Mark of Four Page 19

  * * *

  As much as Alayne enjoyed learning how to work the elements, the gray weariness of January dragged on. Whenever she sat down at her desk in each of her classes, Jayme’s empty chair mocked her. Half an hour south. The temptation to go visit strengthened each day, but she knew Manders, well schooled by her parents, would never let her out of his sight.

  Sprynge was ruthlessly uninformative about the Cliffsides group. She’d been back four times since the first time, but his answer was always the same.

  She shoved her worries aside and buried herself in her studies.

  Kyle often passed her in the common room and in her classes, but he kept his gaze in the opposite direction whenever he was near her. Alayne occasionally glanced up to see his eyes on her, but he would jerk his head away. Hockey practice was a study in awkwardness. Kyle would shout directions at the other players, but he was noticeably silent when it came to coaching Alayne. Sometimes, Alayne would mess up a play, and she could feel Kyle’s angry gaze on her back. But if she looked, he would be staring at the scoreboard, fixing his helmet, or cleaning his hockey stick.

  With Jayme gone, Alayne’s team shot up in the rankings. The replacement goalie on Jayme’s team couldn’t keep anything out of the net. The other seven teams in the bracket were decent, but Alayne was proud of the way her team could pull together to win. I’ll have something to tease Jayme about when he gets back.

  But the strain of her relationship with Kyle was wearing on her as well as the rest of the team.

  After one practice session, Alayne skated off the ice and clomped her way toward the changing rooms. She reached it before the rest of the team and hurried into a booth to strip out of her sweaty jersey. Donning her jeans and hoodie, she shoved the door open and entered the main area of the changing room.

  “Hey, Worth,” Alex Wynch called. “You nailed that backhand pass to me. Congrats.” He sat on the bench, undoing the latches on his skates, and grinned at her.

  “Took me long enough, right?”

  “I always knew you’d get around to it one of these days.”

  Kyle appeared in the open doorway, but as soon as he saw Alayne, he turned and continued down the hall.

  “Kyle.” Alayne ignored the curious stares of her teammates. “Kyle, I have to talk to you.” She raced out the door and caught him in the hallway.

  Kyle faced her. He looked braced for something. She stopped a good four feet from him. “What’s your problem, Pence?”

  “What, you mean like figuring out my girlfriend was two-timing me? Or were you referring to something a little less abrasive?” Anger tightened his jaw; his words sounded stilted and forced.

  “First, Kyle, I was not your girlfriend. Or at least, we hadn’t made it official. Jayme was right when he said I was trying to make up my mind about you guys. I—just couldn’t—decide,” she finished weakly, shrugging.

  “So you finally made up your mind and chose Jayme over me. Is that supposed to make me feel any better?”

  “No, Kyle, I just—” Alayne stuttered to a stop and then tried again. “I wish that we could still be friends. I miss you.”

  Kyle stared at her, then abruptly grabbed a handful of his hair. He turned in a frustrated circle before facing her again. “Layne, apparently you can be just friends. Me?” He sighed and let go of his hair. “I’m still in love with my girlfriend.”

  His sad expression twisted Alayne’s stomach. “I’m sorry, Kyle. I really am. Isn’t there some way you can put that aside? Some way we could just—hang out and have fun again?” She held out her hand, wondering what he would do.

  He stared at the floor for a long time. Alayne had just decided to drop her hand when he took it gently in his own. “Alayne, let me be very clear. Where you’re concerned, there is no quits. If you want me to be friends with you, then you can expect that I’m going to do everything I can to get you to leave Cross.” He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. “But if that’s what you want to call our relationship for now,” he paused, “friends it is.”

  * * *

  Marysa was none too happy to find out that Kyle would be hanging around them again. “Oh, come on, Layne, I thought we’d ditched him already,” she exclaimed as he left their table at supper that evening.

  “You can still put up with him. He’s your friend, too.”

  “That’s what you think,” Marysa muttered ungraciously, but she included Kyle in the conversation when they joined him in the common room later that evening.

