by W. J. May
Benji paused to catch his breath, gazing up at the mountain with mutinous eyes.
“This is—”
“—so much better than whatever bloody punishment our parents would have devised,” Lily interrupted under her breath. “Just do it. Be grateful it isn’t something worse.”
He gave her a choice look, but there was an inescapable logic to it, so he picked up another back-breaking stack and carried them off into the winding rows of shelves. James was already back there—supposedly filing the books away—but in all likelihood the boy had long ago fallen asleep.
Aria watched them for a moment, but her mind was on other things. If it wasn’t the scores of casefiles or the fact that she’d ruptured a vertebra hauling off the linguistics section, their new taskmaster overwhelmed her thoughts completely.
Ms. Penz, the last librarian, had been around eight hundred years old. With wrinkles so deep they didn’t seem possible, and a gnarled shushing finger permanently affixed to her lips. Aria had never considered the possibility that someone younger might accept such a position.
But Dorian was young—a lot younger than her initial impression had led her to believe.
Maybe it was the glasses; they’d aged him. The second he took them off it was easy to see that he was about the same age as her parents, maybe just a year or so older.
And he was fit.
It was hard to tell beneath the proper school-teacher clothing, but she’d grown up around enough athletic people to recognize when it was standing in front of her. Maybe it’s what came of hauling around five hundred boxes of books every day.
Maybe he hasn’t always been a librarian...
“So where did you transfer from?” she asked casually, watching from the corner of her eye. The man hadn’t sat down for a second since they’d started. He’d been hauling boxes right alongside. “Guilder’s a small community; I haven’t seen you before.”
“Well that’s not entirely true, is it?” he answered with a wink. She remembered their bizarre first encounter and looked down with a grin. “I transferred from a school in Sussex.”
“A school,” Lily repeated in surprise. “As in, a common world school?”
Dorian chuckled under his breath. “I’d forgotten they teach you to call it that.” His eyes flashed up and met her inquisitive stare. “Yes, at a common world school. Like Aria said—the supernatural world’s a fairly small community. If you don’t want to kill people for a living, there aren’t very many jobs.”
All five friends paused at the same time, feeling abruptly unsettled. So many years dreaming of the day they’d get to join the Privy Council...but they’d never thought of it that way.
“You know my name?” Aria asked abruptly.
It wasn’t that surprising. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d introduced herself to someone who didn’t already know her family legacy. Still, it was a little disconcerting all the same.
Dorian chuckled again, straightening up to lean against a table.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I can figure it out...” His eyes swept around the room, pointing to each of them in turn. “Aria and James Wardell, Lily Decker, Benji Fodder...and Jason Gaines.”
Jason jerked like someone had hit pause.
“Alden,” he finally managed. “It’s Jason Alden.”
He’d kept the name Jason and taken the name Alden not long after Gabriel had recovered him in London. Not long after that, Natasha had taken the name Alden as well.
“Oh—my mistake.” Dorian frowned slightly, as if the name had been written incorrectly somewhere, lifting his eyes apologetically. “I probably should have known.”
Jason flashed a tight smile and dismissed it with a shake of his head.
They continued working for a few more minutes before Dorian abruptly dropped what he was holding—clapping the dust off his hands with a comical sigh.
“Well, I’ve held out as long as I can. Aria, will you take care of the rest?”
The others glanced up in unison. James instinctively dropped what he was holding, too.
“By myself?” Aria said indignantly, eyeing what remained of the mountain. “You want me to finish unloading all of these by myself?”
Dorian’s eyes twinkled as he took off his glasses and polished them on the hem of his shirt. “It’ll go faster if you don’t use your hands...”
For a split second, she had no idea what he meant. Then her lips parted in surprise. “...really?”
Strictly speaking, students weren’t allowed to use their tatùs outside of the classroom. It was one of those rules that nobody ever followed, but to have a teacher actually suggest it?
As expected, each of the friends reacted in their own way. Benji looked excited. James was interested. Jason was a mix of curious and wary. And Lily was...concerned?
The quiet girl took a tentative step forward, dark eyes flickering between them. “She’s not really supposed to be doing that—”
“Just like you weren’t really supposed to be in the restricted section of the library?” Dorian interrupted sharply. The boys lifted their heads, looking tense, but he flashed an easy smile. “This is a school, is it not? You’re here for instruction? Aria...basic levitation, please.”
Aria set down the box she was holding and glanced nervously around the room. She played around with her powers all the time, but that’s all it was—playing. There had never been anything on command. There had never been anything like this.
“I don’t know if I can...”
Dorian tilted his head quizzically, and she gestured back at the pile.
“I’ve never done anything so big before.”
The glasses tucked into his shirt as he pushed to his feet with a gentle smile. “That will always be true—until the day you try.”
She stared at him for a moment before her eyes flickered reflexively to Jason. He was standing in the corner with his arms folded over his chest, watching carefully. Just a few steps away, Benji was watching with equal attention. He caught her eye and gave her a prompting nod.
Okay. You can do this.
