by James Riley
“Jia, no,” Rachel said, shaking her head a few feet away. That had to be the first time in a while that Rachel hadn’t used Jia’s nickname. “We can’t—we promised. Besides, I figured you’d be all about not sharing secrets.”
Jia flinched at this, almost as if Rachel had slapped her. “You know why I couldn’t tell you that,” she said quietly.
“No, I don’t,” Rachel said, looking away. “But I do know why we can’t tell Fort about… everything. I don’t know how much I trust Merlin, but he made sense about this.”
“Tell me what?” Fort asked. “Is this about the training or something? Because if there’s a way I can help, I want to!” Ember meowed loudly in support, which he absently petted her for in thanks.
Jia stared at the ground. “He deserves to know,” she said. “I don’t care what we promised.”
Rachel snorted. “It’s weird how these promises of yours come and go, isn’t it?” She turned to Fort. “Hey, remember when you asked if either of us made a deal with the faerie queen, because that girl said something about it? Well—”
“Rachel, no!” Jia shouted, stepping in front of Fort and holding up her hands.
“Why not?” Rachel asked, looking miserable but not backing down. “Do you really think Fort doesn’t need to know? Or is this why you want to tell him what we found out in the past, because you feel guilty about keeping this from us?”
“What is going on?” Fort shouted. “What happened between you two?” And did Jia make some kind of deal with the faerie queen that she hadn’t mentioned? Why would she hide it?
Jia gave Rachel a pleading look, and the other girl just rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry—I’m tired. I haven’t slept in days, and—”
“Days?” Fort said, his eyebrows rising. “What are you talking about?”
And then it hit him: wearing different outfits, traveling through time, training for as long as they could. They hadn’t been gone for just a half hour.
“How long?” he asked. “How long were you training for?”
“Two weeks,” Rachel said, hugging herself with her arms.
“Two weeks?” Fort said, his voice rising an octave. “You’re joking. There’s no way!”
But Jia nodded in confirmation. “Merlin had a lot to show us. About the Old Ones, and—”
“And more that we’re not allowed to talk about,” Rachel said, interrupting Jia. “So that’s all we can say.” She looked down at Ember, who was batting her paws at Fort’s earlobe now. “Are you going to be okay with this murderous cat while you figure out her language?”
“I’d be a lot more okay if I wasn’t maybe going to cast a random spell every time I said something to her,” Fort said, deciding to let whatever their secret was go, since Rachel was obviously trying to change the subject. Not to mention he knew he’d never get anything out of Rachel that she didn’t want to tell.
Jia, though, definitely seemed to be feeling guilty about something, and for good reason if she’d been hiding a deal with the faerie queen. Granted, Fort hadn’t initially told either of them about his own deal with the queen, the one that had ended up saving his father, but he hadn’t believed it would actually work. Now that they’d seen what the queen could do, it seemed like a pretty good time to share any other deals.
Rachel smiled slightly. “I’d avoid the word ‘fio’ if I were you. Now I’m heading home to sleep for as long as my parents let me.” She turned without another word, or even a look at Jia, while Jia just watched her go. Rachel opened a portal with her slap bracelet and, a moment later, was gone.
“Jia, if there’s anything you want to tell me now that she’s not here…,” Fort said, trailing off, but Jia just shook her head.
“I don’t know, I… I have to think about it all,” she said, and the expression on her face made his heart break for her. Whatever had happened, it’d hurt them both a lot.
Still, Fort couldn’t help but be a little annoyed himself. What had Jia kept from them? Whatever it was had to be worse for Rachel, too. As close as they were, Fort couldn’t imagine what Rachel must have felt if she’d found out about Jia keeping something from her. It would be as if Sierra hadn’t told him something, which he already was way too familiar with, considering she’d been hiding Damian from him.
But it wasn’t going to help anyone to go over all of that with Jia now. It looked like she and Rachel had already had it out, and Jia looked like she could use a friend at the moment.
