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  Alayne stopped and faced him, shaking her head. “Jayme, stop it. I mean it. It’s behind us now. Let’s just forget about it, okay?”

  Jayme studied her face. “Deal.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled. He leaned forward and kissed her, sighing when they pulled apart. “Do me a favor, Al.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Next time there’s a sign-up sheet for a field trip, come sign up with me. This trip would be a whole lot more fun with you along.”

  Alayne nudged him playfully. “You’ll have fun anyway. Take advantage of the time and practice Air-Mastering. Maybe we can have some fun competitions when you get back.”

  “Nah. I’ll never get a handle on Water-Wielding, not even the little bit we’re supposed to get in Elementary Elementals.”

  Alayne opened her mouth to tell him that she’d mastered his element and then slammed it shut again. She’d nearly forgotten that she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. She hadn’t told Marysa; she couldn’t tell Jayme either.

  * * *

  The gong sounded in the common room that afternoon, and as the students gathered, Dorner’s hologram appeared in six places across the huge expanse. He wished the student body remaining at Clayborne well as he prepared to take his fifteen students to Cliffsides, and cautioned them to get the rest they needed to hit their studies hard in the new semester. “Professor Grady Sprynge will serve as acting Chairman while I’m away. Should you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to visit his office.” Dorner’s light blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled benevolently across the common room, and Alayne suddenly wished she hadn’t listened to her fears, and that she’d entrusted him with the knowledge of her Quadriweave abilities. I’m sure he knows anyway.

  All too soon, Jayme pulled Alayne close and kissed her. She watched as he crowded into the chute with the other members of his group. He waved to her through the glass, and they shot upward toward the shuttle landing.

  The rest of the day was dreary; Alayne was bored without cramming for exams. Marysa had gone down to Grenton on an errand for Professor Grace, and Alayne couldn’t pull her mind out of her slump to get interested in any books or movies. Students paired off in twos and threes, and Alayne felt lonelier than she had for a long time.

  That evening at supper, Stanwick Jones greeted the students from his desk in the Continental Media newsroom. The room fell silent when the anchor mentioned Clayborne in his news report.

  “Meanwhile, three former professors at Clayborne Training Facility for Elementals have disappeared from their respective homes. They were last seen within each of their private residences last evening, but have disappeared as of this morning. Sources say that some well-known members of Simeon Malachi’s Shadow-Casters were seen in the area before the abduction, and families up and down the coast are asked to use extra caution before leaving their houses.”

  Stanwick disappeared behind a map of the Continent. Blue shaded the region where the Shadow-Casters had been seen. Alayne’s thoughts lurched to a stop. The colored area included Cliffsides.

  Stanwick reappeared. “Their families have asked that any information anyone has be sent to the tipline whose number appears at the bottom of the screen.”

  A number scrolled across Stanwick’s desk. Whispers hissed through the commissary. Alayne’s thoughts turned bleak as she thought of the three professors whose pictures she’d seen on the first day of classes: Walters, Pepper, and Foy.

  This was surely evidence that Malachi and his Casters were still successful in their continued evasion of the Continental Guard, but Alayne couldn’t figure out the purpose of the professors’ disappearance. Malachi was after the Vale. How would the abduction of three former Clayborne professors bring him the Vale?

  Marysa slid onto the bench beside Alayne. “What’d I miss?” she demanded. “The place looks shell-shocked.”

  “You know those three professors that quit earlier this year? They’ve been abducted.” Alayne faced her friend. “Why would Simeon Malachi focus on them?”

  Marysa twirled a wiry strand of hair around her finger. “You’re sure it was Malachi?”

  “That’s what Continental Media is reporting.”

  Shadows chased across Marysa’s usually cheerful face. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. She didn’t say more, which was unusual for her, and Alayne was more troubled by her silence than she had ever been.

  Supper was subdued. She glanced down the table at the next cluster of students gesturing and discussing the news over their ham and sweet potatoes. Daymon sat on the near end, and for some odd reason, he studied her boldly without flinching. Bitterness mixed with curiosity in the depths of his gaze, and Alayne flushed as she returned to her own meal.

