Because his sidhe blood put him closer to the Otherworld than anyone else. If the geis really did maneuver wilders into the vicinity of an impending problem, this time it had put him squarely in the line of fire.
“They reached through and attempted to pull him into their world,” Robert went on. “And failed. But the critical point here is that the connection thus formed is to him and not to the place. Welton’s location facilitated the attempt, but nothing in the magic was directed at the land.”
It was a good observation, and one Julian hadn’t considered before. Kim said, “Right. They don’t seem to have been coming and going from that spot.”
“Indeed, I do not think they have. To continue: the line was established. And so when Julian cast his summoning circle, he was able to contact the Seelie. Time had passed; the veil had continued to thin. And the nature of the circle thinned it even further. Given this, and given that he did not resist the attempt, they successfully brought him into the Otherworld. The connection was solidified.
“Now we come to the second summoning,” Robert went on. “Julian must at this point be a beacon to the sidhe, the contact point between their realm and ours. Then he works another summoning—”
“With our help,” Kim finished. “We cast that circle together, shared magic. And we’re all friends anyway—a link between us.”
“Exactly.” Robert’s energy faded to grimness. “Julian was the contact point, but we are the next step out. My theory therefore goes thus: the sidhe are not specifically bound to Welton in any way. They are bound to us. Or, more accurately, to my esteemed roommate. They can only come and go in his vicinity, and they cannot go far from him without feeling uncomfortable.”
“Define ‘vicinity,’” Kim said. “My bedroom’s not that close to the hospital.” Then she cut her own words off with a groan. “I’m an idiot. It’s already expanded, hasn’t it.”
“I believe so. You were apparently the next in line. At first they may have relied on him alone, but now you are included in the contact.”
Because of Julian’s own attachment to her. No, it was more than that; he kicked himself as he remembered asking Kim to assist him after Samhain. Sending her out there like that had reinforced her connection. He had made her a target.
If Kim realized that, she didn’t say anything. “What about you and Liesel? Are you in the contact as well, now?”
“Impossible to say. We shall have to see if any of them visit us when you and Julian are not there.”
“But this won’t spread geographically,” Julian said, his voice low. “It’ll spread by the connections we have to other people.”
“Our families,” Liesel whispered. She looked sick. Robert must have told her this before they came to Wolfstone; it explained her uncharacteristic quiet, and her defensive posture. “And the Circle. We shared blood. Not much, but it’s still a connection. They’re all in danger.”
Kim rose slowly to her feet, expression bleak. “Gods. I’ve been wondering why nobody’s pulled us into protective custody—but that runs the risk of making things worse. The more we move around, the more the sidhe can, too.”
“But they could guard us,” Liesel said, her voice tight and wobbly. “Unless we’re just bait to them, dangled out to see what the Unseelie will do—”
Robert snorted, sounding like he was trying too hard to make light of it. “Never attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by mere bureaucracy. But Julian, can you do anything to move them along?”
He didn’t sound worried, but then Robert never did. The real warning sign was Liesel, sitting there with her arms wrapped tight and her face as blank as a mask. Julian was used to closing himself off that way, but on Liesel, it just wasn’t right.
“I can try,” he said. Guardians didn’t usually have time to call for reinforcements—the problems they faced were over too quickly, one way or another—but maybe this once, a wilder wouldn’t have to stand alone.
~
I made it to my pyrokinesis class the next day and discovered my studying binge had done me a world of good. It meant that I returned home in a good mood. I climbed the stairs, humming under my breath, and found Liesel dusting the room. I sneezed as I closed the door.
“What are you doing Friday?” she asked as I took my coat off and hung it up.
The question, so relentlessly ordinary, threw me. “Um, probably studying how to not die. Shit—tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, isn’t it?”
The dust cloth swept across a shelf, sending a small cloud into the air. “And the night after it is the Department of Telepathic Sciences’ Annual Masked Ball.”
Just like every year. Welton’s isolated location meant most students didn’t bother to go home for such a short break, so my department staged an event for our entertainment. Where the hell had November vanished to? The Otherworld, apparently. “You want me to go to it?”
“Yes.”
“Liesel, I kind of have bigger things on my mind. I don’t feel up to a dance.”
“People have been asking if you’re okay. Akila came by earlier, wondering why she hasn’t seen you at Div Club in weeks. And why you haven’t been answering your messages. Do you want them to think something bad is happening?”
“Something bad is happening,” I reminded her. “They’ll know that soon enough; we’ve got less than a month until the solstice. Besides, how could I go to the ball, knowing I’m putting everybody in danger?”
The dust cloth stopped. I winced, wishing I could reach out and take those last words back. Liesel turned to face me. “What?” she asked.
I considered trying to cover my tracks. I might have just been referring to my status as a contact point, after all. But this was Liesel. I couldn’t tell Julian about the dreams and omens; he’d only feel more guilty, and convince himself this was all his responsibility. I could tell Liesel, though, and giving voice to the fear festering inside me might do some good.
