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

by Maria Amor

  “It’s easier than what I did before, which requires a great deal more control and power,” she said. “And I strongly suspect that there will come a time when her agitation makes her a danger to herself and others—and your ability to do this to reign her in could make a major difference.”

  “Okay,” Dylan said reluctantly.

  “Let’s see if you’ve learned it,” Ruth suggested. She rang a bell—one of the kind made by nymphs: pure silver, with a tone that felt like a rush of cold water down his spine—and Agatha came back into the room. “Will you allow Dylan to practice on you?” Ruth looked at Dylan. “Agatha is a water-witch, learning things from me before she goes back to her coven in the South.”

  “What is he going to do?” Agatha might be a grateful member of the Regina Undinae’s staff, working for her in exchange for knowledge she couldn’t get anywhere else, but she wasn’t limitlessly trusting.

  “A spell that I just taught him,” Ruth said. “Its effects will not last beyond the moment.” Agatha looked at him doubtfully but nodded, and Dylan took a deep breath again, bringing to mind the words of the incantation.

  He closed his eyes and did as Ruth had explained moments before, focusing down until he could feel the watery essence of his own energies, the influence of his alignment on every cell of his body. Dylan called on the flowing, changing, mutable nature of it, visualizing it—as his teachers had taught him—as a torrent, as a river or stream coursing through and out of him.

  He reached out to Agatha’s presence in the room, and began to murmur the incantation as he remembered it. The language of the water Guardians was such that it was easy for them to remember, but impossible for the creatures and Guardians of other alignments to quite learn; even air-aligned Guardians couldn’t quite master it, and their main talent was communication.

  He decided that he wasn’t going to make Agatha cry—that seemed needlessly cruel for a woman who had only barely consented to what Ruth had wanted them to do. Instead he chose the happiness that Ruth had used the second time, and poured it into Agatha as if he were emptying a pitcher, sending the emotion coursing through her open mind; there wasn’t anything to wash away—her will wasn’t opposed to him—but he knew instinctively, based on what Ruth had said, how he would have done it if he had encountered her resistance.

  Dylan opened his eyes to watch as the staffer began to smile slightly, and then more and more joyously as he poured more happiness into her presence, reinforcing the incantation with one and then two repeats of it. He stopped short of making her laugh, but it was obvious to see that she had only rarely been that happy in her life—she was almost alarmed by it. He stopped when he felt her flicker of discomfort, and turned his head to seek Ruth’s approval.

  “Very good,” Ruth said, nodding slightly. “Thank you, Agatha. Can you send Jess in so that Dylan can practice with her as well?” Ruth looked at Dylan as Agatha cheerfully agreed to do as she was told. “The effects dissipate in a matter of moments, but I think you have the basic concept.” Dylan shrugged, feeling uncertain about what he had just learned to do.

  “This seems like dangerous magic to know,” he said, thinking of how other water-aligned Guardians at Sandrine would put the incantation and the magic behind it to use.

  “Don’t get caught doing it,” Ruth said. “And yes—it’s a dangerous thing for someone to know how to do. But I feel like it’s going to be necessary, and soon.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “So, dinner at Babbo, and then the show at Terminal 5, Bowl-a-Rama, and back home at the end of the night,” Julia confirmed, looking from Dylan to Keegan and Magda. “Kelsey, Helena, and Mary are meeting us at the restaurant.”

  It was finally—finally—her birthday; it seemed as if it had been much longer than the roughly two months since the school year started. Julia had been looking forward to the weekend of her birthday more and more, especially since they’d met with Ruth two weeks before—it was one of the few bright spots she could count on in a semester that was shaping up to go from bleak to bleaker.

  Most of her air-aligned friends weren’t able to make it to her birthday, since more than half of them were in trouble at home from the accusations of theft and the other half lived too far away from the city to visit over the weekend. Her friends who lived in the city—Guardians, supernaturals and regular humans she’d known since before starting at Sandrine—were happy to help her celebrate the last birthday before she came into her full abilities as a Guardian.