“Try to get some sleep, okay?” Fort told her, but she was already opening a portal. She gave him a wave, then disappeared inside, taking the teleportation circle with her.
Weirdly, standing alone in the clearing with Ember on his shoulder, Fort felt more alone than at any time since the original attack in Washington, D.C. He, Rachel, and Jia had been a team for so many weeks now, it felt odd to be left out of secrets, to know they were hiding things from him, even if there were good reasons.
Once again, he was reminded of what it felt like to be the only student at the Oppenheimer School not born on Discovery Day. Just like then, he seemed to be left out of everything, like he didn’t belong.
At least he had Cyrus in those days, someone who didn’t care when Fort was born, or how talented at magic he was. Hopefully, Cyrus was somewhere okay and would be back soon, because right now, Fort could have used a friend.
“You want to know what’s going on, don’t you?” he asked his cat-dragon.
Ember briefly opened her eyes, yawned, then closed them again.
“Yeah, me too,” he said sadly. Speaking of the original Oppenheimer School, he suddenly missed having access to Sierra’s Mind magic, even if it was all by accident on her part. If he could read minds like she could now, he wouldn’t need Jia to tell him what they’d found out, whatever it was that Rachel was so insistent he couldn’t know.
But they’d destroyed the book of Mind magic, back when they’d stolen it and the book of Summoning from Colonel Charles, so there was no way to…
Wait. Of course there was a way.
The dragon dictionary had every possible spell word in existence!
All he had to do was find the right words, something like See What Jia and Rachel Were Hiding That They’d Learned from Merlin During Their Training—or maybe a bit simpler than that—and he’d figure out whatever this secret was, without Merlin even knowing or Jia and Rachel getting in trouble. It’d be easy, and wouldn’t be dangerous at all, considering there was no fire involved this time. And while he was looking for this new spell, he’d still be learning Ember’s language, so doing exactly what he was supposed to!
And hey, once he knew Merlin’s secret, maybe that’d help Fort find a way to actually help against the Timeless One, as soon as he got Ember to Avalon. This was starting to feel like a plan!
“C’mon, little girl,” Fort told Ember, rubbing her head. “We’re going to have a lot of studying to do tomorrow night, so we need to rest up tonight!”
“Volai hrana,” Ember hissed at him, then went back to sleep.
- SEVENTEEN -
UNFORTUNATELY, BEFORE FORT COULD GET back to Merlin’s cottage the next night, he had to spend a full day with a certain faerie girl.
Xenea was waiting for him the next morning as soon as Fort stepped outside the apartment complex. “I didn’t see any dragons last night,” she told him without even a hello. “And I was watching.”
“Fantastic,” Fort said. “I didn’t see any either.” Considering Ember had stayed in cat form, that at least wasn’t a lie. “Xenea, you mentioned that one of my friends might have made a deal with your queen. Do you know what that deal was?”
Xenea slowly smiled. “Maybe. Why? What’s it worth to you?”
Fort sighed deeply. “Forget it. I don’t want to know.”
“I think you do,” she said, staring at him suspiciously. “You better watch out, or I’ll use my glamour on you to find out what’s actually going on here.”
Thankfully, the school
bus pulled up just then, and Xenea was distracted away from Fort’s eyes widening at her threat. He hadn’t even considered that she might use her magic to force him to reveal things. He might tell her everything about Ember, and that’d be it for the baby dragon!
Fortunately, Xenea seemed to forget what had just happened as soon as she stepped aboard the bus, surrounded as she was by other students. And once at school, she seemed even more distracted, which was perfect, since Fort had a lot of thinking to do.
Unfortunately, instead of the faerie girl sitting with her new friends at lunch, she brought them all to Fort’s table, where they crowded in, giving Fort a bunch of side-eye while fawning over her. Perfect.
“So explain this one more time,” Xenea said to Fort as she stared at the chicken tender in his hand with distaste. “What part of that strange white feathered bird you showed me is that again?”
