by Maria Amor
Then there was the question of Dimitrios’ friends who had put him in position to steal relics in the first place. Who had it been? And what were those people gaining from it? Well, obviously, they’re getting the relics. But why? “What would people want with relics from the school?”
“If they were sufficiently powerful, they could maybe use them,” Dylan said. “But I can’t think of anyone who could really use more than one or two—definitely not at a time.”
“We don’t even know how many were stolen,” Julia pointed out. “Or how to prove that they’ve been duplicated.” She sighed and threw herself down onto her bed. “So obviously, Dimitrios is doing this thing with the students to sort of—I guess—cover for the thefts. If a bunch of air-aligned creatures are being accused of thefts, then it takes the attention off of what he’s doing.” She sighed and scrubbed at her face.
“Same as he somehow convinced the council and the school advisory board that the professors were responsible for the thefts before,” Dylan agreed. “He’s using distraction.”
“It’s got to be some of the new professors, too,” Julia said. “Braden said that, didn’t he?”
“More or less,” Dylan agreed. Julia opened her eyes and stared up at her ceiling, willing the pieces of the puzzle to come together. If the “distraction” that Dimitrios was using to cover his thefts continued to go on, then more and more of the air-aligned creatures would leave the school—it wasn’t safe for them.
And if that happened, it would only be a matter of time before the air-aligned Guardians left. And that included her. On top of that, issues with one elemental alignment would throw things around in the council; it would create a huge issue, and that wasn’t something that anyone—at least, anyone with good intentions and full possession of their sanity—wanted.
“So, the thing would be to prove what’s happening,” Julia mused. “There has to be a way to demonstrate that something is a duplicate, and not the real relic.”
“I’m sure there is,” Dylan agreed. “But how are we ever going to be in a position to do that? And more than that: who are we going to prove it to? We don’t know who’s in on this.”
“It’s gotta be someone on the council—at least one person,” Julia said, considering it. “And obviously not an air-aligned Guardian. I can’t imagine it would be a water-aligned Guardian, either.”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” Dylan said blandly.
“If it were a water-aligned Guardian, my grandmother would know more about it,” Julia said. She sighed again. “We need to find a way to prove that the relics are being stolen, that they’re being stolen by Dimitrios—and given to someone—and who’s profiting from it.” Julia laughed bitterly. “With all that free time we have outside of class.”
“Braden told me you need to be careful, stay under the radar,” Dylan pointed out.
“I know, I know,” Julia said. She rolled her eyes. “But you know I can’t do that.”
“Of course not,” Dylan said. “I tried to tell him, but I think he’s worried about what will happen to us if we dig too deep.”
“I’m worried about what will happen to us if this keeps going on,” Julia countered. “We don’t have forever to figure this out, and you know—as well as I do—that eventually Dimitrios is going to have to ante up the distraction factor.”
“What do you think he’s going to do?” Julia shrugged.
“He’s going to start making things worse, like some kind of bizarre arms race,” she replied. “And even if we don’t dig too deep, he might come after us for what we already know. And if not for that, then because I’m an air-aligned Guardian, and my grandmother is someone big.”
“Ruth is one of the four biggest people in our entire world,” Dylan said. Julia twisted around on her bed to look at him. Her parents had long since decided to trust the two of them alone in the apartment, even alone in her room. Before this whole business with coming into my abilities and Grandmother’s paranoia, they would never in a million years have been okay with me being alone in my bedroom with a boy.
“There has got to be a way to figure this out,” Julia insisted. “We know what we need to get, and do, and discover. Just not how to do it.” She pressed her lips together and picked at imaginary lint on her bedspread.
“You can’t keep talking to teachers,” Dylan pointed out. “They’re already in the know. And if you keep doing it, then the wrong ones will find out about what you’re trying to prove. We can’t talk to students, either; not that I think they’d actually tell us anything worthwhile.” Dylan sighed.
“Okay,” Julia said. She worried her bottom lip, wiggling it between her top and bottom teeth, as she considered her options. “We need to find someone who would know about the relics, who would know how a person could just...duplicate a relic,” she said finally. “And we need to find someone who could tell us who Dimitrios’ connections are.”
“Both of those things sound like incredibly bad ideas,” Dylan said. “Just so you know.”
“Why? I’m not suggesting we talk to a professor about it,” Julia pointed out. “The first one…” she shrugged. “We might be able to find a witch, or maybe an older Guardian, who could answer it for us.”
“We are not bringing anymore Guardians into this,” Dylan told her firmly. “Even talking to witches is iffy, since they know what we are.”
“But they don’t know how to talk to anyone who would be in the know about Dimitrios,” Julia countered.
“If they’ve ever gone to Sandrine, they’d know about him,” Dylan said. “And that’s dangerous. We’re supposed to be keeping you out of danger.”
“No, you are supposed to be keeping me out of danger,” Julia told him. “I’m just supposed to be trying to be sensible.”
“How am I supposed to keep you out of danger if you keep doing things that put you in more danger?”
