by W. J. May
Jason, apparently, disagreed.
“What’s your name?” he asked. His voice had taken on a slightly different tone than the one he’d been using with Simon. Something slightly more…adult.
The girl blushed and smiled. “Teresa.”
“Teresa… that’s a lovely name.” Their eyes met for a lusty moment, before he turned with mock speculation to Simon. “Teresa, my friend Simon and I are having a bit of trouble here. You see, we can’t seem to agree on the backstory regarding the ink design on his arm. Would you say it looks more like a warlock?” He shot her a doubtful glance. “Or a wizard?”
Simon resisted the urge to punch his new mentor in the face, and instead gritted his teeth into a smile and extended his arm so the girl could get a better look. It was a strange juxtaposition, to be sure. One that any other member of the Guilder staff or PC agency would surely have a mild stroke just considering.
Here Simon was, for all intents and purposes, exposing the most vulnerable and powerful side of himself to a total stranger. Exposing the secret of who he was and the rest of his kind in the process. It was foolish. It was reckless. It was entirely too bold.
But, in a way, it was a little thrilling as well. Simon had always hated the way that whenever groups of kids from school went out, they tended to cover up their arms so that the ‘common people’ wouldn’t find it odd that so many of them had tattoos in the same places on their arm. He’d always hated the fact that the nurses’ station at school was stacked with gauze and flesh-colored bandages for exactly that reason.
Ink was the very essence of who they were. It was their entire purpose in life. What set them apart and made them so special. It should be worn as a banner. Not hidden away like a blight.
Yes, there was something a bit rebelliously thrilling about rolling up his sleeve and showing this random girl his magical design.
…not that she really cared.
“I think it can be whatever you want it to be.”
The words were practically dripping with innuendo, and Simon rolled his eyes.
Jason, however, leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile. “Is that right? Would you look at that, Simon? Beautiful and smart.” He bit his lip suggestively and leaned towards her. “Tell me, Teresa, when do you get off work tonight—”
Simon grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him to his feet. “And…I think we’ll be needing the check.”
Two minutes later, the both of them were standing outside.
Really? He takes me out to lunch on my first day instead of training, and when we get there, he shows off my tatù to the world and tries to go home with the waitress?
Simon expected Jason to look repentant, or at the very least a little embarrassed. But it couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
He just flashed Simon a little wink as he slid across the top of his shiny car and landed on the driver’s side. “No apologies, we have to get our thrills where we can. No ink on ink, right?”
Simon stared after him incredulously, before shaking his head with a disbelieving grin.
“This is going to be an interesting year…”
Jason grinned and jumped into the car through the open window. A second later, the engine was revving as the sounds of a hard core punk band screamed from inside.
“Simon, you coming?”
Simon stood there for a moment, staring inside. The wind swept his hair back around him as he considered the road upon which he was about to embark. And not just the road back to Guilder. There was something else starting here. Something he couldn’t begin to describe.
The warlock sizzled on his skin, and his lips curved up with anticipation.
“Yeah. I’m coming.”
Chapter 6
“Get up, Simon! Come on!”
If only it was another ear-piercing alarm clock catastrophe with Brick. If only it was the evil Professor Luther, about to give him another calculus exam. But, alas, the gods were not so kind…
Simon lay in a heap on the Oratory floor. Over the last two hours, he was surprised he hadn’t made a permanent imprint of himself in the mats. Somewhere above him, Jason was screaming for him to get to his feet, but Simon’s brain had long since stopped acknowledging those sorts of requests. In fact, he was beginning to wonder what he was doing here at all.
“Are you deaf, Kerrigan? I said get up!”
With a painful groan, Simon rolled to his side and spat out a mouthful of blood.
He was starting to think he’d gotten the wrong impression of Jason. That their initial time spent at the diner had pulled the wool over his eyes. It’d all been a farce.
If he had come here expecting beer pong and milkshakes, he was dangerously mistaken.
Long gone was the playful exterior. The charm and jokes had vanished. The guy standing in front of him now was a task-master. Plain and simple. No reprieve, no leniency, no mercy. He was everything the Privy Council could have wanted him to be, and even more. In fact, Simon would go as far as to say that he’d never tasted a milkshake in his entire life.
“Some time this year, Kerrigan.” Jason examined his fingernails with an air of perfect nonchalance. “Unlike you, some of us actually have a social life to get back to.”
A profanity slipped past Simon’s lips as he stood up and forced his battered legs forward. This was freakin’ ridiculous. He’d stood up—sort of—to Beth’s father. He could stand up to the monster of a man.
Ow!
There wasn’t a single inch of his body that wasn’t bruised to the bone. And where there weren’t bruises, there were open cuts. Ripped clothing. Hairline fractures. You name it. If Simon didn’t know better, he’d guess that Jason had a secret arrangement with Dr. Stein. A ‘do whatever you want to them, I can always heal them right back up’ kind of thing.
No, this was certainly not what he’d expected when he’d come to begin his training.
Training.
