It’s Jared who finally cuts in. “That’s enough, Storm.” And then, when Storm doesn’t seem to listen, Jared leans down and seethes, “You’re hurting Lucy.”
The air splits, as though the atoms have slipped a harness I can’t see. Spectral bones rise from Storm’s head, clear as day. I look over at Ali, watchful. Can he not see them now?
“You come in here with the guise of friendship and yet you wreck my house.” Storm drops each word, heavy as stone, with the cold deliberation of a judge. “You took my ward to Russia under false pretenses. You lied to her”—his eyes narrow in disgust—“and by doing so, you placed Lucy and Margot and Jared in extreme jeopardy.”
I try to sort through what Storm is saying. Did Ali betray me? I spent so many months being nothing but grateful to the brown-eyed stranger that it never occurred to me to second-guess his motives.
Storm’s grip on the table, three inches of hard wood, tightens. A crack rips through the room, louder than a bullet. Storm pulls his fingers back and with them come a splintered section of the table. He hasn’t even so much as stood yet. He tosses the end of the table at the wall where it whacks with a massive thud and punches a hole the size of a small child. Instantly, there’s banging on the locked door of the boardroom. A buzzer sounds, again and again, like an insistent pest.
If I thought Alastair was pale before, it’s nothing like this. Though I admit I’m curious at the way he sits there, breathing heavily but otherwise not giving away his fear. Not that I can tell, at any rate.
Storm tosses his antlers and stands, pawing the floor slightly with one leather shoe. The gunmetal of his gaze stays on Ali, and even I shiver as he dismisses the young man before him with a cold, “You let me know, Alastair Red Wing, when you and your followers of Cernunnos have something of value to offer the True Borns.”
The door bursts open. True Borns and Ali’s people spill awkwardly into the room. Storm steps forward and they scatter, pressing themselves against doorways to keep out of his way.
And we three are left surveying the wreckage of the boardroom and one another.
“Well,” Alastair says shakily. “That went well.”
Jared crosses his arms. “What did you think was going to happen?”
Alastair holds out his palm. Seconds later the stone he let loose flies up through the hole in the window with unerring accuracy and lands softly in his palm. He curls his fingers around it and hazards a glance at me.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he says quietly. And though I hear the sincerity in his voice, I don’t know what he’s apologizing for, exactly. And something else tells me that were I to know, I would not be very happy.
10
The stone benches in the courtyard have just finished drying off from the last rain, while I have just finished flunking my first-ever exam.
Margot slides down beside me as I hold my head in my hands and moan. “It’s not that bad,” she soothes. Her long hair floats into my field of vision.
“How can you say that? I didn’t even remember the exam was today,” I whine. I am not the twin who forgets tests, who does badly in school. But Margot was in her room studying for the past two days while I was picking shards of glass out of my hair.
These are not ordinary times.
“You should have called me. I’d have liked to have seen Ali again,” Margot muses, pulling at a strand of her long hair.
“Margot.” I eye her. “Which part of ‘disaster’ did you not understand?”
I’m out of line. I know this. But rather than call me out, Margot just snorts. “I like this new and irresponsible side you’re showing, Lu,” she tells me snottily. I make a face. “But really, what do you think he wants?”
“I-I don’t know. Not exactly.”
Ali said he was offering friendship. But the Fox twins know better than to take friendship at face value. Everyone wants something, as our father would say.
A long silence falls between us. Neither of us is keen to talk about it, but I know we both feel unmoored. Dependent on a virtual stranger’s kindness, parentless and directionless now that our family is out of touch, Margot and I aren’t sure what to think about this so-called “future” promised by our graduation from Grayguard.
Should I ever graduate, that is.
“Nash. Storm. The Watchers. Father Westfall…Alastair,” Margot muses out loud. “Do you reckon there could be a connection among them?”
I blink. Sometimes my twin surprises me with how similarly our minds work. The threads are there but hidden. And I have no idea how to tease them into existence. “What are you thinking?”
