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

by Maria Amor

  “We appreciate it,” Avani said. “We were just talking about some of the events coming up in the next few weeks.” Julia’s hopes fell, but she kept a polite smile on her face.

  “I seem to be getting invited to more than I could ever possibly deal with or go to,” she said, moving a little closer to the group.

  “Obviously,” Geb said, smiling slightly. “You’re the biggest thing going on in the world of air Guardians for at least a handful of years.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Julia said, blushing slightly.

  “You’re powerful,” Perga pointed out. “More powerful than anyone we’ve met.”

  “We haven’t met every one of her alignment, though,” Avani pointed out. She turned her attention back onto Julia and behind the big, golden-brown eyes Julia thought the other girl was evaluating her. “Of course, from what Auntie Karine says, you might as well be.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Julia said, shrugging. “I know that I’m not in a huge hurry to come into my full abilities in a few months.”

  “Why not? You’ll be able to join the council if you want to then, especially if you’re powerful like everyone says.” A quick look from Geb rendered Perga silent.

  “I don’t really want to,” Julia said. “It seems like a lot more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “I’m not interested either,” Dylan said. “I never was, really.”

  “Air and water-aligned Guardians aren’t always as ambitious as we are,” Avani told her sister.

  “I’m plenty ambitious,” Julia told the girl, taking a quick breath to moderate the hasty retort that rose up in her mind. “I just find politics to be boring.”

  “But if you could become one of the real rulers...wouldn’t that be interesting?”

  “Too much responsibility,” Julia said, shaking her head to underscore her answer to Geb’s question.

  “But surely, you’re interested in settling down with someone eventually,” Geb said. “Raising a family, things like that?”

  “Eventually, maybe,” Julia said; the attraction she’d felt for the boy began to fall apart. “But not anytime really soon.”

  “You’d be a very desirable partner for a lot of people,” Geb observed.

  “And one day, when I find one that I desire, I will make that person very happy,” Julia said. She was beginning to reconsider whether she would get anything worthwhile from the meeting with Karine—or her nieces and nephew.

  “Geb is old-fashioned,” Avani said. “He just wants our parents to make a nice arranged match for him, and get all the wealth and prestige.” Avani seemed to have decided that she liked Julia overall; at least, Julia hoped so.

  “I want to live my life to the fullest,” Julia explained. “Not be constrained any more than I have to be.”

  “Dylan—if I recall correctly—you lived that life for two years,” Perga said. “Did you like it better?”

  “It was about the same,” Dylan replied. “But I wasn’t exactly living my life to the fullest; once I had a recording contract, things were pretty damned constrained.”

  “There are downsides to not participating,” Avani said. Julia could feel some of the effects of her grandmother’s potion beginning to wear off; restless energy began to blow through her again, hard to control or suppress.

  “I didn’t say I don’t want to participate, just that I’m not interested in joining the council right away,” Julia said. “Besides, if I joined as soon as I gained my full abilities, I’d be a very, very junior member.”

  “There are benefits to that,” Geb said, glancing at his sisters. “We were just talking the other day about how Terron Dimitrios used the council to his advantage.” Julia’s heart beat faster in her chest, and she tried to cover the spurt of excitement that comment brought her.

  “The dean seems to have done well for himself,” she said. Did the three of them know what she was trying to uncover? Did they know what she was trying to do? Was the comment just bait—or were they interested in helping her? How much help could they possibly give, anyway? They’re not all that involved politically. They can’t be.

  “He has,” Avani said. “But some people say he’s got too much of the negative earth characteristics to make it last. Too much greed.”

  “I didn’t know it was worth so much money to be dean of a school,” Dylan said.

  “I’ve heard he’s received some fringe benefits,” Perga said. “But no one can prove anything.”

  “Someone on the council is obviously helping him out,” Geb pointed out. “But he’s going to lose all his allies if he keeps showing up to events half-drunk, bragging about what a success he is.” Julia’s eyes widened slightly. How did the three kids know anything about what Dimitrios did at parties? Could she believe any of them?

