Dylan turned to face them. “Okay, seriously dude, what’s going on?”
“My parents, they…” Tiago sighed, breath fogging. “The reason I’m in Shadow Valley is because I ran away. My parents… hit me and stuff.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.” Dylan’s stomach dropped. That explained why Tiago didn’t talk about them.
“They also… we hunt humans. Eat them.” The scent of his nervousness filled the car.
Aiden reached across the seat and gripped Tiago’s hand.
Okay that was… major. Dylan didn’t even know what to say to that.
Tiago looked up at him. “But I couldn’t do it anymore, so I ran away. I turned myself in to the wardens, and I guess because I’m a minor, Mr. Johnson convinced them not to punish me.”
Mr. Johnson again. Did he really care about them, or was this some scheme to win their trust? Did Tiago owe him a favor too?
“Last night my parents showed up in Shadow Valley.” Tiago’s heartbeat thundered. “They tried to convince me to go with them. Said I didn’t belong here, that it was a cage, that I was better than humans and they’re just cattle and blah, blah.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I’m scared of them. I know it makes me sound like a chickenshit, but there you go. I’m afraid they’ll try to take me, and I don’t ever want to go back to them.”
Fierce protectiveness filled Dylan’s chest. “Hey, no one’s gonna take you.”
“He doesn’t want to tell the wardens because they’ll put his parents in jail.” Aiden still held Tiago’s hand. “Or kill them.”
“They might leave me alone. They probably will. But just in case, could you, uh…” Tiago shifted, not quite looking Dylan in the eyes. “Watch my back?”
Dylan knew how hard it was to ask for help. “No problem, Cat Boy.”
“They came after him on his way home from school.” Aiden leaned back as he released Tiago’s hand. “So maybe you could drive him too?”
Great, more sharing his time with Aiden. “Yeah, sure.”
Tiago must have picked up on his lack of enthusiasm. “You don’t have to.”
“What if they come after you again?”
Tiago rubbed his palms against his pants. “How about just on the way home? If they do try to take me, it’ll probably be then.”
“Are you sure?” Aiden asked.
“Yeah. In the evening there’s a lot of people around, going to work and stuff.”
“Need someone to watch your house?” Not that Dylan wanted to sit in a car or stand around for hours waiting for something to happen, but he wanted to keep Tiago safe. And he liked the idea of catching Tiago’s asshole parents and making them hurt.
Tiago shook his head. “But I’ll call if anything happens. You could drive there in ten minutes.”
Twice as long as it would take the police to arrive. “Okay.”
“My guardian doesn’t know, but if they tried to break into the house, she’d stop them. I don’t really know how powerful she is, but I get the feeling she could handle two werejaguars. So I’ve got someone looking out for me.” Tiago sighed. “God, I hate feeling like this.”
“Hey, man, we’re all afraid of something,” Dylan said. It wasn’t easy to admit, but he wanted Cat Boy to feel better. “I was there when you offered to take on the dark fae, so I know you’re a badass.”
The corner of Tiago’s mouth turned up. “Thanks.”
“I’ll take you home now.” Dylan turned and started the car. “So, uh, where do you live?” He’d never been to Tiago’s house. He knew Tiago lived close enough to walk to school, but that was it.
Tiago gave him directions while Aiden nagged them to put on their seat belts.
“You know, we could all do our homework at your place since we’re all going there anyway. If that’s cool with you.” Dylan wasn’t sure why he wanted to go to Tiago’s house. Probably feeling left out. Aiden had been there a few times, and Tiago had been over to Dylan’s house.
In the rearview mirror, Dylan caught Aiden and Tiago exchanging a glance.
“Uh, sure, I guess,” Tiago said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“So show me.”
Aiden made a face.
“Come on. I wanna see it. You got to see me turn into a dragon when I wasn’t good at it.” Not only did Dylan think it would look cool, but he wanted Aiden to share things with him again. The last time Aiden had pulled away from him it was because he was afraid of Dylan. But this felt like something different. Part of him hoped it was at least. Dylan hated having his best friend be afraid of him.
