“If you manage to convince them that you stole the magic by accident, they might acquit you for now—but that will only mean we’ll face a bigger problem in future. A girl from your bloodline with enough power to take so much magic by accident will be seen as an enormous threat, especially by the Skykeepers.”
Gunn smells manly and wonderful, like honey and spice and something else I recognize instinctively but can’t quite name. His scent clouds my mind and confuses my senses, deliciously, but I need to think. I take a step away from him, ignoring the way the balcony creaks beneath my feet.
“So what’s the plan?” I whisper.
“The plan is to play dumb. We’re denying everything.”
“You mean lying?”
“Through our teeth.”
“Will it work?”
“It might. Stealing someone’s magic is a long and complicated process that requires enormous amounts of power. I doubt anyone really believes you did it, despite all the fuss.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Me neither. But we do have one advantage: the Blue Lord will be one of the judges. They need a majority to find you guilty—with Deron on your side, we only need to convince two other judges of your innocence. The Red Lord and the Red Lady are brother and sister, and Ingrid knew their mother well. So we think you’ve got a good chance.”
A shaft of moonlight breaks through the clouds, and for the first time I catch a glimpse of Gunn’s face. His eyes glow as if lit from within, and he’s staring as if I’m the most precious thing in the world. I swallow thickly.
This is serious. Really serious. I have to concentrate.
I clear my throat, take another small step away from him. “So what’s our story?”
“Our story is that you know nothing about anything. You visited Daniel on Sunday and his mom suddenly seemed a lot better. That’s it. You haven’t met Jack Pendragon, you don’t know the Blue Lord, you didn’t experience anything strange. You heard a commotion outside the house on Sunday evening but by then you were in bed and too sick to care. You’ve been sick for two days, some kind of flu: high fever, sore muscles, headache, the usual. That’s it. This is nothing more than a fishing expedition; they have no hard evidence against you.”
“What about Daniel? And his family?”
“They’ve been briefed and they’re going to help. Don’t worry about them. The important thing for now is to carry on exactly as usual. School, friends, homework—everything depends on them believing that you’re a clueless, powerless, ordinary girl.”
“Will they believe it?”
“I suspect they won’t be thrilled that you’re living like this, being who you are. But it should go a long way to proving that you don’t have enough magic inside you to be any real threat.”
There’s just enough moonlight for me to see the worry in his eyes.
“Remember there will be spies and cameras everywhere, so no matter how private the moment might seem, you cannot relax. These are dangerous, ruthless people, and if they find out just how powerful you are, there’s going to be real trouble.”
“I’m scared.”
He puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder, and I immediately feel my body heating up. “I know,” he whispers, his breath hot in my ear, “and you should be. Because you cannot let down your guard. Not for a second. They’ll try to test you in different ways, but you need to be strong, okay? Don’t use your magic for any purpose except to protect yourself from the judges’ probing.”
“What do you mean?” I don’t like the sound of that at all. “What probing?”
“Remember that day I told you that you’re different from keepers, that the magic inside you is part of you—of your brain and your heart and your bones? That’s the part of you they’re going to try and find, and that’s the part you need to hide from them. Do you understand me? Show them nothing. I cannot tell you how important this is, Jess. Your freedom, and maybe even your life, depends on it.” His voice is so low it’s almost a growl.
“But… how do I hide a part of myself that I don’t even know how to find?”
“If they touch you, which I doubt—they’ll be too wary, I think—I want you to imagine that there’s a barrier between you. A cement wall or a sheet of steel or something similar. Conjure up the image in your mind, and then focus your full attention on it. Your full attention. We’ve worked on a lot of focusing techniques—you should be fine.”
I feel my throat constricting in panic. “You mean like we did with the blade of grass? It never worked.”
“You have a great deal of Skykeeper magic inside you now. All that magic needs is a focus. It should last you long enough to withstand any physical test.”
I give him a doubtful look.
“But that’s not my main concern. I think they’ll be too scared to touch you, but they will probably try to lure the power from you. This’ll be more difficult to resist, but not impossible. Not for you. Raw power is ugly and corrupting and dangerous—but you are more than the power inside you. The power is just a tiny part of you, although they’ll try to make you think otherwise. Remember who you are: a growing, living being on this world, connected to everything else in the same way that a blade of grass—”
We both tense as we hear footsteps coming up the stairs.
“You need to get back!”
He helps me over the railing and I dive into my bed, too rushed to worry about the noise. I make it just in time. A second later someone opens my door softly, without knocking. I pretend to be asleep, groan a few times and pull the covers over my head as if I’m having a nightmare. Hopefully that will explain the noise.
After about a minute I hear the door close again.
When I open my eyes and peer into the darkness, there’s no sight of Gunn. I get up, tiptoe to the window, but there’s nobody on the balcony. He must have found another way down.
I sneak back to my bed, silently, and pull the covers over me.
Then I lie on my back and stare into the darkness.
“Jess Sarkany!”
I turn around reluctantly when I hear Mrs. Hector’s shrill voice behind me. “What on earth have you done to your hair!” she hisses, her mean face scrunched.
