Guardian Academy 1: Seeds Of Magic (The Mystery Of The Four Corners)

by Maria Amor

  The wrought iron-clad door opened to reveal one of her grandmother’s household staff, and Julia kept her face carefully impassive. “Welcome back, Julia,” the woman said, inclining her head. “Your grandmother is waiting for you in the living room.” It wasn’t what the staff referred to as “the main parlor,” which made something in Julia relax; the living room was less formal, which—she hoped—meant that the discussion they were to have would be less of a tongue-lashing and more of an actual conversation. But she didn’t have me brought all the way here right after the end of semester for a cozy chat by the fire.

  Julia followed the older woman through the house, to the rear of the building, trying not to lose her sense of confidence or nerves. The living room didn’t have quite the level of formality as the other parts of the ground floor of the house; the couches were a bit more worn, the chairs were comfortable rather than chosen for beauty.

  It was a room that Julia had played in when she was younger, a room where she’d fallen asleep reading books as if she wanted to devour them, while her parents spoke with her grandparents, or her aunts and uncles sat around talking “shop.”

  Her grandmother sat in her favorite chair, hands at rest on the arms. She wore a pantsuit in her signature blue-green color, and as always, her hair was perfectly styled in rippling waves that didn’t quite fall to her shoulders, steel-gray instead of the black it had been in her youth. Ruth rose and smiled at Julia, and although there was the same kind of hardness that Julia had always seen in the woman, there was kindness in her eyes too—warmth that Julia knew was reserved for only a few people. “Your mother hops to when she has to, it looks like,” Ruth said, accepting a hug from Julia. Her grandmother felt frail to her and almost superpowered at the same time, her body a weak frame for the energy that supported it.

  “She dragged me out of bed at six in the morning,” Julia told her.

  “Sit down and I’ll get some coffee in here,” Ruth said. “Heaven knows you don’t have to worry about your growth being stunted anymore.” Julia sat in the chair closest to her grandmother and let the older woman look her over as she smoothed the dress her mother had insisted she wear against her knees. Just as Ruth had drilled into her when she had been little more than a toddler, Julia crossed her legs at the ankle, and let her hands—slightly clammy with sweat—rest on her lap.

  “I’d pay a month’s allowance to know what fire you lit under her,” Julia said absently.

  “We need to have a good, long talk about your future, Julia,” Ruth said. “I told your mother about the importance of our conversation and because of that she was willing to do what I told her.”

  Without any obvious command, one of the other members of the household staff came into the room with a tray of coffee and snacks: cookies, a few slices of pound cake, some of the tiny tarts that her grandmother liked to keep around, topped with cream. She’s trying to butter me up, Julia thought, though she didn’t say anything. “What about my future? I’m assuming this has to do with—ugh—my ‘blossoming’?”

  “I’ve never been fond of that term myself,” Ruth said, her lips twitching in what might have been a smile if completed. “But yes—in short, that’s what we have to talk about.”

  “What about it? It’s still a year away,” Julia pointed out. She poured coffee into her grandmother’s cup, and Ruth took the carafe away from her to serve Julia in turn.

  “This is an important time in your life,” Ruth explained. “And I do mean in your life. Many Guardians don’t have much to concern themselves with beyond the usual transition.”

  “But I’m special?” Julia raised an eyebrow at the idea. She added sugar and milk to her coffee, stirred the contents of the cup, and sipped it eagerly.

  “Have one of the fruit tarts,” her grandmother suggested. “And yes—you are special. By virtue of being a powerful Guardian-to-be, by virtue of the family you belong to—you are particularly worth paying attention to.” Julia looked at her grandmother dubiously but snatched up one of the fruit tarts—a raspberry one—from the tray, eating it in two quick bites and chasing the delicious sweet-tart-buttery treat down with another gulp of coffee.

  “I can’t be that special,” Julia said. Ruth did smile that time, and Julia felt as if a chill had worked through her spine.

  “You know that I’m a very powerful Guardian,” Ruth said. “And you know that I have a position on the council. But you’ve been carefully guarded from the real truth of my status among our kind.” Julia’s heart beat faster in her chest.

  “So, you’re a VIP,” she ventured.

  “Very much so,” Ruth replied. “There are four highly powerful Guardians who form a kind of meeting of the minds. One for each of the cardinal elements, obviously. While we can’t do everything on our own, our opinions have a particular weight, and we have a particularly deep set of responsibilities—even beyond our positions on the council.” Julia stared at her grandmother.

  “So you’re the hot shot from the water kingdom, basically,” Julia said.

  “In essence. I’m the Regina Undinae: the ‘queen’—if you want to call it that—of the water spirits.”

  “That’s Latin,” Julia said with a frown.

  “There are other names for it, but that’s the most official title,” Ruth replied. “Obviously, there’s a ‘ruler’ for each of the elements—Rex or Regina—and the politics of that position are intense.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Julia took a cookie off of the tray and ate it quickly.

  “Because my position as the Regina Undinae makes you a likely target—especially now that you’re fully coming into your abilities.”

