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

by Maria Amor

  “You’re correct that I can’t—rightfully—make you feel any way other than how you feel,” Ruth conceded. “But if the wind you’re raising harms the plants I’ve spent so much time cultivating, you will pay out of your own pocket for them to be repaired or replaced. And if you break one of my windows, that will be the same.” Julia scowled at the older woman and Dylan thought about using the trick that Ruth had taught him, just for the sake of keeping the emotional atmosphere at least somewhat calm.

  In a moment, however, Julia took a deep breath and the wind seemed to dampen down a little outside of the house. The glow of air-aligned energy began to dim somewhat, and some of the tension left the room. “Fine,” Julia said, and if her voice was tight, her expression had lost some of its scowl.

  “I’m glad you made the decision to come and see me,” Ruth said, sitting down. “There are a few things we need to discuss.”

  “Like what?” Dylan glanced at the entrance into the living room; Ruth was almost certainly going to have a member of her household staff bringing in some form of refreshments soon—probably not coffee, given Julia’s temper, but something.

  “A few things,” Ruth repeated. “One of them is how volatile you’re becoming, Julia.”

  “I’ve got so much energy flowing through me that I almost don’t even notice power surges anymore,” Julia told the older woman. “I’m doing my best to keep it under control.”

  “I know that,” Ruth said. She softened slightly, and Dylan wondered if Julia had any idea of the worry, the love, that radiated out of the woman in spite of the expression on Ruth’s face. “I remember how difficult it was when I entered the last year before achieving my full abilities. Trust me, girl, I know how difficult it can be.”

  “So why am I here?” Julia crossed her arms over her chest and Dylan resisted the temptation to sigh at how obstinate she was being.

  “Julia, let her talk,” he said quietly.

  “You’re here in part because this is one of the few places reasonably close to your home where your energies can be contained,” Ruth told her matter-of-factly. “If you stayed in Manhattan, with everything going on right now—at this part of your development as a Guardian—there is a risk that you’d bring attention to our existence. That’s the opinion of the council.”

  “So I’m out in the middle of nowhere so I don’t pull an Akira,” Julia said dismissively.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ruth said, sitting back in her chair slightly, “but there were some concerns that you might cause a windstorm that couldn’t be explained, or that your energy would run out of control sufficiently to create an ‘incident’.”

  “That’s basically what I mean,” Julia said. Dylan suppressed a smile.

  “You’re here to insulate your energies until you can be back at Sandrine,” Ruth said. “If you gain more control over your abilities and energy, then you can spend most of summer in Manhattan, the same as always. But for now—you’re volatile, and clearly not able to completely control your output.”

  “I sound like a broken robot,” Julia commented sulkily.

  “I had to spend some time out of the city when I was coming into my abilities,” Dylan pointed out. “And I’m not as powerful in my element alignment as you are.”

  “When I was coming into my full abilities, I didn’t have the option,” Ruth added. “I had to remain—as you kids say—out in the boonies, until I had full control. I wasn’t even allowed to attend school.”

  “I’m not a danger to anyone,” Julia protested.

  “Another reason I need you here for the week is political,” Ruth said. “You need to start making contacts on the council, contacts of your own.”

  “More of those stupid parties? Every one of them is the exact same,” Julia told the older woman. Dylan didn’t resist the smile that twisted his lips at the complaint. She’d been eager enough to go to the parties when she thought she could get information from someone—but now that she had more or less whatever information she could get to advance her agenda from the people at the high society events, Julia was more than bored by them.

  “Not the parties,” Ruth said. “You’ll be meeting with different members of the council when they come and visit me. And when I visit them.”

  “So I don’t get any kind of vacation at all, is what you’re saying.” Ruth pinned Julia down with a green-eyed stare, and Dylan once more felt the impressive weight of the older woman’s energy suffusing the room.

