by W. J. May
Even Tristan, arguably the most well-adjusted of them all, was distractedly twirling a steak knife between his fingers at lethal speeds. His head cocked to the side in a vaguely animalistic gesture so as to better hear what Isaac was saying, and no matter how obviously the waitress on the other side of the diner was trying to get his attention, he seemed determined not to notice her.
Meanwhile, Argyle continued writing everything down.
“This is a nightmare,” Simon muttered under his breath, not really caring who heard.
Only Tristan looked his way, abandoning Isaac and Rob’s conversation as he turned back to his buddy with a hint of a smile. His blue eyes scanned Simon’s face for a second, then he cocked his head towards the rest of the table in a silent push. “This is a meeting,” he corrected. “Act like it.”
He and Simon locked eyes, and the silent message was understood. Then, with a fresh burst of confidence, Simon cleared his throat, pushed to his feet, and banged on the table. “HEY!”
A dozen pairs of eyes shot to him in surprise. On the other side of the diner, the waitress who’d been silently trying to get Tristan’s attention was overfilling a coffee mug without realizing.
“I didn’t ask you guys to come out today because I particularly enjoy your company, and I certainly didn’t come here for the damn chips.” Simon’s eyes flashed as he glared at each one of them in turn. “Now are we going to talk about this, or what?!”
A hushed whisper filtered between the chairs, and Simon glanced down at Tristan hopefully. “That good?”
Tristan pursed his lips. “A little less Mussolini, a little more Gandhi.”
“Got it.” Simon glanced back at Argyle, whose hand was flying across his notebook, before adding, “Don’t write that last part down.”
He stared around the table of boys—guys who he had once found so intimidating—and dropped down a few decibels so the discussion would be heard by them, and them alone. “My point is, we’ve all got some questions.” His voice dropped instinctively even lower, and they leaned subconsciously closer to hear. “And I think it’s high time we got some answers.”
It was his big moment, but no one said a word. They simply quieted down and stared at him, expecting more. His burst of momentum stalled, and as his eyes flickered around the table he suddenly realized this was going to be a lot harder than he thought.
Fortunately, he had a strong ally by his side.
“You know the day of the attack, Caness was on guard duty?” Tristan asked quietly.
Simon thought this was a rather inexplicable way to begin the discussion, but the other boys leaned forward with interest, frowning one by one at this fresh detail.
“Seriously?” Eli asked in surprise. “How do you even know that?”
“Checked the guard’s log,” Tristan replied easily.
This time, it was Simon’s turn to be surprised. He’d had no idea Tristan had done that. To be honest, he didn’t even know that such a log existed. But he was sure that, wherever it was, it was kept under strict lock and key. He couldn’t imagine how Tristan had gotten his hands on it.
“And you’re sure it was Caness?” Arturo reiterated with a frown.
Tristan nodded silently, and Simon leaned towards him as the rest of the boys disseminated this information with varying degrees of shock and dismay.
“Who the hell is Caness?” he whispered.
“Caness is the guard you don’t want to be on guard duty when you’re sneaking off campus,” Tristan answered just as softly. Simon still had his ink, so as long as Rob and Isaac, the two shifters, were sufficiently distracted, the two of them could talk with relative privacy. “We all call him ‘Siren’ behind his back. His ink acts as a sort of alarm system; he can sense when things aren’t as they should be.”
Simon leaned back with a frown. “Sounds kind of vague.”
“It can be. But when directed—as in watching Guilder’s perimeter—it makes him basically foolproof.” He shook his head with a begrudging kind of respect. “We had to memorize his schedule freshman year just so we’d stop getting so many demerits.”
“Oh, that must have been so taxing for you—”
“Shut up, Simon. The point is, Caness being on guard duty that night makes absolutely no sense. There just simply isn’t a way the assassin could have gotten inside. Much less while harboring any thoughts of harming anyone. It’s just not possible.”
It may not have been possible, but it was clearly the perfect thing to say. The news about Caness ignited up a speculative wildfire that Simon was quick to harness as his own. “When I got back to the Oratory the next day, it was like the whole thing never even happened,” he continued forcibly. “The body was gone, the mats were cleaned up, like nothing had even happened. The place wasn’t even closed down a full day before they started everyone training again.”
“I thought that was strange,” Zane murmured, almost to himself. Normally, the PC never issued a formal invitation to a first-year student, but like Simon’s ability, Zane’s telekinesis was already so advanced that Jason had pushed the paperwork through. “When I went in to train the next morning, the janitors were still there, ripping out the mats. But no one was saying a word about it. It was like they wanted to pretend that everything was business as usual.”
“Business as usual,” Isaac scoffed. “You remember the look on Dean Robbins’ face the next day when he went racing across campus to the infirmary? We kept waiting to get pulled out of class so the administration could make a formal statement, but no. Nothing.”
“I don’t know,” Simon said carefully. “Maybe they just thought it wasn’t a big deal.”
