The Reluctant Assassin

by Alexandra Vos

  Jack, who had already changed into some pyjamas, slid into my bed and allowed me to follow suit. “I’m sorry you had to go through that tonight.”

  Now in the pitch black, there was no reason to keep my tears back. They were silent. “It’s okay. Hopefully it’ll just be over soon.”

  The feeling of secure arms wrapping around me cut my tears short and I was filled with even more guilt as the warmth of Jack’s embrace surrounded me. A short, sweet kiss was pressed to the back of my neck. “None of this is your fault. You’ve just been really unlucky.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, burying myself further into his arms. This would all be over soon, I had to hope for that.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Waking up in Jack’s arms was perhaps the best feeling in the world. I was warm, comfortable, and it was easy to banish everything from my mind as I focused on the shallow breaths caressing my neck. It would be no chore to continue laying here pretending I was asleep.

  Jack tightened his arms. “I know you’re awake.”

  “Oh,” but when I pulled away in slight embarrassment, Jack kept me against his chest.

  We lay in silence for a few minutes, both absorbed in our own thoughts and when Jack drew breath to talk, I already knew what he was going to say. “I think we need to talk.”

  It was inevitable and I was unsure whether my stupid invitation for him to sleep in my bed was worth it or not. I had really wanted to prevent this conversation for as long as possible. “Okay.”

  “I really like you, Ilona. Like, really bad, but we can’t do this anymore.” It was the only real outcome; our relationship was completely impossible and I was unwilling to bring Dale’s wrath down on Jack.

  “I like you too,” having this conversation whilst we were huddled up in bed didn’t make things any easier. “But it’s okay, I understand. Besides, you and Ellie are good for each other. This is just never going to happen. I do know that.”

  Jack placed a gentle kiss on my forehead and it took all my effort not to cry. This was something I had to take well, for the both of us. All my concentration needed to be focused on the Dimitri situation from now on. Not having to deal with subtle touches and longing looks from Jack would help with that. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s really not your fault,” I dismissed instantly. “I would have said the same thing. Anyway,” I pulled myself from the bed and shrugged into my dressing gown. “We need to decide what you’re going to do about Ellie because she’s going to want to see you soon and she can’t come here or know about what’s going on.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t really thought about it.” There wasn’t really any reason for him to lie about it, but the effort at least made me feel a little bit better. “I have no idea, really. Do you have any suggestions?”

  Groaning, I had to turn away from Jack as he also left the bed, his legs exposed in his boxers. Deciding Leo would probably be awake anyway, I figured I could use the fact I’d saved his life to my advantage. “I really, really don’t want this to be the solution, but we’re going to have go on some kind of shitty double date.”

  Jack looked equally horrified. “Is there really nothing else?”

  Leo, who had clearly still been passed out, raised his head and squinted against the light. “Is it time to go?”

  “You’d say you owed me one, right?”

  He wasn’t good at hiding his apprehension. “I suppose so.”

  “Good, then I’m enrolling you as my fake date so that Jack can sufficiently trick his girlfriend into not finding out that I’m an assassin and we’re all in grave, mortal danger. Sound fair?”

  “And it’s definitely fake?” Leo flashed me a winning smile.

  After my conversation a minute ago, I did nothing more than roll my eyes. “Absolutely. And yes, it is time to go. I’ll get changed in the bathroom.”

  This was definitely going to be painful.

  ***

  “I had a long talk with Jasper last night, and he’s had a long talk with everyone else. They’re sending resources up to Sheffield to help eliminate the problem. Whilst they’re doing that, we need to try and locate this bastard. We have to get as much information as possible on him, so I need your ideas.”

  “We can start by looking at birth records. If his name is actually Dimitri then there can’t be that many of them in Sheffield around his age.”

  “Good idea, Violet, put that on your to-do list. Anybody else?”

  I was honestly at a loss when it came to what to do. Without any ideas there was no chance of me doing anything off my own back, everyone else was a sitting duck whilst Dimitri had this hold over me.

  “Can’t we use that idiot Ilona’s got upstairs for something? He knows them, we could use him as bait.”

  I grit my teeth, holding out to hear Dale’s response before I bit Glen’s head off for such a suggestion, even though that was my excuse for keeping him here in the first place. “Maybe, but unless you’ve got a more specific suggestion, I don’t know what we’d do with him.”

  Glen shrugged. “I’ll think about.”

  Violet’s glance at me wasn’t the most subtle, but my face remained unchanged. “Jasper says the people he’s sending will be arriving over the next couple of days, since it’s basically a ‘loan a few assassins from every Guild in Britain’ type thing. They’re putting themselves up in a hotel in the city centre, so there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to accommodation. They’re bringing all the resources they’ve got on Warlocks with them and Jasper’s emailed me a heap of stuff. We’ve all got to be reading it and scanning over the next few days. Ilona, you’ll not be going into school. Setting Jack to read is what he’s going to be useful for in the immediate future.”