“That was an emergency. This isn’t.” Aiden pushed his hands farther into his pockets, breath coming out in a white cloud.
Dylan was still a little scared to come out to the pit. He jumped at any odd noise and sometimes thought he saw shadows moving out of the corner of his eye. It was easier to have Aiden with him. “I bet you’re better at it than you think. C’mon, Aiden.”
Aiden shifted his feet. “Okay. But you have to swear not to laugh if I screw up.”
“I swear.” Dylan held up a hand.
Aiden took his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them on his jeans. Taking a deep breath in and out, he closed his eyes.
Dylan waited patiently, standing still and even breathing quietly. The air around Aiden shimmered with a faint greenish-gold light, and the scent of a warm spring day filled Dylan’s nose.
And then he was looking at himself. “Whoa.”
Aiden opened his eyes, but they were Dylan’s green eyes. “How do I look?” It was even Dylan’s voice coming out of him.
“It’s like looking in a mirror, only 3-D. That is so weird. And awesome.” Dylan slowly walked around his double.
“Yeah, it’s really trippy when I look in the mirror and someone else is staring back.” Aiden brushed his palms over his face.
“You could fool anybody with that.” Dylan laughed as he got an idea. “You could go to class for me. Take my tests.”
Aiden frowned with Dylan’s eyebrows and Dylan’s mouth. “I’m not cheating for you.”
“Just kidding, dude. Jeez.” He studied his transformed friend for a moment. “Why me?”
Dylan watched his cheeks blush. That was a super weird expression to see on his face. “Um, well. Phoebe said to try someone I was really familiar with. And I spend lots of time with you every day, so…” Aiden shrugged.
You used to, Dylan thought.
“I can do other people too. And I can make up features so I don’t look like anyone specific.”
“So it’s a glamour, right? That means you don’t actually shape-shift? Like your bones and skin and stuff are really the same under there?”
Aiden nodded. “Yeah. It’s sort of like a… a magical costume.”
“Damn, I’m jealous. I wish I could do that.”
Another frown. People probably saw that expression on Dylan’s face a lot. “You’d just use it to cheat.”
“Nuh-uh. I’d use it to play jokes on people too.” He laughed as Aiden shoved him. “Oh hey, you should do that during our next match. Freak people out in gym. You can even do fire magic so people won’t be able to tell which one is the real Dylan.” He got an even better idea. “Ohh, man. We should’ve done that for the spring exhibition!”
Aiden held up his hands. “I’m not doing this in public. I’ll get nervous and probably mess up.”
Dylan shrugged. “So you practice until it’s easy. You can do your vine trick just fine, and lots of other things.”
“The point of magic isn’t to show off.” Aiden shimmered and became himself again.
“No, but that’s a pretty good reason for it.” Dylan conjured a flame and made it dance in the air. “Besides, once we graduate we’ll have to hide our magic, so… might as well show off while we can.” Dylan watched the flame, wondering if he could live a life out in the human world, always hiding his dragonkin nature.
What good was the freedom to go anywhere he wanted if he
couldn’t be himself?
Aiden’s eyes shifted as he followed the flame. “You know… when I first got here, all this stuff was really weird, and I just wanted to be a normal kid. But now I’ve been surrounded by magic and monsters for years, and it kinda seems… normal. My best friend can throw fire around and turn into a dragon, and my—my other friend can turn into a jaguar.”
“So you like being fae now?” Dylan asked. Aiden had gotten so much better at using his power and seemed to be past most of his fear.
Aiden made a face. “That’s maybe too strong a way to put it. I’m used to it now. Used to life in Shadow Valley. I think it’s going to be hard to go back to the normal—uh, the human world.”
Dylan lifted his hands and said in a low voice, “Come to the Dark Side, Aiden. Embrace your power.”
