FOR ONE FRACTION of a second that felt like it lasted about three hundred years, the stone bolt from the crossbow looked and sounded like the world’s largest bumblebee as it headed straight for my right eye. But, at the last instant, it seemed to turn, and I felt a burning kiss on my cheekbone followed by the crash of breaking glass.
Before the badgerlike delver could redraw his bow, I aimed my palms at him and opened the place in my heart where fire lived. Torrents of red-and-yellow flame shot toward him. Driven by fear and anger, the fires came out much more forcefully than I intended. Instead of a tight burst, I launched a gigantic wave of flame.
The delver grunted something short and hard in the language of stone, raising a shield of earth from the garden bed, and the roaring sheet of fire washed over and around it. The fire struck the glass wall behind and dozens of panes shattered in the sudden heat, but I kept right on pouring my heart into the flames.
“What was that about!?!” Lisa demanded.
Dave yelled, “Kalvan, shut it down! The delver’s gone, and there are going to be official-type people all over the place in about one minute.”
I closed my fists and snuffed the flames, though several plants continued to burn fitfully while fire danced along my fingertips for a couple of seconds longer. “We’re going to need a really good story…”
Morgan pulled herself out of the pool. “Maniac with a Molotov? That’d explain the burns, and there’s plenty of broken glass. Ran out through that giant hole you made?”
Dave nodded. “Uh, yeah, that might work.”
“You’re fire,” snapped Morgan. “Can you do silvertongue?”
How did she know about that? “I don’t like to—”
The older girl cut me off. “But you can do it. Good; that’ll make them believe it no matter how daft it sounds. Lisa, you and I play dumb and cute. That usually goes over well with authority. Dave spotted the nutball and tackled us into the water—we didn’t see anything after that. That’ll let Kalvan do most of the talking.”
“Why Dave?” I felt a little hurt he was going to get the credit for my quick thinking.
Morgan rolled her eyes. “He’s black and, unless I’m wrong, he doesn’t have powers. There are going to be cops all over the place, and it would be a lot safer for him if he’s clearly the hero.” Then she grimaced. “Don’t worry about it, Kalvan, I’m not going to forget who actually ruined my dress.”
I winced at the way she’d phrased it, but she was right. I’m pretty much a white boy, even if I’ve got some of my dad’s complexion, since that’s how I was raised, and official-type people generally treat me as such. Add in that silvertongue, which means I can talk my way out of a hole better than just about anyone, and Morgan hadn’t said anything I shouldn’t have thought of myself. While I dithered, Dave jumped into the pool and started splashing muddy water on his face and arms.
“You and Lisa can do magic?” I asked. “What element?”
“I’m air, obviously,” said Morgan. “You don’t think that bolt turned away from your face all on its own, did you? Lisa’s—”
The other girl’s voice cut across Morgan’s. “It’s complicated, and now’s not the time. Let me see that cut.” She leaned in so close her nose grazed my cheekbone. “There’s some dark influence of earth on that wound. Let me…” She mumbled something low and growly, then licked her index finger before running the tip of it along my cut, which tingled at the contact. “That should take care of it.”
“I … uh, thanks.” That wasn’t weird at all.
Before I could say more, she held up a hand, and for the first time ever I noticed her eyes were more gold than brown. “Sirens. A long way off, but lots of them. Means we won’t be alone much longer.”
I was going to say I couldn’t hear anything, but then—in the same moment Dave climbed out of the water—doors at the far end of the greenhouse burst open and an older woman came through accompanied by a security guard.
“Bomber had on a parka with the hood up, so we never saw his face,” added Dave.
Morgan nodded. “Good, no description. Gloves, too.” She turned to me. “You’re on.”
I took a deep breath as the guard came running up to us, and then I began to speak quickly and breathlessly with the power of fire dancing on my tongue and filling my throat. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here!”
I followed the script we’d concocted and almost believed it myself as I poured my magic into the words. Sparx says fire is the most dangerous element—tricky to work with and prone to unexpected blowback. Silvertongue is especially treacherous, since it plays with the mind of the listener and no one listens more closely to what you’re saying than you do yourself. Use it too much and you can lose all sense of the truth or even reality—which makes it especially scary to me given my mother’s problems. By the time I was done, I could barely remember what really happened, and I wondered if any of my companions would without me reminding them with fire on my lips.
The cops arrived shortly after, and the fire department with them. Blankets and towels were found for the others, and they bandaged the long, shallow cut on my cheek. I had a brief, panicky moment when they inspected the pane broken by the crossbow, but they never found the bolt, and I heard someone saying fire did weird things.
