by Priya Ardis
The Wizard Council’s base operated out of Avalon Preparatory School. I muttered, “I’m not a wizard. I don’t belong there.”
“You’ve proven yourself more than is necessary.” He pulled me closer to him and said softly into my ear, “You belong anywhere.”
I jerked my head up to look at him. His eyes were filled with such naked sincerity that I had to lower mine. My heart melted just a little. I stared off into space. Finally, I said, “I needed to come home.”
He tucked a stray, dark-blonde strand of hair behind my ear. “Hence, we came. But we’ve been here for over a month and you don’t seem satisfied. You’re distracted. Not just out on the field, but all the time. What is going on?”
“I’m fine.” Unconsciously, I touched the red gemstone amulet I wore around my neck. The one Matt had given me.
Vane’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what is distracting you? My brother?”
“What? No—” I bit my lip. “Maybe. I was just wondering if he was all right.”
“He’s fine,” Vane said. “My brother can take care of himself.”
Vane’s fingers tangled in my hair as he yanked me close. “Forget about him,” he said harshly.
Steely arms wrapped around me. I leaned into him, burrowing into his chest. His warmth seeped into my skin. The tension in my shoulders eased bit-by-bit the more heat I drew. I lifted my head. Our lips were barely inches apart. I swallowed. What was I doing with Vane? Could I really handle him? He was older… in more ways than just age. Being with him was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I tried not to be overwhelmed. I turned away.
“How about if we go see a movie tonight?”
After a pause, he said, “You know we can’t. It’s not safe for you.”
“It’s just a movie. Nothing is going to happen if we take one night off.”
“I can’t be seen out with you.”
“You’re a wizard. You can figure out a way. Disguise yourself somehow.” The window showed a sky painted with moody shades of grey. My words came from deep down in my throat. “I want to go on a real date.”
“We’ve been on a date.”
I scowled. “Making out on the couch doesn’t count.”
Vane’s lips curved up. “It’s safer than going out.”
I didn’t think so. I pushed away from him and sat back in my chair. “No one is coming after me.”
Vane looked at me like I was idiot. “Of course, they are.”
“No one even knows I am here.”
He snorted. “The gargoyles almost burned down your house. Believe me, they know where you are.”
If I thought a tantrum would have worked with Vane, I would have thrown one. Instead, I crossed my arms and stuck my jaw out. “I’m going out tonight, Coach—whether you like it or not. The Council charged you to protect me, not to jail me.”
“I’m not here because they asked,” he said.
I sniffed. “You won’t even let me go to a coffee shop. All I do is school, house, school, house… repeat. It’s ridiculous. I. Am. Done.”
“You’re exaggerating. You’ve been to several games,” he reminded me.
“You rushed me into a van after each one! I didn’t even get to hang out with the team afterwards. I may as well be locked in a dungeon with the amount of freedom I have.”
“If I were to lock you up in a dungeon, I guarantee you would not be bored,” Vane said softly.
Bedroom eyes beckoned me. Trying not to blush, I stood up.
“Besides, you’re more of the tower type,” Vane commented. “I don’t see why you’re complaining. I did get you a pint of ice cream.”
I jumped up and stomped my foot. “It’s not funny! Can’t we just pretend to be normal for one night?”
He looked at me for a long minute. “As you wish. But we go only where I say.”
I blinked. Had he actually given in… for once? “There better be popcorn.”
I broke off with a gasp as the amulet around my neck suddenly started burning. It seemed to tighten like a noose on me. Making choking sounds, I tried to pry it away, but it wouldn’t move.
“Ryan!” Vane stood.
The world trembled around me. The room shook just as it had done during the Total Tremor. Vane grabbed me by the waist and steadied me. He yelled past the noise of the shaking room. “Matt is having a strong vision. Allow yourself to see it. Shut your eyes.”
I stared into Vane’s hazel eyes. I held onto them for as long as I could. Then, drawing a deep breath with effort, I did as he said.