  Nodding, I was quite happy to accept that. “I have to go out in a couple of days so that Jack’s girlfriend doesn’t get suspicious, but it will only be for a few hours. That okay?”

  “Just make sure you check in throughout the night and stay indoors. I’m going to forward you all the email now, so go and get started. If you think of anything, come and tell me immediately. I’m shutting down all external operations for the foreseeable future, so there won’t be any jobs coming up. I’m also sending Daisy on paid leave, she doesn’t need to be around for this. We’re effectively on lockdown until this is sorted out, all right? Don’t go out unless you need to.”

  Nodding, we all traipsed back up the stairs in silence. I was grateful my room was only on the first floor. Jack was on the computer and I decided it was best to leave him to it, right now I needed to read through these emails and search for anything that might help me defeat Dimitri without Jenny or Jack getting hurt.

  Grabbing my laptop, I retired to my bedroom, knowing Jack wouldn’t disturb me.

  The information Dale had sent was useless. It detailed how the Warlock’s demise had happened. In those times, Warlock and Fae lived in peace. But then something had to change, and in this case it was the Warlock’s changing the use of their powers; they began dabbling in darker magic, in the uncertainty and unknown rather than the elements. These few became incredibly powerful and soon there was an uprising on the Fae’s hands.

  We played espionage, of course. Back then we were all trained assassins, according to the documents. Taking out the leaders was difficult, but it happened, and then the rest were easy enough to slaughter. We lost a lot of our numbers, probably the reason for this horribly strict regime now, but we survived and that was all the documents had to offer.

  They were completely useless. We’d killed the Warlocks back then with the help of our abilities – abilities we simply didn’t have anymore. They’d faded and apparently so had our ability to rid the world of Dimitri as long as he remained this slippery. Unless we could locate him and rush him down with all our force, there was nothing to do but remain as sitting ducks and that would never end well.

  It was going to be a long night of scouring the internet to see if someone reckless had put any information online that I cou
ld find or use.

  ***

  My yawn was cut short as I scanned the blog post. Buried in the millions of search results nobody read, this Nigerian boy had found himself able to manipulate water. Apparently practising a meditation routine that his mother had always taught him, the boy had found the water in the stream where he meditated moving with the flow of his movements.

  Could it be? There was no point in debating it – I quickly hashed out a private response, asking for more details. What exactly the routine had been? Had there been any other weird happenings? I’d leave the question of whether he had a birthmark just behind his ear for later on in the conversation.

  It made sense, really. If a Warlock was actively using his powers again, using them against the Fae for the first time, why shouldn’t our natural abilities come back?

  I didn’t want to let myself get excited, the boy writing these words was more than likely an aspiring writer toying with the idea of elemental manipulation. He probably wouldn’t be Fae.

  When my inbox dinged with a response, I was almost expecting a derogatory response about my intelligence for taking his post seriously. Instead, it was a well thought out response detailing the meditation routine that had been passed down his family since before any of his living relatives could remember. It was a tradition for them, but no one he’d ever spoken to had heard of such rituals. They were apparently isolated and didn’t speak to a lot of people – the internet was his only real communication with the outside world.

  Definitely curious by this, I realised there was no way of telling whether he was stronger than other people if he had no human contact other than with family. Instead, a simple Do you have a video of the water moving? seemed to suffice. I could gather everything I needed to know from that.

  The boy responded that he would go and see if he could film one now. I tapped impatiently against my laptop, sudden hope filling me. This could most definitely be the weapon I needed and there was no way Dimitri could know about it. It had taken me hours upon hours of scouring the web.

  When Jack poked his head into the room, I alt-tabbed to a game of solitaire quicker than I thought even my reflexes could handle. “I’m going to head to bed. You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine, just sifting through some stuff Dale sent through. Operations are down indefinitely and so is school. You’ve arranged everything with Ellie, right?”

  “It’s all sorted. We’ll pick her up and we’re going somewhere near her house.”

  “Okay, cool.” My dismissal wasn’t cold, but it was final. I needed to stay away from Jack; spend as little time with him as possible, even if it did mean using my rubbish laptop instead of my expensive computer.

  “Goodnight.”

  “Night.”

  Jack left the room with a prominent frown and I ignored any emotion but hope as I returned to my conversation with the blogger. He’d replied, attaching a video. Taking a deep breath, I clicked and watched with the sound turned low.

  I spotted the mark straight away, even though it was hard to distinguish against his dark skin. The mark of the Fae, and hopefully my ticket to beating Dimitri before anyone else got hurt. He was making small, almost unnoticeable movements with his hands, but stood straight as a post and with his eyes shut. If I was forced into this position for any length of time I wouldn’t be able to do anything before Dimitri took me out.