“Doesn’t it seem just a little convenient that Alastair should show up now, claiming to be a long-long relative of Storm’s—but not knowing Storm—to tell us there’s a war brewing? Does the Watcher insurrection count as a war?” Margot curls her pretty, pearly lip in disdain.
“You sound like one of them.” I toss my head back at the rooms filled with overprivileged children. I’ve surprised myself with my words, but I won’t take them back. We can’t afford their kind of attitude. It’s complacent. And complacency could get one of us killed. If nothing else, living with Jared and the other True Borns has taught me that. With a pang, my mind flashes to Jared as I’d seen him that morning. A shuttered expression to his face, as though he’d shut off everything he felt like a tap.
Was it so easy for him?
“I am one of them,” Margot replies evenly. “So are you.”
“I don’t get it, Mar.” I shake my head at my sister. I open my mouth to say more but stop when I spy Alastair walk up to us, bold as daylight. How did he get in the school? Visitors aren’t allowed at Grayguard, though Jared has broken in at least once.
He’s not alone, either. Ali has with him a companion. I take in the white-blond shaggy hair, as though leeched of all color. The pale skin with a dusting of freckles over the nose, eyes a light-light blue. He’s in a leather jacket, protection against the chill of the spring air, plus a pair of brown functional trousers that seem to be common to Alastair’s people.
Alastair, on the other hand, has dressed to the hilt. His leather jacket fills out across his shoulders. The shoulders are crisscrossed with stripes of red and black, so that in the brightness of the day it glints like the wing of a bird. Red Wing, I reckon. Under the leather is a good linen shirt, paired with smart gray dress pants. And for the first time in as long as I’ve known him, Alastair is sporting polished, proper leather shoes.
He saunters up to us, an easy smile on his lips for both Margot and me. He bows down before us like a story-time prince, taking first Margot’s and then my own hand and raising it to his lips for a kiss. Behind the pair, a gaggle of girls swoons over the handsome boys who have just broken all the rules and crashed Grayguard to see us.
“Mistresses Fox.” Ali’s dimples wink at us. His hair, usually an untidy mop of black-brown, has been swept aside with something shiny that scents the air with pomade. “This is Tomas.”
“Hi, Ali,” Margot chirps.
Speechless, I nod at the other boy, who acknowledges us with a somber nod in return. I shade my eyes against the brightness of the white-white sky. “What are you doing here?”
He winks. “What, can’t I visit my favorite twins?”
“No, you can’t,” I say sternly, tamping down on my panic. If we’re caught, our lives will become even more complicated, something Margot and I can’t afford right now. “You’re not allowed to be here.”
“Well, I needed to talk to you both.”
Margot rolls her eyes. “So talk. But then you need to scoot. Lucy’s right.”
“You Upper Circle girls are so rude,” he teases.
But I haven’t forgotten yesterday’s mess. “Rude? What is this, Ali? You couldn’t tell me all the time we knew each other, on the cruise ship, or even before, that you’re part of some weird druidic cult?”
“No.” A stubborn look comes into Ali’s eyes. “And I’m not part of a cult, Lucy.
I’m head of the cult. And it’s not a cult.”
Margot pinches the inside of her wrist. Her sign for trying not to laugh. But I’m in the mood to argue. “Why not? Why couldn’t you say something?”
“Because it wasn’t time.”
“And now it is?” I huff in disbelief.
Ali stares up at the blank sky as though looking for an answer. “Remember what I was saying about Cernunnos yesterday?” He shoos Margot and me over on the bench and sits down beside me.
I roll my eyes. “How could I forget?”
“Well, there’s more to it than what I said.”
Margot feigns a yawn and sounds bored when she replies, “You don’t say. Why don’t you tell us about it?”
Alastair’s facade of happy calm cracks. “Well, for starters, there’s the prophecy.”
That catches our attention. “Go on.”
“Here’s the thing. I told you that Cernunnos is the father of all the True Borns, right? But when he was making the True Borns, he also chose special traits in his servants, traits that we’ve cultivated for the millennia since he’s been gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘chose’? You make this ancient god sound like a Splicer doc.”