We repeated our story over and over for the next two hours, until, eventually, they handed us back over to the authority of our teachers, where we got to tell the story again to Rob and Evelyn. They made a much more skeptical audience—it was no surprise to me that Morgan had been able to put together a good story on the fly. The Free School isn’t always perfect where it comes to teaching academic lessons, but we sure learn how to work the system and the refs, and our teachers know it. Still, silvertongue is very convincing and I’d worn the story smooth with frequent use.
Finally, lunchtime came and everyone stopped grilling us. Morgan ducked off to the bathroom while the rest of us settled on a couple of benches. That’s when Dave and I discovered pretty much everything we’d grabbed out of the bin had …
“Raisins!” Dave held up the package of cinnamon rolls in disgust. “Who puts raisins in cinnamon rolls?”
Lisa nabbed one of the buns. “I like raisins. Here, you can have some of my jerky as a trade.” She held out a couple strips of dried meat.
Dave grinned and took one. “Does this make us all friends?”
Lisa smiled and broke the roll in half. “Cinnamon rolls and jerky isn’t quite the same as sharing bread and salt, but I think it’s close enough to count for a declaration of alliance.”
Morgan returned just then, wrinkling her nose distastefully. “Temporary at best, Lisa.” She shifted her attention to Dave and me. “But we’ll definitely need to talk about this whole thing at some length later. Of course, for the next week or two we’ll have to snub you boys hard if we don’t want stupid rumors flying around.”
I must have looked wistful, because she singled me out with an amused look. “No offense, Kalvan. You’re cute enough for your age, but that’s about four years too young for me. Oh, and I still need to make you pay for destroying this.” She tugged at the hem of her badly stained dress—formerly cream, now duckweed green with black streaks from the muck on the bottom of the pool. “I am soooo taking this out of your hide.”
I wanted to laugh, but something about the look in the depths of her eyes made me wonder where the joke ended and the strips out of my back began. Before I could think of a good response, I saw our science teacher, Tanya, heading our way with a stern look on her face and a purposeful stride.
“Kalvan, could I have a word with you?”
Her expression didn’t allow for a no, so I nodded. “Of course, Tanya.” Again, for those tuning in late, part of being a Free Schooler is calling all your teachers by their first names.
As Tanya turned to lead me away, Morgan caught my eye. Pointing at the science teacher with one finger, then herself and Lisa simultaneously with two, she made a very slight shake of her head and a lip-zipping motion. I bobbed a nod to let her know I’d understood. Tanya—an experienced windwalker who had recently begun tutoring me in magic—didn’t know about the girls’ powers. That, or Morgan wanted me to pretend she didn’t, or that I didn’t. In any case: Don’t tell Tanya anything about her and Lisa. Seeing as she’d just saved my life with that gust of wind, I felt I ought to play along.
Once we’d put a little distance between us and the others, Tanya leaned against a wall and gave me a very hard look over her glasses. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“Not really, no,” I said with complete honesty. I didn’t use silvertongue; and not only because I had no idea if it would work with Tanya being a magical adept. I’d pushed way past any reasonable margin of safety and I was having flashes of false memory trying to blot out what really happened.
“Kalvan Middlename Monroe.”
“Sorry. Jerk reflex. I, uh, the story I told the police isn’t quite true.”
“That’s a good start.”
“How did you know?” I had to ask.
She snorted. “So you can figure out how to avoid my catching on in the future?”
“That had crossed my mind, yes.” There was no point in lying after you got caught.
“Let’s just say silvertongue leaves traces for those who know what to look for. Especially when you layer it on as thick as you did today.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t afford to tell the truth.”
She simply raised an eyebrow, so I continued. “We … I was attacked by a delver. I had to defend myself with fire and then I needed to cover my tracks.”
Tanya winced, then sighed. “That does change things. I still don’t like it, but better a white lie than getting tossed in the psych ward for telling the police you were attacked by an earth elemental. Was it that delver who worked with the Winter King? I ask because they don’t normally come out in the open, so I have to believe this one had a grudge or was directed to attack you.” I’d told her the whole story of my conflict with my stepfather soon after she started teaching me magic. “What was his name?”
“Cetius.” I shrugged. I had vivid memories of my stepfather’s henchbadger, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Oscar had sent him after me again, but … “I don’t know. One delver looks pretty much like another to me.”
There were probably all sorts of ways someone with more practice could tell delvers apart, but I hadn’t spent enough time with them to get there, and I hoped I never would. I considered telling her about the crowned man I thought I’d seen in the alley this morning, but I was starting to doubt myself on that one. I’d been more than half asleep at the time, and I’d spent much of the night worrying about Oscar and the Crown, and my zombie aunt. I wanted more evidence about what I thought I had seen before I started telling anyone as official as a teacher.