  She didn’t understand him. Not one bit.

  * * *

  Alayne stared in morose depression at the same page of a book that night. She tossed the book onto the nightstand with disgust when she realized she’d read the same paragraph six times and still had no idea what it said.

  Marysa sat on the foot of Alayne’s mattress, knitting. Alayne watched her friend grumpily. “What are you knitting?” she asked at last.

  “Knee socks.” Marysa had rediscovered her usual cheer. “For you, not for me. I stay warm enough, thanks. These will keep you toasty for the rest of the winter.”

  In spite of herself, the corners of Alayne’s mouth tipped up. “They’re yellow and orange striped.”

  “Yep.” Marysa counted her stitches.

  “They hurt to look at.”

  “What’s a little pain?” Her needles began flashing again.

  A giggle burst out of Alayne’s throat.

  “There, see?” Marysa crowed triumphantly. “I knew you were going to be okay.”

  “Of course I’m fine, silly. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Marysa flashed a look of approval at her friend. “You’re coming along nicely. Now, let me see how this thing fits on your leg.”

  * * *

  The sixty-foot spruce tree that stood a scant eighth of a mile west of Clayborne was the one nominated for bedecking with lights and ornaments. The students had done themselves proud, and the tree was a frequent gathering place for those who wished for outside air and weren’t currently caught up in intramural sports in the gymnasium.

  The professors had allowed the students to surround the tree with wooden benches and tables. Granted, the chill of winter kept many students indoors, but some, especially the Fire-Breathers, ventured out to take advantage of the Christmas cheer.

  Alayne curled up on one end of a bench, watching the lights twinkle among the branches, thinking about Jayme, her yellow and orange striped socks covering her legs clear up to her knees. Chatter from six or seven other students surrounding the tree served as white noise to cover her morose thoughts.

  Marysa had brought a novel from the library and sat cross-legged on the other side of the bench, reading and chewing on her thumb nail. After a while, she closed the book with a snap and a sigh. “Stupid sad romances.”

  “Didn’t turn out the way you thought it should?”

  “No. The guy was being an idiot and left the girl to go off on some epic journey. Then he got killed on his trip, and the girl waited and waited and he never came home.”

  Alayne flinched, and Marysa immediately looked appalled. “Oh, Layne, honey, I shouldn’t have gone off. Obviously, Jayme’s coming back. He’ll be back soon. Hardly any more time left until you see him again. Stanwick Jones talks too much anyway.” The news report from supper that evening had again centered on the Shadow-Casters’ sightings, and Cliffsides and surrounding areas had been mentioned several times.

  “I know,” Alayne said. She shook her head. “Don’t mind me. I—I’m paranoid.” Like mother, like daughter. Alayne sat up in irritation. She would not give in to her mother’s fears.

  Marysa laid the book on the bench and turned to Alayne. “Ready for your parents’ visit tomorrow evening? My mom has completely fallen in love with you
r mom. Says they do everything together, and you know we don’t actually live too far from each other. We can do lots of stuff together this summer when we go home.”

  Alayne was grateful for the distraction. She smiled. “My dad said he took your dad fishing last weekend, and your dad completely wowed my dad with his fishing abilities.”

  “Well, when you can actually lift the fish out of the water with the water itself, the sport’s not that difficult. We’ve got loads of fish in our storage at home. It’s just about all my mom ever cooks.” She bounced off the bench, clutching the book to her side. “I’m hungry,” she announced with one of her dizzying changes of subject. “Want something to eat?”

  Alayne shook her head. “No, I’m still full from supper.”

  “Okay, I’ll be back soon. I’m going to run up to the commissary, ‘cause I want something hot and fresh.”

  The sky had darkened considerably. After Marysa left, ominous flashes of light in the clouds turned them a pale green before they returned to their dark gray. The other students sitting around the tree slid off their seats and grabbed their things, hurrying toward the spire.

