“Hey, can we talk in private?” Aiden asked Maggie.
She looked up from her lunch with a frown. “Sure.” Setting down her sandwich, she got up to follow him. “I’ll be back,” she told her friends.
Aiden led her out of the lunchroom, thoughts going back and forth. He really should talk to Mr. Johnson about this. It was such a stupid risk, and there was no way Maggie knew as much as the warden. But Mr. Johnson would tell him not to contact his birth mom at all in case it was a trick.
“So what’s up?”
Aiden shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t want anyone to hear us.” He peeked through the narrow window on a classroom door. The room looked empty, and he ducked his head in to make sure. Nobody was around, so he led Maggie inside.
“I hope this is about the LGBTA council, but from the look on your face, I’m guessing that’s not it.” Maggie watched him with concern.
“Dylan said you helped him out with information on dream walkers.”
Maggie held up her hands. “Oh no. The last time this happened you guys almost ended up dead.”
“That dark fae was after us anyway. He would have attacked us even if Dylan hadn’t done anything.” It hadn’t been Morgan, and Morgan had denied returning to Shadow Valley, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t sent the other dark fae.
“Did Dylan talk to him? Was he a dream walker? He never told me.”
Aiden wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, not sure what to say. He didn’t want to tell Maggie everything. The more people he told, the more likely the information would wind up in the wrong hands. Like the wardens’.
“This is… This doesn’t have anything to do with that.” It might not, so that wasn’t a total lie. “My birth mother might be trying to contact me.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh wow. Your birth mom is a dream walker?”
“No, but she’s using one to contact me. Only I can’t be sure it’s really her. Fae like to trick people, right?”
“Except you. You’re really honest.”
His cheeks burned with shame. “Um, yeah.” He was lying and hiding things from her right now. “So I want to know if there are ways to protect myself from a dream walker in case this is a trick.”
“Hmm. But not block one out, because you still want to talk to her?”
“Right.”
“You should really ask someone who knows about this stuff. What about Phoebe?”
That was Aiden’s part-fae tutor. “She’ll just tell me not to take the risk. But I have to know. I just don’t want to go in totally unprotected.”
Maggie pressed her lips together. “Okay. Dylan told you about lucid dreaming, right?”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t very good at explaining it.”
Maggie laughed. “Not a future teacher. Well, start working on that. I’ll send you some good links for lucid dreaming, and you can practice. But until you get good at it, you should block the dream walker. I’ll have to look it up again, but there’s a spell you can put on something iron and keep it under your pillow.”
Should he play dumb or be honest? “Yeah, I know about that. A dagger works best.” At her curious expression, he added, “I looked up protection spells against fae after what happened, and that one came up. So I know how to block a dream walker from my dreams but not how to defend myself if I want to contact one.”
“Okay. What about the information I sent Dylan before?”
“Sorry, he lost those texts.”
“I think I might still have them. I’ll check. Probably easier to send it to you in e-mail anyway. And I can look through my parents’ books again, but I think it’s better if we go to the library.”
“We?”
Maggie sighed, but she also looked amused. “You know you can look this stuff up by yourself.”
“Um, yeah. But I wouldn’t even know where to start.” When he’d first come to Shadow Valley, he’d spent a lot of time doing Internet searches on the various kinds of supernatural creatures, but it was hard to separate fact from fiction. Even when he’d finally gone to the town library, he’d been overwhelmed by all the books. A number of them weren’t even in English.
She smiled and nudged him. “It’s okay. I’m happy to help. Besides”—her eyes twinkled—“I have access to the special collection.”
The library had a locked section in the basement with rare books. “Really?” One of those old books might have exactly the information he needed.
“Uh-huh. The librarians love me.”
“Of course they do.”
Maggie laughed. “Want to go Saturday?” When he made a face, she said, “Oh. Warden training, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Sunday then?”