In the dark, the first thing I sensed was the smell of wood and earth—Matt. I was seeing what he saw through the amulet. Matt had presented a number of enchanted amulets and rings to me and others in a select group of students at Avalon Prep. Almost immediately, I’d been drawn to this one. Called The Dragon’s Eye, a large ruby gemstone sat embedded in a dull gold pendant. The matching golden chain was thick and more like a rope than the light chains I was used to. I wouldn’t have normally gone for something so medieval looking, but this one had struck me. The connection had been so strong that I’d wanted to gouge out the eyes of my friend, Gia, when she had grabbed it first.
Later, I found out that the amulet had been made by Matt and formed a special connection between us—a connection that linked our thoughts.
Images flooded my mind.
An ocean. Just off the coast of a tropical island. The water boiled, creating burping bubbles of steam. A huge explosion of smoke burst like a geyser out of the water. Red fire and lava spewed out the sides of a tornado of smoke.
The scene shifted. Another ocean. No land anywhere in sight. A curvy billow of smoke spewed up for miles in the sky.
Again, the scene changed to a barren chain of islands. The whole land mass rumbled as three smoke stacks blew out of the ocean and from various places on the islands. Frantic waves in the ocean pulled and pushed in a violent tug-of-war. In one slingshot movement, the water pulled back and then released, unleashing a wall of water that rose and rose until I could swear it touched the sky.
I opened my eyes with a snap. “Tsunami.”
Everything in the room had moved just a bit. My laptop hovered close to the edge of the desk. I turned to Vane with wide eyes. “What happened? Another tremor?”
“I don’t know.” Vane sat me down. The plastic chair groaned as I dropped onto it. Vane flipped my laptop open. With a few clicks, he pulled up a news site.
BREAKING NEWS, it declared in bright red letters.
Vane clicked on a video.
A news report played. A clean-shaven reporter in a tidy suit clutched an iPad and spoke from a news desk. “It happened here just moments ago and reports confirm that it seems to have happened everywhere—another tremor spanning the entire globe. Many are asking if it is the Total Tremor again. However, this one seems to have been on a much smaller scale. Not much damage from what we have heard, so far. Just a rattling. The bigger question is what caused it…”
Vane paused the video stream. “This is what you saw?”
“No.” I rubbed my forehead. “I saw erupting volcanoes on the ocean. Five of them. They seemed to be in different places all over the world. Then, I saw a tsunami building on the ocean.”
Vane’s gaze sharpened. “Merlin had a vision about the ocean?”
“Where else would you have a tsunami?” I grabbed the laptop from Vane. I punched up the term “underwater volcano” in a search engine. I clicked on a news clip about one that caused a tsunami. South Asia. 2004. Images of the hundred-foot high tsunami I’d seen in my head played out on the news clip. The news clip changed to show the aftermath—scene after scene of destroyed villages and homeless people followed.
“This is what’s coming, but what I saw is going to be much worse.” My eyes swam with tears.
Vane cursed. Reaching out, he caught my shoulders and steadied me. “Why can’t he shut this out from you like he’s shut me out?”
Vane and Matt’s powers were conne
cted. At one point, Vane had been able to talk to me through the amulet. Once Matt found out, he’d blocked Vane, but for some reason, he hadn’t blocked me. Well, I suspected the reason. I refused to verbalize it… even in my head. I could never tell Vane. Truthfully, I was glad Matt had shut him out. He was intense enough to have as a boyfriend. I didn’t need him in my head too.
“I’ll be fine.” I straightened away from him and reached for my cellphone. “We should call the emergency services. Warn them.”
Vane yanked the phone away. “And tell them what? That you had a vision? Actually you didn’t have a vision. You saw Merlin’s vision. They will hang up on you without a second thought. With all the alert systems they have in place telling them that everything is fine, the regulars won’t pay attention to you.”
“I’ve got to do something!” I said.
“No, you have to calm down and think. We need help figuring this out.”
