I doubted I had the energy for our downstairs neighbor’s enthusiasm. My resemblance to the actress made her far too happy. “Maybe I’ll just come as a dead college student, killed by stress.” Robert sat up straighter, and I made myself smile, to allay his concern. “Don’t worry about me. You’re the one who has exams after the party.”
“My own suffering does not eliminate yours,” he pointed out.
“But allow my misery to enjoy company.” The dream felt far too significant to be about something as minor as exams. No, this was the Chariot, reversed in my reading—the defeat I would suffer if I wasn’t prepared. This was the Strength card, the environment of my question, only it wasn’t just Grayson’s class, or learning CM, or even my hopes for the future. It was something more. I knew it.
I just didn’t know what it was.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Liesel asked quietly.
I met her eyes and smiled again, locking down my worries where even her empathic senses couldn’t read them. “Right now? No. But once I get through exams, I’ll be fine.”
~
The grassy slope of the riverbank seemed to float in the light of the waxing moon, as though it were drifting away from the concrete world of dorms and classroom buildings. On the edges of the clearing, the oak trees loomed dark, marking the boundary of Geoff’s party. Whether Halloween or Samhain, this night was special to many people on campus—even when it fell in the middle of exam period.
I stood in the shadow of a tree, watching people go by. One last, unexpected warm snap had lured students outside, many of them dressed for the night, though not so fantastically as they would be for my department’s masquerade next term. Even if they weren’t saving their best for then, not everybody had the time or energy to spare for costuming, not with tests still hanging over their heads.
I had no such worries. Laziness had kept me from going to Ceridwen for something to wear, but I was basking in the deliciously light feeling of a burden lifted. My exams were done. I’d floated through the Palladian Circle’s Samhain ritual earlier that evening, celebrating the harvest and commemorating the long-forgotten departure of the Otherworld, and with that taken care of, I had not a care in the world until next Monday.
“Enjoying your freedom?”
I turned around and found myself backing up a step. Julian’s body was unremarkable in the standard college uniform of t-shirts and jeans, but in the clothes he’d chosen for tonight, his eyes were suddenly not the only unsettling part of him. I was very glad he didn’t choose that moment to meet my gaze. Julian looked as though he lived partly in the Otherworld.
As though he knew how alarming he looked, Julian smiled and smoothed his black velvet doublet with one long-fingered hand. I blinked; the spell was broken. “Nice costume.” Close-fitting black pants, high black leather boots—had he raided the theatre department? His black velvet cloak had a vivid dark green lining.
He bowed at the compliment. “I could say the same to you.”
I suppressed the urge to tug at my bodice. “Thank you.” After the Samhain ritual I’d changed out of harvest colors into a dark blue skirt, a snowy white shirt, and a black bodice that might be just a wee bit too snug. As long as I didn’t have to run anywhere, I wouldn’t pop the seams—I hoped. “This is just thrown together out of my closet and Liesel’s.”
Julian extended one black-gloved hand. “Care to accompany me? I’m in search of drinks.”
The leather shielded me from his skin, so that I might have been touching anybody. I wondered if Julian was deliberately experimenting with the gloves, so he could lay aside his usual avoidance of touch, or whether the courtly gesture just went with the costume. Maybe his roommate’s mannerisms were rubbing off on him. Speaking of whom….
“Where’s Robert, anyway?” I asked as we set off across the dead grass. “He vanished after the ritual.”
“Coming. He’s putting the finishing touches on his costume. The madman is coming as a leprechaun.”
I laughed. “A six-foot-four leprechaun?”
“Why not?” Julian released my hand to collect two plastic goblets of punch.
After making our greetings to Geoff, the party’s host, who was dressed as Friar Tuck’s Thai brother, Julian and I circulated through the party. Robert arrived, costumed as advertised, and we listened to him sing beneath a huge tree, his body wrapped around his guitar. To my surprise, he sang Irish songs—some new, some very old—about the conflict in his homeland, the three-way strife between Catholics, Protestants, and the Wiccan bloods who flocked there after First Manifestation. For all that Robert spoke loudly and at length about wanting to get out of Ireland and away from its issues, those troubles meant more to him than he would admit.
We moved on at last. I had Julian’s cloak around my shoulders—my shirt, while pretty, was not remotely warm enough—and curling my fingers into its green lining, I wondered how much I could read into the gesture. He’d come to me after his Combat Shielding exam; he’d unbent enough to ask me for help. One tiny step closer. Could I manage another?
Might as well try. “Mind if we talk?” I asked, and it came out pleasingly even.
Julian glanced sideways at me, but merely said, “Sure.” Without us discussing it, we widened our latest loop, so that it carried us along the bank of the Copper Creek, away from the party.
I wasn’t surprised. He never stayed long at those things. And I was just as happy to have this conversation without witnesses. Whether it was his costume or something else, tonight, for the first time in ages, I found myself seriously uneasy in Julian’s presence. Worse even than when he startled me at the beginning of the year. His clothing suited him all too well, with the gloves and the cloak and his hair silver-white.
Julian paused on the creek’s edge and pulled off his right glove so he could fish an empty beer can out of the water. Holding the dripping can, he frowned in annoyance. “I don’t have any pockets.”
