Lies and Prophecy (11 page)

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.

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 campus 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.

Exams had ended, and the next term didn't start until Monday; I had the place to myself. And though it was cold, this was the best place to work from, without anything to interfere.

I seated myself on the dead grass and rotated my head to loosen my neck. The trees surrounding me reached for the sky with skeletal branches, forming a delicate lacework arch over my head. I breathed in the stark bite of approaching winter, and sank into a trance.

Sensations dropped away one by one. I closed my eyes, focusing on the blackness behind my lids. The sigh of the wind, its cold edge against my skin, the chill of the earth beneath me, the scent that promised snow later—all faded into emptiness.

When I was ready, I sent my mind outward, casting about for any sign of Julian. It was appallingly rude—psychic spying—but I didn't care. He'd been gone far too long. Yes, sometimes he went off on his own, but never like this. And if he was in trouble….

If he was, I didn't know what I would do about it.

I had no chance to find out. It was a lost cause before I started; Julian's shields put mine to shame. He could have been sitting next to me and I wouldn't have known it. Maybe he'd gone too far away for me to reach, but if he was anywhere on Welton's campus or even in the town, he didn't want to be found.

Frustration rippled my trance. I breathed it down and surfaced slowly, restoring my mind to my body, then opened my eyes.

And nearly choked on my tongue.

Julian was seated cross-legged on the ground across from me. He was still wearing the boots and breeches from his costume, and the shredded remains of his shirt. It looked like he'd crawled under a few thornbushes in it. I would have wagered good money Julian hadn't eaten in the four days since I'd last seen him.

The wind whipped strands of his hair into his eyes while I opened and shut my mouth a few times like a landed fish, searching for words. When they finally came, they weren't pretty.

“Where the
hell
have you been?”

His grey eyes were as remote as the sky above us. “Around. I'm sorry, Kim.”

“
Sorry?
You damn well better be! What the hell happened? You get
attacked
by something, we get drowned without warning—and if that storm was natural, I'll eat my PK textbook—then suddenly it's gone, and so are you, then you don't come home for four days, leaving us all half-dead with worry! You owe me an explanation.” I glared at him, all the more furious because he seemed so utterly composed.

“I can't give you one.”

“Damn it, Julian—”

“I don't
know,
Kim. Believe me, I'd tell you, if there was anything to tell.” Julian scrubbed his eyes with the heel of one hand. The action made him human, rather than the distant, Otherworldly being that had been sitting across from me. My anger, building since he sent me home like a child on Samhain, drained away.

“So what now?” I asked, when the silence became too much.

Julian left off his study of the dead grass, fixing his gaze on its usual spot, just below my own eyes. “I was hoping you could help me.”

“Help you? How?”

“Divination,” he said. “You're the best I know. I need you to look for me, find out anything you can. Knowing something's after me, that I can deal with—but I don't know what it
is
. I'm hoping you can fix that.”

I almost laughed. He wanted me to help him, when I'd just figured out how useless divination was? His bleak expression stopped me, though. He needed my help. Julian, who was never frightened. Julian, who never asked for aid.

The future was mud to me, but this was a question about the here and now. That, maybe, I could get.

The snow would hold off for another good hour, if I was any judge, and this glade would serve my purposes well enough. I didn't want to wreck what remained of my trance by running to my room, but I needed a few things….

Julian caught my key when I tossed it to him. “My silver bowl's in the upper left drawer of the dresser. My focus ought to be on my desk. And grab my scarf—I think it's on my bed. This coat isn't enough.”

He was off without a word, vanishing into the forest. I passed the time by re-centering myself, preparing for my task.

After ten minutes Julian was back. He'd already filled the bowl with water from the creek. I wrapped the scarf around my neck and put the dish on the ground, letting its contents settle into stillness. My focus, the flawless quartz crystal Julian had given me for my birthday last year, hung from a silver chain. I slipped it over my head and gripped the stone in my cold hands.

Then I took a deep breath and fixed my eyes on the surface of the water, and the smooth reflection of the black tree branches overhead. The wind had died away to nothing. I collapsed in on myself, looking outward with more than natural sight.

My final impression of the outside world was of Julian, tense, wary, as if expecting another attack.

~

Consciousness came back gradually. First I became aware of sounds. After a while I identified them as voices, and was pleased with this success. My sleepy brain sorted through them and attached names: Liesel and Julian.

I decided to open my eyes. They slowly focused on a rectangle—the Celtic knotwork poster on the ceiling above my bed. I contemplated that for a while, tracing its intricate twists with my eyes, before turning my head to look at the rest of the room.

Liesel and Julian were sitting on Liesel's tidily made bed, talking in low voices. My movement caught Julian's eye, and he was on his feet in an instant.

“Are you all right, Kim? What happened?”

Everyone's favorite question lately. My brow furrowed as I tried to chase down my scattered thoughts.

“Julian showed up an hour ago, right in the teeth of a snowstorm, carrying you,” Liesel said, also coming to my bedside. “You were just asleep, it seemed, but you wouldn't wake up—”

She stopped speaking. I had my eyes fixed on Julian, waiting for some kind of answer. I remembered him appearing in the glade….

“You went rigid,” he said quietly. “I shook you, emptied the scrying bowl, took off your focus—” I could see it on my bedside table, the silver chain snapped. Emergency methods for breaking a trance. “Nothing worked,” Julian continued, mouth grim. “Until suddenly, for no reason I could see, you screamed and went limp. Right on cue, the snow started falling.”