“Very carefully.” Julia gave Dylan a quick grin. “Come on, Dyl. We know just enough for it to be dangerous for us. If we know more, it’ll have to be less dangerous.” Julia knew full well that the argument made no sense, it wasn’t logical, but she also knew that of the two of them, logic was more her strong suit than his.
“The only reason that Braden told me what he did was to try and keep you from doing more,” Dylan pointed out. “And now you’re just going to put us both more at risk.”
“Get real, Dylan,” Julia said, sitting up and meeting his gaze. “We’re in danger—we’re at risk—either way. Dimitrios could decide tomorrow that he needs to separate us.”
“But the more you dig, the more likely he is to decide it,” Dylan countered.
“We need to figure this out,” Julia insisted. “Dimitrios is a threat to both of us. He’s a threat to the school. If he’s doing something with someone on the council, he’s a threat to all of the Guardians.”
“And since he’s a threat to all of the Guardians, people who are actually full Guardians should deal with it,” Dylan told her.
The words hit her like a slap, and Julia sprung to her feet almost before she knew what she wanted to do. She found herself standing over Dylan in the desk chair in her room, glaring at him, her heart pounding in her chest, her face burning. “Are you seriously sitting there gloating over the fact that you’re a full Guardian and I’m not?” she could hear the wind howling outside, but she couldn’t make herself stop. She couldn’t force herself to calm down.
When Dylan reached for her hand, she pulled back just enough to evade him; she could feel the insidious pushing of his watery energy against her and something in her mind snapped shut, something slammed down, blocking him. “I’ve had just about enough of you constantly wet-blanketing everything that I want to do,” Julia told Dylan tartly. She knew that it wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. But she was so angry at him—at what he’d suggested—that it didn’t matter.
“Jules, calm down,” Dylan said firmly.
“No, I am not going to calm down,” Julia tol
d him. “I didn’t have any choice in having you as a bodyguard. I didn’t have any choice in having you in almost all of my classes. I didn’t get to choose whether I even ever wanted to talk to you again when Ruth made her arrangements supposedly for my protection.” The windows rattled in the force of the wind, and Julia could feel the power coursing through her, caressing every nerve—annoying and glorious all at the same time.
“Have you ever thought that maybe you’d have gotten a choice in it if anyone had any confidence that you’d do the sensible thing for once in your life?” Dylan rose to his feet, obviously angry with her as well—though Julia couldn’t think of why—and she staggered back, unprepared for him. But she recovered quickly, remembering exactly why she was so fired up.
“That’s not even the point! The point is that everything that I want to do about this is just too much, too exciting, too—whatever—for you,” she cried out. Julia knew that if she let the energy have full sway for too long, the windows would break; she’d accidentally done it before, and her parents probably wouldn’t be pleased to have to replace the glass again.
“The point is that you’re determined to do something that’s going to get you expelled, or thrown into prison, or—or something—before you even come fully into your abilities,” Dylan said. “For someone whose elemental alignment is supposed to make you so smart, you are acting like a complete and total idiot.”
“Oh yes, because the guy who got himself put on probation because he couldn’t contain his energies, and because he snubbed his nose at the Guardian council, is totally who I want advice from,” Julia said sarcastically. “Don’t you see how much this matters to me?”
“Why does it matter to you?” Dylan met her gaze, staring back at her defiantly. “Does it matter because you honestly care about the changelings, or about the air-aligned students at Sandrine? Or does it matter because it’s a way for you to actually earn some of the attention that gets thrown at you all the time?”
“I don’t want the attention,” Julia insisted. “I would really rather be freaking left alone! But if my own kind is being made into a—a—a scapegoat,” Julia felt her cheeks burning with embarrassment that the boy in her room had briefly deprived her of the ability to remember a word. “If my own kind is being abused by the dean of the school, then someone needs to do something about it, and obviously, no one else the hell is!”
“Why can’t you just wait a little bit?” Dylan shook his head. “Why can’t you lie low until we can find things out the careful way, the slow way, and then take it to Ruth? If anyone can do something about this it’s her—what are you even going to do if you manage to find out what the deal is?”
“I’m going to take it to the council,” Julia said hotly. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Who on the council? You have to get someone to give you a general audience, and they have to believe you. Who’s going to believe you over a grown man who’s also—remember—the dean of the school?”
“I will figure that out once I know how to prove what he’s been doing,” Julia said. She could feel her blast of temper starting to evaporate. “Stop trying to make me be—I don’t know…” The fact that she couldn’t express herself clearly—something she’d done her entire life—was so incredibly frustrating that Julia let out a little scream; the wind outside echoed it, and she knew that she was dangerously close to pushing the energies that flowed through her into danger.
“Calm. Down.” Dylan grabbed her shoulders and Julia tried to break free, but his grip was too strong; his energy flowed through her, cooling her off, like ice down her spine. She felt the rush of his emotions: fear, frustration, anger, excitement, concern—and even, strangely, a kind of affection that she couldn’t name—and the wind outside didn’t quite die; but just as abruptly as it had risen, Julia heard rain join it, spattering against the window in a torrent.
