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Aria barely registered what was happening as the remaining windows burst apart and half a dozen agents of the Privy Council came swarming inside. There were crackles of static as they spoke into their radios, the clicks of automatic weapons as they ghosted through the rest of the cottage, clearing it one room at a time. She didn’t notice when two strong hands clamped on her shoulders, checking her vitals, shining a light into her pupils, while a distant voice warbled in her ear.
She was frozen just like the others.
Watching as all the blood in Noah’s body slowly drained onto the floor.
...they barely even notice him.
It was as if the agents had simply gathered for a late-night tour of the cottage. You’d never know there was a dead teenager lying in the middle of the room. The instant they realized he was no longer a threat, he vanished from their minds completely. Becoming nothing more than an after-thought as they continued the investigation, checking things off some procedural list.
One of them snapped a quick picture for the file before apologizing for the hassle of the windows. Another was speaking into his radio without realizing he was stepping on Noah’s hair.
“Is someone going to move him?” Aria asked no one in particular, glancing blankly around the busy room. “Is someone going to...?”
No one heard her. People were bustling about so quickly, it was as if everyone who’d actually been inside the cottage was no longer there. It wasn’t until those hands tightened on her shoulders that she realized someone had been speaking to her at the same time.
“...I’m sorry?” she said in a daze, tilting her heads towards them while her eyes were still locked on the corpse.
Corpse. How did that word just become an official part of my vocabulary?
Two people entered the room quite suddenly, kneeling on either side of the dead boy. These men weren’t dressed like the others, handling themselves with a brisk efficiency that was almost cold considering the reason they’d come. With practiced hands they took a quick set of fingerprints, pulled a lock of hair and slipped it into a file. There was an imperceptible pause when they took in the rest of him—eyes lingering on the shadow still dripping from his skin and the little shards of ice.
Then a bag was produced from nowhere and he was slipped inside. They carried him out between them. Just a few seconds later, it was like they were never there.
I wonder if they even know his name...
One person did. The only other person whose eyes were still rooted to the floor.
Dorian was inconsolable. He wasn’t crying out loud—perhaps such a thing was forbidden in the land of adults. But he was shaking uncontrollably and one hand was still reaching for the halo of blood on the carpet, the grisly outline where Noah had fallen.
Agents were speaking with him as well, muttering in quick urgent voices, but it didn’t look like he was giving them much. He simply wasn’t capable. The only decipherable thing Aria heard him say was, “Where are you taking him?” He asked the question over and over.
A wave of nausea rolled through her stomach. Aria bent over at the waist. “I’m going to be sick...”
The agent speaking to her stepped back. Jason stepped immediately forward.
“Breathe,” he commanded quietly, rubbing gentle circles on her back. The pallor of his skin didn’t look much better, but for at least the moment he appeared in control. A faint glow emanated from his palm, and the next thing she knew a soft coating of ice pressed to the back of her neck. It helped immensely. “Just breathe. They have to be almost finished. We’ll be able to leave soon.”
Could we not have left before?
She lifted her head again, ears still ringing with the shot. It was only then she noticed that the clamor in the room was winding down. The windows were already being taped over. The door they’d broken on the way in had already been fitted back into the frame. It was also then she noticed that the beautiful boy speaking to her was splattered head to toe in blood.
“Jason,” she gasped, pulling back to see him better. There wasn’t an inch of his clothes or skin that had been spared. “What—”
“It’s not my blood,” he said quickly. “I was standing right behind him when...when they...”
He bowed his head quickly, unable to finish. A rush of emotion shook her to the core as that famous calm slipped away from him. As she saw the frightened teenager on the other side. He wasn’t nearly as put together as he’d first appeared. And he wasn’t the only one.
After getting nowhere with the children, other than determining they were physically fine, the agents had momentarily abandoned them in order to help clear the room. It was a welcome reprieve, given that none of them was in any state to be answering questions, and it let Aria really see the rest of her friends for the first time.
Benji was shock-white—a color that looked even more dramatic given the fiery hues of his hair. Little streams of blood were still dripping from his broken nose, making their way slowly down his neck, and both hands were clenched and trembling.
He met Aria’s gaze a second later, at a complete loss as to what to do.
That’s enough, she commanded herself fiercely, remembering her father’s unshakable calm back in New York. It’s no time to fall apart. Pull yourself together.
With a silent jerk of her head, she gestured to Lily—still gripping the handle of her katana with her back pressed against the wall. She hadn’t so much as blinked since the gun had fired, but the second Benji approached her she shook her head quickly, breathing hard through her nose.
“I’m okay,” she said before anyone could ask her the question.
Aria turned from her to James.
Unlike the others, he hadn’t yet mastered the teenage ability to hide his emotions. Ever since he was a child, he’d worn them right on his sleeve. His sister was having trouble reading him now, but a single glance told her it wasn’t good. He, too, was still staring like he could see the body. Every now and then a violent shiver would rip through him, shaking him to the core.
Moving with exaggerated slowness, she stepped right in front of him—deliberately blocking the bloody outline from view. His bright eyes flickered for a moment, like they were still trying to see, before locking with sudden speed onto her face.
