too low down on your list of priorities to even tell me when someone tries to shoot you in the head?!”
“Whoa, whoa! Calm down,” Simon tried to reassure him. “It wasn’t that big a deal; I’m absolutely fine.” He didn’t exactly know why he was downplaying it. Argyle just seemed so wound up that ‘down’ was the only direction he could possibly go.
“Wasn’t that big a deal?!” Argyle quoted incredulously.
Simon winced. Yeah, not my best line. “I was just coming to find you,” he improvised believably. “I’ve been in meetings with the dean and the headmaster and Jason and stuff—talking all about the attack. I only finally got out when you found me just now.”
The lies? Had they always come so easy? And to Argyle, of all people.
Argyle’s face relaxed just a fraction of an inch. “Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Then he looked Simon up and down and started shaking his head with a look of sheer horror. “I just can’t believe it! I can’t believe that happened to you! That’s got to be the first attack on a student on Guilder grounds in—what? Forever?”
Simon nodded thoughtfully and put his arm around Argyle’s shoulder as he steered him gently to the dorms. They would talk about everything in great length. Pore over every facet and minute detail until they couldn’t be pored over any more. Who knows? Maybe Argyle even had a fresh perspective that could prove useful. “I know, I know…” he needlessly interjected as Argyle ranted on and on.
In the meantime, he
and Tristan hadn’t been able to find anything useful on Rockwood, but perhaps Jason had. With any luck, Jason had a lead on the assassin himself.
Or better yet, he had information on the man behind the curtain, pulling the strings.
* * *
“So, the conquering hero returns! And how is our brave little victim today?”
Jason was already waiting on the training room floor when Simon pushed open the door a few hours later. His hair was pulled back into its customary ponytail, the earring was tucked safely away, and he was fitted head-to-toe in the same kind of cool black spy gear that Simon had been trying so hard to recreate the night before.
“You know, I think the professionals at the career-placement center did you a severe disservice,” Simon countered, taking up his usual position a few feet away. “You should have been a trauma counselor. Or maybe a puppy trainer.” He shrugged. “Something like that.”
Jason grinned. “Having canine flashbacks, are we?”
To that—Simon could think of nothing to say. He simply bowed his head and gritted his teeth in defeat as Jason chuckled softly.
“So,” his mentor held up his hands in invitation, “what do you have for me today?”
Simon grimaced apologetically. “Clairvoyance. That I can’t even use.”
Rather than be disappointed, Jason looked up in surprise. “You talked to Jacob?”
“No,” Simon clarified, realizing his mistake, “just ran into him. He’s still avoiding me.”
Jason nodded thoughtfully. “Well, that’s to be expected. I’ll hunt him down myself later today and make sure he’s alright. In the meantime,” he strode forward and rolled up his sleeve, “let’s not even get into that ability. Too complicated to pull randomly out of a hat. Take mine.”
Simon reached out greedily, and then tried to hide his excitement. In a lot of ways, Jason’s ability felt even more energetic than Tristan’s. Well, maybe not more energetic, but more wound up. When Simon was using it, he always felt as though he was perched on the edge of a cliff just waiting to spring out into the air. No safety net. No consequences.