  “I think lunch is just about ready,” Perga observed. “We should probably go back inside.” Julia bit back the impulsive rebuttal before it got further than her uvula, and smiled.

  “I think so,” she agreed. “And anyway, it’s getting towards the warm part of the day.”

  “Your grandmother and our aunt have been friends for a long time,” Avani remarked, as the five of them walked back towards the house. Julia nodded.

  “I think my grandmother met your aunt when she was really young, right?”

  “Would have to have,” Avani agreed. “Ruth is way, way older than Auntie.”

  “I was surprised to hear you’d be visiting,” Perga said to Dylan, behind her. “Ruth never brings anyone—just talks to Auntie for hours.”

  “She wanted me to start meeting people,” Julia said, half-glancing over her shoulder. “And Dylan is sort of my companion wherever I go these days.”

  “Is it true that you caused a flash flood at Sandrine during your power surge?” Julia rolled her eyes.

  “Just a rainstorm,” she said. “It was windy. I think maybe one of the antennae went out, at most.”

  “But you don’t have any water energy,” Avani said with a frown.

  “Dylan helped me through the power surge,” Julia explained.

  “Oh,” Avani said, glancing at her and then away. “I suppose if he’s your constant companion that makes sense.”

  “I am adapting much better these days,” Julia said, her pride more than a little stung. “Of course, it’s nice to have some support when the energy becomes intense.”

  “Avani, remember what Auntie Karine said about Uncle Abdul’s transition? And how he caused a major earthquake?” Geb’s voice was slightly sharp, and in spite of her irritation towards him generally, Julia couldn’t help but feel relieved that he was intervening. “I can only imagine what Julia’s energy would be like, unchecked, and powerful as it is.”

  “For the most part I have it well-regulated,” Julia added.

  “We heard that you have to stay with your grandmother during spring break because the council is afraid you’ll cause an ‘incident’,” Perga commented.

  “I haven’t caused one yet, and I certainly wouldn’t do it intentionally,” Julia said, keeping her voice carefully light. They’d reached the door back into the house and she turned a bright smile on all three of Karine’s young relatives. “But of course, I’m not at the height of the transition. Maybe the council is right.”

  She knew that she should be more circumspect, but the three earth-aligned Guardians had needled her. Julia took a quick breath and followed Ged into the house, feeling Dylan’s presence behind her, feeling his energy flowing in her direction. You need to keep playing along until you have a strategy, she reminded herself.

  Julia followed Karine’s nieces and nephew into the dining room, keeping her pleasant, “company” smile on. “Ged, Avani, Perga—you remember my friend Ruth,” Karine said, gesturing to Julia’s grandmother. “And of course, now you’ve met her granddaughter.”

  “And Dylan,” Julia said, not about to let her friend be slighted.

  “Of course,” Karine said, smiling at him. “Please—be
seated, all of you. The servers should be coming in with lunch in just a minute.” Julia waited for just a moment to see where the woman’s relatives sat themselves and took a seat at the table. She could feel the energy simmering inside of her, not quite enough to make the wind outside rise, but enough to make her feel restless and a little irritable. She took slow, deep breaths to attempt to keep herself under control.

  “We were talking about the School of Sandrine dean,” Geb said. “Remember him, Auntie?”

  “Dimitrios?” Karine nodded. Julia caught the sharp look her grandmother sent in her direction, and wondered if it was supposed to be a warning or an alert to pay close attention. “I remember him. From what I’ve heard, he’s not in favor with about half the council anymore—but no one seems to have the authority to call him to account.”

  “Why is that?” Perga’s gaze slid in Julia’s direction and Julia thought to herself that it was seeming more and more likely that the group of earth-aligned Guardians were trying to deliberately bait her, that they knew what she was up to and either wanted to help her without being too direct about it, or wanted to lead her astray.