“That’s exactly it. He was some sort of Splicer. We just don’t know how. And the things he’s given us?” Alastair pulls out his pet rock once more. “Some call it witchery. Sorcery. We call it keeping to the old ways. Like dream casting, commanding the arcane elements.” A lock of Ali’s hair falls over his face. He holds the rock in his palm and, almost before we can see it, it hovers an inch above his skin before it falls back down. “One of our kind had a gift for Sight. She saw the coming of two girls who would be born special. Twins. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
Margot has gone pale beside me. Our fingers reach for and fold over one another. I squeeze hers reassuringly. “We’ve heard this one,” I say, my voice as bland as I can make it. “It’s nonsense. Father Wes told us this story. That it’s us who’re going to swoop in and save everyone from the Plague.” Even as I say the words, I think back to what we’d witnessed in Doc Raines’s lab. Maybe it is a possibility, but I’d just as soon not let Ali in on our little secret.
It’s in the blood. Evolve or die.
“What if it were true? See, we’re meant to be your guardians.” He says it with such sincerity that I can tell he believes what he’s saying. I burst into nervous laughter.
“We have a guardian, thanks very much. And a family, I might add.”
“Regardless of what you think, it’s our job to protect you. I’m not asking your permission.”
My chest seizes as I realize that maybe Storm was right. Maybe I’d been too trusting. “So that’s what you were doing with me in Russia? Protecting me? Why couldn’t you tell me?” I rub my chin, which is going cold in the spring air.
“Why do you need to protect us, Alastair?” Margot says. But her eyes are fastened onto the silent, pale blond boy with a gleam of speculation.
“For Him. For Cernunnos.” Alastair’s face positively gleams with the light of the fervent. I’ve seen this look before—most often on the faces of the preacher men and their followers. But those men are desperate, I think to myself. Dying. Is Alastair desperate, too?
“But why, exactly? What does your Cernunnos want? Why wouldn’t your God want the Lasters to perish? Then all that will be left are your True Borns.”
“See…” Ali scoots closer to us, his voice dropping so we won’t be overheard. “Truth is, there was another part of the prophecy that wasn’t stolen from our Seer. She said that the gifts from these girls would rain down on the people, showering them with unimaginable wealth. And from this rain, Cernunnos’s people will be able to claim back the world as their own.”
An all-over body shiver rocks me. I don’t want this to be true.
Margot scowls. “Rain doesn’t sound all that special. In fact, it sounds a lot like what already happens here every day.”
Ali tosses his stone up, catches it. “Think of it as an allegory. What’s most important here is that when Cernunnos returns, my people will be restored to their proper place.”
I think back to the pictures Storm showed Margot and me. It seems like so long ago now. And yet I can still remember vividly: the hair standing up on my arms as I studied the image of a figure at a throne, half-human, half-animal. The leopard men crouching at his feet. The trees, the same leafy variety that grew from the magic bombs stretching up behind them.
And then, with a jolt, I recall the servants in the image. Standing beside the animal men in their tabards and headdresses, the servants holding out trays of food and pitchers filled with some ancient beverage fit for a race of demigods.
Could this possibly be real?
A drop of rain splats on my cheeks as the wind picks up, turning from a caress to a biting claw. My mind buzzes and whirls so fast that I barely register the great roiling bruise-colored clouds rolling in.
“Flux storm’s here,” Margot murmurs beside me, gathering her things. The admiring girls in the quad pack up their books and screens, sending Ali and Tomas reluctant farewell gazes.
“But couldn’t your allegory have another meaning?” I blurt out.
“What?” Ali’s voice rises over the now-whipping wind.
“Your allegory,” I call back. “Why would one part of this so-called prophecy be allegory but the other not? It doesn’t make sense.”
“What are you saying?” Ali frowns.
“I’m saying, maybe your Cernunnos isn’t going to return the way you think he is, no matter what happens.”