  “How late are we going to be out?” Dylan gave her a slightly concerned look, and Julia shrugged.

  “Bowling is open until four,” Keegan pointed out.

  “We can’t stay out until four,” Julia admitted. “But Mom and Dad did say I could be out until two, as long as I checked in at midnight and one.” Julia knew that most sixteen-year-olds’ parents wouldn’t feel comfortable letting them stay out so late, but considering that most of New York City’s night-time scene didn’t really get going properly until ten at night, and with Dylan to protect her—not to mention the abilities that she and her Guardian and supernatural friends were able to use—there weren’t many in the city who could harm them.

  Her parents had celebrated her birthday with her that morning, waking her up early to visit the MoMA exhibit that she’d been dropping hints about since she’d seen the listing for it at the end of her previous school year. Her father had given her a set of golden beryl jewelry that she planned to wear as much as possible, he said in hopes of helping her direct her energies, while her mother had given her tickets to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs during winter break at a big, all-day festival. They’d had breakfast with Dylan after the exhibition at Lafayette, sharing pastries and bread, egg white frittata and house-cured bacon.

  But her mother and father had left the house by lunchtime, off to the council to do whatever-it-was they did for the Guardians. Julia had spent the early part of the afternoon coordinating with Magda and Keegan, meeting with them at her favorite pho place with Dylan, and the rest of the day, organizing the final, last-minute details of her birthday night out. She’d made the reservation at Babbo a month before, reserving a table big enough that she hoped that most of her friends would be able to fit.

  Some of her friends from the city would meet them at Terminal 5 for the show, and the rest would catch up at the bowling alley; altogether, Julia thought she would have a great night, and then a Sunday to recover from all of her indulgences before she had to go back to Sandrine.

  “We should start getting ready,” Magda said after they’d rehashed the plans a few more times.

  “You guys go first—I’ll let you get a head start on the hot water and mirror space,” Julia said. The two girls left the living room, and Julia looked at Dylan, still seated near the window. “I know it doesn’t take you that long to get ready, but maybe you feel like playing some guitar or a round of Halo or something,” she suggested.

  “I actually wanted to hang back so I could give you something,” Dylan said. Julia raised an eyebrow, surprised. “It’s not—you know—a big deal or anything, but I saw it and thought you’d like it, so.” Julia smiled slightly at the awkwardness that had come over Dylan.

  “I thought you water-aligned Guardians were supposed to be so in touch with your emotions,” Julia said playfully.

  “I thought you air-aligned Guardians were supposed to be charming,” Dylan countered, giving her a challenging grin.

  “Fine, fine, if you get all huffy and decide not to give me whatever it is that you were just talking about, I’ll die of curiosity and not even be able to enjoy my birthday,” Julia told him. “You win this one.” She had to wonder just when she and Dylan had become actual friends again; it had sneaked up on her at some point between the ongoing tension at Sandrine, the power surges, and the attention from seemingly everyone about coming into her full abilities as a Guardian.

  When she’d gotten home the night before, Julia had another five invitations to visit with various high
-ranking families during winter break, and the way they were worded made her feel more like they were demands than requests.

  Dylan stood and gestured for Julia to wait; she watched as he walked down the short hallway to his room, and wondered what it could possibly be that he had gotten for her. He came back out a few moments later with a flat, wrapped box in his hands, and Julia felt her heart beating a little faster with anticipation at what it could possibly be. He’d chosen silver and gold paper to wrap the box, and a deep blue ribbon. Probably got someone to wrap it for him, Julia thought, but the care in it made her smile nonetheless. I need to remember to get him something good for his birthday.

