by W. J. May
Anyway, I was wondering if you’d had time to think about what I proposed in my last letter. Do you think there’s any way that you could manage to come out here for spring break? I know it’s asking a lot, and I know that it might be virtually impossible what with your parents, but I’d love to see you. Here in London, back in Scotland. We could even meet somewhere in the middle if it was easier for you. I just…I have to see you again, Beth.
Since I turned sixteen, my entire world flipped upside-down. There are some things that I want to tell you. Some things you need to hear. But it has to be in person. It’s not the kind of thing you can just say over the phone.
Nothing bad. I promise. Just…different.
That’s all for now. I’ll give this to Argyle in the morning and write again as soon as I can. In the meantime, try to see what you can do about spring break. And write to me. I live for your letters.
I miss you more than you could ever know.
With love,
Simon
P.S. If that Mulgrew kid decides to try anything, let him know that your boyfriend recently picked up one or two tricks that will knock him flat on his arse.
Feeling strangely satisfied, Simon put the letter into an envelope and slipped it with the comic books into his bag. The day might have started out as a mild disaster, but it had turned out alright enough. In fact, there was a chance he might even go to sleep smiling.
* * *
“Kerrigan? Kerrigan! WAKE THE HELL UP!”
Simon’s eyes snapped open to see a boy the size of a mountain towering over him. The first few times this had happened he had screamed like a four-year-old girl. Now, he simply flinched away and pressed his pillow over his eyes. “What do you want, Brick? It has to be, like, five in the morning…”
The pillow was snatched away and thrown across the room. Another few seconds, and Simon might have gone with it… if he hadn’t had the foresight to open his eyes.
“Hey! Watch it!” he cried, leaping off the mattress as Brick made a swipe for him as well.
Normally, the two teenagers got along without much of a hitch. Sure, they were as different as humanly possible, but between Brick’s training schedule and Simon’s hours at school, they ended up rarely running into each other. Brick was gone before Simon woke up, and Simon came back long after the big guy had gone to bed. It was a delicate system, but one that had worked so far.
Until now.
“It’s actually not five in the morning,” Brick thundered, glaring down at Simon like he was a particularly annoying fly. “It’s seven in the morning. Time for you to get up and go to class. Not that you would know that, because you’ve been sleeping through your deafening alarm clock for the last fifteen minutes.”
A flush of guilt warmed the back of Simon’s neck and he dropped his eyes to the floor. He was beginning to see where this was going.
“You know what else is special about this morning?” Brick demanded, leaning dangerously close.
Simon cleared his throat nervously. “It’s the—”
“That’s right! It’s the only morning of the whole week where I get to sleep in. Where I don’t have to get up at four a.m. to train. Something that you are making damn near impossible by sleeping through your freaking alarm clock!”
He was pretty much shouting near the end, and Simon flinched apologetically as Brick grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him awake. “Every week we go through this, Kerrigan! When the hell are you going to learn!”
“I’m sorry!” Simon shot back. A strange feeling started buzzing through his skin, something he attributed to impaired circulation due to Brick’s vise-like grip. “It won’t happen—”
“It won’t happen again?! Is that really what you’re going to say?!” Brick’s voice was growing louder and louder. Impossibly loud. He was going to wake the entire floor. “Every freakin’ week!”
Simon ripped himself away with a glare. “Look, I said I was sorry, alright!?” His own voice had risen to a decibel he hadn’t intended. Something far beyond the force he had put behind it. “I don’t know what else you want from me, but I’m not going to say it again!”
“What I WANT?!” Brick was beside himself, screaming at a volume that shook the pictures hanging on the wall. “I WANT you to show a little COURTESY to your freakin’ ROOMMATE! I didn’t ASK to be put in with you, you know!”
“Yeah? Well I didn’t ASK to be put in with you EITHER!” Simon had no idea why he was yelling so loudly. He was having a hard time controlling it. It was as though all the emotional turbulence of the last couple days just started barreling on through. “If I’d had some kind of preference, I’d probably have asked for a guy who could string together a coherent SENTENCE!”
There was a pounding now, coming from both adjoining walls and the ceiling as well.
“Shut the hell up down there!” someone shouted.
“People are trying to sleep!”
Brick and Simon fell silent, chests heaving as they stared each other down. Then, without a word, Brick picked up his gym bag and stormed away.
“Might as well go to the Oratory after all. Prick.”
The door slammed behind him, leaving Simon alone in the abruptly quiet room. But it wasn’t his roommate’s sudden departure that had left him so unsettled… it was the little scream-off that had happened just seconds before.
With an incredulous frown, he stepped in front of the mirror hanging on the wall and turned his head to the side. A tiny trickle of blood dripped down from his ear.
“What the hell?”
* * *
The feeling of unease stayed with Simon all during his morning classes. In a way, it was probably a good thing. It didn’t give him the extra time or attention to notice the way that all of his classmates were staring at him. The way that they parted silently in front of him, watching from behind their books to see what he would do. He didn’t even notice the way that Tristan Wardell turned around in the hall and took the long way to class, just to avoid him.