Using a technique her mom taught her she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, visualizing exactly where she wanted everything to go. The second she was sure, her arms seemed to lift of their own accord—lifting the entire mountain of boxes along with them.
A sudden hush fell over the room.
The whole thing must have weighed a thousand pounds, but to her magical hands it was light as a feather. Swirling and separating in a slow-moving cyclone, rotating each box on its axis until she could see the tape that said where it was supposed to go. The second she’d seen them all, her fingers started twitching—dividing them into piles floating twenty feet in the air.
Somewhere behind her shoulder there was a quiet gasp, but she never heard it. Her eyes were practically glowing with intensity as she tilted her head distractedly to the side—spinning them faster and faster, at an almost blinding speed. Then all at once, individual boxes started breaking away from the cloud—shooting off in various directions, finding the appropriate shelves.
While the room itself was frozen, it sounded like a wind-storm. And there was Aria standing in the middle of it, flashing eyes, uplifted arms, dancing clouds of raven hair.
“Remarkable,” Dorian murmured under his breath.
The entire thing only took about a minute. It was an almost flawless display. But at the last second one of the boxes tipped over mid-flight, spilling its contents across the floor.
“Aw, Arie—that was terrible,” James scolded, trudging over to the fallen books like only a little brother could. “Now we’ve got to pick these up...”
The others shared an exasperated grin, while Dorian swiped up a book that had fallen at his feet and made his way over to Aria. She was still planted in place, trying to catch her breath.
“A stunning performance.”
She blushed and lowered her eyes, a thrill of adrenaline still spiking in her veins.
“A work in progress,” she corrected.
His eyes twinkled as he stared down at her. “Like so many of the great works are.” He glanced up at where the little cyclone was just seconds before, then glanced back down with a rather serious expression. “Magic is meant to be used, Miss Wardell. Now more than ever. Don’t let anyone try to temper that fire of yours.”
She stared up at him, a little thrown by the sudden change of tone. “Uh...thanks. I won’t.”
A bell was chiming in the distance. The students of Guilder University were slowly making their way to the cafeteria for Sunday morning breakfast. Her friends had no intention of dining with the others, but they were already waiting by the door—eager to get back to their own breakfast tables before their hyper-vigilant parents noticed they were gone.
“And thanks again for not getting us in trouble,” Aria added, snatching up her purse and flinging it over her arm. “That was really decent of you.”
Dorian cocked his head to the door with a wink. “It’ll be our little secret.”
He watched as they vanished through the door. He watched as they sprinted over the grass.
He was still watching as their car disappeared into the trees.
Chapter 7
As fate would have it, Lily Decker wasn’t nearly as afraid of breaking the rules as she was of disappointing her father. She flew over the winding country roads, completely ignoring traffic signs and taking hairpin turns at nearly ninety miles per hour. What was meant to be an hour-long drive back to London ended up taking thirty minutes. Ironically, her mother would have been proud.
Normally, the kids wouldn’t have stood a chance of sneaking back inside when their parents were home. Fortunately, their parents weren’t really watching. For the first time in months they were all in London at the same time—reunited for the birthday. They’d slept in late, having drunk a barrel of wine, free of the usual assassins, and hit squads, and mobsters breathing down their necks.
“Late night?”
Correction: they’re always watching.
Aria froze where she stood. James had taken the extra precaution of sneaking round the back of the house, but she’d arrogantly swept right through the front door.
Only to come face to face with her mother.
Rae tilted her head with a sweet smile, one that sent chills up the back of Aria’s neck. Even wearing a silk bathrobe with her hair swept up in a knot, it was the scariest thing she’d ever seen.
“Sweetheart, did you have a late night?” she asked again when her daughter wouldn’t answer.
Aria swallowed hard, then forced a quick smile.
“Hey, Mom. You’re up early—” A spray of involuntary sparks flew from her mother’s hand and she quickly changed gears. “Not a late night, an early morning. I thought I’d get a jump start on the day, you know? The early bird catches...uh, there’s a bird and it catches...something.”
Truth: I’m not really a morning person.
“Ah, I see.” Rae Kerrigan wasn’t really a morning person either, but unfortunately for her daughter she was still running on Australian time. “So you were ‘jump-starting’ the day, were you?”
“That’s right,” Aria said bracingly, still trying to remember the end of the saying.
Early bird catches the...what do you catch in the morning? Coffee?
Rae walked toward her slowly, conjuring a steaming cup of espresso out of thin air, like she’d read her daughter’s mind. Their eyes locked as she took a sip, staring shrewdly over the rim.
“You wouldn’t have been out late? Celebrating a certain birthday?”
Aria bit her lip, staring back with wide, innocent eyes. “Would that have been so terrible?”
In spite of her best efforts, Rae cracked a smile. She’d always found it difficult to punish her children—especially when her children reminded her of herself at their age.
“At least tell me you got your brother home safe.”
There was a thump from upstairs as James toppled clumsily through his window. Rae pursed her lips as Aria made a valiant effort not to roll her eyes.