  “You’re right, Worth, it was a good idea to be friends again.” He grinned at her on the way to the river one evening after supper. Marysa had suggested a walk, and Alayne had eagerly agreed—anything to escape the tediousness of late winter, although her conscience twinged as she exited the tower, knowing her parents would flay her for leaving without speaking to Manders. Kyle, of course, had tagged along. “You’ll get to the point where you just can’t do without me, and then Cross’ll have to let you go.” He draped an arm over her shoulders and winked.

  Alayne tossed his arm away in irritation. “Kyle, grow up. It’s not going to happen.” Kyle seemed determined to press his advantage while Jayme was gone, and Alayne wished he would drop his flirtation. If anything, it only made her miss Jayme more.

  The three students were quiet as they lingered by the river. The spire loomed, dark, behind them, and Alayne craned her neck to see the top of it.

  “What’s bothering you, Layne?” Kyle asked at last. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  Alayne bent and picked up some rocks. She tossed them one by one into the river, watching them sink out of sight in the near darkness. “I—I just have a feeling. I don’t know. Someone wanted to wreck my room, but who says it has to be a student?” Chairman Dorner’s words floated through her mind. I’m warning you to be on your guard.

  “What?” Kyle’s voice was sharp. “You think a professor might be responsible?”

  “N—no, not exactly.” Alayne shook her head, realizing she might have said too much. Marysa knew that she was a Quadriweave, but Kyle didn’t. She didn’t want to go into all the reasons why someone had been looking for the book she’d kept in her room. “I just thought it could be anyone, really. The janitorial staff, a visitor; there were lots of families around at that time.”

  Marysa lazily drew fiery shapes with her finger in the night air, watching the burning threads drop with a hiss into the water. “I still think it was Crede, Ryck, and Jonathyn. You got the best of them at the pool, so this was their payback. Come on, Alayne, don’t you think we should tell Sprynge?”

  Alayne shook her head. She and Marysa had told Kyle what had happened, but none of them had mentioned it to anyone else. “I still think it’s best to keep it to ourselves.”

  “What about Daymon?” Kyle asked. “He spent most of the first semester bad-mouthing you. Think he might have something to do with it?”

  “No.” Alayne’s answer was firm.

  Marysa shot her a quick glance. “You don’t? He’s pretty intimidating. Everybody we know is scared to death of him. If he came to you and told you he’d do something awful to you if you didn’t do what he said, would you do it?”

  Kyle grinned. “No. But that’s ‘cause I like to pick fights, and that would be a good excuse for one.”

  “Okay, well, most people we know are scared to death of him, you and Jayme excluded.”

  “I think...” Alayne stopped and bit her lip. “I think he’s got a side of him we don’t see very often. That maybe inside he’s insecure ... or troubled, or something.” She thought about the conversation she’d overheard in Manders’ office. She wondered why Manders and Daymon had never publicly claimed kinship, but her unexplainable loyalty to Daymon for twice saving her life kept her from revealing the link to her friends.

  Kyle and Marysa stared at her like she had two heads. After a disbelieving minute, Kyle smirked. “You’ve got a loose connection in your brain somewhere, Layne.” He sat lazily on a boulder
by the river. “I think Daymon gets away with so much because of his connections.”

  “What?” Alayne glanced sharply at him, wondering how he knew the boy’s link to Manders. “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you noticed how buddy-buddy he is with Dorner? I mean, he’s always in Dorner’s office, which could be interpreted as punishment, but the two of them are always talking, all serious and stuff. Not that Daymon’s ever not serious. Dude never smiles unless he’s making fun of somebody.”

  “Dorner.” Alayne rolled the word around in her mouth to test it. Maybe Dorner was the one who had searched her room. But no, Dorner had already gone to Cliffsides before the attack happened. And that wouldn’t make sense anyway, would it? Whoever had done it had been looking for her Quadriweave book and taken it with them. Dorner already suspected she was a Quadriweave. She tossed the thought out of her mental window and shook her head. “No, I think Dorner’s got his own reasons for his interest in Daymon, but I don’t think they’re especially close.”