He wanted to go right then if it meant finding a way to safely contact the person claiming to be his birth mother. “The lucid dreaming will take a while to learn, right?”
“You can’t even be sure it will work. Not everyone can do it. But even if you can manage it right away, you’d need to practice it for at least a few days to make sure you have it down.”
This was already dangerous enough. Rushing into things wasn’t going to help. “Yeah, okay. Sunday.”
* * *
“First up is Dylan, of course.” Ms. Yang shot him an amused glance. Dylan already stood in the middle of the gym, waiting for his opponent. “And he’ll face off against Sakura.”
She jumped up from the bench with a grin. Taking up position in the green circle outlined on the floor, she said, “You better not go easy on me.”
“I know you can take it.” A flare of desire went through Dylan, and he told himself to watch it, otherwise this match might get seriously embarrassing.
“And don’t forget I can give it back.” A faint glow shimmered around her as she called up her magic.
“Ready?” Ms. Yang said, pulling Dylan’s attention back. “Go!”
Dozens of tiny fireballs flew toward Dylan, and he fended them off with fire of his own. Although they pushed each other, having a match against Sakura was so familiar it was almost comforting. He and Sakura—and Izume—had been having matches against each other since junior high. While the other kids in class had been nervous, even begging the teacher not to make them go against Dylan, the fox sisters had never been afraid of him.
Dylan wondered why he’d never reached out to them to strike up a friendship. Too busy wallowing in his status as an outcast probably. Then Aiden had come along and changed everything. Dylan wondered how different things might have been if he’d made an effort to hang out with Sakura and Izume outside of gym. Would he and Sakura have started dating sooner?
He hurled a blast of raw magic at her, and she ducked, rolling to avoid it. Even before the roll ended, she shot streams of fire at him.
When he was younger, Dylan had mostly used aggressive, offensive magic. Practicing with Aiden had helped him improve his defensive spells, and with warden training, Dylan was getting even better at defensive magic.
A shield sprang to life in front of him, absorbing the fire. Unlike gym, the outside world wasn’t protected against magic, so wardens had to prevent collateral damage. Fire bouncing off a magical shield could cause serious damage.
Look at me, all conscientious.
But Sakura had a surprise for him. Using her fire as a cover, she’d sprinted up close to him, and Dylan barely had a second to react as she slammed a hand against the barrier. Instinctively, he dodged as magic flared. His shield fizzled and burst. Bringing his hands up, he summoned a fireball to dodge her next attack.
The air between them was as hot as an oven, but they were both creatures of fire. That was one of the reasons he never had to hold back against either of the fox sisters. The other was that they matched him in skill. Even now, with Dylan taking magical combat training from the wardens, Sakura was able to hold her own.
God, she was amazing. Sakura’s eyes were fierce as she came at him, and a sheen of sweat made her short bangs stick to her forehead. They were fighting nearly hand to hand now, flames filling the short space between them.
Dylan had always admired her, but now he had a new level of appreciation for the beautiful kitsune. Of course he’d noticed her physically before, as any straight dude would notice a hot girl, but he really noticed her now. And he had to remind himself again that they were in class.
She tripped him, and Dylan went down hard, breath rushing out of him. He brought a barrier up just in time to absorb her next attack and rolled to his feet.
“Sure you’re not holding back?” she said between pants.
“Geez, no!” He might be a little bit too focused on the way her body moved, but that wasn’t deliberate. “Maybe I should take my shirt off and distract you with my chest.”
“Then I’d do the same, and we’ll see who’s more distracted.”
He let out a surprised bark of laughter, then hurried out of the way as a huge fireball roared toward him.
“Okay, stop!” Ms. Yang’s voice rang through the gym.
Dylan sighed in disappointment but dropped his hands. “Why?”
“We need to give someone else a chance. You’ve been at it for half an hour.”
Wow. It hadn’t seemed that long. He and Sakura headed back toward the benches. “Great match,” he told her.
She bumped him with her shoulder. “You too.”