So I sat on the couch and confessed it all. I told her about Shard’s prediction and the dreams, from the ones my mother and Michele described, all the way back to mine from the previous quarter. They still didn’t form any coherent picture, but taken together, they filled me with a sense of dread. I spilled it all to Liesel, while she stood with her back against the wall, dust rag forgotten in one hand, and when I was done I felt lighter than I had in weeks.
“And that’s why I wouldn’t feel right, going to the ball,” I finished. “I can’t tell what form it’ll take, but I am in danger. And I don’t want to expose everyone else to that any more than I have to.”
Liesel closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. “The Unseelie won’t do anything then. It would be stupid. Everyone will be there, all the students and the professors—everybody. They’d be suicidal to attack. Wouldn’t they?”
I didn’t put it past them, but…. “I guess you’re right,” I said reluctantly.
“So go to the ball.”
“I don’t have a costume.”
My flimsy excuse did nothing to dampen Liesel’s renewed animation. “Leave that to me.”
“No, I’ll just go ask Ceridwen. She always wants to use people as dress-up dolls.” In my case, a Christine Rendal look-alike—but it was easier than finding my own alternative. I rose and went to the door.
“I said, I’ll do it.” Liesel’s voice was sharp. Attempting to look meek, I left the door ajar and, head bowed submissively, returned to my chair. Let her do this her way. Liesel turned to go out, but she was only halfway to the door when it slammed into the wall.
My personal shields flared as I leapt to my feet. Liesel let out a half-shriek. But it wasn’t a sidhe in the doorway; it was only Julian.
Julian, radiating anger like a heat wave.
And then Robert behind him, holding his arm protectively against his body as if it was injured, although I saw no visible damage.
“Shit,” I muttered, lowering my guard.
“I think we can assume I’m in the
contact as well,” Robert said lightly.
The guys came in and shut the door behind them. Liesel immediately took charge of Robert, leading him protesting to the couch and examining his arm. “What happened?” I asked Julian with a heavy sigh.
“Ask him,” Julian said with a curt nod to his roommate. I took a step back. He wasn’t about to lose control, but his anger was far closer to the surface than usual. It was a faint reminder of the insane fury I’d sensed in him at the hospital, and I didn’t want to think about that.
Robert gave a careless, one-shouldered shrug. Liesel had her head bowed over his arm, feeling for damage with her mind. “One of them was lurking around.”
“He attacked you?”
“That fool started it,” Julian growled, glaring at his roommate.
“What?” I stared at Robert in shock. “You—good gods, you attacked a sidhe? By yourself?”
Robert was trying to look innocent, but glee lurked under the mask. “I led him to the edge of the Arboretum so as to get him away from everyone else, then sent a little flick to let him know I do not appreciate being stalked.”
“Hell,” I snarled, and dropped into my chair.
“There was only one of them.”
“So what happened to your arm?”
Another one-shouldered shrug. “I was a trifle careless, and let a levinbolt through.”
Liesel’s head came up. I couldn’t see the look she gave Robert, but it killed some of the glee. “So I see,” she said. “You’re going to have a massive bruise there.”
Robert accepted this ruefully. “I shall do better next time—not that I plan on there being a next time,” he hastened to add. “In truth, I was rather curious to see what they were like. I do not know where that fellow stands among his kin, but I found him not that challenging, and had I been better prepared, I think I could have taken him.”
“And what if there had been more than one?” Liesel snapped.
“I would have run like hell, my lady.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that. Robert’s eye still held a manic gleam. I hoped Grayson was right, that help would be here soon. We just might need them to restrain our friends as well as our enemies.
~
I went back to Talman that night. With Julian, at everyone’s insistence. I didn’t mind the company, but being treated like something fragile grated on me. The touch of reassurance Julian sent as we came to the steps of the library wasn’t necessary. I went inside without hesitation.
The debris was gone from the front room, but there were still holes where the screens had been. Polite signs apologized for their absence without ever quite explaining where they’d gone, though the scars on the walls hinted at the answer.
Once we had a good stack of books, Julian and I took a few each and went down to the reading room to go through them. There was only one other student there, staring hopelessly at some vodou books and a few sketches of vévés. At first the quiet made my nerves hypersensitive, jumping at every sound, but after a while I was able to focus on my reading, and even to relax. Tense or calm, though, I didn’t find much of use in the books, beyond what we’d already guessed on our own.
Julian glanced at his watch as we left the library. “We have a little time before dinner. Would you like to walk for a bit?”
I got the feeling Julian’s request wasn’t an idle one. “Sure.”
“Let’s go back to Kinfield; it’s too cold to sit in the Arboretum.” That was for damn sure. Robert might be right about the danger attaching to us, rather than to the place, but I could at least be in danger and warm.
We trudged through the snow for a while in silence before Julian spoke again. “I’d like to finish the conversation we started last night.”
“If you want to,” I said neutrally. Curiosity was eating me alive, but I didn’t want to push it.