  “Unwrap it,” Dylan said, handing it to her. Julia appreciated the effort put into the wrapping for a moment more, and then untied the bow of the ribbon, gathering up the soft material in one hand. She tore open the paper and then lifted the lid on the box. Julia stared at the box’s contents: nestled into black fabric, the white and black artwork of Foo Fighters’ One by One sat, a copy of the vinyl that would have been pristine if not for the scribbled signatures splashed across the white space. It was autographed.

  “You saw this somewhere?” Julia looked up, torn between frowning in confusion and smiling in unbelievable elation.

  “Well, I saw the vinyl,” Dylan said. He half-smiled, looking at her intently. “And then I asked my manager if he could get it signed for me, for a friend.” Julia looked down at the album once again, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “I can’t believe you remembered,” she said, staring at the evidence in front of her. Before they’d had the fight that had ended their friendship, Julia had spent most of a semester listening to the album; she’d had a crush on a fire-aligned Guardian, Andrew Masters, who had loved Foo Fighters and sent her what he’d called “the ultimate Foo playlist,” from which point she’d delved in the discography until she found her favorite album.

  “Of course, I remembered,” Dylan said, and Julia looked up to see him making a face, rolling his eyes and grinning. “Look at the back.”

  Julia frowned and did as he asked. If you’re ever at one of our shows, come back and say hi! “How in the hell did—what?” Julia looked up in shock.

  “Apparently, Lisa is really good friends with Dave’s wife,” Dylan said with a shrug. “She said that I just have to mention her if we make it out to a Foos show, and they should know to let us back.”

  Julia sat down, briefly too stunned to even think of what to say. The gift that Dylan had given her was beyond anything she could have even imagined—she hadn’t even really thought that Dylan would get her anything for her birthday, and to have it be something so momentous was incredible. “You’ve accomplished something a lot of people think is impossible,” she said finally, looking from the new, beloved vinyl album to Dylan. He raised an eyebrow to ask her silently to finish her statement. “You made an air Guardian speechless.”

  After she put away the album carefully, Julia began getting ready for her night out, but she almost couldn’t make herself believe that anything she did that night would be as exciting as the prospect of one day meeting Dave Grohl. Nonetheless, she, Dylan, Magda, and Keegan met with a handful of Julia’s other friends at the famed restaurant where she’d made reservations, and if the group of teenagers was not the usual for Babbo, the staff didn’t treat them any differently from anyone else in the restaurant.

  They ordered more than enough for everyone: buffalo mozzarella with arugula pesto and olive oil, the salami selection and marinated sardines to start, beef cheek ravioli and bucatini all'Amatriciana, duck and rabbit, sweet peas with pancetta, greens with roasted shallots, and potatoes. For dessert, the table shared biscotti and cookies and an entire chocolate hazelnut cake with orange sauce and citrus-hazelnut sorbetto. They couldn’t have wine, but they were able to enjoy the meal nonetheless—it would have been difficult not to—and even if Julia had thought that there couldn’t be anything better than Dylan’s gift to her, she had to admit that her birthday was off to an amazing start as she sat back from the table slightly, full to the brim with delicious food.

  “Now, Jules, you’re not allowed to even look at the check,” Magda said, getting nods from the rest of the table.

  “Come on, guys! I planned for paying for dinner,” Julia countered. “I set aside allowance for weeks to make this happen.”

  “And we saved up money too, specifically to keep you from paying,” Keegan told her. “So when the check comes, you are not going to touch it, look at it, or even think about it in any way.”

  “You might as well give in,” Dylan told her. “No one at this table is going to let the restaurant charge your card.”

  “Fine, fine,” Julia said, rolling her eyes; but she had to admit that she was touched by the fact that her friends had conspired to make sure that she didn’t pay for her own birthday dinner. She checked the time as they waited for the change from their bill to come, and saw that they would just get to Terminal 5 in time to get into the show she’d wanted to go to.

