Guardians of the Boundary (The Conjurors Series Book 3) (13 page)

Kanti and Cyrus were already
heading down the hall, and Valerie followed, lagging behind. Dulcea’s door was
wide open, and the sound of Jack’s voice, full of life, and Dulcea’s laugh,
made them pause.

“The A team is here! Great
timing,” Jack said when he saw them. He was sitting on Dulcea’s desk, leaning
down so his face was close to hers. Dulcea blushed when she saw them and pulled
back.

“What are you doing here?” Kanti
asked Jack.

“I’ve apprenticed to the Acting
Guild. They think I could be a lead performer or a great spy. One way or
another, my gift for lying is going to make me a star,” Jack said, striking a
pose.

Valerie smiled at Jack’s
exuberance. He deserved happiness after years of living in the Black Castle
serving Zunya.

“Congratulations,” she said, and
Jack gave her a bear hug.

Then he lifted Dulcea and spun
her around, making her laugh.

They hadn’t begun to tell Dulcea
their reason for visiting when Valerie saw all of the color drain from her
friend’s face. Dulcea’s hands fell to her side.

Valerie turned and saw her
father standing at the door to Dulcea’s office, tall and out of place. The mood
darkened.

“What do you want?” Dulcea said,
her voice flat.

“To talk to you. To apologize,”
Oberon said, his words clipped from trying to rein in a powerful emotion.

Without a word, Cyrus and Kanti
slipped out the door. Jack gave Oberon a glare and turned to Dulcea.

“Want me to stay?” he asked her.
“Or to kick this guy across The Horseshoe for you?”

“No,” Dulcea said, her eyes
never leaving Oberon’s. “I have a few things to say to this monster. You and
Valerie need to leave.”

Valerie reached for Jack’s arm
and pulled him out of the office. She saw a muscle twitching on her father’s
face and knew that he was suffering, but she didn’t pity him. Whatever Dulcea
said or did would be nothing he didn’t deserve.

At the same time, a sliver of compassion
made its way through the cracks of her anger at her father. He was the proudest
person she knew, and she had no doubt that he’d come to beg for forgiveness,
something she’d bet her life on that he’d only done for her mother.

“If he makes her cry, I’m going
to punch him in the eye,” Jack said fiercely. “And no using your power to stop
me.”

“I won’t. It’s no more than he
deserves,” Valerie said, and Jack eyed her with surprise.

“You’re tougher than you were when
I met you way back when,” he said, and Valerie could tell he meant it as a
compliment. Then his expression changed, his whole face regaining some of the
glow it had when he’d told them about joining the Acting Guild.

“I love her, you know,” Jack
said, gazing at Dulcea through the little window on the office door. Valerie
had never seen him so serious. “She saved me. I’d be back at the Black Castle
by now, hating myself, if it weren’t for her. She gave me a home outside of
that place for the first time in my life.”

“She gave me a home once, too,
when I needed one. The first one I ever had,” Valerie said. “That’s not a debt
you can ever repay.”

Valerie went home that night to
wait for Oberon instead of staying out with her friends to strategize like she
had been doing the past few weeks. It was time to stop avoiding her father.

When Oberon came through the
door, the furrows in his brow were pronounced, making him seem older than she’d
ever seen him. Perhaps for the first time, it hit her how ancient he was, how
many mistakes he’d probably made over the centuries, and how many people he’d
loved who had died.

He began to make himself tea,
but his hands were shaking. Without saying a word, Valerie took over for him,
putting tealeaves in steaming water as her father sat heavily in a chair at the
table.

“Mom would’ve been proud of you
today,” Valerie said.

“Dulcea didn’t forgive me,”
Oberon said, resting his head in his hands.

“But I do,” Valerie said.

Oberon stood and pulled her into
a fierce hug, surprising her so much that she almost dropped his mug of tea.

“Thank you,” he whispered into
her hair.

A knock on the door made Valerie
pull back. Oberon didn’t meet her eyes, and she sensed that he was a little
embarrassed by his display of emotion. She left the room to answer the knock and
give him time to get himself together.

Sanguina stood on their front
steps, and Valerie immediately reached for Pathos, her heart rate accelerating.
Sanguina had proven that she’d changed, and Valerie knew that she wouldn’t have
survived her last trip to the Black Castle without Sanguina. But there had been
many more years when Sanguina had haunted her, making her life even more
miserable than it already was, at Reaper’s request. So even though she trusted
Sanguina now, she couldn’t stop her automatic defensive response at the sight
of her.

Oberon joined Valerie at the door
and greeted Sanguina with less hostility. Sanguina and Valerie’s mother had
been best friends, and he knew Sanguina before she had been turned into a
vampyre by Zunya.

“Lydia, come in,” Oberon said,
using Sanguina’s real name.