“Not funny.” Aiden rolled his eyes. “You’re casting yourself as the villain trying to tempt me. Not the way to convince me that having magic is a good thing.”
The little flame went out. “I should get Maggie to convince you then. She loves her magic too. She’s like the Obi-Wan to my Darth whatever.” Maggie was his opposite in many ways except that they were both proud of what they were.
“Does that make me Luke?”
“Yeah, dude. You get to be the big hero.” Dylan laughed.
Aiden smiled and shook his head, but then his expression turned dark. “That still makes you the bad guy, and that means I have to fight you.”
“God, don’t take it so seriously. I’m just joking.” Aiden took a lot of things way too seriously.
“Yeah, but some part of you believes you’re the villain. The people in town cast you that way, and you act like you think that’s all you can be. You’re a hero too, Dylan. You saved me from the warden and those hunters—”
“After you—”
But Aiden kept going. “And you saved me from the dark fae. Me, and my parents, and Tiago.”
Dylan’s stomach tightened. “It’s my fault he got out in the first place. The people he killed, that’s on my head. And whatever Morgan’s doing now, that’s all my fault.”
“You made a mistake. He tricked you—”
Aiden was so damn blind sometimes. “No, he didn’t!” Dylan’s voice echoed off the piles of gravel. “You tell yourself that for whatever reason, but I knew what he wanted when I let him out. Okay, so I didn’t know him and his buddies would kill random people, but he promised me he would kill the wardens. That’s why I released him from Faery, so he’d get rid of them and I could do whatever I wanted.”
In a quiet voice, Aiden asked, “But you regret it, right?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I know I shouldn’t have listened to him.” And aside from the people getting killed, the thing he regretted most was hurting Aiden. “But I still want the wardens out of the way. Maybe… maybe not dead, but just… gone.”
Aiden wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. “You understand why the treaty exists, right? If humans found out about you… us, they’d panic and kill us.”
Dylan snorted. “They could try.” Although the memory of the hunters with guns was sobering. Bullets weren’t a joke, even to a dragonkin.
“Maybe you’d be powerful enough to get away, but not everyone would. It’s not just about you, Dylan. It’s about all of us. What if someone like Hanna got chased down by a mob? Or Maggie? They used to burn witches at the stake. The treaty protects mundanes and supernaturals.”
If there was a class for guilt trips, Aiden would get an A plus for sure. “So I have to suffer for everyone else?”
“If you want to look at it selfishly, yes.” Aiden had that extra judge-y expression on his face.
“Maybe I am selfish. That’s what villains are, right?” Dylan didn’t know why he was saying that. He didn’t want to argue with Aiden, but he was so frustrated. Things were so unfair.
“You’re not a villain, and when you talk like that it scares me.”
“It scares you because you know what I’m capable of.”
Aiden’s eyes went wide and he put a hand to his chest where Dylan had burned him two years ago. “Stop.”
In a weird, twisted way, it felt good to feel terrible. To feel like a piece of shit for making Aiden afraid. Why am I so screwed up? Because of the way people had treated him growing up? Because he was a dragonkin? Or was it just him, something dark inside that had nothing to do with being part dragon? After all, his mom never talked about having fantasies of burning whole cities down.
“I need to burn something.” Dylan balled his fists. “You should go.”
“Dylan—”
“Go!” Dylan turned away so he wouldn’t have to see that hurt look on Aiden’s face.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Aiden started sweating as he changed in the locker room. Calm down. You’ve been doing so good. But it only got worse when he walked into gym. His chest felt tight, and he couldn’t get a full breath. He went straight to the bench and told himself it would pass in a minute.
“You okay?” Dylan asked as he sat next to him.
“Yeah,” he lied.
Why am I scared? I do this every day. I can handle Dylan throwing fire at me. I’m supposed to be better!
His heart beat faster and he gripped his knees. He stared at the center of the gym where in a few minutes he would stand while someone attacked him with magic.
“Aiden.”
He looked up at Ms. Yang.
“Do you need to sit out today?”