It was a meticulously-worded statement. One thrown out at exactly the right time, in exactly the right pitch. One that Simon didn’t believe in the slightest, but that wasn’t the point. The point was the reaction it would cause. The point was what would happen next.
“Not a big deal?!” Rob threw up his hands in exasperation, and a plate of half-eaten cheese sticks clattered to the ground. “Are you kidding me?! There was an assassin on campus! What could possibly be a bigger deal than that?!”
“Just walking around the dorms,” Eli shuddered, “chances are we probably saw him.”
The others were quick to jump onto the terrorized bandwagon, but Simon shook his head, seemingly unconvinced.
“I don’t know,” he leaned back, frowning uncertainly at his glass of iced tea, “maybe I’m just over-reacting. I mean, we go to a school where everyone inside the gates has a freaking superpower. This can’t be the first time that something like this has happened.”
This time, it was Arturo, the Brainiac from East Liverpool, who chimed in with a vengeance. “Actually Simon, it is the first time that anything like this has happened. Kids have died in freak accidents, of course. But there’s never been a malicious attack by an outsider on school grounds. Not since it was created hundreds of years ago.”
“Really?” Simon asked innocently. “I just assumed—”
But the guys were on a roll. A little momentum was all it took to get things started. After that, a lifetime’s worth of uncertainty and doubt came bursting into light.
“But that’s just the freaking tip of the iceberg,” Eli banged his hand on the table, sending little drops of ketchup flying into the air. “Remember our first year, when we got that telepath from Hamburg? Turned out, the kid descended from one of the rebels who raised hell back in Masters’ day. Day after the guy turned sixteen, he disappeared and was never heard from again.”
“Same thing with that lion shifter.”
“Same thing with that teleporter. One day he was here. The next day—poof—he was gone.” Rob tilted his head thoughtfully to the side. “Granted…that may have just been his power…”
One by one, the stories began to pour out. And they weren’t just of strange coincidences or disappearances. Slowly, ever so slowly, they began to fixate more and more on grievances with how the Guilder staff, and by
proxy the Privy Council, operated things in general. Kids turned up missing. Families left in the lurch. A set of rules and policies so draconian, that no one in this day and age could possibly be expected to follow them.
It was music to Simon’s ears. As Argyle’s hand scribbled furiously over his notebook, Simon leaned back with a secret smile, watching them sound off of each other back and forth. Although Simon himself wasn’t exactly sure what he’d been expecting when he called the meeting, he was somehow positive that it had been a huge success. They’d started something here today. And even if he didn’t know exactly what it was, or what it meant…he knew they were on the right track.
“I don’t know…” He finally shook his head with wide eyes, bringing the roaring conversation to a thoughtful pause. “It’s like, if something or someone doesn’t fit their particular narrative, the rules just don’t apply. No protection, no laws. They just do whatever the hell they want, and the rest of us have to live with the consequences.”
This assessment was met with a strong murmur of agreement as each of the boys continued to back it up with anecdotes and stories of their own. Only Tristan was hanging back, staring at Simon with a set of almost wary eyes.
He had governed this particular kingdom for almost two years now. He knew the difficulties and rewards there within. But when trying to get them to a collective point, Tristan gently steered the way. He didn’t manipulate.
It was a distinction the importance of which was becoming abundantly clear.
“The man who attacked Simon attacked and killed another kid in Rockwood,” he said suddenly. All conversation at the table stopped, and Simon pulled in a sharp breath.
“Tristan,” he said under his breath, wishing desperately that his new friend hadn’t seen fit to share that particular bit of information.
But Tristan advocated a democracy—not a dictatorship. If he was going to be responsible for these people, they had to know all the facts. In his opinion, they deserved them.
“Simon and I went there yesterday afternoon.” He stared at each one of the boys in turn, hiding nothing in his honest blue eyes. “The kid was a hybrid. His parents were in hiding. That’s how the assassin was able to get to them so easily.”
This story was met with a circle of stunned silence. Even Argyle could think of nothing to say, although he stared at Simon with wide, almost-accusatory eyes. How could Simon not have told him? Had they truly started to drift so far?
Finally, when the quiet could go on no longer Simon cleared his voice reluctantly to speak. “It’s true. The kid was shot by the same man who came for me and Jacob. He was just seven years old.” Davey. Simon almost said his name. Davey. But somehow, the word stuck in his throat.
Like poking a hole in a bucket of water, a torrent of muffled profanities and bereaved, angry mutterings followed this reply. Each of the guys sitting around the table dropped their eyes to their laps, looking troubled, although not surprised, before raising their heads to discuss the matter with each other once more.
As they did so, Simon used the cover of conversation to elbow Tristan sharply in the ribs. “What the hell was that?” he muttered under his breath. This time Argyle was watching very carefully, but Simon was too caught up to care.
Tristan glared back at him with a pronounced frown. “I could ask you the same thing.”
A wave of guilt crashed through Simon’s chest, but he shook his head with a completely innocent expression. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cut the crap, Simon.” Tristan’s eyes flashed a warning as he gazed out over his table of friends. “I didn’t bring them out here for this.”
