Fledgling

by Tabatha Palomo

  Chapter Forty Two

  “I’m going to the Cove. You coming?” Dustin asked. Austin remembered how beaten those little kids had been and how their faces lit up when Dustin came, and she shook her head. As tempting as it was, she couldn’t.

  “I’d rather stay here,” she said as she pushed him aside to make tea, “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Whatever you want. Do you have the knife?” he checked. Austin nodded and he disappeared inside his room, closing the door behind him. As soon as she was positive that he was gone, she ran to her room and pulled Kai’s package out of her bag.

  She opened the blank journal and started to write, capturing everything that had happened so far. She didn’t go into detail, but instead wrote down events and times. She talked about waitressing. She talked about how cold the portal always was. She wrote about everything but Dustin.

  Then, when she could no longer avoid that subject, she wrote, in shaky letters: he isn’t a bad person.

  He might actually be good, when he wasn’t off killing people. When he had accidentally landed on her yesterday, he had been so apologetic that she couldn’t hold it against him. That confused her. If she wasn’t embarrassed by the incident, why did her cheeks warm every time she thought about it?

  She closed that journal and opened the other one, which had been filled by someone else. A name used to be printed in the inside of the cover, but that had been crossed out so many times that Austin couldn’t read it. She flipped to a page in the middle.

  Aiden has been acting strange recently. Whenever he comes back from the human world to train us, he is withdrawn. He always talks about his Fledgling, who he’s been hiding from us in the human world. She’s not healthy for him. His mental state is deteriorating. This is good news for us, but not for him. I am worried. He might not be a chaos, but deep down, he is a good person. I think I might have begun to fall for him, but I can’t tell my supervisors that. They’ll take me off the assignment. If they do, I won’t be able to see him again. Or Chelsea. The water dragon and I have grown close.

  Derrick is still a problem. I think he suspects what I am, but that isn’t a problem. He suspects everyone new to his life. Still, I think that I’m safe. I don’t act like a chaos, and it only strengthened my earth abilities. To his eyes, I’m nothing more than a pure earth dragon.

  It went on to talk about her abilities, and Austin grew bored. She flipped to a new place farther on in the book.

  The girl has been brought into Anathaem by Aiden, finally, but D has flooded the city with our kind. I’m assuming that she’s the one that he used to keep as a pet. Or a sister. Whichever. He is becoming unstable, just like Aiden. Is she already a chaos? Is that her ability? It seems that she taints the people around her. I met her only a few times, but she hasn’t tainted me. I doubt she will.

  D told me to keep an eye on her, and so has Aiden. Everyday, I walk by Kai’s shop. I see her putting away books. Kai will give me updates with a look on his face that tells me he knows what I am, but he doesn’t care. He helps me do my job, no matter who I’m reporting to. He’s been tainted, too. If it concerns her, he’s like clay. Manipulated.

  They’re all idiots, but Aiden is healing. He doesn’t obsess as much as he once did. He seems to like my company more than before. We train right after he comes in from the wall. I know what he does out there. I could be doing it too, but I don’t. I can’t torture my own kind. Aiden thinks that I’m just weak, but he needs someone to help him blow off steam. We fight. We’re compatible opponents. If I weren’t a girl, I might actually have a shot at being his successor.

  Someone knocked on the door and Austin looked at the clock. Unless Dustin had gotten the portal exactly right, there was no way that he could be back yet. She put the book down and opened the door, the deadlock still in place. Evan stood there, snow clinging to his coat.

  “Can I come in?” he held out a box of tea in offering, “We need to talk.”

  “About what?” she let him in, giving him a wide berth as he passed. She locked the door behind them and led him to the kitchen, taking the knife off of the kitchen table.

  “Dustin,” he said. Of course.

  “What about him?” she sat down, putting her hands in her lap. She was aware of the fact that she hadn’t brushed her teeth, that her pajama bottoms were incredibly short, and that her oversized sweater was stained at the shoulder, but she honestly didn’t care.

  “Do you know why he’s so well known?” his jacket was dusted with snow, but he didn’t look cold.

  “Why?” she asked, since that was the expected response. Evan had business for being her, probably chaos business. She couldn’t just kick him out.

  Could she?

  “Because we put him on so many missions. He is literally everywhere. Other chaos dragons, we call them in every other month or so. But Dustin, he gets around.”

  “So?”

  She didn’t see what that had to do with her. She was really nothing more than a roommate. They want on adventures sometimes, but it wasn’t like she assisted him on a daily basis.

  “So, we only call him in so much because he’s efficient. He will get the job done, no matter what,” Evan leaned forwards, “We need to know that you won’t affect that.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good, that means you won’t have any problem with signing this,” Evan took a piece of paper out of his jacket and slid it towards her, “You can read it, but it just says that if you decrease efficiency, you give us permission to take you out of the equation, or change it to our advantage.”

  “You’ll kill me?”

  “No. Well, maybe,” Evan said, shrugging, “It’s not my call. But you’ll probably be deported somewhere else, either in Affelil or Earth. Maybe Canada? Have you ever been to Canada?”

  “What did you mean by ‘change the situation to your advantage?’” she asked, tightening her hold on the knife. The weight of it made her feel better, more confident. She had come to like this knife, more than she even like the apartment, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to leave. She wanted to stay in this state, not to mention the country.

  “We’ll do something to ensure your loyalty to the cause,” Evan tapped the paper, “And if you tell Dustin about this contract, these consequences go into immediate effect.”

  “And if I don’t sign?” she didn’t ask just to be difficult, even though it did give her a bit of satisfaction when Evan frowned.

  “The consequences will go into immediate effect,” he said, smiling once more, “This is a courtesy, Austin. Nothing more.”

  She signed.

  “Good decision,” he poked her forehead, taking the contract and tucking it into the inside of his jacket.

  Her necklace felt suddenly hot against her skin, and she stared at it, “Are you trying to wipe my memory, Evan?”

  “You have a protection charm?” Evan frowned, “That makes things more complicated. Oh well, see you in a few hours.”

  “I don’t know whether to dislike you or not,” she said as he walked away, the floor creaking with every step. She heard him laugh.

  “Not many people do,” he said, and the door shut behind him. She sighed and stared at her pale skin, almost expecting chaos marks to rise out of nothingness. She stayed the same. She stayed normal. Pure.

  And so she picked up the journal and picked up from where she’d left off. It went on to talk about skirmishes between the writer and Aiden, and then her reports to D—which Austin guessed was short for Dustin. The door opened and Dustin came in, his arms laden with bags.

  He took in Austin’s appearance, which hadn’t changed much since he left, and started to put the groceries away, “Did anything interesting happen while I was out?”

  “No,” she shrugged, shutting the journal.