“It might fit in my pouch,” I said. He crumpled the can, the tendons in his hand standing out, until it was small enough for me to slip in with my port and key. I watched as he stripped off his other glove and tucked it into his belt with the first, and by the time he was done I had gathered my resolve to speak.
“I know you don’t like people worrying about you,” I said, “because you think it means we doubt your strength. But it’s not that.” He’d stopped, and his posture spoke of startlement even if he let nothing slip empathically. “Julian—you’re the strongest person I know. And I don’t mean your Krauss rating, either. I think you can survive anything. But it has a cost, and that’s what worries me.”
His lips compressed into a thin line. Then he said, “Combat Shielding.”
“And everything else on top of it. But yes, that specifically.” I tugged the cloak straight, to give my hands something to do. “I don’t like what it cost you. And I’m not the only one.”
He walked onward, and again I could tell it was to hide his expression from me. “So what—you think I should back off? Kim, I can’t.”
“I believe you,” I said quietly. I let him stay a step ahead, enough to feel as if he had a measure of privacy. “But I’d like to know why. What are you preparing for, that makes you half-kill yourself like this?”
We were well away from the party now, the trees overhanging us and beginning to crowd the bank. I was almost certain Julian wasn’t going to answer when abruptly he said, “You’re thinking about Guardianship, aren’t you.”
It was one possible reason for his choices, but—oh. “I won’t even ask how you figured that out. Yes, I am. If I can get past my trouble with CM. You’re changing the subject.”
“No, I’m not. If you’re thinking of it, you’ve looked up the training. You know what it’s like.”
“But if you’re preparing to be a Guardian, why are you even in school? I need this. You don’t.”
Julian bent his head briefly, perhaps to watch his footing. “There are things I can l
earn better here. But Kim—” A muscle flickered in his jaw, as if he had clenched his teeth before going on. “Education is only part of it.”
“And the rest is….”
Robert was right; Julian only opened up if something pushed him. Normally I waited for circumstances to do it for me, but tonight I’d taken matters into my own hands, and for once it was producing results. “For ordinary Guardians—people like you—it’s different. A job, like any other. You go where you’re sent, and you fix problems because you can, because you’re the sort of person who wants to.”
It was more or less what I’d said to Grayson. “So why do you do it?”
“Because we have to,” Julian said, almost too quietly to hear. “The problems find us. Or we find them. And we can’t walk away, can’t tell ourselves somebody else will take care of it for us, because we have these gifts and we have to use them where we can, to help people. They encourage that in our training, but the truth is they don’t have to; it’s just there. Part of us. Maybe just because if we don’t put an end to the problem, it might put an end to us.” He paused, halting the flood of words, the startling honesty. His next words chilled me to the bone. “My kind rarely lives to be old.”
My kind. As if the wilders were a race apart—not just humans with strong gifts, but something else entirely. Something more like the sidhe.
I bit my lip. What was the life expectancy of a wilder? I’d never asked. And no point asking if he wanted that life. From the sound of it, that would be like asking if he wanted to breathe air.
He stopped, and I walked on another few steps before realizing he wasn’t at my side. Turning, I saw him standing perfectly still, a black-and-silver statue in the middle of the path.
He wasn’t looking at me.
I took a hesitant step toward him, and then another. “Julian?”
No answer. I’d never touched Julian without permission, not once in more than two years of knowing him—but I reached out now to put my hand on his tense shoulder.
He threw me off with enough force to send me stumbling into a tree. Even as I hit the trunk, something went wrong. Julian twisted, crying out, his whole body contorting. The air around us turned black. Storm clouds appeared out of nowhere, blotting out the stars and moon, and let loose a torrent of cold rain. Julian stumbled, fell to one knee, lurched to his feet. He clawed frantically at his body, as if trying to tear something off his back; his nails caught the velvet of his doublet, splitting the seams, ripping it off. The rain plastered his white shirt to his back before it joined the remains of his doublet on the muddy ground.
Julian collapsed to his knees on the dead grass beside the stream, raking his own skin bloody. Clinging for support to the tree behind me, I desperately centered myself and threw a telepathic shield over him.
It had no effect.
Whatever was attacking him slid through my shield like water, as if it weren’t even there. Dropping it, I gasped for air. Julian convulsed, his hands slamming into the earth. If I didn’t do something—
Without thinking, I centered myself, drew power, and flung a magical shield over Julian.
The instant it went up, something slammed into it. I would’ve fallen if it weren’t for my death grip on a low branch. Remembering what Julian said, I tried to sink the energy into the ground, but it was even harder than I’d imagined. This was a magical attack, and the fact that I’d gotten the shield right for the first time in my life didn’t make me prepared. My protection bowed, nearly snapped. I gritted my teeth and hung on, but I wouldn’t last for long, and all I could think of was what happened to a shield—and the one maintaining it—when it took too many direct hits.
Then a wild surge of power rushed through me, snapping my head back against the tree. I saw stars. For a moment everything was confused juggling, that thing almost breaking through, and then suddenly I wasn’t in charge of the shield any more. I was swept along, energy draining out of me at an unbelievable rate, pulled out by Julian—gods and sidhe, the power in him….