It wasn’t until he headed to the cafeteria to get some lunch that he noticed the hundreds of furtive eyes locked on his every move.
It happened like in one of those high school purgatory movies. Where the guy is standing in the lunch line and turns around with his tray to see every student in school staring back at him.
He sucked in a quick breath, hoping they were staring at something behind him, knowing it wasn’t the case. His heart started pounding in his chest as the fingers gripping the tray grew slick with sweat. It was like they were all waiting for something. For him to speak. Or maybe for him to sprout fangs and start chasing everyone all over the cafeteria.
Whatever the reason, he wasn’t sticking around to find out.
Dumping his uneaten lunch in the trash, he left the building and headed back to his dorm at a speed just shy of a run.
This isn’t fair! He took the stairs to his room three at a time. It was an accident. They have to know that. And I’m not the first person here who’s had an accident! What about that guy who accidently turned that other guy into a fish for the better part of the first semester?! I don’t see everybody staring at him!
For the second day in a row, Simon threw open the door to his room and slammed it shut behind him. He collapsed onto his bed in a fit of fury and frustration, trying his best to catch his breath. There were still little drops of blood on the floor by the mirror from where his ear had mysteriously started bleeding just hours before, and Brick had seen fit to ‘accidentally’ smash the CD Beth had sent him when he’d come by to drop off his bag.
Simon sat up with a sigh and looked at the broken pieces. They had been conveniently arranged to spell out a word that Simon’s mother would have slapped him just for thinking.
Perfect. That’s just—
He stood up with a sudden frown.
An envelope had been shoved beneath the door. Large, white, and nondescript. There was nothing on the front of it save for his name, written in a hasty,
looping hand.
Couldn’t be from Beth. I just got something from her a few days ago. Plus, she wouldn’t write my name on the front in case her parents found out.
With the caution of a man whose life had recently flipped on it axis, he knelt down to pick it up. Upon closer examination, it looked like it had been written on something like parchment. There was a strange kind of weight to the letter. Something that Simon suspected had less to do with what it was written on, and more to do with what was actually written inside.
With trembling fingers, he opened it up and began to read:
Mr. Kerrigan,
The Privy Council would like to extend a formal invitation for you to begin training tonight at seven p.m. in the Oratory. Please do not construe this as an offer of employment, merely as an opportunity to explore and expand one’s ink in a safely controlled environment.
Sincerely yours,
Francis Wainwright
Head of Recruitment
An uncontrollable smile stretched across Simon’s face as he read it a second and then a third time, his fingers excitedly gripping the edges. Gone was his hesitation about what exactly he’d be training for. Gone was his scoffing condescension of the mindless sycophants who had received a similar such letter and had gone to train.
The wanted him. Him. The Privy Council wanted him.
Of course they did.
He rolled up his sleeve and stared down at the warlock with a little smile. Now that he had this guy on his side there was no telling what he was capable of. He was surprised the head of the Privy Council hadn’t driven down and hand-delivered the letter himself.
“…not an offer of employment…” he murmured to himself as he read it a fourth time.
Well…that’s probably a good thing, right? It’s not like you wanted to work for them anyway. This way, you can get all the instruction, with none of the fealty-swearing nonsense that usually comes with it.
Plus, they never made official offers until the end of second year.
Simon couldn’t help but tag that last part on at the end as he fell back on his mattress with a contented smile. Screw the kids in the cafeteria. Let them look. They were looking for a reason.
There was an old saying his father had told him once as a child. ‘Your life starts the day you get your tatù.’ He hadn’t thought anything of it then, just another stern proverb his father enjoyed doling out from time to time. But it turned out the man was absolutely right.
Three days ago, Simon had been a nobody at this school. A loner. An outcast. Three days ago, there wasn’t a kid in that cafeteria who probably knew his first name.
But now…?
With a triumphant smile, Simon stuffed the letter deep inside his desk drawer—the one where he kept all his most personal items. The one where he kept all his correspondence with Beth.
Three days ago, Simon Kerrigan had been nothing. But he had the warlock now. All that had changed, and ‘three days ago’ didn’t mean shit.
He had arrived.
* * *
Simon couldn’t possibly count how many times he’d walked past the Oratory, simply dying to go inside. The high-domed ceiling and shining white walls made the whole place look like something almost sacred. Forbidden. Completely off-limits to all but a selected few.
Now, with a written letter of invitation safely on file, he pulled open the heavy doors and took his first tentative steps inside.
If it was possible, it looked even bigger on the inside than it did from the lawns. The whole thing was set up like some kind of auditorium. There was a wide arch of bleachers circling around half of the wall, their silver steps leading up to the top, and the rest of it was decked out with every tool and accoutrement a top-secret training arena could possibly have.
There were weights, bars, mats, weapons. Even a set of levitated rings that looked like it was straight out of the Olympics. Simon had never seen anything like it. Every inch of the ground was covered in thick safety mats, but what really threw him were the ones mounted to the walls.