Vane tapped on the touchscreen of my cellphone and dialed a number. I saw the number on the screen, but I didn’t recognize it. It didn’t pick up as any of my contacts. The number connected.
“Marilynn?” He put the phone to his ear. “What does the Council know about tsunamis?”
***
The rest of the school day went by in a blur. Everyone seemed to be on autopilot, even the teachers. Most of them checked news updates, blatantly ignoring the no cellphone rule. Yet, everything seemed to have quieted after the small tremor.
Grey and I drove home together. The main street of Concord seemed unusually abandoned as I drove the car we shared around the turnabout and onto the small street that led to the wooded suburbs just past Walden Pond. The cold February sky of grey and blue highlighted the blackened snow that sat in the gutters of the road. At least, the air flowing in from outside smelled of wet pine and dewy wood.
I turned at a small gravel opening off the road, marked by a stumpy mailbox. The Land Rover thundered downhill. About midway, another Land Rover pulled out from behind a hidden lane, blocking our path. I rolled down my window and waved. Without acknowledgement, the other Land Rover reversed and disappeared back into the hidden lane, giving the okay to proceed.
Bodyguards or sentries? I didn’t know exactly what to call them. Wizard-goons seemed too impolite for someone risking their life for you. Besides the physical checks of who was entering the woods, Vane and Sylvia had also set up an invisible perimeter to detect any magic.
I cast a speculative look at Grey, who sat hunkered down in the passenger seat. It wasn’t like him to give me a chance to drive, but today he hadn’t even put up a token protest. The tremor had brought back too many memories. We emerged from the lane into a circular courtyard in front of Ragnar Manor, my home.
The hundred-year-old manor boasted gorgeous arched windows, several balconies, and even a pointy turret. Stone gargoyle rainspouts stuck out at the edges of the house. Ironic, since actual gargoyles nearly burned down the house a few months ago.
I pulled to a stop near a broken fountain in the middle of the courtyard. It used to have a gargoyle statue that expelled water from its mouth. The gargoyle statue had been crushed when Grey’s Corvette slammed into it… the day the sword and the stone fell out of nowhere. The day Alexa died. The day everything changed for us.
I stared at the fountain. It didn’t surprise me that Sylvia hadn’t fixed it. I doubted she ever would.
“It’s starting again, isn’t it?” Grey said.
I pushed a button and the Land Rover’s engine switched off. “It never stopped, Grey.”
Grey continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “The tremor today wasn’t a coincidence. It all goes back to Arthur’s sword.”
“Did you think pulling the sword from the stone was the end? There’s a reason it showed up in the first place.”
“Yes, and I know the reason,” Grey muttered as he flung open the door. He jumped down and turned to look at me. “It’s a joke, Ry. And the joke is on us. Someone with a nasty sense of humor dropped it in the middle of the world so they could watch us as we all tried to kill ourselves to get to it. The sad thing is—that’s exactly what we did.”
Grey slammed the car door and headed into the manor. I watched him climb up the short steps to double front doors. The doors were a masterpiece. Wrought iron with an intricate leaf design on frosted glass. They were new. The old doors had burned down in a volley of fireballs. That day, I left the manor not knowing if I’d ever come back.
On that day the sword and the stone first appeared in London and I learned about magic. I learned that Matt—the new boy at school I’d been crushing on—was a wizard. I also learned about gargoyles. They wanted to kill Grey and me because we were Candidates. Apparently, out of everyone in the world, only a few of us had the potential to actually pull the sword. Candidates also had the greatest potential, therefore, to die.
The Wizard Council sent Matt and Vane out to recruit and train Candidates in hopes of improving their chances of survival; but more in the hopes that the victorious sword-bearer would align themselves with the wizards. The gargoyles had taken a different approach. To ensure their success, they decided to kill every Candidate who was not a gargoyle.
Only it hadn’t been Grey or me whom they killed in their first attack. The image of a girl with impossibly bright eyes, a broad smile, and snarky wit hung in the thin veil that separates day from falling night. Alexa.