He bit his lip, and after a moment he nodded.
She frowned. “I think you should go see Mr. Emery. Come on, I’ll write you a pass.”
“But I don’t know why I’m… having trouble. I don’t even know what I’d talk about.” Not everyone had shown up yet, but there were several kids in the room, and Aiden’s face burned with embarrassment.
“Come on.”
Aiden sighed and followed her to the small office. She closed the door. “Anxiety doesn’t always have an obvious cause.” She pulled out a hall pass and started writing. “Sometimes you just have a bad day.”
“Then why do I have to go see the counselor?” It felt like a punishment even though he knew it wasn’t.
“Because I think it’ll be good for you to go somewhere quiet for a while. Should I have someone walk you down there?”
And be even more embarrassed? “No, I’ll be fine.” He took the pass.
As he walked through the gym, Dylan got up to follow him. “Hey, something wrong?”
“Just having a bad day.” For no reason at all.
“Can I help?”
“No.” Aiden made it to the door.
“Okay.” Dylan sounded defeated.
Aiden glanced back at him. “I’ll see you at lunch.”
The empty halls were odd and made him more anxious. Even though he had a pass, he felt like he was doing something wrong to be out here while everyone else was in class. Rows of silent lockers, the polished floor stretching out in front of him, the murmur of voices from behind closed doors. Aiden tried to breathe past the tightness in his chest.
“Mr. Spencer.”
Aiden jumped.
“What are you up to?”
He turned to find Warden Bradley. “I… um.” Aiden held up the pass like a shield. “I’m going to the counselor.”
“Really?” Warden Bradley took his pass, giving Aiden a look that made him feel guilty even though Aiden knew he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Studying the pink paper, the warden said, “Hmm. You have regular appointments with Mr. Emery, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Aiden swallowed. This wasn’t helping his anxiety at all.
“Then why are you going to see him now?”
“I-I’m feeling nervous.”
“Is that why you have appointments with him?”
Aiden realized Mr. Emery had promised their meetings were confidential, although Warden Bradley clearly knew they were going on. Maybe he only knew the appointments existed, like from a
schedule. “I have anxiety and panic attacks.” Once the words were out, Aiden wondered if he should have said anything. That was private information, wasn’t it?
The warden studied him a moment longer before handing the pass back to Aiden. “I’ll walk you to the office.”
Not a gesture of kindness. No, the man was watching Aiden, making sure he went straight there. The tightness in Aiden’s chest got worse. Dylan was right. Warden Bradley was keeping a close watch on both of them.
How close of a watch? Did he follow them after school?
Did he know about Aiden and Tiago?
Aiden felt dizzy by the time they made it to the office, and his hand shook when he knocked on Mr. Emery’s door. When the counselor called for him to come in, Aiden only opened the door enough to slip in, then shut it behind him.
“Aiden. Is something wrong?”
He slid the hall pass across the desk and practically collapsed into the chair. “Ms. Yang thought I should come see you.” Aiden explained about feeling nervous for no reason. While he talked he wondered, as he often did, if he should mention to Mr. Emery that he was bisexual. Aiden hadn’t said a word about having a crush on Tiago, even though it had been a source of anxiety, and he hadn’t mentioned either the joy of dating him or the fear of being caught.
The counselor would no doubt be able to help, and Aiden didn’t really think Mr. Emery would say anything about it, but the more people who knew, the more likely it was that someone would talk.
As afraid as he was of what the other kids would say, what worried Aiden most was his parents finding out. He’d ruined their lives enough by making them come to Shadow Valley. They’d left their home, their friends, the rest of Aiden’s family to live in a town full of monsters. They lied to people about where they were and why.
And Aiden wasn’t even really their son.
He didn’t want to give them another reason to be disappointed, to show them that he wasn’t what they expected. If Aiden could have hidden his magic from them, he would’ve done that too.
“And then Warden Bradley found me in the hall, and he made me feel guilty,” Aiden said.
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