“No one really knows,” Fort admitted, putting the chicken back down on his plate, suddenly not very hungry.
“And the ‘money’ they wanted for this?” she asked, picking up a pudding cup and happily spooning its contents into her mouth. “Food should be free for all. But if they have to make a deal for it, why not just let me bargain with this so-called ‘lunch lady’? I could have gotten all our meals, plus the net she wears in her hair, for a pittance!”
“We use money instead of making deals,” Yejun told her. “It’s like saying ‘I gave someone a dollar’s worth of something, and they gave me this piece of paper to prove it.’ Now I can trade that piece of paper to someone else for the same amount of stuff.”
Xenea sniffed disdainfully. “Seems overly complicated. Why not just negotiate directly? That way you can outwit your opponent.”
The rest of the table all nodded in agreement, while Fort rolled his eyes. “Because not every deal has to be about beating someone,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be nicer if both sides were happy with what they got?”
Xenea’s eyes flashed dangerously, and she slowly stood up from her seat. The entire lunchroom went silent as she turned to Fort, her face flushed with righteous anger. “Because that is how you get tricked, Forsythe!” she roared. “Do you remember what the Timeless One did to my people?!”
“That’s what she calls someone who makes clocks where she’s from,” Fort said quickly to the lunchroom, but no one seemed to even hear him, as they were all watching Xenea with an almost reverent gaze.
“Why do you think I was changed back into a child, and stuck at this age for a thousand years?” she kept right on going, though none of it was affecting the students through their glamoured minds. “I was an adult once! But he reversed us all back in time to when we were kids, and now I’m here with you sad little humans who don’t understand that everyone is out to get you, unless you get them first!”
“We’re not out to get you!” Yejun shouted, and the rest of the lunchroom loudly agreed.
“If I agree with you, would you turn down your glamour a little?” Fort asked, getting extremely uncomfortable with how much his schoolmates were worshiping Xenea. It reminded him way too much of Spirit magic and how he’d felt while under William’s spell.
Xenea rolled her eyes at him but dropped back into her seat, then snapped her fingers. All around them, kids began talking to each other instead of focusing on every word she said. Even Yejun turned to the girl sitting next to him and began chatting quietly. “There,” Xenea said to Fort. “Better?”
“Yes,” Fort said, breathing a sigh of relief as he leaned in closer so the other students couldn’t hear. “It just makes me nervous when you use it that much on them. I mean, you don’t like it when other faeries use a glamour on you, do you?”
Maybe if he could convince her to stop using it, she’d keep her magic away from him and not force him to tell the truth about the dragon in his room.
“First of all,” Xenea said, “our glamours don’t work on each other, only on lower life-forms.” She paused, giving him a long look. “Second, you have to quit being so naive, Forsythe. Life is about taking what you can get before someone else takes it from you. If you can’t admit that, you’re already losing.”
He sighed. “Even glamoured, Yejun was right: Not everyone is like that. Don’t you have any friends, or family? People who watch out for you? People who don’t want to take advantage of you?”
“Of course I do!” Xenea said indignantly. “Who do you think teaches us our first lesson in making deals? My family made a point to cheat me out of anything I ever got, just to show me how it’s done. I still haven’t bargained back any of my toys.” She sniffed loudly. “Not even Mr. Uni-Bear. I miss him the most.”
Fort had no idea where to even begin with that, but he did have an idea to keep her distracted from all things dragon. “That’s not what humans are like. And since you said you wanted to learn about us, I have a plan for this afternoon. Maybe there’s something we can teach you.”
She snorted. “Really? Because so far, all I’m seeing is greed.” She pointed at the cash register at the end of the lunch line. “You make children pay to eat. Food in Avalon is free for everyone, no bargaining required. Just like everything else you need to live. What happens if a child can’t pay for their food? Would you kind, nice people who don’t bargain for anything just let them starve?”