“...Arie?”
It was the sound of his voice that did it. The voice of a frightened child.
She embraced him a second later, circling her arms tightly as he clung to the back of her shirt. He wasn’t quite crying, but no matter what he did he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. It tore out of him in broken gasps, muffled slightly in her collar as he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Can we go?” he whispered. “Can we please get out of this house?”
No sooner had he asked the question than two new faces appeared in front of them. Both were instantly unwelcome and both were bleeding, though the source wasn’t immediately clear.
“Are you two all right?”
Maize took a step closer, looking the siblings up and down with concern.
Gone was the man who’d decried her as a murder suspect, ranting against nepotism and demanding she be put on trial. Gone was the man who’d ambushed the friends just a short while earlier, attempting his own crude version of an interrogation on the campus lawn. All that remained was an agent of the Privy Council. Calm, quick, and professional. With just a bit of guilt underneath.
He and Windall seemed to have only just arrived. The rest of the agents who’d apprehended them were still conspicuously absent. As was the woman who’d stopped the ambush in its tracks.
Aria didn’t reply, she merely tightened her grip on her little brother.
“Get away from them,” Benji warned under his breath.
But the agent had no intention of pushing the matter further. Unlike the others he seemed very aware of the bloody outline on the carpet, and exactly what it happened to represent.
“So this...” He caught himself, carefully censoring whatever he was trying to say. “This is the man who actually...”
Aria looked him straight in the eyes.
Did you really think it was me?
He faltered for a moment, then turned away.
No, you didn’t.
“I see.” He cleared his throat unnecessarily as Windall tapped him on the arm. “Well, that’s good. Good that you caught him,” he clarified quickly at the five blank faces staring back. “This agency owes you a great debt—”
Windall tapped him more urgently and he glanced over his shoulder. A second later, both men were gone—hurrying back outside the way they’d come. They were replaced a moment later with two more familiar faces. These were far more welcome.
“Is everyone all right?”
The crowd parted as Julian and Angel swept into the room.
Aria lifted her head in a daze. Never had she known that relief could be a physical thing. The second she saw them, it was as if a part of her world fell back into balance. Her uneven pulse found its way to a steady rhythm. The room itself steadied as she stepped into her uncle’s embrace.
“Oh, sweetheart...I’m so sorry.”
Angel had seized Lily, so he had Aria under one arm and James under the other. Both collapsed in a mixture of exhaustion and mild suffocation as he pulled them instinctively away from the bloody outline, out into the relative safety of the hall.
“You were here when it happened,” he said softly. “You saw the whole thing.”
Neither was asked as a question—he’d seen as much in the car racing over from London—but it was a vital affirmation nonetheless. Yes, they had been the only ones present. Forgotten in the aftermath, still reeling from the shot. Yes, they were the only ones who were still alive.
Aria nodded mutely, while James simply clung to the back of his uncle’s jacket.
“I’m so sorry,” Julian murmured once more, tightening his grip on both of them.
Jason and Benji were being examined by Angel—a quick yet strangely maternal assessment, after which she nodded curtly and glanced back at her husband.
“Jules, let’s take them outside.”
He nodded silently and steered the children out through the open door. Whether they were technically allowed to leave didn’t seem to matter. Not a word was raised in protest as he and Angel led the band of children to the middle of the campus lawn. At first, Aria didn’t know why they were stopping. The rain might have slackened, but it was still drenched and freezing.
Then she pulled in a gulp of icy air.
It was heaven.
Exactly what she needed to steady her trembling limbs. Exactly what she needed to clear her mind. Her pulse quickened as she took a step away from Julian, pulling in breath after breath.
He was watching carefully, still holding James in both arms.
“...it’s over.”
Realistically speaking, it was the only comfort he could offer. No, things weren’t okay. A boy had been shot to death in front of them. It would take years before they could begin to reconcile what had happened. Years after that before they could begin to truly move on.
But for the time being, things were over.
“You want me to fix that nose, kid?” Angel said quietly, tilting Benji’s head with a pair of practiced hands. “Or do you want to wait for Rae?”
Aria glanced around hopefully. “Mom is coming?”
Stupid question. Of course she was coming. It would be a miracle if she didn’t bring half the British National Guard along with her. Not to mention Dad.
Julian smiled faintly, releasing her brother and gathering Lily in his arms. He pressed a soft kiss to her temple, brushing back her ivory hair and staring deep into her eyes.
“You had a vision?”
The girl nodded, then simultaneously crumbled. While she didn’t say anything directly, her clairvoyant father seemed to understand. She had a vision...and look what happened.
He smiled sadly, wiping tears from her cheeks. “You saved a life today, Lily. Your gift saved someone’s life.”
Even at the cost of another.
The young psychic pulled in a deep breath, sporadically clenching her fingers as if the katana was still clutched in her hand. “I think I tried to draw it.”
“You did,” Benji interjected suddenly, having escaped Angel’s clinical hands. “Your hand kept twitching like you were trying to draw.”
