by Maria Amor
It was too vague for him to make sense of it, but he was almost certain that there had been other people abducted with him, though he couldn’t say why. It was clearly someone supernatural; they’d taken the care to ward his room to make escape impossible. A normal person abducting random kids from a school wouldn’t know to do that. The energy vibrating from the different materials in the wards made it so that he couldn’t even access his own energy—it was at such a low level that he couldn’t even call upon it. “Come on, someone, bring me food. Something.”
Dylan tried to think of a way to count the time as he sat on the bed; he didn’t even know how long he’d been awake—not just how long he’d been out. It seemed utterly hopeless. Dylan sighed, debating getting another glass of water. His stomach was starting to rumble, a sure sign that he’d been out long enough—and then awake long enough—to be hungry, at least a little.
There was a sound near the door, and Dylan stirred, staring at it, debating whether or not to try and bolt if it opened. Useless. He shook his head and set the water aside as the sound of a clatter, a clink, and then a thunk greeted his ears. Only the lower portion of the door—he could see the seam suddenly, where it divided—opened, and a tray pushed through before Dylan could even fully appreciate what was happening. There was a hand, but it wasn’t in any way familiar to him. There was obviously a person on the other side of the door, but Dylan couldn’t make out enough of them to have any idea of who it could be—or even if it was anyone he knew.
But the food was welcome, he supposed; the door closed and he heard the noises of whoever-it-was who’d brought him the food locking it once more. There must only have been a handle on the other side for the bottom half of the door, Dylan decided; there wasn’t one on his side. But then, that made sense: they’d want a way to give him food without any contact at all.
“I’m going to go stir-crazy in here,” Dylan murmured to himself, as he climbed out of the bed and padded to the door to retrieve the tray. He could bathe, he could keep his teeth clean, he could keep himself hydrated—and whoever had captured him was apparently willing to feed him. But he had no better idea of where he was or who it was who’d taken him, or the other people he was fairly certain had been abducted with him. And he had no idea how long they intended to hold him.
“Somewhere along the line, someone is going to have to talk to me,” Dylan decided. The food on the tray was ample, and clearly designed to mitigate some of the effects of the wards that surrounded him, leeching away his element-aligned energy every moment: a soup full of spinach and other leafy greens, broiled filet of grouper with lemon, a salad with artichoke hearts, cucumber, and hearts of palm, and a crisp with cherries and almonds. All of the foods were made up of plants with a watery alignment, and Dylan almost felt grateful that his alignment had been considered; but at the same time, as he started to think of it, he realized that it merely meant that the people holding him wanted him to retain strength—but not enough to be able to escape.
He decided that he might as well eat; he needed to stay alert and healthy if he wanted to have any hope of finding out what he could about his predicament. Dylan ate the food slowly, not quite savoring it but feeling it do its work: he didn’t hurt as much as he had when he’d awakened, and he could feel some of his element-aligned energy coming back to him. It was better than a potion, though he suspected that the soup probably qualified as just that, in its own way.
Exploring the room in more detail, Dylan found that his textbooks had been brought as well; he opened one of them—the textbook for his water-aligned language class—and decided that if he was going to be stuck in the little room for an indeterminate time, he might as well put his sudden isolation to good use. Dearest helpless, intent’s not as bad as the action, he thought, starting a new chapter in the book. He murmured the vocabulary words to himself, committing them slowly to memory. He sighed.
“Someone has to come and explain this to me eventually,” he murmured, more to reassure himself than anything else. Of course, it wasn’t true: with the setup, he could be trapped in the room for days, weeks—even months—without ever having contact with someone, if the people holding him decided to keep it that way.
But they can’t; not really. Surely, someone had already noticed that he was missing—he had to have been gone for longer than an hour, and Dylan was sure that Julia, not to mention Ruth, would have realized that something had happened to him. He wouldn’t have just abandoned Julia; not on the eve of her birthday. Someone would be looking for him.
But his kidnappers, whoever they were, couldn’t risk him losing his mind from loneliness, could they? Dylan glanced at the water glass. He could—if he had to—use it to kill himself. “It’s not going to come to that,” Dylan told himself firmly. He pushed the thought out of his mind. His captors wouldn’t want to risk that, not if they were holding him for a reason.
He had to think that the abduction had something to do with Julia; he wasn’t important enough on his own to justify being kidnapped. But what did his captors want from him? Was it just to keep him away from Julia—or did they want information? Dylan set aside his language textbook and picked up his Government text. At least he would be able to get the reading done for Literature—that much he could do, but he wanted to save it for when he was well and truly bored. “If they want information from me, they’re on the wrong track,” Dylan said to himself. He had to figure out what they wanted; he had to find out how long he had been there already, and how long they intended to keep him in the little room.
He decided that the next time he heard someone bringing him food, he would try his luck—there would only be a short window to get to whoever it was, but it was worth it if he could find out something. Anything you can find out is better than where you are now.
