"Well, you know I'm probably going to end the day complaining anyway. So, you're a better man than I."
Devon winked. "I could've told you that much."
I reached my elbow out to jostle Devon in the side before turning and grabbing yet another box of my own. I ended up placing it at my feet because we were running out of space on our table as endless stacks of paperwork spread out around us. Next time I went back I'd have to ask Devon for some organizational hints, because whatever he was doing was working better than my plan.
A few minutes later, my eyes scanned yet another character information sheet. This one featured a war hero who'd fought in some medieval battle. Thomas Decker.
The sheet should have had all the same information that all the others had, but this time, there was something a little different.
"What about this?" I asked, holding up the piece of paper to Grayson. My finger drifted up to what I was trying to show him. Under the area where Decker’s first arrival should be listed, someone had blacked out the information. I doubted I found anything truly valuable to our cause, but it was the most interesting thing I’d found all day.
Unfortunately, Grayson shook his head. "That just means that this guy went back to his origin story, almost right away. If you hold the paper up to the light, you should still be able to see where he first arrived. But we have lost some information due to bad planning back then. But wherever he came in, it’s more than likely that same Reclamation Center was where he left as well. Whoever discharged him would've left that mark as a way to show us in the Archive that whoever this guy was, he hadn't had much of an impact on our world at all."
A little disappointed, I moved Decker’s file to my ever-growing stack of useless information.
Just then, a loud crash came from behind me. Grayson and I both turned at once, to see Devon cursing under his breath. The box he’d been holding had fallen to the floor, spilling paperwork at his feet. In a matter of seconds, the dust in the air around him got twice as thick. I saw the moment when it reached the level of Devon's face and his whole body heaved as he took in a deep breath of musty air.
A second later, he jerked forward, letting out a massive sneeze. It would have been funny if it weren't for the fact that right after that, Devon disappeared completely. One second he’d been standing there, the next he was gone. In his place, hovering in midair at about the same level as his head had been a moment before, was a tiny bird, about the size of a chickadee.
"What the hell?" I said aloud. I closed my eyes tight for a moment and then opened them, but the image in front of me hadn't changed. More puzzled than worried, I looked over at Grayson, hoping he’d be able to offer some sort of an explanation but instead his face was contorted in shock, almost horror.
A flash of movement caught my eye and I whirled back to see that Devon had reappeared. He was standing there exactly as he had been a few seconds before but was looking entirely bewildered.
The three of us stood there for what seemed like forever. Finally, Devon shook his head a little and seemed to wake up before turning around to face us. But it wasn't me his eyes locked onto. At once, his expression shifted from scared to terrified. Instinctively, I turned to see what he was looking at.
Grayson was standing in the same place he had been before, but no longer was he confused, or distracted by research. Instead, he had stepped out from around the table and was standing right behind me, stance wide and steady. With a gun pointed straight at Devon's chest.
"Do. Not. Move." Grayson was talking to Devon but I found myself frozen in place at the same time. I couldn’t understand anything that was going on around me. But whatever had just happened to Devon had clearly been magic, and a similar variety to what I'd seen Grayson do a week before.
"Who are you?" Grayson almost barked out the question.
Slowly, I turned back to face Devon, trying not to do anything too suddenly and set off an already tense situation.
Devon stuttered out a response that I couldn't understand. He was already visibly shaking and Grayson wasn’t making this any easier. I couldn't say whether it was the gun pointed at him now, or having been turned into a bird the moment before that had gotten to him more, but I didn't envy his position.
"Who are you?" Grayson said again, this time more slowly. "Clearly, you're not who you said you were. And not a prosaic at all."
"I swear, I have no idea what happened to me. One second, I was sneezing. And the next everything was kind of a blur. I felt disconnected to my body, and like I was almost hovering. I kind of freaked out. In my panic, all I could think was that I wanted my body back. And then here I was, everything was back to normal."
Grayson scowled. "You're going to have to do better than that."
I took a long, slow breath trying to come up with something I could do that would make what was happening better. But there was nothing I could say. Instead, I settled on attempting to defuse the situation. "Let's just take a breath here. Could someone have done this to him?"
"In any other circumstances, maybe. But I know that magic he just performed all too well, and that's not something that would be out of his control. The odds of someone else transfiguring him into a bird while he's in the same room as me, after all this time? It's just too much of a coincidence. But something surprising happening and forcing his magic out--that I can believe. Which means he's been lying to us this entire time. All the assumptions we've been basing our investigation on have been based on lies."
Not moving his hand, Grayson's gaze briefly shifted to look at me. Gone was the easy-going expression from our shared conversation about his childhood. Instead, he was trying to assess whether I was just as much of a threat. But I still couldn't wrap my head around the fact that Devon had been lying this whole time. The pieces didn’t fit. And looking at him now, he seemed as stunned as we were.
There had to be more going on, but Grayson did not look like he was in the mood for a reasonable discussion.
"I don't know what happened," Devon said again, as much to himself as to us. "I didn't do anything."