  Julia, Dylan, and a half-dozen of their friends bundled themselves onto the D train and headed uptown, and Julia felt the strange, body-wide tingling that told her that she was going to have another power surge at some point. Of all the nights for that to happen! She gritted her teeth and looked at Dylan desperately, not able to tell him—not just because of the public venue, but also because she didn’t want the others in the group, especially the non-supernatural friends she had in the city, to know. He raised an eyebrow, and Julia pressed her lips together, trying to think of a way to get him to understand what was happening without having to say it.

  Dylan reached out and grabbed her free hand, hidden by the press of people in the subway car. Julia remembered what he’d done a few weeks before, when they’d secretly met in the multipurpose room, and let the cool, insinuating energy of his presence flow through her, letting him know what was happening. She heard him murmuring, and the tingling sensation seemed to abate, or at least assume a background-level interference, even as the cool fluid feeling of his energy washing through her intensified.

  She felt strangely peaceful, less excited—but pleased, indeed, that she wasn’t about to create a scene and reinforce for friends who already occasionally looked at her as if she might explode, vaporizing them, and how strange she was becoming.

  By the time they got off of the train, Julia was ready for the concert, and hopeful that maybe—she could put off the surge until after she was home. Maybe they would have to cut bowling short, but Julia was not for a second going to either get in trouble for creating a tabloid event, or deal with the fallout of her friends having a better idea of how her transition was going.

  As they crowded into the venue, Julia felt a body-wide tingling that had nothing to do with elemental energies and everything to do with her excitement at getting to see Greenlight Fiasco for the first time in years, since the band had managed to sign with its label and go on its first big tour. Just do me a favor, body, and don’t ruin this birthday for me, she told herself firmly, leaning slightly against Dylan. For his sake, she thought—since she knew she would need to keep siphoning off small amounts of his more calming, soothing energy throughout the night—she would call the celebration done a bit early.

  CHAPTER 14

  Dylan watched as Julia sorted through the mail from her campus mailbox, making faces every third or fourth item she same across. The car was scheduled to pick them up from Sandrine in a few hours, to take them back to Manhattan for the break.

  His parents had stayed in touch with him, sending him the occasional treat in the mail along with postcards from the places they went to; unlike Julia’s parents, who were mostly in one place, Dylan’s parents’ work took them to different corners of the world, evaluating newly-born or emerging Guardians.

  They’d started in that work when Dylan had left the supernatural world in favor of the music industry—to be better able to follow him around, to make sure everything was okay. Whe
n he’d left the music industry, returning to help Julia, they’d kept up their work, since they didn’t need to be home for him anymore.

  In the month since Julia’s birthday, she’d had six more power spasms, and Dylan was starting to be truly concerned about the slightly younger Guardian; each surge of power through her body brought more and more changes, though they somehow managed to remain subtle. In spite of eating almost twice as much as she used to, she was losing weight, which worried Dylan more than a little.

  He tried to keep her eating, tried to make sure she was getting enough calories to support the kind of metabolism that the air-aligned energy was starting to give her, but he had started to wonder if it was even possible to keep up with the way her body was burning calories.

  He’d called Ruth, quietly, in the middle of the night, from the multipurpose room, just a few nights before to express his concerns. “She’s losing weight like crazy,” he’d told the older woman. “And I swear she’s eating way more than usual. Are you sure something isn’t going wrong?” He’d dropped some weight when he’d gone through his own transition, but not at the rate that Julia seemed to be doing.

  “Her body is adjusting,” Ruth had said. “If she doesn’t stop losing weight within a couple of weeks—at least for a while—we’ll get her to the right people.” The Regina Undinae had been more concerned with the frequency of the power surges; six in four weeks was unusual for so early in the transition process.

  “They’re starting to normalize a little bit, but each one is still intense,” Dylan had reported to the old woman. “The most recent one she was glowing, head to toe. It was just good luck that we were able to get somewhere private.”

  “Does anyone know about what’s happening?” Dylan had considered that.

  “A few of the fae do,” he admitted. “Orla tried to keep it quiet, but it’s difficult for anything to stay fully private when it comes to the fae.”