“Of course I did, but Mom, at this point, it would be better if we just left him by the side of the road. The boy’s a lost cause.”
Rae’s eyes cooled as she flashed another deceptively sweet smile. “If I was in your position, I really wouldn’t be pushing your luck by sharing homicidal thoughts about your little brother. If I was in your position, I’d thank your lucky stars that it was your mother who found you and not your father—who would not be so forgiving.”
This time Aria flashed a grin as she bounded forward, kissing her mom on the cheek while just as casually stealing her coffee. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”
“Yes, I am,” Rae agreed soundly, conjuring herself another cup. “Now run upstairs and get cleaned up for breakfast. I’m making pancakes.”
The smile froze on Aria’s face. “...you’re making them yourself?”
There was a dangerous pause.
“Go.”
BY THE TIME ARIA GOT upstairs, the door to the bathroom she shared with James was already locked as the kid stole the first shower. She gave it a petulant kick for good measure before heading down the hall to her room.
It was bigger than his—just a hair smaller than the master bedroom her parents shared. Back when the friends had bought the house together, it had been Julian’s room. But when her mom had gotten pregnant, he and Angel had moved into the house down the street.
Every now and then, she still found little remnants of her aunt and uncle’s time there. And by that, she meant her aunt. Just last year she’d been banging the wall and yelling for James to turn his music down, when a picture had swung forward to reveal a hidden cache in the wall just behind. That one had been empty, but when she told Benji what had happened they systematically went through the room together and discovered a whole treasure trove of weapons, and miniaturized surveillance equipment, and all other sorts of things Angel had left behind.
They were on the verge of starting their own spy ring, when her father had heard the telltale click of a silencer and came racing up the stairs. The weapons were confiscated, the equipment was packed up in a box, and the fight that ensued between Devon and Angel was one for the books.
With a contented sigh, she tossed her purse into the center of the bed and sank down beside it—warming her lips on the side of the mug before taking a large sip. Despite having been up all night, she found that she wasn’t really tired. Along with a multitude of other things, she’d inherited her mother’s ability to self-heal. For short periods of time, that included sleeplessness as well.
Ding.
She glanced down at her phone, then bit back a smile. It was from Benji. Starting up the same group thread the friends shared every time they were home for the weekend.
Where are we having breakfast?
The shower turned off as James headed back to his own room. With her fennec fox tatù, Aria could hear him rifling through his dresser and checking his phone as well.
Lily answered first.
My parents are still sleeping.
It was followed quickly by Benji.
All we have in the house is whiskey and kale.
Aria stifled a grin, then typed the words that were sure to get her disqualified.
My mom is cooking.
There was a brief pause as they all registered the horror. Then Jason swept in for the save.
My dad’s making waffles.
Aria downed the rest of her coffee, and picked her purse right back off the bed.
Waffles it is.
Instead of risking the wrath of her mother or, even worse, being asked to sample the pancakes before her father had them properly quarantined, Aria leapt out the window, grabbing hold of the honeysuckle on the way down to slow her fall. She probably should have changed clothes, or at least run a comb through her hair, but there was something exhilarating about showing up to breakfast in the same clothes yo
u’d partied in the night before.
Even if it was a birthday party. Even if the breakfast was at your uncle’s house.
James was already strolling across the park by the time she crossed the street. They locked eyes briefly, debated adjusting their pace to walk together, then decided against it and continued on their separate ways. Both Rae and Devon had repeatedly assured them that sibling squabbles were a normal thing. That one day they’d see the value in one another, learn to get along.
Aria had vowed to dismember herself before that happened.
James had asked if they were drunk.
His dark head of hair had already vanished inside by the time she got to the Aldens’ house across the park. He shut the door firmly behind him, resisting the urge to lock it as well. She rolled her eyes and wiped her feet on the mat before yanking it open again.
A delicious aroma hit the second she walked inside.
Unlike the others, who’d grown up with some idea of what a parent-child relationship was supposed to be, both Gabriel and Angel were completely in the dark. Ripped away from their parents at an age so young they never got to know them, they’d modeled their own parenting style completely off what they’d researched and studied themselves.
The day after Gabriel adopted Jason he’d vanished for a half hour, then returned with his arms full of parenting books stolen from the public library. The others had laughed. He was already so good with children; he took care of theirs all the time.
But being good had never been enough for Gabriel Alden.
The only child he’d ever raised was when he was five years old, living with a madman beneath a cemetery. (And, one could argue, she’d turned out a bit crazy.) Now, with significantly more means at his disposal, he was determined to educate himself. To learn whatever he didn’t know and become a great dad. He was a fast study. And Jason was a shining testament to his work.
“Morning!” Aria announced the second she stepped inside; waving hello to Gabriel, who was hovering in front of the stove with a spatula in his hand.
It always cracked her up when she saw her parents’ friends trying to do anything domestic. Give the man fifteen minutes and a boomerang, and he could probably break into any government agency you could want. But put a spatula in his hand, and he turned to the internet for guidance.