Simon internally scoffed at the word. If you could call it that. Him standing here while Jason kicked his ass a thousand different ways in alphabetical order would be a more accurate description.
He approached his mentor cautiously, every bone in his body screaming in protest, every frayed, unguarded instinct telling him to run the other way.
Under different circumstances, the whole experience might not have been so bad. This was combat training, after all. The sort of thing that Simon had been dying to try, the sort of thing he would have given his left arm to learn how to do. The instruction could have been informative, not punishing. The aches and breaks in his body could have been decreased tenfold—and possibly even shared between two people.
There was only one little problem.
He didn’t know how to work his tatù yet.
“So, remind me,” he grimaced as he made his way back to the center of the ring, “this is supposed to be teaching me something, right?”
“Oh, Simon,” Jason’s voice took on that infuriating air of condescending indifference, “the bond between master Botcher and apprentice Dagonet works both ways. I learn just as much from you as you do from me. Take today, for example. You’re teaching me a lesson of extreme patience.”
Simon’s temper riled up, but he kept the first choice words that leapt to mind to himself, and decided to go with the second. “I’m trying here, you know. It’s not like you’re giving me a whole lot of instruction.”
“And you’re not giving me a whole lot to work with,” Jason snapped back. He finally dropped the ‘too bored for words act’ and fixed Simon with a frustrated glare. “You’ve done this once before, Simon. It’s not like we’re in unprecedented waters here. Just use your damn tatù.”
“I. Don’t. Know. How!” Simon shouted back, half-enraged, half-utterly-frustrated with himself for not being able to pull this particular rabbit out of a hat. “What do you think I’ve been doing here for the last two hours?!”
“I thought you were doing your best impersonation of road-kill.”
&n
bsp; Simon turned away to hide his murderous expression, wiping the steady drip of blood coming from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Oh, that’s great—just great. I finally get this invitation to come and begin my training, and the Privy Council sees fit to give me the resident comedian. All the jokes. None of the laughs.”
This time it was Jason who was incensed. His temper was clearly run on just as short a wire as Simon’s, although he did a much better job of controlling it. “You think this was a coincidence? Some happy bit of fate brought the two of us together? I was on assignment in Rio when I got the call to come and train you. I said no three times before Masters got on the phone himself. There’s no saying no to him. So I packed up and flew halfway around the world just so I could be here for the start of your school year. Got assigned a couple of other charges to pass the time, waiting with the rest of the Privy Council for you to turn sixteen. ‘Such great promise,’ they said. ‘He’ll be a privilege to train.’” Jason’s eyes narrowed as all the inflection left his voice. “Lucky me.”
Despite the caustic ending, Simon was rooted to the spot. Before yesterday, he’d had no idea that he was even remotely on the Privy Council’s radar. He couldn’t have conceived that they’d know he was turning sixteen this year—let alone that they’d be waiting for it. And the fact that they’d flown out a trainer specifically for him?
There were so many random questions to consider, he didn’t know where to begin.
Why, if there had been such a buildup to him getting his tatù, had no one bothered to talk with him about it before now? Why, if everyone knew the exact day it was happening, had no one come to see him? Why, on the morning after he’d gotten it, was he reduced to scrounging around the library all by himself? Feeling like a freak amongst freaks. No record of his ink anywhere.
Another quieter voice echoed nervously in the back of his head.
What I received was an invitation, was it not? So…what if I’d said no?
The whirlwind of questions came to a sudden halt as his eyes returned to his trainer.
Suddenly, the trip to the diner made sense. Jason was feeling him out. Getting an unguarded idea for his personality before launching into the fray. The PC training program was as much mental as it was physical, and he’d wanted to know what exactly he was getting into. Who was this strange boy who’d forced him to fly halfway around the globe? What was so special?
Simon was ashamed to say that, after hours of work and exhaustive internal debate, they were both still quite unable to answer that last question.
Jason, however, didn’t look perturbed. In fact, after his initial knee-jerk frustration, he rather looked like he was expecting it. “I’ve trained over thirty other agents, Simon. This isn’t some mindless exercise in pain. I know what I’m doing. Tatùs, especially new tatùs, tend to express themselves in times of great emotional and physical stress. It’s most likely why yours kicked in when Wardell was attacking you. I’m recreating those same conditions here in an attempt to trigger something and get similar results.” He took a step forward, staring at Simon with steady, patient eyes. “There is a method to the madness. You have my word. Now, do you trust me?”
Just an hour or so earlier, Simon had been lying in a chokehold with Jason’s arm around his throat. So it was an interesting question to ask. But, try as he might, he couldn’t help it when the natural response came bubbling up to the surface. “Yes, I trust you.”
It may have sounded petulant. But it was true.
The corners of Jason’s lips twitched up in a fleeting smile, before he lifted his hands and beckoned Simon forward. “Good. Now…let’s go again.”
* * *
Understanding the reason behind Jason’s strategy may have eased the mind, but it did absolutely nothing to ease the pain. Simon could hardly make it up the winding stairs of Joist Hall that night before collapsing on his bed in a dead sleep.