  Alayne didn’t want to go back to the spire. Restlessness surged through her; she felt smothered whenever she entered the chute to return to her room. Excitement and joy of life seemed elusive right now. She wrapped her coat more snugly around her, missing Marysa’s toaster-warmth from the other end of the bench.

  A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. With a sigh, Alayne slid her feet back into her shoes and stood.

  She faced the entrance, started to walk toward it, but then changed her mind. She couldn’t bear the stuffiness indoors. She turned north, crossing the deep shadow of the massive gymnasium above her, and then waded through the grass north of the spire, leaving the colossal structure behind. The thunder boomed over her head.

  It had been a week since Jayme left. It would be another week until his return. Anticipation zinged through Alayne at the thought. She stopped walking, staring at the flat, empty horizon. The purple-green clouds hung low in the sky, heavy with rain that had yet to drop.

  She hated what her relationship with Jayme had done to her friendship with Kyle. He now evaded her completely. Alex Wynch had invited her to play a game of ice-hockey for fun two nights ago, and she had agreed, but Kyle’s angry glare had sliced through her the moment she arrived at the ice. He’d demanded to know why she thought he should allow traitors to play, and while the rest of the team gaped at him, she had stumbled to an awkward halt before exiting the gymnasium, flushed with embarrassment.

  The thunderstorm was in full swing now. Alayne tilted her head to the sky, enjoying the play of light through the dark clouds.

  A streak of light left the clouds, fast, fast, and Alayne had no place to hide, nowhere to run. It was there, the bolt of lightning, and ... she could feel it.

  The contents, the energy, the heat sizzled the air as the bolt streaked toward her, almost there, almost there. The heat burned her body; her hand stretched upward, warding it off.

  The bolt stopped.

  Frozen. In mid-air.

  Alayne stared at the streak of fire, her breath coming in shallow pants. What had just happened? In a split second, she’d mastered fire. A Quadriweave! All four elements. She thought back to the field trip to the arboretum, then the fall off the tower, and last, this.

  Her eyes widened. She had learned to utilize three of the four elements when her mind had told her that her life was in danger. Water-Wielding hadn’t been that way; it had always been like a gift, an extension of her fingers. These other elements—Did I have to scare myself into them?

  The point of the bolt had stopped about six feet above Alayne’s head. She reached up, tentatively touching the air around it, feeling the streak of energy all the way up to the cloud hundreds of feet above her. The bolt held fast. With a twist, Alayne yanked the element away from the bolt, and it snapped backward to rejoin the cloud.

  Her eyes wide and her mind churning, Alayne stalked back to the Christmas tree. Some rain had spattered across the benches but had moved on quickly. Alayne evaporated the excess water. Marysa already sat on her side of the bench again, this time with a platter of fried chicken legs on her lap.

  She looked up as Alayne approached. “Did you have a good walk? I brought some food back in case you changed your mind.” She studied Alayne, her eyes serious.

  Alayne flushed. “Fried chicken sounds good.” She sat once again. “Maybe I’m hungry after all.”

  “Help yourself.” Marysa set the platter on the bench between them. “I like the legs best, don’t you? I asked the cook specifically for them.”

  “Mm, yummy.” Alayne grabbed a fat leg and bit into its greasy deliciousness. She wiped her mouth on her coat sleeve as she chewed. “These are good.”

  “Guess who was in the commissary getting his own snack when I was there?” Marysa tossed down a leg bone and picked up another piece.

  “Who?”

  “Daymon.” She smiled when Alayne stopped chewing to listen. “Yeah, he wouldn’t have been too thrilled to see me either, but then again, when is he ever?”

  “Good point.”

  “Thankfully, he never did see me. When I went in, he was talking to Corn. None of the kitchen staff were around; it was just the two of them. They hadn’t seen me ‘cause I had gone straight to the pantry, and I overheard Corn say that she’d heard rumors about a Quadriweave at our school.”

  Alayne froze mid-bite. After a second, she tore off her chicken, chewed, and swallowed. “How did she come to that conclusion?”