  Kyle shrugged.

  “So if it wasn’t Crede—” Alayne began.

  “And I still think it was Crede—” Marysa interrupted.

  “Then who else would it be?” Kyle asked.

  “There are others in Daymon’s crowd. Cornelia. Maybe she did it to impress Daymon. We all know Cornelia’s got a massive crush on Daymon.”

  The three of them snickered. Only yesterday, Professor Grace had intercepted a note in their Throw-Casting class and had read it aloud, to Cornelia’s scarlet-faced embarrassment. It was only two sentences, expressing the girl’s admiration for the boy and then asking for some reassurance of his regard in return, but the whole class had erupted into giggles. The professor had crumpled it in her hand, looked severely over her glasses at Cornelia and told her that she would be staying after class.

  “Oh well, Worth, I’m sure it’ll all work itself out,” Kyle said. “Let’s have a rock-skipping contest.”

  The three of them gathered the flattest pebbles they could find and began tossing them across the river. Marysa almost immediately gave up. “It’s no fun playing with two Water-Wielders,” she complained. “I don’t have a chance.” She watched as Alayne’s rock skipped around Kyle’s in a circle before landing on the opposite bank with a thud. Kyle tried to keep his rock light on the water, but in his efforts, ended up raising a geyser instead. The pebble danced happily on the top of it. Kyle looked grumpy as his geyser collapsed back into the river. “I can never get such a fine-tuned grasp of the element as you do, Layne. I always get way more than I need.”

  “Comes with practice ... and slender fingers,” Alayne teased, glancing at his huge hands curled on his knee.

  “I think I’d look pretty funny with tiny hands like yours.” Kyle grabbed one of hers and spread her fingers across his palm. “Look, I’ve got you beat by a good solid inch on all the fingers.”

  Alayne laughed and tugged, but Kyle didn’t release her hand. He gazed at her, his eyes dark in the night air. Alayne grew more uncomfortable. “Kyle—”

  Abruptly, he let her go. He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’d better get back,” he mumbled. “It’s almost time for curfew, and you don’t want Manders checking up on you.”

  Marysa fell into an easy silence as she walked next to Alayne. At one point, she wove her arm through her friend’s, the heat rolling off of her to warm Alayne’s cold body.

  “I know, honey.” Marysa patted Alayne’s arm. “I know.”

  Chapter 17

  Alayne climbed the last set of stairs with Marysa and hurried down the hall to their room. They’d put a lock on the door, and it took some fumbling of her cold hands to get the key in the keyhole. Marysa finally rolled her eyes and snatched the key from Alayne’s fingers. “Here.” She turned the key and opened the door.

  Alayne went in and stood by her bed, yanking off coat, scarf, hat, and gloves and tossing them over the footboard.

  “Are you okay, Layne?” Marysa asked behind her.

  “Fine.” Alayne pasted on a smile and faced her friend. She sighed and sank onto the bed. “Mostly fine, anyway. I just—I need to see Jayme again, that’s all.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  Alayne shook her head. “No, and nobody will tell me anything.”

  “It’s got to be soon now, right?” Marysa sat down beside Alayne. “It’s been almost a month. What did Jayme tell you when he left? Did he have any idea when they’d be back?”

  Alayne shrugged. “I’d understood that he’d be back by the beginning of the second semester, but it wasn’t set in stone. Dorner must have extended their stay.” It was an empty hope. The nightly news told of more Shadow-Casters rampaging City Centres across the Continent and even across CommonEarth. “Oh Marysa, what if something’s horribly wrong?”

  Marysa pulled Alayne into a hug. “We’ll figure it out, honey.”

  Alayne suddenly pulled back. “Marysa, the mirror!” She snatched the box off her desk where she’d put the shards after their room had been searched.

  “But ... it’s broken.”

  “It was broken before, remember? There was a big piece out of the top corner. Why wouldn’t it work now?” Alayne could feel the excitement rising in her. “Anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to try it.”