  “Someone is obviously speaking on his behalf,” Karine said with a half-shrug. “I would love to know who.”

  “You don’t know?” Geb frowned. “I thought you were intimately connected with all the power players.”

  “I’m friends with many of the people on the council,” Karine said, “but not all of them.”

  “One of my friends said that he’s gone away from his roots—he’s collaborating with a Guardian of another element,” Avani said.

  “If he is, then he’ll get the raw end of the deal soon enough,” Karine said. Julia glanced at her grandmother; Ruth raised one eyebrow for just a moment, enough to keep Julia silent—at least for the time being. “There were some murmurs that he was hand-in-glove with some fire-aligned Guardians, but those alliances never last.”

  “I haven’t heard of earth-aligned Guardians having much to do with the fire-aligned,” Dylan said, keeping his voice as light as possible. Julia studied the flower arrangements on the table, trying to pay attention without being too obvious about it.

  “It’s an unstable combination,” Karine said dismissively. “Almost always some kind of scheme behind it.”

  The servers came in, and Karine apparently decided to change the subject; but Julia worked on what she’d heard all through the lunch, even as she maintained a steady stream of small talk. It was a lead—that was something that she had wanted to find, something that she’d wanted to pursue, for weeks.

  Of course, it could be a false bit of gossip; it might not be real at all, and Julia reminded herself that it could just as easily be bait to get her to show herself. But Karine was a friend of her grandmother’s—and Julia didn’t think that Ruth would have brought her to meet the wealthy and relatively powerful earth-aligned Guardian if there wasn’t something for her in it.

  Geb, Perga, and Avani talked about their school—their parents had chosen to send them to the west coast for education—and Julia and Dylan told them about Sandrine. “I’ve been going since I was ten,” Julia explained.

  “I started going a little before that,” Dylan added. “But I took two years off.”

  “It must be nice for your parents, for both of you to be able to come home so frequently,” Karine said. “I know my sister misses her children terribly.”

  “I thought you said that Lina planned on moving to Seattle to be closer to them,” Ruth commented.

  “She’s still working out the details,” Karine replied, and Julia let her mind drift slightly as the courses changed, servers coming out to remove plates and replace them with the next thing.

  If she could trust the information that Karine and her relatives had given, Dimitrios had some kind of involvement with a fire-aligned Guardian on the council; that was something that they could look into, but Julia wasn’t sure how she could turn it to her advantage—at least, she wasn’t sure yet.

  We need to figure out who it is, and how we can prove it, she thought, as she took careful, dainty bites of spiced chicken and minted peas. We still need to find a way to prove that Dimitrios is somehow duplicating relics as he’s stealing them. It seemed—for a few moments—like the number of things, and the magnitude of things, that she and Dylan had to prove was impossible.

  But then, Julia thought, it could be easy. It couldn’t be that difficult to find out who it was that Dimitrios had speaking for him; she still wasn’t sure how she could go about proving the thefts had happened, and how they’d happened, but it couldn’t be impossible. The duplicated relics would have to be different from the originals somehow. So, we find out what he stole, and then get someone to help us prove that the replacements are just that. But finding out what Dimitrios had stolen would be difficult too.

  Finally—finally—they left Karine’s house, and when Ruth remarked from the seat across from her that Julia was quieter than usual, Julia stirred herself out of her thoughts. “I think the potion is doing its job,” she said absently. “I’m a lot more focused, and a lot more thoughtful.” She glanced at Dylan when Ruth seemed to accept that explanation; obviously, the other water-aligned Guardian in the car wasn’t as convinced. Julia smiled at him, knowing that as soon as they were able to get alone, she would have a few things to discuss with her bodyguard.

  CHAPTER 24

  “I don’t feel at all like I had a break,” Julia told Dylan as the car started off towards Manhattan. They would leave for Sandrine the next day; after a week at Ruth’s home, Julia’s energy levels were much more contained.

  “There’s some kind of saying that ‘a change is as good as a break,’” Dylan pointed out. Julia rolled her eyes, shifting in her seat.