"Well, we're not taking any chances. Put your hands out in front of you, and don't make any sudden movements. It would also be in your best interest not to go muttering any incantations under your breath. I can't decide what happens next on my own, but we cannot simply let this go. But one wrong move and this is going to have a very unhappy ending for you."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At Grayson’s order, I led the way back down to the councilors’ offices, with Devon not far behind me, practically shadowed by Grayson. I tried to imagine all the ways this might have been a misunderstanding, how it could work itself out. But I kept coming up short, giving up entirely once Marc appeared beside us, shepherded by a librarian I didn’t recognize, decked out in a white robe and a paranoid glare. He was guarding Marc, there was no doubt in my mind. Guarding Marc like Grayson was guarding Devon… and me.
I didn't know what exactly was coming, but the implication for what the end result could be was clear. If Devon had been lying about who he was and what he was capable of, there was nothing to say that Marc and I hadn't been doing the same. All anyone had to go on was what we'd said about ourselves, during the dozens of times we'd been questioned about our pasts. And maybe we wouldn't have been under suspicion before if the people in the Archive had thought we were magical from the outset, but the possibility that we'd been lying changed everything.
When we arrived in the foyer of the councilor's offices, it wasn't Eliza sitting at the front desk. Instead, it was a middle-aged man with dark skin and long pointed ears that protruded out from the sides of his head. He watched us from the moment we entered the hall leading to his workstation until Marc and I were seated in the lobby. Unlike the last time I was here, two armed guards who I suspected worked for Grayson were left with us while the Hand of the Archive himself marched Devon into the center room.
For a second we sat in silence, but eventually Marc leaned over and whis
pered, "What's going on? I was on my way to the gym when this guy"—he cocked his finger towards one of the two hovering nearby—"told me that the councilors required my presence. What he didn't say was that if I didn't go of my own free will, the decision would be made for me, but it was heavily implied."
Not bothering to keep my voice quiet as I assumed everyone around me would know what happened with Devon soon enough, I filled Marc in on everything from the dusty room to Devon's magical sneeze to Grayson's reaction. "And it's funny," I said. "Because Grayson can do the exact same thing. Or, kind of. My first day in the After, I swear I saw him shift from a hawk into a human. I mean, if Devon had been hiding something this whole time, what are the chances that it's the same kind of magic that Grayson has?"
"No chance," Marc said. "I mean, I guess someone could just happen to rip-off, or have the same magical idea as Grayson's author, but the odds of that are just unreal."
I shook my head. "Grayson doesn’t have an author. Apparently, librarians have to be at least second generation citizens of the After. So, whatever Grayson can do, he got it from one of his parents. Meaning that the idea for those magical powers would've come from even further back. I guess it also means that Grayson wouldn't necessarily recognize anyone from the same book as his parents, so maybe Devon wasn't a new arrival after all. But… I don't know. None of this makes any sense."
"So, they're all pissed that Devon can do magic and didn't tell anyone?"
"I guess. But I honestly don't think Devon has been hiding anything. He looked as surprised as I was and seriously freaked out."
Marc sat back in his chair with a low hum, thinking to himself but not sharing with me whatever was going through his head.
"What do you think it means?" I asked, not willing to go back to sitting in silence. If Marc had a theory, I wanted to know about it.
"Well, do you have any special powers you haven't been telling us about?" Marc asked, turning back to lock eyes with me. We were both well aware that anything I said would be overheard by three other people, but I didn't have anything to share.
"I can't do anything. I can barely do long division. What about you?"
Marc hesitated for a second longer than I would've liked but soon shook his head and swore that everything he told me had been true.
"I guess it’s wait and see?" I said, shrugging my shoulders.
"What choice do we have?"
If I thought the question-and-answer sessions I had been involved in before were an interrogation, the next few hours of my life were a rude awakening. No one took me into a darkly lit room with a long table and an unsheathed light bulb hanging overhead to create some sort of noir mood to intimidate me, but the result was the same. Devon had been moved away without being allowed to say anything to Marc or me, and then I was brought in.
Time seemed to stand still as I faced the four councilors all over again. The same old questions sprung most readily from Joanna’s and Grayson's mouths. But while Joanna seemed intent on uncovering a plot, hoping to catch me in a lie, Grayson mostly just asked questions and intently listened on the answers.
But in the end, someone must've accepted that, at least for me, nothing had changed. And since there was nothing they could do one way or another to prove whether I was magical or not, and since I was already well under their control, it was determined that I, and later Marc, would be allowed to continue as we were, unencumbered. Nobody mentioned what would be happening to Devon.
They didn't even bother giving me a new guard to escort me back to my room, though they assured me that I'd be better off keeping to myself for the rest of the day while things settled down in the Archive. I wanted to wait for Marc, but the new receptionist and his steely gaze made it clear I wasn't welcome.
Yeah, it was probably going to take more than one evening for people around here to stop looking at me like I was a criminal. But I found my way back to my room easily enough, my week at the Archive and my new routine making it all too easy to go between my usual stops. But what I found when I entered our private row of rooms was certainly different than anything I'd seen before. Both my room and Marc’s room stood exactly as they had been before I’d left this morning. But all the walls to Devon's room in the middle were gone. Instead, metal bars encircled all three sides of the room, adjacent to connecting walls rather than in place of them. Curtains had been hung where, I assumed, the bathroom walls had once been, at least offering him some semblance of privacy. Or at least they would, whenever Devon was brought back to his new holding cell; there was still no sign of him.