The roar of another engine sounded as another black SUV pulled into the driveway. Its bright headlights pierced through the lingering bit of memory. I opened the driver’s side and jumped down from the Land Rover.
I put my hand up to block the glare of headlights that shone into my eyes. The passenger side opened and a shadowy figure stepped down.
My heart gave an uncomfortable leap. The amulet on my neck warmed against my will.
Soft rays of fading daylight shone down on the wavy mane of brown hair making a russet halo around the head of a boy. He had a lean face, inky lashes, and eyes too old for someone I knew to be only eighteen.
He still wore a black biker jacket. I remembered the sensation of my cheek against the back of that slick synthetic leather, and the sensation of flying as his Ducati took the open curves of the road.
Matt. The amulet gave a silent sigh. My pulse raced so out of control I was afraid it would explode.
Matt’s perfect mouth curved up in an uncertain smile. His burden-filled shoulders straightened. He took a step toward me and then another… until he stood just a few feet in front. The last declaration he’d made to me hung between us. The L. word. The one that had nothing to do with like.
All I had to do was take a step back toward him.
CHAPTER 3 - CROSSROADS
CHAPTER 3
CROSSROADS
“Ryan?” Matt started, paused, then, started again. “Is Sylvia inside? I need to speak with her.”
I blinked. After all he’d put me through. After not seeing each other for two months that’s all he had to say to me?
“Not all, but it is a start,” his voice whispered inside my head.
I almost jumped. I touched the amulet that connected us. The only time I’d heard Matt in my head was the last time I’d seen him. After months of reflecting on that last time, I’d concluded that it just made me… angry.
“Get out of my head, Matt!”
“As you wish,” he demurred.
My fingers curled into a fist. To shut out what wasn’t meant to be. It was his choice for us not to be together and I had moved on.
The lights of the SUV shut off. Vane stepped down from the driver’s seat. He walked forward, past the front of the car and reached me in a few steps. For a second, he stood right beside his brother. Only a bit of daylight remained.
The resemblance of their faces and matching length of their frames made the brothers seem eerily similar, but that’s where the similarity ended. Vane’s hazel brown eyes glittered despite the dark. Matt’s amber ones sank into the night like a dying e
mber. Vane’s broad shoulders moved with loose grace. Matt’s lean ones held tight and still. Despite the shadows, they both flickered sharp and true, even if Vane’s torch burned a bit too bright to hold. The tiger next to the lion, Vane pounced forward and placed himself directly in line between Matt and me.
Vane said, “Aren’t you going to invite us in?”
“Since when do you wait for an invitation?” I arched a brow. “Why did you call Matt?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Matt said dryly.
Vane smirked. “I didn’t call. The Council did.”
Five other SUVs burst out of the wooded lane and sped onto the driveway. I tensed. Vane put himself between the SUVs and me.
“It’s alright. I think you’ll like these visitors.” Matt touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to see such a vision. It can be… disturbing.”
The destruction I’d seen had been more than disturbing. It was terrifying. My gaze lowered. “I don’t know how you live with them.”
“It helps to have someone share it, for once,” he said softly. “But I would rather not have burdened you. I’m just glad I was close enough to come quickly.”
I frowned. “You were coming here?”
Matt said evasively, “I happened to be in the area.”
The SUVs squealed to a stop beside Vane’s. Several men dressed in uniforms of slacks, black t-shirts, and long wool coats got out. I recognized many of them as guardian wizards who’d protected the Candidates until we got to the Council. Two teenage wizards jumped out of the last SUV next to the broken fountain—a red-haired girl in punk goth clothes and a skinny, black-haired boy with glasses.
I let out a squeal of delight and ran to greet them. “Gia! Blake!”
Gia laughed and met me halfway. She caught me up in a tight hug. “I’ve missed you!”
I touched her long red hair. “You grew it out.” I’d only ever seen her with short, spiky hair. Now long curls softened the angular bones of her face. “It looks good.”
She gave a small, self-conscious smile. “I needed a change.”
