by W. J. May
“Just leave it alone, Jason!” A strange feeling was welling up in Simon, a deep sort of rage he’d never felt before. The rational part of him knew that Jason didn’t really deserve it, but the stronger part of him didn’t really care. Beth was off-limits. The rule was absolute.
“So what’s the story, huh? She break your heart?”
In a moment of blind rage, Simon actually took a swing at him. One that Jason dodged easily, while his verbal taunts continued.
“Or maybe you broke her heart. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“I said—leave it alone!”
Using all of his might, Simon shoved Jason back as hard as he could. While his mentor only retreated a few steps, that strange feeling bubbling in the pit of Simon’s stomach grew even stronger the second he touched Jason’s skin, threatening to boil over at any moment.
“You sleep with her? Was that it? You slept with her and then just left?”
And just like that, Simon snapped. A wave of emotion crashed through him. One bigger than he was able to control.
“THAT’S ENOUGH!”
There was a sharp cry, followed by a deafening silence. In the seconds that followed, Simon gazed around in a dull sort of terror.
Jason was lying in a bloody pile on the floor. Not the floor where they had been standing, but the floor clear on the other side of the room. His arm was twisted out at a strange angle, and a steady stream of blood poured from a deep cut just below his eye, pooling crimson on the mat.
Simon didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t, for the life of him, understand what had happened. One second he’d been thinking—just thinking—about laying Jason out cold. But the next thing he knew, it had actually happened. “J-Jason?” he called tentatively.
No response.
Shit! Shit! SHIT! How did I let this happen?!
He didn’t even remember moving. A part of him wasn’t even sure that he had. It had been a thought, not an action. And no one could have moved that fast, let alone himself. It was as if the whole thing had just manifested into being.
But I didn’t want this. Simon’s whole body started trembling as he stared across the floor at his fallen teacher. I didn’t want to hurt him like that. I just wanted him to stop. He’s been coming out here every night just trying to help me. He’s been patient. He’s been my friend.
The pool of blood was getting bigger now, running down the cracks in the mats. Simon watched it with near tunnel-vision as the world around him seemed to dim.
Please don’t let him be dead.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then there was a muffled cough followed by a fierce profanity, and Simon’s heart started beating again.
A second later, he was racing across the mats to Jason, saying a silent prayer of thanks.
“Jason!” he cried, sinking down onto his knees beside him. “Are you okay? I’m so, so sorry! I didn’t… Are you okay?!”
His hands flitted uselessly around, wanting to help but not knowing how as Jason slowly pulled himself to a sitting position. From where Simon sat, things didn’t look good.
Jason’s eyes were fluttering open and closed, as if his body was too disoriented to decide a state of consciousness. The cut on his face was still dripping freely down his neck, staining the top of his shirt, and his arm was sticking out at an impossible angle beside him, hanging completely limp as if it was nothing more than dead weight.
Jason gave it a cursory glance as his eyes opened and finally found their mark. As if it was no more than a nuisance, he braced himself against the mat, and shoved the base of his shoulder back into alignment with his good hand. The sickening crack that followed made Simon’s stomach turn, but Jason was already flexing his fingers with a look of grim satisfaction.
“Jason,” Simon murmured, hardly able to catch his breath, “I’m so, so sorry. I don’t even know what happened, but I swear—whatever it was, I didn’t mean to do it. I would have never…”
The longer the one-sided silence continued, the more panicked Simon felt. His sentences rushed manically through the air, one after another.
“Can I get you anything or call for Dr. Stein? Do you want some water? Are you going to stop training me? They’re going to kick me out now, aren’t they? That’s fine. I deserve it. I deserve all of it. But seriously Jason, I swear, I never meant to—”
“Simon?”
Simon sucked in a quick breath, his entire body poised on pins and needles. “Yeah?”
“Stop talking for a second, okay?”
“Yeah—yeah, of course!”
They sat there for another minute in silence. Simon dying a thousand mental deaths while Jason patiently tested the rest of his body for any damage that might be too serious to ignore.
When he was finally satisfied, he lifted his head and met Simon’s gaze for the first time. It was truly impossible to tell what was going on behind his eyes, and after a few seconds, Simon felt like he might actually be having a mild heart attack.
“Can you say something?” he breathed, unable to take the suspense. “Anything?”
Jason stared at him for another second before his lips twitched up in an unlikely grin. “I think I know what your warlock does…”
Chapter 8
“It’s like a mirror, you see? It lets me copy whatever tatù I’ve had the most recent contact with, and project the same ink from within myself.”
It was ten at night and Simon was perched on the edge of Argyle’s bed, delightedly unaware of the fact that he hadn’t stopped once for breath in the last three minutes. Although it was technically after curfew, he had raced over the second he’d gotten out of training, bursting at the seams to see his best friend and tell him every detail of his unbelievable, roller-coaster of a day.
Argyle’s roommate, an intemperate shifter named Justin, had also decided to ignore curfew by walking away the second Simon came through the door. He ran with Tristan’s pack, after all, and until his fearless leader called a truce, Simon was still enemy number one.