Dylan settled in to wait, keeping one part of his mind alert to the sound of someone coming to check on him even as he settled into studying the material for his Government class. He had little else to do but either study or stew, and he knew that if he couldn’t get back to Julia soon, she would be in at least some form of danger. Dylan dreaded the possibility that she already was in danger, that he wasn’t there to help her.
If he had been abducted—and if it had been due to his relationship to Julia—then Julia was at risk. He knew Ruth would take care of her, but unless they took Julia out of school, there was not much they could do to protect her. “Guthrie is going to roast for this,” Dylan murmured, thinking out loud.
It gave him a wry sense of amusement. He knew that Ruth would guarantee it, and Ewan would back her; with two of the four elemental rulers decided on something like that, there was no way that Guthrie would be able to appeal to the council.
After a while, it was impossible for Dylan to stay awake. The lack of a window meant that he had no idea what time it was, but his eyelids were too heavy for him to keep them open. He put his books away, turned off the light in the room, and curled up in his bed. Dylan knew that he might miss an opportunity to grab someone delivering food to him—but if he was too sleepy, too tired to function, he wouldn’t be alert enough to put his plan into action.
He could only hope that he would sleep lightly, that the sound of someone unlocking his door would wake him. He had to hope that he could come up with some way to find out what was going on; once he knew that, he could start thinking about ways to escape.
Dylan fell into a fitful sleep, thinking about Julia. He had no idea whether it was her birthday or not—and his present to her was still at the apartment in Manhattan, hidden in the guest room he’d taken. He hated the thought that he wouldn’t be able to get it to her—he was certain it would be days, at least, until he was able to get free—but even more than that, he hated that he’d let her down.
She wasn’t going to be safe, and it was his own stupid fault for getting captured. Find out as much as you can, and then figure out an escape plan as quickly as possible. You can do it. Dylan finally reached a deeper sleep, exhausted by
the constant press of the earth and fire-aligned wards on his energies. As he slept, the room buzzed and hummed around him, keeping him trapped, waiting for his opening.
CHAPTER TEN
Julia looked at herself in the full-length mirror in the dressing room attached to the event space her parents had booked for her party; in spite of the fact that she knew she was more beautiful than ever, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole party was just off.
She’d half-tried to persuade her parents to cancel the big production because Dylan had gone missing; even though she’d known that it was hopeless, Julia had tried it anyway just on principle. Her parents had insisted that it would have to go forward—and Ruth had backed them.
She turned in a slow circle, admiring her reflection even as she tried to suppress the anxiety she felt at the lack of Dylan’s presence. The fae dressmakers had done her proud, with a dress that looked like the sky itself, clinging just slightly to her curves. The material was softer than silk—it was almost like wearing nothing at all, without feeling naked.
Julia had managed to sit in the hairdresser’s chair for three hours as the stylist worked her magic, plaiting and twisting and arranging Julia’s hair into a complicated, woven style that resembled a crown around her head. She’d put on the golden beryl jewelry her parents had gotten her for her previous birthday, and let the makeup artist at the venue—ordered by her parents—give her an “improved natural” look.
Her actual birthday had been spent in her parents’ apartment, with her mother, father, Ruth, and Ewan; Julia had felt Dylan’s absence even more strongly as she sat with them, eating dim sum that they’d had delivered to the apartment, opening her presents from all four.
She’d undergone the final stage of the transition at midnight, between Thursday and Friday. Julia shuddered at the memory; it had been the most intense power spasm she’d experienced of them all, mitigated by Ewan’s magic and Ruth’s energies—there had been a rainstorm in Manhattan that night, complete with howling gale-force winds. The council had been upset by it, but there was nothing to be done, according to Ruth; they couldn’t argue with two of the four elemental rulers.
As midnight struck, Julia had felt the spasm ease, but it was replaced with a swimming darkness, swirling around her. She had once—by accident—gotten drunk from spiked punch, and the feeling that had come over her then was not all that different from the sensation of the swirling, spinning sensation that had claimed her as midnight struck.
Julia had heard from her parents that the gale force winds and rain had reached their peak five minutes after midnight; sometime in that period, Julia had fallen unconscious as the energy had reached its highest point, for a few moments completely eliminating her ability to function as a normal human being.
She was glad that she hadn’t had to witness it for herself—what little she’d heard from her parents and grandmother about the first hour of her birthday had chilled her enough. In some respects, I’m kind of glad that Dylan wasn’t here for that, she’d thought.
When she’d come back to the world, Julia had realized that her skin glowed more intensely than ever with the energy coursing through her. “That’ll go away in a few days,” Ewan had told her, giving her a little reassuring smile. She’d had a cup of her grandmother’s tea and then gone to bed properly, wishing that she could at least tell Dylan about what it had been like.
The next morning when she’d awakened, Julia had begun trying to understand the full extent of her abilities; while she felt the power humming through her body as acutely as ever, she at least seemed—more or less—to have control over the energy, to be able to direct it and hold it as she needed.