  “Whoever said that was wrong. And probably someone’s boss,” she said bitterly. She sighed. “At least some good came out of spending the whole break basically working.”

  “You got to sleep in,” Dylan countered. “You got to laze around outside and work on your tan a bit.”

  “I also got to meet a bunch of people who are friends with my grandmother, and their kids. Or their nieces and nephews.” Julia’s face twisted into a grimace of distaste. “But now we know that Dimitrios is apparently working with a fire-aligned Guardian on the council.”

  “But we don’t have any way to prove it, not yet,” Dylan said.

  “We know that it can’t be a minor person, if he’s being protected,” Julia observed. Dylan considered that point; he had to admit there was solid logic in it. “That one friend of Grandmother’s apparently hates him, and she’s Earth too.” It wasn’t Karine that Julia meant, Dylan thought; more likely Zola.

  Dylan had spent most of spring break working with Ruth, mastering skills that the professors at Sandrine no longer taught, either because they weren’t allowed or because they didn’t know the skills themselves. “At heart, you’re a much stronger Guardian, with much more powerful water-energy, than anyone has led you to believe,” Ruth had explained at one point.

  “I am never going to be as strong or as powerful as Julia and you know it,” Dylan had countered.

  “You don’t need to be,” Ruth said. “Water and air…they’re not destructive when they’re destructive, merely because of the intensity of the power, but because of their inherent nature, when out of control. Few things can stop air or water. Water can stop fire, and air has the ability to stop it or to blow it up. The mutability, the flexibility of your alignment is one of its major advantages.”

  He’d worked with the older Guardian every day, at least a little bit; going back to Sandrine, Dylan thought that some of his professors would be surprised at what he was able to do. He’d learned how to use his energy to lower the temperature in a room, how to infuse his energy into objects instead of just people. He’d worked with Ruth to improve the native clairvoyance that came along with his elemental energies, and deepened his sense of empathy—not in the sense of letting it take over him,
but focusing in to more accurately “read” others.

  Julia tore Dylan out of his reflections. “If Dimitrios is working with a fire-aligned Guardian, we need to figure out who to ask,” she said.

  “We can’t just walk up to random high-ranking fire-aligned Guardians and ask ‘hey, do you know anything about Dimitrios stealing relics and then duplicating them?’” Dylan looked in Julia’s direction, saw the tell-tale signs of her irritation. “I’m not wet-blanketing. I’m just pointing out that it’s going to be tricky getting the information from the people who have it.”

  “I know you’re right,” Julia said. “But the question is: how do we get that information? There’s gotta be someone who can give it to us.”

  “But there’s not anyone who’s likely to want to,” Dylan countered.

  “The first thing, then, is to figure out which of the relics he’s stolen,” Julia told him.

  “How do you figure on us doing that?” Dylan looked at Julia frankly. “I mean, it’s not like they let students just handle them.”

  “I know,” Julia said. She sighed. “We need a plan.” Dylan considered that; normally, at least in the last nine months, Julia came up with the plan, and told Dylan what it was, only changing it when he insisted that it wouldn’t work or when the situation changed. At least be grateful that she’s consulting you, he thought. But then: If she’s consulting you, then she’s stumped. And that’s not a great sign for moving forward.

  “What have you got worked out about it?” Dylan took a notebook out of his backpack and grabbed a pen out of the front compartment. If they were going to hash out a plan, he might as well take some notes.

  “As far as I can tell, there are only a couple of ways that we could even hope to find out which of the relics has been stolen and duplicated,” Julia said. “And not really any of them are all that promising.”

  “Let me guess,” Dylan suggested. “One of those ways is to find a way to get access to them.” Julia nodded. “Yeah, that’s not all that promising.”

  “The other thing would be to stalk some of the new professors and see if we can find out about one of them helping with it,” Julia told him. Dylan pressed his lips together and made a note to that effect in the notebook.