He woke up the next morning still reeking of sweat and blood. A condition that might have gone temporarily unnoticed, except for the fact that his best friend was sitting impatiently on the corner of his bed.
“You look absolutely dreadful.”
Simon jumped a mile, smacking his head into the ancient Guilder bedstead. “Shit—Argyle!” He clutched at his heart, feeling his pulse skyrocket, then gradually slow down to normal. “You have got to stop doing that!”
Argyle pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, completely ignoring the mild concussion that had followed his pronouncement. He had his mind set on one thing today, and one thing only. “Tell me about your training!”
He bounced even more impatiently on the mattress, and Simon leaned back with a little sigh.
He could hardly blame Argyle for his excitement. What exactly went on inside the mysterious inner-sanctum of the Oratory was a source of constant speculation for all the younger members of the Guilder student body. He just wished his enthusiastic friend hadn’t decided to launch his interrogative attack at six in the morning.
“It was…” He paused, wondering how best to describe it. After a few seconds of painful contemplation, he decided to simply stretch out his arms. “It was a lot like this.”
Argyle’s eyes widened as they zeroed in on the gruesome collage of cuts and bruises littering his friend’s skin. It was like mischievous devil had used Simon’s body as a toy with which to play.
As an image of Jason flashed through his mind, Simon realized that analogy wasn’t too far from the truth…
“Wow,” Argyle said softly, his eyes tightening with sympathetic concern. “That good, huh?”
Simon shook his head darkly. “You have no idea.” With a stifled groan, he hoisted himself up higher on the bed so they could talk. “And that’s not even the worst of it. You should see the rest of me.”
Argyle grimaced. “I’ll take your word for it. So, why so…” he struggled to come up with the best word, “…extreme?”
Even Simon had to grin at the delicate phrasing.
“Apparently, tatùs most often present themselves at times of great emotional and physical stress. As I was unable to trigger mine, my sage trainer decided this was the next best option.”
“Trying to kill you?”
There was a pause.
“It made a lot more sense when he said it.”
Argyle laughed quietly, but sobered up the longer he looked at his friend. “So, he still has no idea what it does? The warlock, I mean.”
Simon shook his head. “Nope. But he seems supremely confident that he can beat it out of me.” He tried to smile, only to re-split his bottom lip. “Until then…”
“…you get to look like you’re starring in a Tarentino film?”
Simon laughed. “Precisely.”
Argyle snorted and offered him a weak thumb’s up. “Well, at least every second that you’re in the Oratory is a second that you’re not trapped in school. On that note—I brought you some breakfast.”
He gestured to a cream cheese bagel and a cup of coffee sitting on the desk.
Simon climbed gingerly out of bed and embraced the coffee like it was his firstborn son.
The derision for Guilder was for his benefit, not Argyle’s. He knew for a fact that his best friend absolutely adored everything to do with this school. All the exclusivity and isolation aside, it truly did offer its students the best education the world of academia had to offer. And Argyle was nothing if not a snob for all things academic. If it weren’t for the fact that you paid your way in ink, he probably would have tried to claim permanent residence.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the student body had recently decided to start treating his best friend like the Loch Ness Monster. Hence the false resentment.
“So it’s still pretty bad out there, huh?” Simon murmured as he lifted the cup to his lips for another steaming sip.
Argyle shook his head quickly, but not before a flash of concern gave him away. “No, not at all,” he said a little too casually. “I just…thought you might n
ot be feeling up to going down to the cafeteria after your first day of training and all.”
Simon held back a smile. “You mean you thought I might not want to go down to the cafeteria after I broke Wardell’s arm and officially turned into the monster all of them had always kind of thought I might be.”
Argyle paused nervously, before hastily shaking his head. “The cafeteria’s boring anyway. So is this school, for that matter. I say we go on an extended trip to the Yukon.”
Simon snorted. “So it is that bad, after all.”
“Maybe the Yukon’s not far enough.” Argyle’s face grew thoughtful. “How do you feel about space?”
Simon laughed and started wolfing down his bagel. He hadn’t known how much a two-hour-long beating took out of you. He was famished. “Space is fine. Maybe the warlock can help us set up a little colony on the moon.”
“Too close.” Argyle shook his head with a grin. “I was thinking of Mars.”
“Mars it is.”
The two boys laughed themselves into silence. A silence that grew heavier the longer it was allowed to stretch on.
“They’ll get over it,” Argyle said softly. “They always do. It certainly isn’t the first time something like this has happened. They just…can’t quite figure you out.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Simon said resentfully, glancing down at his tatù.
“And the fact that they brought Jason Archer in to train you?”
Simon’s head whipped back around. “Wait a minute—how do you know about that?”
“The whole school’s talking about it. Apparently he was a bit of a legend back in his day. Most everybody thought that the PC brought him back to work with Wardell, but after he specifically requested you…?” Argyle bit his lip. “Let’s just say it’s making the rounds.”
Simon shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “And the Guilder rumor mill strikes again.”