“You didn’t bring them out here for what?” Simon shot back, equally frustrated. All pretenses were dropped as he turned in his chair and focused all that pent-up aggression on the guy sitting beside him. “This is it, Tristan. This is what this whole thing is about. It’s exactly why we brought them out here in the first place.”
“No. We brought them out here to tell them about what’s been going on. Everything that’s happened since you were attacked in the Oratory.”
“But all of that leads back to this. You were the one who said it yourself,” Simon insisted persuasively. “You were the one who said—”
But Tristan wasn’t like the rest of them. He wasn’t so easily compelled by fits of passion or skillful oratory. There was an honesty to Tristan that radiated from the very core of his being. A purity at the center that couldn’t be either swayed or corrupted.
A quality that was already getting under Simon’s skin.
“Enough.” Tristan cut him off with that same tone of ringing authority that Simon so jealously coveted. “I’m telling you to tone it down. Think of your end game here. I won’t allow it.”
Simon started seething in anger, but forced a carefully calm façade. “The end game here is that all these guys open their eyes to the injustices going on around them—”
“No, the end game here is that all these guys get kicked out of school.”
The two of them fell momentarily silent, listening to the whirlwind of conversations going on around them. Argyle eyed Simon carefully, but had the wherewithal to hold his tongue. Simon was grateful for his silence. To be honest, he didn’t really want to know whose side his best friend would come down on if forced to choose.
Tristan was right, of course. In the short-term, any one of them would be on thin ice if a single member of the Guilder faculty happened to find out what exactly they were doing at the diner that day. That same ice would grow increasingly thin the more Simon purposefully amped them all up. But there were bigger things at stake. Things that Simon felt responsible for, even if he didn’t quite yet understand them. What was it to him if there were a few casualties along the way?
But a few casualties seemed a few more than Tristan was prepared to allow.
“I’m just trying to get us all on the same page,” Simon murmured again. “So we can—”
“I said, I won’t allow it,” Tristan said again, emphasizing each word very carefully as he stared Simon straight in the eyes.
The seeds of a bitter conflict were sown. But also that of a begrudging respect. Simon was able to hold his gaze only for a moment before he forced his eyes to the window. “Fine,” he muttered, keeping his glare locked on a passing car, “let them work it out on their own. What do I care?”
Tristan watched him intently for another second before letting it go. Neither boy had any cards left to play in this particular hand, and to be honest it didn’t seem too much matter at this point anyway. The message was out, the avalanche had begun, and all that was left to do was try to minimize the damage that ensued.
Or maximize it—depending on whose chair you were sitting in.
“So,” Rob began in conclusion, “if we’re going to have regular meetings, then we’re going to need to have some kind of name, aren’t we?”
Regular meetings?! If they were already setting up a repeat schedule, then this meeting had gone better than Simon could have possibly hoped.
“Well,” Simon began, his mind still reeling from the sudden warning from Tristan, “it seems to me like the entire system is built upon a delicate house of cards. Knock one of them down, and the rest go tumbling.”
“So that’s it, then?” Argyle asked in an abruptly professional manner. “House of cards?”
“House of cards,” Tristan repeated with a grin. He and Simon locked eyes, and their difference in end-game was buried in a tentative truce. After all, they both agreed on a hell of a lot. There was more that united them than tore them apart. “H.O.C. for short.”
Simon smiled back, more relieved than he was prepared to admit. “We need a for short?” he asked teasingly.
“Oh yes,” Tristan answered with a grin. “A pre-emptive attempt to minimize demerits…”
* * *
When Simon got back to his dorm later that night, he was walking on cloud nine. Only having his beautiful girlfrien
d rush once more into his arms could have made it any better, but seeing as how Beth was probably on her way back to Scotland by now, Simon contented himself with his present haul.
House of cards, he said again and again in his head. H.O.C.
He couldn’t have come up with anything better himself. And the fact that it came from the members themselves? It was almost too good to be true.
Of course, Tristan’s thinly-veiled warning still echoed in the back of his mind, but if Simon was being honest with himself, he hadn’t really expected anything different. The guy was protective of his friends. There was nothing wrong with that. Hell, at this point it was a quality that Simon should be immensely grateful for. Tristan had been protective enough over Simon, a person he hardly knew, to have risked his own skin first with Paul, and then later with Masters.
Simon didn’t understand the empathy himself. Not hardly. But maybe, if the two of them were going to be partnering up, maybe it was good that Tristan was the way he was. Because Simon was the way he was. They balanced each other out. And in those increasingly frequent times when Simon found himself drifting farther and farther away from a moral center…a guy like Tristan might be exactly the kind of person he wanted to keep around.
The only thing that was still weighing heavy on his conscience was that Jacob wasn’t there.
Simon had tried a million times to reach out to him, but that still didn’t make his absence any easier, especially with something like this. Unlike a few of the other guys who were sitting around the table, Jacob actually deserved to be there. It wasn’t just that he had an absurdly powerful tatù, and it wasn’t just the fact that he’d been victimized himself.