  She opened the box and pulled out the biggest shard she could find. “Show me Jayme, please.”

  The mirror went dark. Alayne wrinkled her brow before she realized that the mirror showed a cavern of sorts with the flickering of a small fire. The light reflected off numerous stalagmites and stalactites. Alayne squinted at the glass. “He’s in a cave.”

  “I see. Look, it shows the same thing on all the fragments.” Marysa held up a shard of her own, watching the picture carefully. “But where’s Jayme?”

  Alayne searched the darkness frantically. A movement caught her attention. She could make out a tall boy lying on the cold, hard floor. He was wrapped in a thin jacket, and he was shaking with cold. His eyes were shut, as if he were sleeping.

  All at once, he jerked awake. A dark form near the fire motioned to him. He pulled himself off the floor and staggered toward the bright circle. As Jayme neared the fire, the mirror’s gaze followed him.

  “Marysa,” Alayne gasped. “That’s Mycah Gallagher. And Sean McConnell. They look like skeletons!”

  “Honey, look at Jayme,” Marysa said gently.

  Alayne finally got a glimpse of his face. His cheekbones stood out stark against skin that was stretched too tightly over them. His eyes bugged in his skeletal face. His hair was matted, damp, and dirty.

  A sudden thought occurred to Alayne. “Marysa, what if they’re trapped? In the cave? It would explain why they look the way they do, and why they haven’t come back yet.” Panic tore through her mind. “We’ve got to help them! How long have they been like that?”

  “They’re Elementals.” Confusion clouded Marysa’s icy blue eyes. “They should be able to get out of anything. They’ve got Earth-Movers; it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “Unless—unless someone is holding them there. Elementals on the outside, keeping them in. Remember, in Manders’s history class, that story about the Elementals that got caught in the crater of that volcano? They tried to bend the elements to get themselves out, but the guy following them kept the elements out of reach. Maybe that’s what’s going on here.”

  “Why would someone keep the elements out of reach?” Marysa shook her head. “Who would want to hurt them?”

  Now thoughts were crowding into Alayne’s head so fast, she could hardly talk. Her sentences came out in sharp bursts. “I don’t know why, but obviously someone is. They would have been back by now. Marysa, I’m sure it’s got something to do with the Casters and Simeon Malachi. They’ve been ripping apart the Continent in their search for the Vale. Maybe this is their latest thing.”

  “But why would they link the Vale with a crew of students on a field-study trip?”

  “I don
’t know, I don’t know.” Alayne rubbed her temples, gripping her hair. “But they need help. We can go help them, get them out.”

  Marysa stared at her. After a moment, she nodded. “So what do we do?”

  “We tell Sprynge. And then we're getting on a shuttle and heading out there, right now. And I'm not taking any vague excuses for an answer this time.”

  “Sprynge knows nothing about the mirror, and I don't think it's a good idea to tell him. How're you gonna convince him that Jayme's in trouble?”

  “I'll make up something,” Alayne mumbled, already digging in her drawer. Marysa didn't protest. The two girls each threw a change of clothes into a bag and hustled out the door.

  * * *

  Frustration heated Alayne's blood until she thought her head would explode. Sprynge seemed to have no interest in dropping everything and flying to Cliffsides that same hour to look for the students. First, he wouldn't even take her seriously. “They're fine, Miss Worth,” he commented blandly, until Alayne had enough.

  “They're not fine, Professor,” she slammed her palm against his desk. “I got a call from Jayme on a handheld MIU. They're in trouble and need our help.”

  Sprynge went utterly still. “Students are absolutely not allowed Clayborne MIUs outside school property.”

  “Are we really doing this?”

  “Miss Worth!”

  Alayne swallowed a retort. She pulled in a calming breath. “They're sick, Professor, maybe even dying! We've got to try to find them.” Alayne couldn't understand his hesitation.

  Sprynge considered her for a long, still moment. "We cannot depart until the morning, Alayne. There are no shuttle pilots here."