Fort sighed. “I hope not, but that’s a fair point. Still, where I’m taking you isn’t about food.”
“Is there a price to visit this place you speak of?” Xenea asked suspiciously. “Because if so, if you wish me to go, I will need you to pay for it.”
“Yes, and I was planning on doing that anyway,” Fort said, shaking his head.
She snorted. “You’re so truly bad at this, Forsythe. You wouldn’t last two minutes on Avalon.” She paused to consider. “That’s about as long as you did last, wasn’t it?”
* * *
After school, Fort texted his dad to let him know he’d be home for dinner, in case his dad got back earlier (being able to text his father still seemed like the most amazing thing ever), and took a bus to the mall with Xenea. When they walked inside, she stopped dead, staring at all the things for sale in the storefronts, but Fort dragged her on. “We’re not going shopping,” he told her. “Come on. The movie theater is just around the corner.”
“But I could own this market!” she shouted, people staring to look at her. “Own it all ! ”
He eventually got her to the movies and handed over cash for two tickets, then popcorn and sodas (which she finally consented to trying after making sure there were no hidden animals or molds within either one). Finally, they grabbed some seats in the theater, which was thankfully empty.
“What is this?” Xenea asked as she sat down in a chair, then looked down at her feet, which were sticking to the floor. “Some kind of punishment? Is this for all the glamouring I was doing?”
“Just wait,” he told her as the lights began to dim. “You need to see that we’re not all out for ourselves.”
Two hours later, Fort walked out of the theater with a wide-eyed Xenea just behind him. He wanted to ask how she’d enjoyed the movie, but the look of sheer awe on her face stopped him from saying anything. In fact, she ended up staying quiet all the way back to his apartment.
“We don’t have anything like that,” she said finally, when they got off the bus. “Those humans on the lighted wall were so big! ”
“It’s definitely a kind of magic,” Fort told her. “But what did you think about the story?”
“What do you mean, the story?” she asked, her eyes widening farther. “Wait, that wasn’t a magical window into something happening right at that moment?”
“No, that was actors, people pretending to be someone else to tell a story,” Fort said, realizing he probably should have made that clear before going into the theater. “We don’t actually have space aliens here. Magical monsters, sure, but no aliens.”
Her face fell a bit. “Oh, really? I was going to ask to see some later.”
“What? Did you not see the moment the aliens ate almost the entire crew?”
“Sure, but they were so good at it!” she said, then bared her teeth and swiped at him in an imitation of the aliens. “So that was all made up? How disappointing. What was the point of it, then?”
“The point was that the hero tried to save everyone!” Fort said. “Even though she could have died herself, and almost did. She went back into danger, and got nothing out of it, all because she wanted to help the others!”
Xenea wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, that part was the most confusing. Why would she do that? Isn’t her life worth more to her than someone else’s? And if she got eaten, then they’d both be gone.” She snorted. “Just seems illogical.”
“Okay, maybe it is illogical,” Fort said. “But that’s the point! Sometimes people do illogical things because they’re the right thing to do. We try to help other people, even if we suffer for it, because we don’t want them to suffer too.”
And then sometimes, even when you wanted to help, you weren’t allowed to because some old man who could see the future told you that you’d mess everything up if you tried. But that wasn’t anything he was going to share with the faerie girl.
Besides, he was still working to keep Ember out of the faerie queen’s hands. That counted for something.
Xenea snorted. “Then how do you win, if you suffer too?”
Her question made Fort pause. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I guess you win by doing the thing you wish other people would do for you, if they were in your situation. Because then everyone wins.”
“Or everyone loses,” Xenea said, making a disgusted face. “Why take the chance? If I’d been her, I’d have taken that ship and gotten out of there the moment the aliens started turning your people into chicken tenders.” She paused. “So you’re saying you’d help me even if it meant you might get eaten by an alien, Forsythe?” She raised an eyebrow questioningly. “Even if I didn’t promise you any treasure or make a bargain with you to save me?”