Hands fisting at his sides, Tomas looks as though he’d like to strike me. But Alastair just tips back his head and laughs.
Margot rises in an elegant sweep and turns to plant a kiss on my cheek. “Great to see you, Ali, Tomas.” She grabs up her book bag with one hand, and with the other, she cradles the lit screen of her phone. “See you back at Storm’s.”
“Wait. Margot, where are you going?”
“I-I just— I’ll see you a bit later. There’s something I need to do.”
Margot races to the doors of the school, bending against the wind. Ali looks over to Tomas, who has been silent this entire time. The ash-blond boy jerks his head. Ali nods, and Tomas disappears after Margot.
Then there is just howling wind and drops of rain as large as cats. And Alastair. And me. Alone.
“Lucy,” Ali starts.
I busy myself with packing up my things. Regardless of what I said to Jared, being alone with Ali like this still feels like a betrayal.
“Lu,” he says again. It’s the tone of his voice that stops me in my tracks.
“What?”
“I want to give you something.”
I don’t say anything as he fishes a long, thin box out of his coat pocket. “Here,” he says, opening the lid. The wind whips my hair up. It curls around my face as though dancing with it. My skirt gets tangled in my legs. But I can’t help the burning curiosity I feel as Ali shows me what’s inside.
It’s simple. Just a small gold chain. Hung in the middle is a golden coin, so ancient it doesn’t seem real. I’m fascinated by the design, so like the old coins I saw in Russia, dangling from the ceiling of the old witch’s room.
“This has been in my family for as long as time. A millennia at least,” he tells me. “Alongside the Great Goddess, Cernunnos was keeper of life and death, the keeper of souls. He bartered for those souls between here and the afterlife with a bag of golden coins, which he left to his servants when he disappeared. The legend is that anyone who possesses one of these coins is safe from death.”
I ponder the gift. My fingers reach out to touch its raised, grainy surface. Knot work stamps the middle of the coin, which rises out into a set of twisted horns. Ali’s Horned One, I presume.
“Will you accept this token?” he asks. His eyes burn into mine.
“Ali.” I bite my lip. “I couldn’t possibly take such a treas
ure. This has been in your family forever, as you say. Why would you want to give it to me?”
“Please. Please, Lucy,” he pleads. He’s serious. My stomach feels like lead.
“No. Really.” I curl Ali’s fingers around the box. “I can’t take this.”
“Lucy, I need you to. It really is my job to protect you. Look, I know it’s just a coin on a chain, but I’m superstitious. My people are superstitious.” The winds toss Ali’s hair across his face. He shoves aside the strands, showing me a crooked grin. “If you take this, you’ll be making me look good to them. And Lucy, I really, really need to look good right about now.”
Thinking of Storm smashing his table against the wall, I give Ali a wry smile. “Not just to them, although a necklace isn’t going to fix things.”
“Right.” Ali scratches at the insides of the box and pulls out the chain. “I also know Mr. Growls won’t like this, not one bit. But think about it, Lucy. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
I can’t help but entertain the thought. Ali’s people had watched as he mangled a meeting with the most important True Born in Dominion and beyond. What would that do to a young leader who is supposed to be in league with the True Borns? Nothing good. If I can help with such a small gesture, I should. And then another thought scratches at the back of my mind. If I accept Ali’s token, would it make Jared jealous? Would he finally admit that he wants to—no, needs to be with me, hang the consequences?
I’m trembling inside when I say gravely, “All right, Ali. Fine. I can’t let you look bad in front of your people.”
I pull up my hair and bow my head as Ali places the chain around my neck and fastens it. I touch the coin. Its burnished gold surface is already warm from my skin, throbbing with a kind of life.
“You won’t regret this,” he says. But I’m already having second thoughts, and third. Jared won’t like it at all. If Ali notices, though, he doesn’t let on as he holds out his arm, gentlemanlike, and escorts me out of the rain, face lit with some emotion I couldn’t begin to name.
True Storm Page 10