  “I would have thought—given what you’re trying to do—that you’d be glad to meet with people who could give you some insight into Dean Dimitrios’ life outside of the school,” Ruth said tartly. “I would have also thought that you would enjoy the chance to meet with the people who might actually be able to do something about that situation.”

  “You know about that,” Dylan said, the smile falling off of his face.

  “I do,” Ruth said. “Braden contacted me when he spoke to you a few weeks ago.” The older woman sighed. “I can appreciate why you feel the need to do what you’re doing; there is obviously a good bit of corruption going on in the highest orders of our society. That’s a problem, and it’s not really one that a sixteen-year-old girl and an almost-seventeen-year-old boy should be solving on their own.”

  Ruth paused to let her words sink in, and Dylan looked at Julia to see how his friend was taking them. He could see the rebellion in her hazel-toned eyes, but she didn’t try to interrupt. “However, since the two of you are obviously committed to doing something about it, I thought that I would rather help you than have you both end up facing the consequences of failure.”

  “Consequences of failure?” Julia frowned, and Dylan felt a little trickle of victory that something had managed to cut into the girl’s ambition and determination.

  “You didn’t think that a man like Dimitrios—or whoever is backing him, man or woman—would just let you try and bring the whole operation down, did you?” Ruth raised a salt-and-pepper eyebrow. “The person backing him has to be someone on the council, and they have to be profiting from it in some way. If you bring accusations without having any kind of backing, you’re just going to paint a target on yourself. If you get caught before you have proof or even make accusations, you’ll be doing the same. For right now, you need to be amassing political power.”

  “Politics,” Dylan said, making a face.

  “Yes, Dylan, politics,” Ruth agreed. “Nothing in the world happens without some kind of politics accompanying it, and in our world—smaller as it is—that is even more intensely true. You two are going to meet with different members of the council, and you’re going to make good impressions, and you are going to discreetly get more information about what it is you need to prove.”

  “So, you support me in finding it out?” Ruth shrugged in response to Julia’s question, and Dylan stared at the fact that the older woman had actually shrugged.

  “I support someone finding out, and preventing a major diplomatic incident in our world,” Ruth said. “I support Dimitrios and his friends being punished and disgraced. And if you are determined to do it, I support you in that—because if I don’t support you, then you’re liable to end up dragging the family down into the mud when they pull you into the gutter.”

  “Thanks for that vote of confidence,” Julia said blandly. Dylan snorted, and pressed his lips together to suppress a chuckle.

  “I have confidence in your ability to find it out,” Ruth said. The older woman half-smiled. “What I don’t trust is your resources as a sixteen-year-old girl who’s spent her entire life going to private schools and trolling around New York City without a real care in the world.” Dylan didn’t suppress his laugh at that apt description; Julia turned a scowl on him.

  “Fine,” she said, and Dylan saw the tension in her jaw. And this is where she decides that she’s going to do it her own way, just to spite Ruth, and I have to be the one to figure out how to keep her in line. “We will do it yo
ur way, Grandmother.” Dylan looked at her in shock.

  “I’m going to hold you accountable to that promise, Julia,” Ruth said.

  “I know you will,” Julia said brightly. Dylan glanced at Ruth, wondering if the older woman was going to let Julia’s obvious intentions go unremarked.

  “Your parents are bringing you some clothes appropriate to the meetings we’re going to have this evening,” Ruth said. “In the meantime, I’ve had a friend—a water Guardian who has a family background of air-aligned Guardians—help me to concoct a potion for you.” Dylan and Julia both grimaced. Water-aligned creatures, including Guardians, specialized in making potions; it was one of his classes at Sandrine. But most potions didn’t even aspire to taste good.

  “Why do I need a potion?”

  “It will help you regulate your energy,” Ruth explained. “There’s enough of it in the house to help you through the meetings we have this week.” The older woman’s expression softened slightly again. “It should also help you get real, restful sleep.” Dylan glanced at Julia; that aspect of her “blossoming” as they called it at Sandrine had gone more or less unremarked, but he knew it was beginning to wear on the girl, and obviously, Ruth had either heard about it, or had concluded herself that it was happening, in spite of the efforts that Julia had taken to look clean, alert, and rested.