  “A target?” Julia made a face. “All I’m a target for are rumors that I dyed my hair to make people think I’m a more powerful Guardian than I am.” Her hair had started to change colors halfway through the year of its own accord, shifting into a warm, chestnut brown instead of its usual auburn. It was—the professors said—a manifestation of her body itself beginning to accept its alignment with the element of air. Julia had put paid to the rumors by telling people that if she was going to dye her hair, it would at least have been a fun color—pink or green—instead of brown.

  “You know that marriages amongst Guardians are a very touchy subject,” Ruth explained. “There’s an imperative to find your mate, to connect with someone whose traits and abilities bolster and improve on your own.”

  Julia almost rolled her eyes; she’d gotten the lecture on “picking a suitable mate” so many times in the past several years of school that the entire subject of mating, of finding the person she would spend the rest of her life with, had become nothing more than a source of annoyance. While the school didn’t exactly preach abstinence—only sex education, they cautioned the students against “unwary bonding” often—and firmly.

  “I don’t even want to find a mate,” Julia told her grandmother. “I’m not even seventeen yet!”

  “I had two kids at your age,” her grandmother countered. “But you’re right—you’re a child.”

  “I’m not a child, I’m just not interested!”

  “But your lack of interest won’t stop other families from trying to get you,” Ruth said. “Some of them will want you for their own children—to bolster their standing in our community, to give them more power.”

  “Okay,” Julia said, pressing her lips together. “I’m a major catch.”

  “Beyond that, there are people who would want to see you brought down,” Ruth continued. “People who will want to prevent you allying with another powerful family, or even—though it’s not just against the law but also against our codes—prevent you from taking your spot as a member of a powerful family, as a powerful Guardian in your own right.”

  “This sounds like something out of Game of Thrones,” Julia told her grandmother.

  “It’s not that far off,” Ruth said, startling Julia with her knowledge of the series. “People will want to either attach themselves to you, or k
eep you out of the running to have any kind of position in our world at all.”

  “You brought me here to tell me that I’m either going to have to marry someone before I’ve even gone off to college or I might have to spend the next several years of my life looking for poisoned daggers and avoiding abandoned alleys?” Julia finished off her coffee and set her cup aside.

  “I brought you here to tell you that and to inform you of my solution to the problem,” Ruth told her firmly. “I’ve gotten you a bodyguard.”

  “Grandma! I don’t need a bodyguard. Who would come after me at school? I mean, I can avoid the hinky places in Manhattan and the boroughs, I won’t accept any gifts from strangers, I can take care of myself.”

  “You can’t,” her grandmother countered. “And more importantly, I’ve decided that you’re not going to. The earth and fire contingents in the council are not all that keen on seeing a powerful air-aligned Guardian come into play politically.”

  “All right, keep me away from them. Send me to—I don’t know—Paris for the summer or something,” Julia insisted.

  “You’ll stay in Manhattan, and you’ll have a bodyguard both at home and when you go back to school in the fall,” Ruth told her. “I’ve found a very suitable candidate.” Julia frowned. Her grandmother must have been planning for a while, if she found someone that not only would meet with her parents’ approval—though Julia privately felt that her mother would have accepted almost anyone on her grandmother’s say-so but who also wouldn’t get the authorities at the school upset. Ruth rang a small hand bell and Julia felt her heart beating faster again at the thought of who—or what—her new bodyguard could be.

  “I still think this is ridiculous,” Julia grumbled, fidgeting in her chair. “What good is a bodyguard going to do against people who want to marry me?”

  “He’s more to help guide you, and to be a buffer between you and people who would harm you,” Ruth explained. Julia crossed her arms over her chest, knowing that her grandmother would disapprove of the gesture but in that moment, not particularly caring.

  Silence dragged out between them for seconds that felt like an hour, and then Julia heard the tell-tale sound of someone stepping into the room. She looked up, interested and curious in spite of herself. If she had formed any expectation of who she would see entering the room, it was immediately dashed.

  Dylan Kelby, her former friend, stepped through the entry into the living room. He was taller than Julia remembered, and for a moment all she could do was take him in: his slim, lanky body, starting to take on the lines of a fully-grown man with broad shoulders and a straight back. He still had the long hair that she remembered, blond and falling in slightly rippling locks just beyond his shoulders, framing a lean face with high cheekbones and a sharp jaw.

  His brilliant blue eyes were just as captivating as they’d ever been, and for just a moment Julia had the familiar sensation of being almost hypnotized by them. He’d lost some of his tan since the last time she had seen him, two years before—and Julia reminded herself that it wasn’t that unusual, since he probably hadn’t gone to the beach as much as he used to do.

  “Him?” Julia looked at her grandmother, tearing her gaze away from her friend as she remembered everything having to do with her would-be bodyguard. “You cannot be serious.”

  “I am very serious, young lady,” Ruth said. “Dylan has been through the transition; he can help you manage it, and his family is loyal to me.”

  “Of course, they are,” Julia said tartly. “They’re water-aligned like you are. It’d be suicide for them to go against you.”

  “My parents are honored that the Regina Undinae thought of me,” Dylan said.

  “Shut up,” Julia told him. “I don’t want him protecting me. I don’t even want to be around him.”