I shrug. I honestly don’t know what to tell her.
This morning I woke up to find that my hair had turned green overnight. As in green green. A bright, glossy, almost-neon green, like the hair of a comic-book villain or a computer-game character. At the time I was so worried about whoever might be spying on me that I didn’t worry too much about it. I just wanted to get out of the house and surround myself with normal, non-magical people. But now that I’m at school, I realize that I probably should have worn a hat or something, not least because everyone is staring at me, sniggering and pointing and whispering behind their hands.
“Our school’s dress code expressly forbids extreme hairstyles or unnatural hair colors. As a senior, you should know that.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I’m not interested in your excuses! You will go to the principal’s office right now!”
“Mrs. Hector.” The fresh young face of Miss Anderson, my History teacher and guidance counselor, pops up from nowhere. “Perhaps you’ll allow me to deal with this matter?” She comes to stand next to me, as if shielding me.
“I was about to send her to the principal’s office,” Mrs. Hector says coldly.
“Yes, I heard that.” Miss Anderson’s smile is sweet as always, but there’s an unmistakable glint of steel in her eyes. “But as guidance counselor, it’s actually my job to deal with student dress-code violations, so if you don’t mind…”
“I will not have you undermining my authority, Phoebe,” Mrs. Hector huffs.
“And I would never dream of doing that, Martha,” Miss Anderson smiles coolly. “But I am only trying to do my job.” She touches my shoulder lightly, turning me in the direction of her office. “Come with me, Jess.”
Now, I’ve alw
ays really liked Miss Anderson, mainly because she was so solidly in my corner during that horrible time after my mom died. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d probably have been kicked out of this school years ago—during my wild years she came up for me time and time again, and she once confessed to me that she’d also lost her mom when she was a kid, which made me trust her more than the other grown-ups.
But something about this feels wrong.
Why make such a scene in the hallway, arguing with the vice-principal, of all people? As I follow Miss Anderson to her office, I suddenly wonder if she might have had an ulterior motive for being so nice to me all these years. The thought is surprisingly upsetting.
“Please take a seat.” She smiles as she closes her office door behind us. “Can I offer you anything? A Coke? Water?”
“No, thank you.”
As usual, Miss Anderson is dressed like a perky kindergarten teacher: today she’s wearing a bright-yellow polka-dot dress, neon-pink shoes and a high ponytail. For the first time this strikes as me an unlikely outfit for a serious professional. And then there’s that smile, the one she never seems to switch off. Can a person really be so relentlessly cheerful, so constantly kind?
She takes a bottle of sparkling mineral water out of the mini fridge, then sits down in the chair opposite mine. “So. Jess. I haven’t seen you since the suspension. How’ve you been?”
I try my best to return her friendly smile. “Great, thanks,” I say. “Couldn’t be better.”
She raises one eyebrow, her smile not losing any of its pep. “You’ve chosen a rather fashion-forward look today, I see.”
“I guess.”
“Could you tell me why you decided on this hairstyle?”
I bit my lip, not knowing what to tell her. Gunn said to act normally, but how is it normal for hair to change color overnight? Do I lie, and say I did it on purpose? Or do I pretend it was an accident? Either way, it’s the kind of lie that can easily be checked.
“I don’t know,” I say once the silence has stretched out beyond the point of comfort. “It just kind of happened.”
A puzzled yet sunny (always sunny!) smile. “Just kind of happened…?”
I nod.
“What do you mean by that, Jess?”
“I don’t know how it happened,” I tell her, deciding to follow Gunn’s advice about acting clueless. “It’s like, I woke up this morning and my hair was green—simple as that. I didn’t know what to do about it, so I just came to school.” I give a helpless shrug.
“O-o-kay then,” she says slowly, making it clear that although she’s not satisfied with my answer, she’ll let it go for now. “Let’s talk about the rest of your life. I haven’t seen you for a while. How’re things going?”
“Fine. Really good.” By this time my smile is making my cheeks hurt.
“Any problems you’d like to discuss with me?” Behind her round, owlish glasses her eyes seem kind and concerned.
“Nope. Everything’s fine, Miss Anderson.”
“Nothing bothering you? You know you can talk to me.”
“Yes, thanks, I do. But there’s nothing. Really.”
Another long silence—a tactic I know well. What she does is to stay quiet for so long that you become uncomfortable and blurt out something, anything, just to fill the silence. She’s gotten me to talk to her that way in the past, but I recognize the trick by now.
As the minutes tick by, I remember how many secrets I’ve spilled in this chair, how much I’ve told her about my life. What if she’s been spying on me all along?
“Well, your marks certainly seem to be improving,” she says eventually. “So I’m very pleased with that. But, Jess, I can’t help thinking that this new hair color might be a cry for help. For attention.”
“It’s not, Miss Anderson, really. I have no idea how it happened.”
“Did anything upset you over the weekend?”
I shake my head.
“Are you sure? I see you’ve been absent this whole week so far.”
I force myself to give her another smile. “I got sick on Sunday, some kind of flu, but that’s all. I feel much better now.”
“I’ve never heard of any kind of flu that turns hair green.”