“I want you to promise me that this is the last time you wet-blanket me over this,” Julia said. Even without Dylan’s influence, she knew she’d exhausted her anger at him, at her inability to move forward in finding out how to take Dimitrios out.
“You just asked a water-aligned Guardian not to do what water does,” Dylan pointed out wryly.
“You’ve been telling an air-aligned Guardian not to do what air does,” Julia countered.
“I know,” Dylan said. “I know. But if I can’t keep you safe, then we’re both screwed.”
“You don’t have to keep me safe,” Julia told him.
“I do,” Dylan insisted. “Your grandmother put me up to it. And more to the point—if I don’t have her on my side, the council is going to revoke my probation, and label me an unstable Guardian, and I’m going to have to go away. Like—away, away.”
“I didn’t know they were planning on that,” Julia admitted.
“Not formally,” Dylan said. “And not officially. But they were starting to get there.”
The rain began to peter off, and Julia broke away from Dylan’s grip, staggering to her bed and throwing herself down onto it. She was grateful for the jeans she’d chosen to wear in place of a skirt or dress—she had so few opportunities at Sandrine to wear pants, she tried to take as many chances as she could outside of school to do it.
“We need to find a way to do this,” Julia said. “We need to figure out how he’s duplicating the relics, and we need to find out who’s helping him out, who’s above him.” She met Dylan’s gaze. “At this point, the only way out is through.” Dylan stared back at her for a few moments and then—reluctantly—nodded.
“At this point,” Dylan said, sitting down in the chair he’d abandoned, “I will give you that.”
“So we’re moving forward?” Julia raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to try and keep pulling rank on me, and pushing me to stop?”
“If you’ll let me point out when something is too crazy,” Dylan said, “then I can agree to that. We need to get this done and over with since no one else is doing it. And since you’re obviously not going to quit this until you get to the end of it.” Julia smiled wryly. After the surge of power through her, after—she admitted—her tantrum, her moment of temper, she felt exhausted. It had been a longer day than she’d thought possible, and they were no closer to knowing exactly how they were going to prove anything at all about Dimitrios.
“We need a change,” Julia told him. “We need to change this around and find a new strategy.”
“No more maybes,” Dylan said. “And you keep me in the loop on your plans—don’t just tell me about them right before you need me.”
“Fine,” Julia said. “It’s a deal.” She gave him a quick smile. “I am starving. Let’s go down the street to that pho place.” She watched Dylan sizing up the possibility.
“Might as well,” he said. “We’re going to be grounded for the rest of the weekend once your parents get home and find out about the freak weather occurrence.”
“We’ll just tell them I had a really bad power surge,” Julia said with a shrug. “But I could use some delicious soup.”
CHAPTER 22
Dylan was glad that the meeting that he and Julia had been called to was at Ruth’s house. He knew that Julia wasn’t going to appreciate what anyone in the room had to say; she’d been trying for weeks to find out what the story was behind Dimitrios’ scheme at Sandrine, to no avail. At least she’s being sneakier about it than she was before, Dylan thought, as they both waited for the meeting to begin.
Ruth had sent a courier to the school, three days before spring break, to inform Julia that she would be spending the entirety of break at her grandmother’s house. Julia had fought it—arguing with her parents late at night that if it was her break, she should get to spend it how she chose—but just like before, Ruth had all the purse strings; her options were to stay at school during break, fund her own way back to Manhattan, or go to her grandmother’s house.
Dylan glanced at Julia. She was about six months away from attaining her full abiliti
es as a Guardian, and it was becoming more and more obvious to him that she was going to be powerful in her alignment indeed. She’d focused more and more on controlling her abilities through the semester, letting her grades in her academic courses remain somewhat on the backburner; she never neglected them enough to get lower than a high B or a low A in the class, but as more and more air-aligned energy coursed through her, and surged into her body at awkward times, her determination to gain some form of control over her abilities increased. Dylan had watched her carefully, reporting on occasion to Ruth about the way that Julia seemed to be changing.
The essential parts of her personality—her stubbornness, her intelligence, her sense of humor—hadn’t gone away, but her temper was getting worse; and Dylan knew that he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Added to that, he knew that Julia was barely sleeping, even though she made a concerted effort not to bother him—he’d been alerted in the middle of the night more than once that she was out of her dorm after lights out.
Fortunately, she’d never been discovered anywhere that would lead the dean or the new professors to think that she was trying to get information on their activities, but the mere fact of her being out of the dorm buildings when everyone was supposed to stay in their actual rooms had been trouble enough.
Ruth came into the living room, and Dylan could feel the weight of the woman’s energy radiating out of her, pressing on him. Seated on the couch next to him, Julia stiffened, and Dylan could see the faint glowing of her own energy, like sunlight under her skin, flicker slightly—dimming and then coming back. “Julia,” Ruth said, making her way with surprising steadiness to her favorite chair. “You will take three deep breaths and you’ll calm yourself, or I will do it for you.”
“You got me to come here,” Julia said firmly. “You don’t get to dictate the way I feel while I’m here.”