“What about Sparx?” Tanya asked. “He’d be able to tell if it was Cetius.”
“He’s home keeping an eye on my mom.” I might have to explain my dead aunt at some point, but I decided now was not a good time.
Tanya’s demeanor went from stern to worried in an instant. “Is she all right? I know she hasn’t been at her best since … the Winter Carnival.”
It was a brief pause, but I noticed and it hurt. My duel with my stepfather again. I’d won the fight, but my mother’s already dubious mental health was a casualty of the battle. A huge part of why I’d had to take Oscar down was that he’d been using her to enhance his evil magic. The horrible flip side was that his earth powers had been the main thing keeping her stable, since he needed her coherent for his schemes. When I broke his power, I also broke her strongest anchor to the real world. Mostly I managed to avoid blaming myself by not thinking about it, but Tanya’s hesitation and her obvious concern hit me like a brick in the face.
“She’s not noticeably worse,” I lied around what felt like a pound of broken glass in my throat. “But she isn’t working today and I thought she’d feel better for the company.” My mom’s a freelance accountant, which makes for weird hours.
“All right, but if she gets too bad, you’ll let us know, won’t you?”
“Of course.” No chance.
Neither Tanya nor Evelyn had ever said anything about having to report my situation to the state if things got out of hand, but they didn’t have to. The fear was always in the back of my mind when I told any of my teachers anything about my life at home. If Child Protective Services ever got involved, they might take me away from my mother, and the thought terrified me. Though I honestly didn’t know whether that was more on my behalf or hers.
“She’ll be all right. Her next job starts Thursday,” I lied again. “She always does better when she’s working.” True but irrelevant.
Tanya sighed and looked skeptical. “All right. Now, tell me more about this delver.”
So I did. Mostly. I skipped over the part where Morgan saved me from the delver’s bolt, of course. And I took credit for coming up with the fake story, implying I needed silvertongue as much to make Morgan and Lisa forget things as to keep the cops and everyone else from thinking I was crazy. I was pretty sure Tanya didn’t buy everything I told her, but if not, she kept her suspicions to herself.
Most important, she didn’t ask about Morgan and Lisa and magic. But, again, whether that was because she didn’t know anything about their powers or for some other reason, I couldn’t say. There was simply too much about magic I didn’t know, having only discovered it and my powers a few months previously.
At the end she nodded. “I’ll go take a look at the Conservatory now. Not that I think it’ll do much good. Earth and air are opposites and much of what the delvers do and leave behind is alien to me.”
“Will you let me know if you find anything important?”
“I might. Oh, and, Kalvan, on the not getting caught front…”
“Yes?”
“If you want to use fire magic and not have anyone figure it out later, you might try to avoid scorch marks on your shirt cuffs. You may be immune to fire, but your clothes aren’t.”
I’d been too distracted until then to notice, but Tanya was right. The cuffs of my turtleneck—fashioned from some kind of bright blue sports fabric—had blackened and melted away from the heartfire that poured through my hands.
* * *
Sparx took one look at me as I came in the back door and tsked, “I let you out of my sight for one day, and you come home covered in filth and white gauze. What did you do to yourself?”
“This?” I touched the bandage on my cheekbone. “It wasn’t me. It was a delver crossbow. If Morgan hadn’t been there…”
It was only in that moment I truly realized how close I’d come to dying and what that would mean for my mother. For the second time in as many days I found myself suddenly weak-kneed and sliding to the floor. With a flash and a puff of smoke, Sparx crossed the distance between us in an instant, landing in my lap.
“Breathe.” His face was inches from my own as he pressed his chest against mine. “In. Out. In. Out. Again.”
“I—”
“Not yet. For now, I just want you to breathe. At least until you stop crying.”
“I’m crying?” I touched a finger to my cheek and discovered he was right.
“Yes. Now, in, out. Breathe with me.” The big hare stayed in my lap for the next several minutes. Finally, he nodded. “Better. Let’s try again. You look like you’ve had a rough day. What happened?”
When I got to how my cheek got sliced, he whistled. “A daylight attack in a human space is very unlike the delvers, even if it was Cetius pressing a vendetta for your stepfather’s sake or on his orders. I don’t like that part of this thing at all. Neither that nor the crowned man you may or may not have seen. I’m also curious about your itchy foot. That reeks of coincidence, and seeming coincidence in the magical world rarely is. Go on.”