Simon was almost tempted to ‘accidently’ brush into him on the way out, if only to find out what it felt like to be a wolf, but he resisted the urge and kept his distance. Even if he was able to successfully transform…What if he was unable to shift back?
“So let me get this straight,” Argyle interjected, taking advantage of Simon’s momentary respite to speak for the first time, “you figured all this out by, once again, hurling someone through the air and dislocating his arm?”
“Yep.”
Simon beamed, unfazed by the odd pattern. Argyle, however, looked rather stricken.
“What is it with you and arms?”
“Argyle, that’s not—”
“What? You don’t think that’s weird? Two in less than a week? Must be some kind of—”
“Would you forget about the arms?!” Simon leapt to his feet, positively shaking with the force of his discovery. “Do you get what this means? It’s huge! Bigger than huge! Ginormous! The warlock lets me copy any ability I want!”
Both boys fell momentarily silent with the weight of the news, each one internalizing it as best as they could.
“So, do you get to hang onto them?” Argyle finally asked. “After you’ve touched someone else, I mean. Do you still have the first one as well?”
Simon shook his head, thrilled that they had gotten past the initial shock and were into the discussion phase. For longer than he’d cared to remember, he’d been dying to get into the discussion phase and break this thing down once and for all. “I don’t think so. After Jason got up we practiced again with his, but no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t able to recreate Tristan’s. I think I can only hang onto one at a time.”
“After Jason got up,” Argyle quoted with a wince. “Was he really mad?”
“No,” Simon’s eyes widened, “that’s the crazy part. I think he was relieved. I mean, he’s trained so many people—gotten such a reputation for it—but nothing he tried was working with me. I think he’s just glad we
finally figured out what was going on, dislocation be damned.”
Argyle simply stared for a second, shaking his head in disbelief. “Well, the way you described him, he always sounded a bit deranged. I guess, if he’d want to train you, he’d have to be.”
The two friends chuckled for a while, before, as one, they lowered their gaze to the warlock.
“So it really lets you copy any ability you want?” Argyle asked, his voice just a little louder than a whisper.
“Looks that way.” Simon’s eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “And now that I know that, it makes total sense. Remember how I told you that Brick and I got into that weird screaming match that I felt like I couldn’t control? Afterwards, my ears started to bleed?”
Argyle nodded silently.
“Well, Brick’s ability is to amplify sound. When he grabbed me by the shoulders, or we touched or whatever, it must have passed to me. After that, we just revved each other up—one after the other.”
Argyle’s eyes widened. “Do you think he felt it? I mean, does it hurt the other person when you copy it? Or do they not even know?”
“They know.”
The furious look of violation on Tristan’s face flashed through Simon’s head, followed by an accompanying wave of guilt. But he determinedly ignored both, placing them on a mental shelf for later consideration. This was a time for celebration, after all.
“Tristan told me he felt something, like a burn, only he didn’t know what it was. When I asked Jason afterwards, he said the same thing. That it was like a weird stinging on his skin.”
“But they can still use it, right?” Argyle asked quickly. “You’re not stealing their ink; you’re only copying it. You can both use it at the same time?”
“Yep.” Simon recalled the first time that he and Jason and squared off for an actual fight with a faint note of satisfaction. He’d still gotten his ass kicked, of course, but it was a whole different ballgame.
“I have to admit, that’s pretty cool! Dangerous, but wicked. In a good sense.” Argyle shook his head excitedly. “I’ve never heard of anyone ever having anything remotely like that. It’s some hardcore ink!”
“I know!” Simon felt like he was on cloud nine. Not since he’d kissed Beth for the first time had he felt such a rush of adrenaline. It was a total high.
“But wait a minute,” Argyle frowned thoughtfully, “doesn’t this mean that your dad’s tatù is the same thing? Another warlock?”
Simon’s shoulders fell a fraction of an inch. That was the ultimate question, wasn’t it? It was one that he’d asked himself many times—ever since the ink had materialized on his skin. These things didn’t just pop up out of nowhere; they were passed down. And now that he knew what the warlock could do…
It was exactly the reason that some tatù parents talked to their kids about these sorts of things. Told them how to use it, what to expect. By the time most Guilder kids turned sixteen, most all the intrigue had been removed from the equation, leaving them simply excited to see what little progressions or tweaks they might have gotten on the family seal.
But Simon Kerrigan wasn’t ‘most Guilder kids.’ And Peter Kerrigan was certainly not ‘most Guilder parents.’
“Uh…I don’t know,” Simon said quietly. “I never asked him.”
Argyle’s eyes widened incredulously, magnified even more by his thick glasses. “You never asked your dad what kind of tatù runs in your family? How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” Simon countered defensively. “I just…haven’t.”
It was a lie. He remembered perfectly well the day that he’d walked into his father’s study and asked him about his ink.
It was the first day that his father had ever hit him.
Argyle registered his change in tone and deftly changed the subject. “Well, it couldn’t matter less at this point anyway. You figured it out, all on your own.” He leaned forward on the bed and folded his hands eagerly in his lap. “Now tell me, what was it like to use Jason’s tatù?”
A thousand fantastical memories and surges of feeling danced behind Simon’s eyes as his lips curved up into a gigantic smile.