“It’s Sanguina now,” she said.
“I can’t erase what I did, and it would be a lie to live as Lydia again, like
nothing happened.”

Sanguina shuffled through the
door, her gait a little uneven from her prosthetic leg. As they walked toward the
kitchen, Sanguina picked up a picture of Valerie’s mother from a shelf.

“I keep thinking Adelita can’t
really be gone,” she said.

Oberon took a breath and assumed
a businesslike expression. “Are you here for a visit?”

Sanguina put the picture down
and turned around. “No. I would never come near Valerie and Henry unless there
was a need. I know they don’t want to see me.”

A spasm of guilt made Valerie stare
at her feet as she remembered Sanguina saving her life on the battlefield. But
she couldn’t deny the truth of her statement. Sanguina had mentally tortured
Henry to an even more sadistic degree than she had tortured Valerie, and she
would never be a welcome guest in their home.

“I have a message from a friend,
a former Guardian who now lives with the merpeople of Illyria,” Sanguina said.
Illyria was the vast underwater world on the Globe that had cities in every
major body of water.

“Who sent me this message?”
Oberon asked.

“It’s not for you. It’s for
Valerie. Leo needs to speak with you, and he asked that you also bring Cyrus,”
Sanguina said.

Valerie was puzzled. She had met
Leo two years ago when he had chosen to leave his life above water behind and
become an immortal Illyrian, tasked with managing the Akashic Records, which
was the log of all knowledge in the universe. He wasn’t supposed to surface very
often, and he’d recently come from the depths to help them infuse their weapons
with light when they had rescued Darling from the Black Castle.

“Did he say how to find him?”
Valerie asked.

“He’ll be at the Lake of
Knowledge tonight,” Sanguina said. “It’s the only time he can get away. He’s
been placed under watch for surfacing too often.”

Valerie nodded. “We’ll be
there.”

Sanguina nodded and turned to
leave, but Valerie’s mind was racing.

“Can you stay?” Valerie asked,
gesturing for Sanguina to sit.

Sanguina sat down, and the
briefest smile crossed her face. “You look like Adelita when you’re thinking
hard.”

“I wish I could have known her,”
Valerie said. “You were both Guardians of the Boundary, weren’t you?”

“Yes. We met as apprentices,”
Sanguina said.

“When you were there, you must
have heard about the existence of the Byways on Earth and the Globe,” Valerie
said, her speech speeding up as she became more excited. “There must have been
rumors you heard when you were a Guardian about how to find them.”

“The location of the Byways was
a guarded secret that only the Grand Master was meant to know,” Sanguina said.
“However, your mother and I could be very curious.”

Oberon smiled faintly, his face
strained.

“We broke into the Grand
Master’s office on a dare when we were journeymen. The Grand Master wasn’t
Midnight, then. It was a grumpy old Conjuror who lorded his power over everyone
beneath him,” Sanguina said. “We went through all of his books, but we discovered
nothing.”

Valerie slumped in disappointment.
“So you never found out anything.”

“I didn’t say that. Before we
left, we had the chance to examine the scrying globe that is passed from Grand
Master to Grand Master,” Sanguina said.

“I thought that was Midnight’s
globe,” Valerie interrupted.

Sanguina shook her head. “It was
crafted for the use of the Guardian Grand Master. It is heavily charmed with
complex magic, but as you know, my power is that most magic cannot touch me. So
I was able to see that there was a tiny picture on the globe that had been spelled
to be invisible to anyone other than the Grand Master.”

“What did you see?” Valerie
asked, breathless.

“It was a picture of a key.
There’s no way to know for sure, but Adelita and I always believed that the key
was the location of the Byway on Earth.”

“Was it in Japan?” Valerie
asked, and Sanguina’s eyes widened.

“Yes,” she said with surprise.
“It was in the southern tip of the country. I couldn’t narrow the location of
the picture down more than that.”

“I think we have our
first lucky break,” Valerie said, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

After Sanguina left, Valerie
went to her bedroom and used her crystal to find Thai. He was in his dorm room,
sketching on a small drawing pad. She watched him, surprised. He’d told her
once that he loved art, but she’d never known he had the ability to create his
own.

Thai glanced up and put his pad
on the mattress, face down. Valerie wished she were there in person so she
could snatch it up and see what he’d drawn.

“Ming is safe,” Thai said. “No
signs of the Fractus at her house. Chisisi pumped that woman he captured, Lisa,
for information, and she said that they tried to kidnap Ming at the hospital
because they don’t know where she lives.”

“I hope you’re right,” Valerie
said. “What will Chisisi do to Lisa? She killed Zaki.”

“She’ll be tried in Guardian
court,” Thai said. “Chisisi won’t be a part of the trial because he says he’s
too biased.”