I felt some of my earlier sense of panic returning as I recounted what happened next and I had to work hard to keep my breathing calm and even. I was sweaty and shaky by the time I finished.
“Let me have a look at that cheek.” He leaned in closer and sniffed at the gauze. “Hmmm, not sure what the girl did, but if there was any malign influence there, it’s gone now. Finish the story.”
When I was done, Sparx canted his ears toward me, looking thoughtful. “So, this Morgan you promised to cover up for with Tanya? Pretty girl, pale and tragic, a few years older than you?”
Sparx had seen all of my classmates, even if Dave and Josh were the only ones who’d seen him. “I don’t think I’d call her tragic look—”
“Never mind. You say she’s a power of air?”
I nodded. “I didn’t exactly promise to cover up for her.” Even if she had thanked me for it after Tanya left.
“No, but you did cover up for her, and that’s much the same thing. It’s interesting that I didn’t see the power in her before this, and I wonder about the why of it. What about the other girl? The one who doctored that slice. I’m not sure I know who she is.”
“You haven’t seen her very often.” He’d been hiding in my bag for most of the classes I shared with Lisa. “She’s in Rob’s group, like Morgan, and closer to me in age.” I paused, trying to picture Lisa. “Long black hair like my mom’s, but she usually wears it in a braid. Brown skin about like mine … sharp chin … high cheekbones. Eyes almost golden. You know, she’s nearly as pretty as Morgan.”
“You say that like you’re surprised.”
“Well, I usually see them together, and I’ve never paid all that much attention to her until today.”
“Sounds like someone has a crush on this Morgan girl.”
My face went hot and red. “I do not!” Well, maybe a little; but if so, it was a stupid crush that was never going anywhere.
“Of course you don’t. Sorry I mentioned it.”
“You’re smirking,” I growled.
“I am not. Rabbits can’t smirk. Our faces aren’t built for it. That’s a known fact.”
“A, as you’ve so frequently pointed out, you’re not a rabbit, you’re a fire hare. B, tell it to Bugs Bunny.”
“Okay, maybe I’m smirking a little.” He held his paws up a few inches apart. “But you really ought to see your face.” The hare opened his eyes wider than they had any right to go and stared off into space with a big dopey grin. “Oh, Morgan, thank you for rescuing me, I’ve always hoped—”
At that point I dumped him off my lap before stomping through the kitchen and dining room to my bedroom, where I tossed my bag onto my bed and tore off my scorched and bloody shirt. My jeans were in better shape, though they had duckweed and filth from the bottom of the pond spattered here and there.
I’d just stripped them off when I heard a throat-clearing noise from my doorway and spun around angrily. “Sparx! If you don’t st— Oh, hi, Aunt Noelle, I was just—” That’s when I realized I was down to briefs and socks and yanked the blanket off my bed to cover myself, tumbling my backpack to the floor with a crash.
Noelle laughed, a simultaneously engaging and chilling sound with weird harmonic undertones. “It’s all right, Kalvan, I can wait a bit to talk to you, but in the meantime, please don’t open the shades. Daylight … is a problem for me. Even this weak winter light. Your mother and I are in the basement. Come down once you’re clean and dressed.” She walked away as silently as she’d arrived.
“Interesting.” Sparx spoke from his favorite perch atop my shelves.
Since I hadn’t noticed him slipping in, either, I about jumped out of my skin for a second time. “Don’t do that! And what’s interesting?”
“When you cross that section of floor it creaks and groans like a mouse orchestra tuning up for the big night. For her, nothing.” His nose crinkled in thought.
“Maybe she’s more ghost than zombie?” I offered as I wrapped a towel around my waist.
Sparx shook his head. “She’s neither, and plenty solid.”
“You’re plenty solid, but I’ve seen you walk through walls.”
“That’s different and expected. I’m an elemental spirit, both flesh and flame.”
“Neither of which can pass through this.” I slapped the wall beside the bookcase.
Sparx snorted. “Ordinary flesh and flame, no. But in my case both are as much made from the stuff of magic as anything. No, I follow the old rules perfectly. Your aunt, on the other paw … Your aunt is something I’ve never seen before.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“For my curiosity? Excellent. For your mother? So far, so good. For everything else?” He raised both paws pads up. “As with most things, only time can properly answer.”
“Have I ever mentioned that you’re very reassuring?”
“Not even once.”
“There’s a reason for that.” Though I had to admit his teasing had pretty deftly taken my mind off my earlier worries by irritating me—one of his favorite tricks. “Now I need to go clean up so I can have a nice chat with my crazy mom and her dead sister.”