“Oh, Argyle, you have no idea…”
* * *
Simon’s revelation about the warlock had brought with it a surge of confidence that wasn’t just contained to the Oratory. It spread out and followed him wherever he went. Come Monday morning, that meant one thing and one thing only.
Simon Kerrigan was going back to school.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Argyle whispered as the two of them made their way awkwardly down the main hall. On all sides of them, people were already beginning to stare. The whispers behind the hands were soon to follow. “We could always come up with another illness for you. Maybe this time, we could go all out and say you got the plague.”
“Not a chance.” Simon held his head high, and as he sailed through the crowd it parted before him. “This is our school, too, Argyle. It’s time we started acting like it.”
With that, he came to a sudden stop in front of the last person in the world he usually wanted to see. Coincidentally the last person in the world who usually wanted to see him.
“Hey, Tristan.”
Tristan looked up from his locker, then stepped back in surprise when he saw who was talking to him. His eyes flickered between Argyle’s apologetic stance and Simon’s confident one, before narrowing cautiously. “I heard you were out sick. Went on independent study or something.”
Simon smiled cheerfully, furthering his nemesis’ surprise. “No such luck, I’m afraid.”
By now, people were beginning to covertly watch them, coming up with random excuses to linger by their lockers and stare.
Tristan glanced around uncomfortably. “What do you want, Kerrigan?” he asked sharply.
“To apologize.”
Ignoring Tristan’s look of shock, he thrust his hand into the space between them, further bolstering the whispered conversations echoing up and down the hallway.
“I was out of line before, and I sincerely regret what happened between us. We’ve got two years left in this place together, so I’m hoping the two of us can make it right.”
Tristan’s mouth fell open as he stared down at Simon’s extended hand. But it wasn’t the handshake itself that had thrown him. It was the inked design peeking out from beneath Simon’s shirt. Simon had chosen his wardrobe very carefully that morning. A thin-collared button-down with the sleeves rolled up just high enough that a hint of the warlock peeked through.
With great satisfaction, he watched a chain reaction of micro-expressions flit across Tristan’s face as he tried to make sense of it. First there was surprise, followed by wonder, then curiosity, then a good deal of frustration as even his enhanced blue eyes weren’t able to make out the whole thing.
“What is it?” he asked in spite of himself, gazing down in fascination.
A rush of pride threatened to swell open Simon’s chest, but he took a page out of his mentor’s book and kept up an air of complete nonchalance. “It’s a warlock.” He rolled up the rest of his sleeve, letting Wardell feast his eyes along with the rest of them. “Been training with it every night with Archer this last week.” He didn’t know why exactly he was using last names, but it felt like the right thing to do in the moment.
A faint crease formed between Tristan’s eyes as he stared. There was something threatening about it, but something rather threatened as well. It was hard to fight an enemy when you no longer understood the fundamentals of the game. A freaking warlock? Yeah, that changed things.
“Anyway,” Simon tugged his sleeve back down, well aware of the fact that the entire school was locked onto his every move, “I just wanted to make sure that things were cool between us.” For the second time, he extended his hand to shake. “They are, right? They’re cool?”
Tristan’s face paled as he glanced down at the hand, before his eyes flashed up to Simon’s.
If it
had been any other scenario, Simon would have laughed out loud. While the rest of the school might have been oblivious, Tristan’s dilemma was clear as day.
There was no way, no way in hell that he was letting Simon touch his bare skin. Not after what happened the last time. Not after what he’d just seen.
On the other hand, how could he refuse a public peace offering from a guy who’d just shown the entire school quite possibly the rarest ink to walk Guilder’s halls in over a century?
As his eyes locked with Simon’s, a silent message was passed. A messaged that promised a continuance to this conversation in the days to come. But on the outside, he forced his face into a charming smile.
“Yeah, man,” he clapped Simon casually on the shoulder, “we’re cool.”
Simon’s eyes twinkled as he slowly lowered his hand. “Glad to hear it. I was talking with Jason about you. Looks like we’re going to be sparring partners one of these days.”
A muscle twitched in the back of Tristan’s jaw, though the smile remained. “Can’t wait.”
As if on cue, the bell rang and the crowd around them noisily scattered. Simon, however, remained where he was, and Tristan held his gaze as he backed away slowly into the crowd.
“See you soon, Wardell.”
All pretenses were gone, and both boys were glaring at each other with pure malice.
“Count on it.”
* * *
For the first time in his life, Simon was too wound up to take notes in Professor Lanford’s history class. He just kept looking out the window, his leg bouncing impatiently up and down as he waited for the bell to ring so he could get changed and go to the Oratory.
He’d always scoffed at kids in the past. The ones who’d receive their invitations from the Privy Council and would become instant truants at school. The absences became even more frequent if they got offers of employment, and many of them stopped coming altogether, only making a quick appearance at the end of the year to take their finals and graduate.
The scoffing may have been rooted in jealousy, but Simon had scoffed nonetheless. How pathetic that these one-track minds couldn’t find a way to balance both. How shortsighted that they would throw away an entire half of their education just to run off to the Oratory and learn the best way to throw a spear.