On the ground, surrounding all three of our rooms was a familiar bright blue line, the likes of which I'd almost forgotten about during my time in the Archive. Whenever we were locked in, magic would be completely impossible for us to use. Not that that changed anything for me.
I wanted to wait for Devon and Marc, to talk to somebody else who understood what I was feeling, but the need to follow the rules overpowered me pretty quickly. I slipped back into my room, glad I'd at least stockpiled a few books on my dresser the day before.
And when my door locked later that night, I wasn't even a bit surprised.
The next morning I was tempted to stay inside my room for as long as possible, hiding out from the world a little longer. But when I found that my door had been unlocked at some point while I was sleeping, I ultimately decided to venture out. High school had taught me that the longer I hid, the more attention I would draw to myself.
And I hadn't done anything wrong. I had nothing to hide.
And I was hungry.
As soon as I stepped out into the hallway, a flash of movement from beside me caught my attention. Devon had gotten up from wherever he'd been sitting and flung himself toward the bars of his room. He white-knuckled the metal rods, and stared at me with pleading eyes. "You're okay?"
I nodded. "I'm fine. Glad to see you, though."
"You too. No one would answer any of my questions, but I got the impression that whatever happened to me yesterday put a target on all our backs."
"Any idea what happened?" I couldn't bring myself to ask if he’d been lying this whole time about having powers.
"I have no clue. It was the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me, and at this point, that's saying something. Eventually they explained what it had looked like from the other end, but I don't even think I knew I was a bird at the time. And I certainly didn't do anything to make it happen."
"And did they believe you?" The fact that he was currently locked away in a cell probably wasn't the best sign, but seeing him there at all had to be at least a little encouraging.
"I don't think anyone knows what to believe anymore. But it looks like I'm stuck here for the next little while."
"That sucks, I'm sorry. Is Marc up yet?"
"Yeah, he's long gone. Didn't say where he was going. Didn't say much of anything at all. He mostly seemed to be in a mood, which is an impressive feat since he’s still allowed to walk around instead of being treated like a spy."
"Well, that's Marc. Hopefully, this will all pass quickly, and we can get back on track for getting us all the hell out of here.
Devon and I talked a little longer, and I felt terrible leaving him on his own, but eventually my stomach growled loudly enough that he insisted I go get something to eat.
That had to be the fastest meal I'd ever had. I found a selection of bacon, eggs, and pancakes in one of the refrigerators. But the sensation of having everyone else in the cafeteria stop talking as soon as I entered the room was enough encouragement to have me shoveling down my plate of food as quickly as possible. My plan for the day was to basically stay out of the way as much as possible. And to not do anything that could even remotely, in any culture, be considered magical. I didn't know how, but it wasn't lost on me that whatever had happened to Devon could happen to me next. Or maybe, it all was some strange fluke or misunderstanding.
Either way, I retreated to the stacks, heading for the fifth floor an
d the romance section which was becoming a favorite of mine. Yes, secretly part of me hoped I'd stumble on my own book, it somehow being missed during shelving. But with hundreds of thousands of titles surrounding me, I knew the odds weren’t great. Still, the romance section had a little of everything, but always with the flare of love, or at least sexy times, flowing through the pages as well.
I headed for a stack at random, and almost immediately bumped into a metal cart that stood at about the height of my waist. It shifted forward slightly, knocking into the hip of its owner. Eliza.
She looked up at once, slightly alarmed. "Oh. It's you. I didn’t expect to see you…"
"Let me guess, you didn’t expect they’d let me out of my room this morning?"
"No, not that. I guess I just assumed they’d want to… okay, yeah. Keep an eye on you. I suck." Eliza shuffled her feet a little, looking downward. I hadn't seen her in a few days, but had to assume she’d heard everything that had happened the day before.
"I swear, I’m as harmless now as I was before." I held my hands up as though to show I wasn’t hiding anything. "I figured I’d make today a reading day and get out of everyone’s way until this gets sorted out."
"So, you’re hiding out?" Eliza said with a knowing smile.
"Guilty. I can just take my books to my room, if you…" I didn't know how to end the sentence but right away Eliza jumped in to correct me.
"No way. Stay. I don't know exactly what happened yesterday, but I'm a big believer in innocent until proven guilty. And honestly, I'm not even sure what it is you guys are being accused of."
"Well, you seem to be the only one around here who thinks that way."
"Now, you are just feeling a little extra pressure right now. Mostly, people are probably about as confused as you are. Okay, maybe not quite as confused as you, but mostly, librarians are just a curious bunch. And not all that judging. Reading consistently teaches empathy, if nothing else. And we've all heard what happened to those of you who were caught on day one, forced back into their stories. Whatever's happening, it's not cut and dry."
City of Magic (Happily Ever Afterlife Book 1) Page 14