A strange expression flickered across Julian’s face. Something that was too complicated to register, but bordered on the hint of pride.
“It was just so fast,” she murmured incredulously, playing it back in her mind. “We barely had time to get here...it was just so fast.”
Julian stared at her a moment, then nodded in silence. “It usually is. Unless you’re looking for something in particular, a vision can almost be too fast. Sometimes you barely make it. Sometimes you don’t make it at all.”
Aria stared at him in silence, wondering if it had been that way when he saw what was happening that evening. Had he seen the attack—the moment the gun would be fired? Or had he simply seen his wife, battling half the agency out on the lawn.
“Is my dad...?” Jason cleared his throat and started again. “Is my dad coming?”
Another stupid question. But this one was actually rather sweet. Because, before he could even finish asking, a car door slammed somewhere in the distance and a figure started racing across the lawn. Face white with belated panic, golden hair rippling silver in the light of the moon.
“Call it a father’s intuition,” Julian said quietly, watching him approach. “Your father was already on his way.”
Gabriel reached them a second later, cutting straight through the others and catching his son in a fierce embrace. The text from Julian told him they were all okay. The PC medic would never have let them leave otherwise. But he needed to see it for himself.
With the same quick skill as Angel, his hands swept over every inch. Noting every bruise and laceration, wiping away the blood to make sure none of it was his. Performing the same examination each of the children had endured from their overprotective parents so many times themselves.
Jason held perfectly still the entire time. He didn’t move a muscle when Gabriel embraced him again, not even when the tips of his shoes left the ground.
But the second it was over, there were tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Gabriel pulled back at once, staring at him in surprise. His lips parted to answer, still unsure what he was going to say, but Jason beat him to the punch.
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you about those initials,” he murmured, bowing his head as the others pretended not to listen in. “It’s not your fault the woman vanished without a trace—you were just doing whatever you could to protect me.”
His eyes drifted back to the cottage without meaning to, dilating with such intensity it was like the nightmare was playing out right there in his mind.
“When a bullet shattered the window, all I could think...” He trailed off with an involuntary shiver. “I mean, we didn’t know whether it was the PC or if the guy had brought friends, and I didn’t want the last thing that you and I...” His breath caught in his chest. “...I’m sorry.”
Gabriel’s face tightened with some indecipherable emotion before pulling him in for one final embrace. His eyes locked ever so briefly with Angel’s, while his hand clutched the back of his son’s blonde head. When they pulled back a second later, he offered a faint smile.
“Let’s get you inside.”
* * *
THE WHOLE SCHOOL WAS awake and buzzing by the time the rain-soaked group made their way into the faculty lounge. It was hard to miss the sound of gunshots, especially on a campus for the supernaturally gifted, and almost every single light was on in both the dorms.
“We should get back to London,” Angel said quietly, gazing out the window. Lily was lying across her lap and Jason was resting his head against her shoulder. “Carter and the rest should be here any minute for interviews, but after that...you kids are going to want a little distance.”
Aria nodded with a shiver, digging her fists into the pocket of her coat.
It was one thing to weather the Guilder rumor mill when they were dealing with adolescent theatrics. It was quite another with the body of a dead teenager in the morgue.
...if there IS a morgue?
“Where are they going to take him?” she asked abruptly, staring from one to the next. “The body—I mean. Where are they going to take Noah’s body?”
Her friends stiffened at the name, while the adults looked up slowly.
They had been very careful thus far not to press for details. Their presence alone had deterred other agents from doing the same. But there was much to be accounted for. And those questions were never far from their minds.
“That was his name?” Julian asked softly. “Noah?”
Aria stared a moment, then nodded silently. Strange as it was to be talking about, she found it incredibly comforting that her uncle now had this information as well. That he spoke of the boy with the quiet respect his death would seem to require. Unlike the men who’d taken him away.
Gabriel leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“They’ll put him somewhere safe until they figure out what happened, then his family will likely be contacted to collect the remains. From what Jules said, he looked very young.”
She nodded again, a little faster this time. “Same age as me. But he wasn’t...”
How did she explain it? How had everything gone so wrong?
“He wasn’t some cold-blooded killer,” she continued, piecing it together as she spoke. “It was personal. The guy was furious. And he was crying. He kept saying something about this girl—”
“Arie.”
She lifted her head to see Benji looking pointedly at James. The kid was sitting on the very edge of the couch, pale and trembling. The more she talked, the more color drained from his face.
Julian followed her gaze then pushed gracefully to his feet, coming to sit at the boy’s side. “We can talk about it later,” he said lightly, as if the details were scarcely relevant. “All that matters now is that it’s over. And all of you are safe.”
James bit down on his lip, then leaned into his uncle’s chest. The others were clustered in a similar fashion around the rest of the adults—either touching or never more than an arm’s length away. Aria’s every instinct was to join them. Her body was literally aching for the relief.
But her eyes were trained out the window, staring through the darkness at the little cottage.
Because, while his intentions might have been good, while they might have been protective, she couldn’t help but think that Julian was wrong about one important thing.
It wasn’t over. It was only beginning.