  “Thank you,” Julia said. Her lips pressed together, and Dylan knew that the girl’s pride had taken a hit, but he couldn’t help but feel relieved that she was getting some kind of help—even if it was high-handed. “I think part of my temper has been from not getting much sleep the past few weeks.”

  “The energy you have flooding through you right now makes sleep difficult,” Ruth said. “Water energy is not as bad, but I had sleepless nights when I came into my full abilities. My friend was gracious enough to help me when I explained the trouble.”

  One of the household staff came into the room, bearing a tray, and Dylan spotted some of the treats he’d come to like the best when they’d visited Ruth through the past nine months. The older woman slipped a small, cobalt blue bottle out of her pocket and extended it towards Julia. “Put three to five drops of this in your tea, and we’ll see if we need to adjust the dosage before we need you to be able to control your abilities in front of others.”

  Dylan fully expected Julia to rebel at the gesture, but she looked at the bottle and slowly nodded. “We’ll see,” she said quietly. Dylan had to wonder what was on his friend’s mind, and whether it would blow up—once again—in his face. It wasn’t like her to submit to anyone—not without a fight, and certainly not so readily.

  Julia was obviously tired, but Dylan thought there had to be more going on in her mind than just a desire to sleep, or even an interest in the help that Ruth could offer. You’ll have a chance to talk to her alone again soon enough, and then you can find out what new, doomed plot she’s come up with.

  CHAPTER 23

  Julia glanced around the room, trying not to fidget. The potion that her grandmother had given her definitely worked—but in spite of the suppression of airy, restless energy working its way through her body as the cause of her need to move, it was pure boredom. Her grandmother had told her that morning that they would be going to the home of one of her long-time friends, an earth-aligned Guardian named Karine; apparently, Karine was one of the more highly-ranked members of the council.

  They’d arrived at Karine’s home, a sprawling mansion forty-five minutes away from Ruth’s house, twenty minutes before, and Julia found herself wondering why people became so passionate about politics that apparently mostly consisted of sitting in rooms with people, discussing gardening and dinner parties and scandals at different country clubs.

  She managed to keep her composure, but every moment that she had to listen to Karine and her grandmother exchanging pleasantries about subjects that she couldn’t possibly have less interest in made it more and more difficult. The only comforting point was that Dylan had to be at least twice as bored as she was.

  Julia glanced over at her erstwhile friend; Dylan was sitting still, but it was obvious that he was less than interested in a discussion about daylilies—at least, to Julia it was. She shifted as minutely as possible in her seat, keeping her pleasant, approachable smile on her face and her body pointed in the direction of her grandmother and her grandmother’s friend.

  “Julia must be bored out of her mind,” Karine said finally. The older woman glanced in her direction, and Julia was taken—again—by how lovely, in a home-like, comforting way, the woman was. Unlike the slightly cold demeanor her grandmother tended to assume, even with her friends, Karine had a warm smile, and big, dark brown eyes framed by wrinkling skin that probably had been a pleasant bronze when she was younger. Her hair was still dark, though Julia could tell that it was graying, lightening around her face; Julia suspected that the earth-aligned Guardian dyed her white hairs. The older woman was dressed in brown and green, like many of the earth-aligned Guardians, but on her the colors looked rich, warm, and inviting.

  “No—no,” Julia said, smiling brightly at the older Guardian. “I just couldn’t really think of anything to say. The two of you are such experts.”

  “Julia lost most of her interest in gardening when she turned eleven,” Ruth said. “I can get her to weed the beds sometimes, but there’s no more starting her own seeds or asking me what would happen if I crossed this with that.”

  “Well, you have to be fair with her. That would have been about when her elemental alignment started becoming more pronounced, wouldn’t it? Air-aligned elementals rarely have a huge interest in getting their hands dirty.”