“You’ll be studying with Ewan once you graduate from Sandrine,” her grandmother had informed her. “As powerful as you are, you’ll need to.” Julia knew that it would be weeks—maybe even months—before she fully appreciated the extent of her abilities; but all Friday she’d spent trying to at least get a basic understanding of how her fully available powers functioned.
“Julia? Are you almost ready?” Julia started at the sound of her mother’s voice, from the other side of the door.
“Almost,” Julia called back, giving herself one last look in the mirror. The party was probably already starting downstairs from where she had dressed and primped. “I’ll be right down!”
“Remember: you’re supposed to come to the vestibule outside of the ballroom, and we’ll present you formally to the guests as the birthday girl,” her mother told her. Julia rolled her eyes; the whole thing was such a production. Once again, she regretted the fact that Dylan wouldn’t be at her side. He at least would have made the night a little less onerous.
“You never know: maybe you can have some fun with your newfound abilities,” Julia told her reflection, trying on a smile. She hadn’t found out—yet—if she had the dreaded compulsion ability that Ruth had taught Dylan to protect himself against; but Julia thought that if she did, it would at least give her a few fun moments here and there, along with occasionally being useful. If I’d had it last year, I would probably never have had to go to the council at all.
She gave her dress a few final adjustments and turned away from the mirror. Dylan wasn’t there; she couldn’t find anything out about where he was, or who had taken him. She would have to get through the party on her own—and as soon as she went back to Sandrine on Sunday, she would have to do what she could to start finding out what was going on with her friends. Hold yourself, Julia—’cause no one else will. You’ll make it easier.
Julia left the dressing room and carefully navigated the stairs down to the main level, where the rented ballroom already held supernatural dignitaries, family, and high-ranking Guardians, along with those of Julia’s friends who hadn’t been abducted. She found the vestibule and slipped into it; her parents were waiting there as well. Her mother had chosen a dress that complimented her long, still-lean form well, in a somber blue that coordinated with Julia’s own gown, while her father wore a tux with the same colored accents. “You look absolutely beautiful, little girl,” her mother said, giving her a quick hug.
“Do we really have to do this so...dramatically?” Julia found herself hoping against hope that Dylan might somehow, magically appear—dressed in his suit for the night—and be at her side. It wasn’t to be, she knew that; but it didn’t stop her from wishing.
“Let everyone make a fuss over you,” her father suggested. “They’ll get over it soon enough, and you only really have to deal with it tonight.” Julia raised one well-groomed eyebrow at that, knowing that he wasn’t being fully honest; one of her new abilities seemed to be a limited kind of telepathy—one that she couldn’t really control or focus on or direct, but which had given her more than a few hints throughout the day and a half leading up to the party.
“I know you’re lying to me, Dad,” she said. Julia smiled wryly. “And I’d know that wasn’t going to happen even if I couldn’t tell that you were lying.”
“At least after this the biggest part of the pressure will come off of you, and you can focus on the rest of the school year,” her mother suggested.
“But what about Dylan?”
“Your grandmother—along with the entire administration of Sandrine and a good chunk of the council—is working on that,” her father reminded her for what seemed like the hundredth time; Julia resented them more and more every time she heard the words, but she knew that she couldn’t really argue—not yet. Instead she put a sad little smile on her face, hoping to appeal to her parents’ sympathy.
“I’m just worried about him,” Julia said. “His parents didn’t even come, because they’re looking for him too. It just…” she shrugged. “It seems like a shame that no one seems to know anything. And I hate the thought that he and the others might have been kidnapped because of their closeness to me.”
“We’ll work on it once we’re done with your birthday,” her mother said. “Don’t you trust Ruth?”
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��I trust her to try,” Julia said. She sighed and touched her hair. “Okay—let’s just get this over with.”
“Don’t sound so enthused,” her father told her drily. Julia rolled her eyes and smiled a little more genuinely. “Let us go out there and present you—you remember your cue, right?”
“We only went over it about a dozen times yesterday,” Julia pointed out. “I’ll come out when I’m supposed to, dance with the people I have to dance with, open my presents, and eat and drink and pretend like I’m merry.”
“I know you’re worried about Dylan, sweetheart,” her mother said. “I promise you, we’ll work on it as soon as the party's over.”
“Good.” Julia stepped back to let her parents leave the vestibule, and took a breath. She would just have to get through the situation without Dylan. Julia gave herself a shake. “You can do this. You’re strong enough to do this on your own. It isn’t like someone’s going to try and snatch you from your own birthday party.” She exhaled slowly, and listened for her parents to begin their speech.
Julia nervously smoothed the impossibly soft fabric of her fae-made dress against her body as she listened for her cue to enter the room. This is so ridiculous. Bad enough to be announced—but for my parents to make some hokey speech about my coming of age… Julia sighed.