  “He will have a room of his own in your parents’ apartment, and he will join you at school—though of course, he can’t be in the girls’ dorm.” Julia scowled. “This is my decision, Julia.”

  “I don’t have to abide by it,” Julia countered. “In fact, I’m not going to. You can push my parents around but if I want to, I can get back to Manhattan on my own.” She thought she caught a fleeting flicker of amusement on the older woman’s face.

  “These young air guardians,” Ruth said, directing her comment seemingly to Dylan. “So contrary.”

  “I’m not being contrary,” Julia insisted. “I’m telling you that you couldn’t have possibly chosen someone who I would want least to protect me and be around me constantly.”

  “He’s the best choice for the job,” Ruth told her. “You can accept him, or you can figure out how to get back to Manhattan alone. And also, how you’re going to get back to school in the fall, and where you’re going to live this summer. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to figure it out.” The old woman smiled, and Julia thought for a moment that it was very easy to see the source of her mother’s resentment towards her grandmother.

  “Of course, you’ll be staying here overnight. You’re welcome to wander the grounds—but I’ve put a block on the perimeter.” Julia clenched her teeth and exhaled slowly through her nose. Of course, her grandmother had thought to have a perimeter-block—magical items and energies that would prevent a particular person, or someone with particular energies from passing a set boundary—around the grounds.

  She would have known very well how Julia would react. The fact that she’d been predictable was almost as frustrating as the news that she would be deprived of everything if she didn’t accept Dylan as her bodyguard.

  “I am going to take a walk then,” Julia said, feeling the tightness in her throat but somehow managing to keep her voice light through sheer force of will.

  “You should—just be careful you don’t raise the winds so much that you pull down the fruit in my trees,” Ruth told her. Julia’s hands clenched into fists and she took a slow, steadying breath before rising to her feet.

  “I will see you later, grandmother,” she said. She deliberately didn’t address Dylan at all. There had to be some way around what Ruth had concocted—Julia was determined to find it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dylan caught up to Julia as she stood at the edge of a pond on her grandmother’s property, looking into the water. The trees around her shivered with the stiff breeze moving through them, almost making a sound like rain—but then, Dylan knew, Ruth would be deliberately preventing rain from happening unscheduled over her property, and Julia’s air-aligned gifts wouldn’t enable her to bring on an actual storm.

  “Just as powerful as usual, I see,” he called out when he was a few yards away from her. He hadn’t seen it at first but in spite of the windy weather, there were birds—a few mockingbirds, some jays, and blackbirds—perched in different spots around the girl.

  The sight of her had been a slight shock when Dylan had walked into Ruth’s living room; the girl he’d known had been a gangly, slightly awkward, diminutive redhead, just starting to show the signs of being a Guardian, much less an air-aligned one. The girl in front of him had grown three or four inches, maybe as many as five in two years, and her figure had filled out at the same time.

  Her reddish hair had transformed into something darker, and her eyes had gone lighter at the same time. She dressed with her usual unique style—a dress with a pair of boots, her hair pulled back into two braids that somehow looked anything but kid-like.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Julia said, barely glancing in his direction. She pursed her lips and let out an intricate trilling whistle, to which the birds around her responded with their different calls.

  “We need to talk anyway,” Dylan said, moving closer to her. Julia didn’t have full access to her abilities, but she was already—and always had been—a powerful Guardian. The wind rose slightly, and Dylan wished for a moment that he shared Julia’s alignment, if only to make it easier to counteract her energies.

  Instead he directed the water-aligned power that steadily coursed throu
gh him into the pond, and willed a small waterspout into being, letting it rise slowly to almost Julia’s height. There was still plenty of water in the pond itself for the fish swimming lazily around; Dylan would no more have risked them than he would have harmed Julia.

  “What do we need to talk about? You abandoned me,” Julia said. A few of the birds began to look at him, and Dylan felt the unspoken menace in their gazes; he didn’t think Julia would actually call on them to attack him, but it was a near thing.

  “We had a fight,” Dylan countered. “You were as much to blame for it as I was—and yeah, sure, I was partly to blame.” He carefully resettled the water into the pond; it obviously hadn’t made much of an impression on her.

  “And then you didn’t apologize, didn’t call me, didn’t email...nothing, for two years,” Julia said, finally looking at him fully. “I was just really, completely getting over losing one of my best friends and now you waltz back into my life like this.” She scowled at him and Dylan shrugged.

  “I screwed up, okay?” He glanced warily at the birds, arranging themselves in a defensive grouping around his former friend. “I’ve thought about it like—ten times. More than that. About what a jerk I was.” He shook his head and held his hands out, palms flat. “Your grandmother wants me to protect you, and I’m one of only a few people who can actually do that.”

  “How are you going to protect me? You’re a kid too,” Julia protested.

  “That’s actually why,” Dylan told her. “Your grandmother figures that I can stay close to you at school, where some adult wouldn’t be able to. And she’s right.”

  “But what would you even do if someone threatened me?” Dylan half-smiled.

  “There are a few different things I know how to do,” he said. “Your grandmother has taught me a few more.”

  “Still, isn’t this just a little bit weird to you? Why would you even want to do this?” Dylan sighed.