  “It’s more that I don’t have the confident touch that you and my grandmother seem to have,” Julia said, inclining her head towards the older woman. “I’m a little gun-shy after I lost an entire bed of nasturtiums.”

  “The fact that you even know what nasturtiums are is telling of how interested you used to be,” Karine said. “But I know better than to entertain one guest at the expense of talking over my other guests’ heads. Maybe you and Dylan would be interested in wandering around the back yard? I know my nieces and nephew are out there, doing something.” Julia tried not to look too elated at the invitation, and glanced at her grandmother, wondering what the right thing to do in that situation was.

  She definitely wanted to leave the quiet room, with the interminable discussion about flowers; but she also knew that there was some kind of political advantage to getting to know Karine, and she wasn’t—yet—about to do something to disturb her grandmother’s plans.

  Ruth’s gaze moved from Julia to Dylan, and she half-nodded, as imperceptibly as possible. “If you think we’d get along, I’d love to meet them,” Julia said to Karine. “Dylan?”

  “I’d be interested in meeting them too,” Dylan said, right on cue.

  “You can tell them that lunch will be served in about fifteen minutes, while you’re out there,” Karine suggested. Julia rose to her feet and Dylan stood at almost the same moment. She tried to straighten her clothes—a light, spring-weight blouse and pants that her grandmother had approved—as unobtrusively as possible, and went in the direction that Karine had pointed; Dylan following behind her.

  When she stepped outside, Julia felt the breeze and something inside of her relaxed. “What do you think?” Julia glanced at Dylan; he was tightening the ponytail he’d tied his hair back in as they continued away from the door, deeper into the terraced, well-maintained back yard.

  “I think that if my grandmother wants me to participate in politics, she needs to come up with something more interesting than sitting around and eating lunch,” Julia replied quietly. She didn’t know where Karine’s nieces and nephew might be, but she didn’t want to risk being overheard grousing, even a little bit.

  “No, I mean, about Karine. About the situation,” Dylan said. Julia shrugged.

  “I think that if every one of these meetings is like this one, we’re not going to
be any closer to figuring out what we need to know,” Julia replied. “But maybe if we play our cards right, we’ll at least get someone who likes us. Someone who could—I don’t know—get us in front of the council once we do know what’s going on.” She sighed and continued down one of the paths, listening for the different sounds, trying to place the possible nieces and nephew. Julia could hear people—roughly her age, maybe a little older—speaking, voices rising and falling in playful, engaged tones.

  “That would be the biggest thing,” Dylan pointed out. “We need allies in the council, especially if it’s someone on the council putting Dimitrios up to it.”

  “We need to find out who it is, though,” Julia insisted. She took a deep breath. “Okay—we are going to be charming, friendly, and nice.”

  They found the group—two girls and a boy—hanging around a pond with a garden around it. The girls looked similar to Karine, but only vaguely so; the nephew looked almost nothing like his aunt. As he turned to look in their direction, Julia had to catch herself when she nearly stumbled. Karine’s nephew was gorgeous, with neatly trimmed, thick black hair, a clean-shaven face, and tawny-gold skin.

  The boy’s eyes were so dark they were almost pits in his face, but oddly warm even for the depth of them. When he smiled, his teeth were almost startlingly white, neat and absolutely even, framed by full, firm lips. For just a moment, Julia had the compulsive thought to wonder what it would be like to kiss the boy; but she pushed it out of her mind almost as quickly as it appeared.

  “Hello,” one of the girls said. “You’re Ruth’s daughter, obviously. Julia?”

  “Yes,” Julia replied. “This is Dylan.”

  “I’m Avani,” the girl said.

  “I’m Geb, and this is Perga,” the boy told them. He inclined his head towards her. “We’re pleased to meet you.”

  “Your aunt wanted us to tell you that lunch will be served in about fifteen minutes by now, I think,” Dylan said.