  Marysa licked her fingers and went for her third leg of chicken. “Well, she said she’d sneaked into Chairman Dorner’s office last night, ‘cause the rumors had made her wonder.”

  “She did not.” Alayne had stopped eating, staring at Marysa. “What did Daymon say?”

  “He didn’t say much at all. He got real tense, you know, after she started talking about the Quadriweave, barked out a ‘What?’ like a drill commander or something. Anyway, I don’t think Corn found anything. She said she searched Dorner’s files, but there wasn’t anything in them about a Quadriweave. Then Daymon asked where she’d heard the original rumor, and she said when she’d gotten called to Dorner’s office a couple of weeks ago, the secretary had swiped something out of the air real quick, but Corn had seen it: ‘Quadriweave at Clayborne,’ with a question mark after it.”

  Alayne swallowed, fear snaking through her insides. “And what did Daymon say to that?” For some reason, the answer was important to her, but she couldn’t understand why. Perhaps, in spite of his obvious jerk-qualities, his hatred for her, and everything else considered, she couldn’t put away the fact that he’d saved her life one time.

  “His usual stupidity. He mumbled something about how it was probably nothing, or maybe some project for Dorner, and that Corn shouldn’t go reading into situations that weren’t there.”

  Alayne forced a laugh. “That’s not stupid, right? I mean, Corn really was making up a situation that wasn’t there.” Another lie. The laugh quickly faded in the still air after the storm.

  “You’ll never convince me that Daymon’s any sharper than the blunt end of a pickaxe. He and Corn left the kitchen then, still talking. But it does make me wonder.” Marysa glanced at Alayne with curiosity and something else written across her face. “You haven’t heard anything about a Quadriweave, have you, here at Clayborne?”

  Alayne carefully studied the chicken in her greasy fingers. “Seems like if there was one, it’d be a pretty big deal, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah.” Marysa laughed, a note in her laughter that Alayne didn’t recognize, nor like. Alayne glanced up at her friend to find Marysa staring at her, her normally exuberant expression twisted into a mask of hurt. “Seems like if your best friend was one, it’d be a pretty big deal, too.”

  Chapter 15

  Alayne put her chicken back onto the plate and wiped her mouth with her sleeve again
. “What do you mean?” She stared at her fingers.

  Marysa blew out her breath. “Oh, come off it, Layne. You’re my best friend in the whole world. Didn’t you think I could be trusted to keep your secrets?”

  Alayne raised her gaze to Marysa’s face. “How did you find out?”

  “Well, when you fell off the shuttle landing, I started to wonder. It seemed so unlikely that someone would have seen you and been able to stop you in time. When you would go out by yourself, I would follow you once in a while, just to see what was going on. Yes, I know, I’m incurably curious, and I’m sorry about that, but I couldn’t stop myself. So I was there the day you almost took the whole spire out with that swamp you made.”

  Alayne didn’t say anything. Marysa flipped her black hair over her shoulder. “I tried to write it off as you just doing really well with your Elementary Elementals homework; after all, we’re supposed to learn a little of the other elements. But it seemed like so much.”

  “And now, I’ve admitted it, so all doubt is removed.” Alayne glanced at the other empty benches around them, leaned forward, and spoke in a whisper. “Look, Marysa, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. You and Jayme were the only ones I wanted to tell, but Dorner told me I had to keep it a secret, even from my best friends. He said it was a matter of life and death. Any knowledge of a Quadriweave at our school could seriously risk my life.” She looked down at her hands. “So, please promise me that you won’t tell anyone else? Not even Jayme when he gets back?”

  Marysa was silent. Alayne raised her eyes to meet her friend’s icy blue ones. Marysa sighed. “Of course, I’m not going to say anything, Alayne. I won’t tell anyone, not even Jayme, although he probably won’t understand why you didn’t tell him either when he finds out.”

  Alayne bit her lip.

  Marysa’s voice changed from chiding to exuberant, rocking Alayne a little off-balance, as her friend’s sudden changes always did. “But that’s totally awesome, Layne!” Marysa’s excitement was evident even in her whisper. “So can you really master all four elements?”