“I know. It’s really weird.”
Another long, long silence. I let it stretch out until the compulsion to confide in her becomes almost unbearable.
“I’ll try to fix my hair this afternoon,” I blurt out when I can’t take it any longer. “I’m really sorry. I know it must look like I’m just trying to get attention, but I’m not. It was an accident. Or something.” I make a helpless gesture with my hands.
She sighs. “I should probably send you home, but I know you’ve really been trying lately, so I’ll let you off with a warning this time. But get that hair sorted by tomorrow, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“You know I’m here if you ever want to talk.”
“Thanks, Miss Anderson.”
As I walk out the door, I see her reaching for her phone.
The looks and the sniggers continue right through the morning—that moron Ty Sampson almost falls off his chair laughing when he sees me—but I manage to tune it out after a while. Anyway, I have far more important things to worry about.
For one, Daniel isn’t here and whenever I look at his empty seat a sliver of unease slices through me. What if I didn’t really stop Jack Pendragon from getting to him? I mean, it felt as if I’d forced him to obey me, but how can I be sure? How much do I know about this strange new power of mine anyway?
Almost nothing.
“Do either of you know what happened to Daniel?” I ask Henry and Eve the moment I sit down for lunch.
Eve shrugs. “He’s been MIA since the weekend; something to do with his family. Maggie knows all about it, but she won’t tell us. Apparently it’s a secret.”
“Oh.” Another twinge of unease. “Where’s Maggie now?”
“Social Committee. They’re making flyers for the homecoming dance, so she’ll probably be there until midnight.” Eve shakes her head. “ You know what she’s like.”
Homecoming isn’t that big of a deal at our school—basically, there’s just the game on Friday and a dance in the gym on Saturday—but we all know Maggie believes that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
“I see you’ve gone full anime today.” Henry gives my hair a dubious look.
“It was an accident,” I snap. (Henry loves anime so I know he’s not trying to be mean, but I still can’t help feeling a bit defensive.)
“You should own your style choices, Jess,” Eve says, visibly switching into full Third Wave mode. “It can be enormously empowering to challenge the conservative beauty standards set by the patriarchy.”
I manage not to roll my eyes. “It wasn’t a style choice.” Sometimes I honestly don’t know if she truly means everything she says or if it’s merely a kind of reflex she’s developed over the years.
“Well, I for one really admire you for being so brave. Taking control of the whole ‘Applehead’ narrative that’s shaped so much of your high-school life is an act of—”
“What Applehead narrative?” I protest indignantly. “It’s a stupid nickname, that’s all, and it certainly didn’t shape…”
My voice fades as I realize that the entire cafeteria has gone quiet, the way it does when people sense a potential drama.
“Hi, Jess.”
Jonathan Pendragon is standing behind me. He’s not carrying a tray and it’s as clear to me as it must be to everyone that he’s only here to make trouble. I hear a few giggles, and out of the corner of my eye I see his friends elbowing each other, sniggering in anticipation.
“What do you want?” I don’t even try to be civil.
“Nothing. I just wanted to look at you.”
I feel myself reddening under the intensity of his gaze. “What? You’ve never seen green hair before?”
“No. I haven’t. No
t like this.” And then he smiles, his face lighting up with wonder.
Real talk: the sight of Jonathan Pendragon in full-out charm mode is more than mere flesh and blood can bear. Within seconds I have to fight the overwhelming urge to twist my hair around my finger and simper at him like a Disney princess.
I give my head a tiny little shake. “Well,” I say gruffly. “You’ve seen it now.”
“Yes.” By now the room is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. “And it’s so spectacularly beautiful I can’t look away.” There’s a collective hiss as every single student in the cafeteria draws a shocked breath. “Mind if I sit down?”
I hear Henry choke on his food, but I don’t look to check if he’s okay. I can’t. It’s impossible to drag my eyes away from the open admiration in Jonathan’s mesmerizing green eyes. I feel myself nodding helplessly as he pulls out a chair and sits down next to me, so close I’m convinced I can feel the heat of his body, a bit like that day in the pool.
“I can’t believe they didn’t send you home for this,” he says, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I was lucky.” I smile back; I can’t help it. “Mrs. Hector was about to send me to the principal’s office when Miss Anderson stepped in.”
“What did she say?”
“I got off with a warning. She wants me to have it fixed by tomorrow though.”
I’m relieved to hear that my voice sounds pretty normal, in spite of the strange, dreamy sense of unreality that’s suddenly washing over me. With Jonathan so close, the air seems thicker somehow, making me aware of every breath I take. A shiver of awareness ripples through me as he turns his chair toward mine, his leg so close we’re almost touching.
“Don’t change it. It would be a sacrilege.” His words, spoken in such a low, lazy voice, makes my mouth go dry.
I take a hasty sip of water. “I have to. The dress code forbids extreme hair colors.”
His eyes focus on my wet lips. “Screw the dress code.”
“I can’t.” I wipe my mouth, clear my throat, try to get a grip. “I’ve already been suspended once this year. I’m on my last warning.”
Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1) Page 20