  Beside him, though, the water was definitely moving. It was weak and limp, but threads lifted up from the lake and danced through the air following the movements of his hands. The video cut off before I was ready, but it appeared to have drained the boy. Replying, I sold my shock well. It was amazing, of course, but the practicalities of it were what counted. What I needed to know were the exact movements and whether he had any idea as to how to manipulate the other elements. Water was possibly the most useless of the four elements – we were likely to be fighting next to a river.

  The blogger sent back some attachments. Opening them, I was for once genuinely mesmerised by a piece of Fae culture. The pictures on my laptop were of some ancient scrolls which has been laid out and photographed. They were in remarkably good condition and each hand movement was detailed precisely. An element was always present on the scroll, surrounded by the green leaves which matched my mark.

  This was really it.

  Hashing out a hurried response, I saved the photos and logged off. I only felt slightly guilty about my ragtag response that it must be godly intervention. Double checking that no one was going to enter the room, I pulled up the scroll relating to air. The movements were simple enough: large, sweeping, circular motions.

  I almost felt embarrassed as I mimicked the motions, squinting at my computer screen and committing them to memory. The boy I’d spoken to had said he used them as part of meditation, so I attempted to clear my mind and focus on my breathing. I’d attempted meditation before, at some of the angriest points of my life, but had never been particularly successful. Hopefully tonight would be different.

  My breathing was as steady as I could make it, but my heart pounded in my chest as I began making the circular motions, my eyes only flickering to the door once as I dreaded Jack’s entrance. I could probably pass it off as yoga if I really needed to.

  As the motions became automatic, it became easier to keep all my attention on them, imaging the wind flowing with my arms.

  When I felt a whisper against the tips of my hair, I gasped and all my concentration disappeared, including the small breeze that had appeared in my bedroom.

  A large smile broadened across my face. I had a weapon, a real weapon, which had been used to down a Warlock in the past. I raised a hand to practice the manoeuvre again, but found my muscles sluggish and tired. That measly puff of air had completely exhausted me.

  Sitting down and cringing against the pain in my arms, doubt clouded my mind once more. This took such a huge toll on my body and was so slow that I’d never able to master the technique quick enough to take Dimitri down.

  It was the only real choice I had, though. If anyone else got wind of this my cover would be blown and if it went wrong, Jack and Jenny would be hurt. I needed to put it all on my own shoulders – if I failed I could always do what Dimitri wanted me to after all and hopefully he’d spare my friends, even if he didn’t spare me. It would be worth it.

  When I left my room to clean my teeth and grab a glass of water, I was forced to remember our conversation from earlier in the day. This had been a good distraction, but Jack’s calm, sleeping figure was enough to make me sad. I wasn’t sure I could handle a double-date. Having to watch him and Ellie all lovey-dovey was probably going to be too much, even if I’d put off showing any emotion all day.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I’m serious. Have you actually got it?”

  “Ilona, my memory is just as good as yours. I’m not going to mess this up,” Leo grumbled from beside me. “Our backstory is the easiest thing in the world. ‘We met at a party.’ I don’t think I’m going to forget that.”

  “You’ve just stolen Jenny and that guy’s backstory, I thought you were more creative than that,” Jack was trying to worm his way out of obvious apprehension by teasing me.

  “Shut up. And you cannot say anything that would give away we’re Fae. Or that I’m an assassin.”

  “What kind of moron do you think I am? No wonder you won’t actually go out with me.”

  Grimacing, I pulled up to the address Jack had given me. “I don’t even know you.”

  “That’s the point of getting to know me.”

  Gripping the steering wheel excessively hard, I shot him a harsh glare, but it softened at his boyish smile. I was far too uptight for mild flirting tonight. “Please behave.”

  Jack got out of the car to fetch Ellie and ignored our conversation. “You two are appalling. There’s no way she’s going to fall for this,” Leo warned.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” but my blush was horribly revealing.

&nbs
p; Getting out of the car, we exchanged pleasantries and headed towards the restaurant. It was a five minute walk, but it felt like a lifetime. Jack and Ellie held hands, and when Leo smirked and took mine, I didn’t have the heart to protest. In fact, I found myself clinging onto it for dear life as my eyes surveyed the surroundings and ignored any conversation.

  “Hi, I booked a table for four at seven o’clock.” The waiter checked the book and offered a smile, requesting the name. “It’s Woods.”

  With a nod, we were brought to a table in the corner. I made sure I took the window seat. No one was going to shoot a bullet at me, it was safe to say, so best that I made sure no one else got hurt. Leo took the other window seat opposite me.

  “So, Ilona, what are your university plans?” Ellie inquired whilst scanning the menu. It was an Italian, so I’d practically already decided I was having pepperoni pizza.