He looked off into the distance. “I think you need to hear it. This … may help explain some things. Some of my reactions to things.”
I thought of the hints I’d picked up from his mind during the healing and the fury that followed. Some of that, I knew, was from his captivity with the Unseelie, but the root of it was far older. I wondered if that was one of the “reactions” he planned on explaining.
Kinfield was a pleasant haven from the frost outside, and for a little bit we were occupied with taking off coats and hats and gloves, shaking life back into cold fingers—at least I was. Julian, as usual, was wearing far less, and never seemed bothered by it. He put hot chocolate on to heat, stealing from Robert’s stash, but it was more for my benefit than his own.
Finally Julian dragged a chair up to the futon and folded himself into it. I waited patiently. He studied his mug for a moment, hands wrapped around its base, before giving a short half-laugh. “Where to begin.”
“You could try the beginning,” I said, trying to defuse some of his tension.
Julian smiled wryly and leaned back. “All right. The beginning. I suppose that would be soon after I was born.”
That was rather more of a beginning than I’d had in mind, but I bit down on the urge to say it.
“What do you do with an infant who has psychic powers?” Julian asked by way of an opening. “You can’t teach him control. He isn’t old enough to even understand the concept, much less master it. And you can’t let him loose with his gifts either. So you’re left with one option: take them away from him.”
He took a quick sip of the hot chocolate and grimaced. I doubted it was from the taste. “I understand it, but that doesn’t mean I like the answer. They shield the infants so thoroughly they might as well be baseline. And they leave them that way for a very long time.”
I tucked my arms in tighter against my body, trying to warm the cold spot in my stomach.
“I could tell something was missing,” Julian said, his gaze distant. “You always know; it’s like you should have an arm, but there’s nothing there, and it’s confusing at first. Then you learn someone took that arm away from you, because you didn’t know how to control it. And they promise to give it back to you, but first you have to prove you can be trusted with it. And every time you fail, they take it away again, as punishment. They call it ‘stripping.’ We do too, around them, but to us it’s always ‘gutting.’”
“They can do that to you?” I whispered.
“Oh yes. It’s not easy to do, but it can be done. And they’re permitted, if that’s what you’re asking. For safety—ours, and everybody else’s. I told you, it makes sense.”
Maybe—but I didn’t blame him for not liking it. “So that’s what set you off. With the Unseelie, and in the hospital.”
Julian’s eyes were like grey ice. I was grateful they weren’t directed at me right now. “Yes. I don’t remember it very clearly, but I remember enough. More than I want to. Shielding me, blocking me from using my gifts, is … a very good way to upset me.”
Which was the biggest understatement I’d ever heard out of him. He would’ve leveled the hospital if he could.
“You should know, though—Grayson is a better person than you think she is. More compassionate.” Julian ran his fingers slowly through his hair, apparently searching for a way to explain. “Let me back up. I told you it wasn’t easy for me to convince the powers that be to let me come here, right?”
“Right.”
“They had reasons for opposing it, reasons beyond the obvious ones. If I came here, I was out of their control.”
I blinked. “I somehow don’t think you just mean they’re fanatical about your education.”
“They are, but you’re right. I’m talking about the shield. They set up the structures for it when we’re infants. Plant them in our minds, deep, where we can’t get at them. And they have the only keys. It’s far quicker and much more reliable than shielding someone the ordinary way; all they have to do is trigger the appropriate point, and no more gift. Until they choose to give it back.”
He wasn’t talking about the past anymore, a
bout childhood. He meant now. My body stiffened. “That’s barbaric!”
“It’s necessary.” Julian’s voice was iron-hard. “It isn’t easy to shield a wilder, not if you can’t monitor it every second. They have to have something like this, something they can trigger and then leave alone. But if I came here, what could they do? So they gave the key to the Dean. And they let me know she has it. If I misbehave, or seem like a threat, she has carte blanche to gut me until someone can come investigate.”
Outrage almost choked off my voice. “But—you’re an adult.”
“And I consented. It’s one of the conditions of my presence here. Welton wouldn’t take me, and the government wouldn’t pay my way, unless I agreed.” Julian’s knuckles whitened around the mug. “The Dean gave the key to Grayson when this mess started.”
“Did she—”
“No. She could have. Maybe even should have. When I was in the hospital … by all rights she ought to have triggered the shield and called someone in. It would have been safer for everybody. But she didn’t. She knew that gutting me right then would probably have driven me mad. I was close to it, already. And since she can’t take the damn thing down, it would have been days before someone came to free me. That would’ve destroyed me. So she trusted you, and dropped the shields.”
That night was burned vividly into my memory, but until now I hadn’t understood all its implications. I’d walked a finer line than I realized. And somehow, by the grace of the gods—or maybe by just sheer dumb luck—we’d come out all right.
But that didn’t make the basic situation any less horrific. “So wilders are slaves.”
“No, we’re not,” Julian said, with a touch of impatience. “The government’s our legal guardian; it doesn’t own us.”