Valerie was awed by Chisisi’s
restraint. “I can’t believe he doesn’t want to make her suffer for what she did
to his brother.”

“Oh, he does. But more important
than that is doing what is honorable, he says,” Thai explained.

Valerie absorbed his words,
letting the rightness of them settle in her heart.

“Is there something else?” Thai
asked.

“Yes. We think we have a strong
lead on the location of the Byway on Earth. Chisisi needs to get to southern
Japan as soon as he can.”

“What city?” Thai asked.

“We don’t know anything more
specific than that,” she replied.

“I’ll let him know right away,”
Thai said.

Valerie nodded and prepared to
say goodbye when Thai spoke up again.

“How’s Henry? Does he like his Guild?”
he asked, his eyes searching her face.

He seemed to be reaching for
questions, trying to delay her from leaving. His eyes flickered with an emotion
she couldn’t identify. Loneliness? Longing? He’d lost Tan and Logan in the
space of a few weeks. Valerie couldn’t help her instinctive urge to erase his
pain. After everything, she hoped they were still friends.

“Henry’s on the brink of a
breakdown,” she admitted, sitting next to Thai on his bed. “If his father is
hurt, he’ll never forgive himself. Every morning, I check his room, wondering
if he’s left to give Reaper what he wants in exchange for his father’s life.
And maybe he should.”

Valerie hadn’t admitted to
anyone that she was starting to despair that they’d never find Joe. There were
no ancient clues to find, like there were with the Byways.

“Do you think it’s wrong,
convincing him to risk his dad’s life like this?” Valerie asked Thai.

Thai considered her words. “I
don’t think it’s his decision to make. Or yours. What would Joe want Henry to
do?”

“He told Henry not to give the
Fractus what they wanted,” Valerie said.

“Then he should honor that,”
Thai said.

“You’re right,” Valerie replied,
and she felt as if a weight had been lifted from her mind.

“Tell me,” Thai said, staring at
her with his dark, intense eyes. “Is your life on the Globe better than the one
you left behind?”

“Yes,” Valerie said without
hesitation. “There are people who love me here. I have a family. It
counterbalances Reaper and the Fractus and the responsibilities of being a
vivicus.”

“Still, there must be things you
miss about Earth,” Thai said.

Valerie could think of just one
as she stared back at him.

Thai reached toward her. The
expression on his face changed as he seemed to remember that he couldn’t touch
her now that a universe separated them, and he let his hand drop.

“Goodbye, Thai,” she
whispered.

Henry and Kanti joined Cyrus and
Valerie that night when they went to the Lake of Knowledge to meet Leo.

“Dasan thinks we may be able to
touch Joe’s mind, even though it’s across the universe, if a group of Empaths
pools their magic,” Henry said with an almost feverish excitement. “Remember,
Val, when I touched your mind from Earth when you were on the Globe?”

“Yes. And let me help, too.
We’ve located people’s minds together before,” Valerie said.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he
replied.

Kanti reached for Henry’s hand and
squeezed it hard. Valerie could guess what her friend was thinking. If the
Empaths failed to locate Joe, Henry would be driven to despair. Valerie doubted
that anyone could stop him from giving in to Reaper’s demands then.

They reached the lake, and
Valerie saw that Elden was waiting by the gently lapping water. The gold sheen
on his dark skin was even more noticeable in the starlight.

“Are you here to meet Leo as
well?” Valerie asked him.

Elden nodded. “We worked
together before Leo became an Illyrian, but we were not close friends. For him
to summon me now means that something is amiss.”

Bubbles rose from the glittering
water of the lake, and Leo emerged, water streaming down his face and hair. He
took stock of everyone who had come, his relief evident.

“I wasn’t sure who my message
would reach,” Leo said. “But the only two missing are Gideon and Azra. You will
share my news with them?”

Valerie nodded. She wasn’t
surprised that Azra and Gideon were harder to reach now that they had both been
stripped of their titles and all but thrown out of the power structure of Arden.

“Illyria has been compromised by
the Fractus,” Leo said without preamble.

“How can that be?” Kanti asked.
“Only those with the highest integrity are allowed into Illyria.”

“Information in the records has
been leaked that the magical ties between Earth and the Globe are weak. If they
snap, both worlds will be plunged into darkness,” Leo said.

“That sounds like a riddle,”
Henry said, biting his thumbnail.

“Most of the knowledge in the
Akashic Records is like that. The information isn’t always concrete, and it is
historical knowledge. It can’t predict the future. That leads to a lot of
speculation about what might happen to Earth and the Globe if the tie breaks.
Many Illyrians are saying that the destruction the Fractus would cause by
returning to Earth would be better than a complete break between the worlds,”
Leo said.

“If the Fractus get their army
to Earth, humans and Conjurors alike will be plunged into a different kind of
darkness,” Valerie said, her heart pounding with her conviction.