The force vanished.
I fell to my knees and hit a rock, but the pain didn’t register. I crouched there, shivering in the still, icy air, my dripping hair plastering my face. Finally I mustered the strength to reach for the tree and pull myself to my feet.
Julian was still kneeling on the grass of the riverbank. Occasional shudders wracked his body. I could see them chasing across the white, bloodied skin of his back; I had to get him inside, or he’d freeze to death. The rain was gone, the night cooling with frightening speed. But I couldn’t make myself move.
At length Julian grew still, his tortured breathing going silent. And so I couldn’t stop a gasp when, without warning, he rose to his feet. The way he stood there, how he’d moved, made me suddenly afraid to approach him. Not human. And whatever had just happened … this was his life, the kind of thing he’d been trained for. The Julian standing in front of me wasn’t a college student, not right now.
Without turning his head, he spoke. “Kim, go home.”
“Wh—what?” I managed to get out.
Julian snagged his soaked shirt from the ground. “Go home. It isn’t safe for you to be outside right now.”
“What about you?” I demanded.
But he’d already vanished, leaving me alone on the riverbank with only the shredded remains of his doublet for company.
Chapter Four
When I woke up the next day, I felt like the worst friend in the world.
It was nearly noon, and I was lying in bed, as if nothing had happened. Never mind that it wasn’t exactly my choice: I’d made it back to Wolfstone last night by dint of sheer refusal to pass out in the mud, but barely stayed awake long enough to give Liesel what I suspected was a horrifically confused account of the night’s events. Then my body pointed out it had given all its energy to Julian, and I went down like a boxer who took one to the jaw. And because I’d been looking forward to an exam-free morning of sleeping in, there was no alarm to wake me.
Liesel was gone. Right. Exams. But Julian didn’t have one today, so I rolled out of bed, staggered into the main room, and jabbed at my screen with a finger until it woke up and called him for me.
The first ring hadn’t even ended before the screen leapt to life—but the face on the other end wasn’t him. My heart thudded against my ribs. Robert never touched his roommate’s things. But my mouth carried on anyway, saying words I knew were useless. “I need to talk to Julian.”
Robert’s mouth twisted. “He didn’t come home last night.” His voice was low, strained.
“Didn’t—” He hadn’t taken his port to the party; it was still in his room, and if Julian had come home he would have at least picked it up. “Where is he?” I asked stupidly.
“I was hoping you could tell me that.” Too late, I heard the warning signs in Robert’s voice. “You were the last one to see him, Kim. What in seven hells happened? One minute the party is going marvelously; the next, with hardly a warning sign to raise our hackles, there’s a storm overhead that looks like the opening blast for Armageddon. We ran for cover, but before we’d even made it halfway to a building, the rain just stopped. And no one has seen Julian since.”
Fear danced along my nerves. Where could he have gone? To Grayson? Off campus entirely? “Robert, I—I don’t know what happened. You know almost as much as I do. We were just walking, and then suddenly there was something….” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Julian started to scream. I put a shield over him, only he took it over and almost burned me out—gods, he’s like a force of nature, I don’t know how he keeps it under control—but then it was gone, whatever it was. He told me to go home. Then he disappeared.”
Dead silence from the other end. Then—
“Fuck,” Robert said, and hung up.
I stared at the screen in shock. Then, furious, I dialed again. No answer. None on Robert’s port, either. I dropped my head to the desk, stayed there for several minutes, then sat up and called c
ampus security.
~
Would I see Julian again? Yes. When? Soon. Would I get an explanation for what had happened? Maybe.
I glared at my assortment of divination tools. Some help they were. A magic eight-ball would be more useful.
Campus security had perked right up when I told them a student was attacked—until I said Julian’s name. I could practically see the word “wilder” rocket through their heads, and after that, all I got was meaningless reassurances. Not that they didn’t care about him; they just figured he could take care of himself.
And maybe he could. But I couldn’t just leave it at that.
The danger had arrived, and I couldn’t tell whether I’d been prepared or not. I’d managed a full shield; on a normal day, I would have been dancing with joy. I wasn’t sure whether it was enough, though. And my attempts to play to my usual strength were falling flat. What the hell happened to the days when I could get actual answers from my gift? Dreams I couldn’t remember, vague premonitions, a random Moon in my cards, and then that one flare, the repeated appearance of the Tower—a spotlight, shined straight into my eyes. Too blatant to miss, but too simple to tell me anything of use.
Either I’d suddenly become inept, or all of this was of a piece, a pattern I’d tried so hard to see that I missed it entirely: the future was so uncertain that no clear pattern could be seen.
Except one. The Tower.
Sudden, destructive change.
Spots swam before my eyes; I jerked and started breathing again. I put my cards into their box, my hands moving mechanically. Then I kept going, picking everything up and putting it away. Liesel would have cheered to see me being so tidy.
By the time I was done, I’d managed to put together one goal.
Find Julian.
~
Four days after Halloween, having failed at every method of finding Julian known to polite society, I threw manners out the window and went into the Arboretum.