Did they really throw people that high? He studied them a bit nervously. There were even ones adhered to the ceiling. Okay—surely that’s just a joke, right?
A door opened suddenly from the far side, and a tall boy about his age walked out onto the mats. He was wrapping his knuckles with the kind of gauze that Simon had seen professional boxers use on TV, and every now and then he would stretch out and flex his left arm.
Simon’s stomach fell down to his shoes.
Great. Tristan.
Tristan was so involved in the wrapping that he didn’t even notice Simon standing there until they were only a few feet away. The rest of the building was completely deserted, and he had obviously counted on the fact that he was going to get some time to train by himself.
“Shit! You scared me.” He leapt a step back, a bit more wound up than usual. A bit more distracted, too, or else there was no way that Simon could have ever surprised him. “What’re you doing here, Kerrigan?”
Emboldened as he’d been by the warlock, Simon was just as nervous to have run into Tristan on his own as it seemed that Tristan was to have run into him. He never noticed how fit the guy was. The way all the muscles in his arms were sleek and perfectly developed.
Must be a fox thing.
“I got a letter,” he replied bluntly. “It told me to come.”
Tristan’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “You were asked to train?”
“That’s what I just said.”
Normally, Simon wouldn’t be so rude. But he was stung by how surprised Tristan was that such an invitation would come his way. More stung than he had counted on.
Tristan cleared his throat quickly and dropped his eyes to the floor. “Well, that’s…” He gave up after a second, and headed right back out the way he’d come. Clearly, an afternoon of training alongside Simon wasn’t something he was willing to do. “Lockers are in the back.”
Simon stared after him, feeling uncharacteristically guilty. “Thanks.”
Tristan nodded curtly and was almost to the door, when he suddenly stopped. His hand froze on the handle as he seemed to be deciding something. A second later, he was storming back.
“What the hell did you do to me?”
Simon looked up in shock, not quite understanding the question. And certainly not quite understanding the expression twisting Tristan’s face.
He was there, but he was shaking. His jaw was clenched and he was glaring at Simon with a fury that few people on the planet probably possessed. But there was something else buried beneath all that rage. Something that seemed completely out of place, yet somehow made perfect sense.
Fear.
For one of the first times, Simon held his ground. That fear hadn’t sprung up out of nowhere. It had simply moved. From one boy to the next. The more Tristan feared him, the more Simon was free.
“You saw it.” His face twisted up into a smirk. “Or rather, you felt it.”
Little quips were easier now, and he needed them to throw Wardell off his trail. Because the truth was…Simon had no idea what he had done.
Tristan paled slightly with flashbacks of his broken arm no doubt, but shook his head in defiant frustration. “Not that. I’m talking about before, when you…” He trailed off uncertainly, for the first time since arriving at Guilder.
Simon found himself suddenly quite interested in what the guy had to say. “When I…what?” He tried to make it sound taunting, but a genuine curiosity gave it away.
Not that Tristan noticed. He was clearly far too unsettled by what had happened to concern himself with conversational jabs and parries now.
“You know what,” he muttered quietly, running his good hand up through his hair. “When you touched my skin, I felt it.”
At this point Simon dropped all pretenses, leaning forward with bated breath. “What? What did you feel?”
Tristan’s eyes flashed up angrily. “How the hell am I supposed to know? One minut
e everything is normal, and the next I feel this burning on my arm, and then you use my tatù!”
Simon’s jaw dropped to the floor. “I used…that was your… Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” Tristan snapped. “What? You thought you just threw me fifty feet out of some kind of force of will? I know it when I see it, Simon.”
But Simon was still completely bewildered. “Do you still have it?” he asked uncertainly. “Your tatù, I mean. I didn’t…take it, did I?”
For a second Tristan just glared. Then he picked Simon up by the collar, and threw him as hard as he could.
And that is why they put mats up on the wall.
Simon fell back to the ground with a painful cry. Breathing through the intense throbbing that was radiating down from the base of his skull, he wrapped his arms around his ribs and pulled himself gingerly to his feet. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Tristan’s eyes shone with pure menace as he paced forward. “You might have copied my tatù once, but that doesn’t mean you know how to use it.”
“Really?” Simon fired back with more confidence than he really felt. Ignoring the shooting pain that followed, he straightened up to his full height. “Let’s see, shall we?”
Incensed beyond reason, Tristan broken into a run.
But which boy would come out on top, they would never know. A second before the dangerous collision, a loud voice rang out in the auditorium.
“HEY!”
With a grace that even Simon had to admire, Tristan broke off at the last second, spinning around in a hairpin turn that left him standing perfectly still, staring at the newcomer. Simon followed his eyes.
It was a man he had never seen before. Not that he was surprised; he looked a little too old to still be walking around campus. He was twenty, maybe twenty-one. Tall, fit, and reeking of a confidence that said he was quite capable of taking care of himself.