Secret Worlds (468 page)

As soon as the words ‘Councilor Five’ were out of his mouth, Lena jerked her hand back. She darted a look at Alex. “Councilor Five? But…. The Ward School is supposed to be independent of the Zones?”

She didn’t like being at the Ward School. He imagined she liked it even less now that there was a Councilor involved.

Alex couldn’t tell from his vantage point, but he imagined Thomas smiled at her. The look on her face was not reassurance. If anything, she’d just become even more suspicious.

“It is, yes.” Thomas told her. “For the intents and purposes of the Council of Nine, the Ward School is independent of the Zones. But, as I’m sure you can guess by now, there’s more going on here than just the school, and I am more than a Councilor. This is merely a convenient and temporary role used to conduct Zone Five’s business while I take care of our other concerns.”

Alex cleared his throat and ushered Lee in.

She inspected the young man from top to bottom. When she’d finished, she arched a brow at Alex. She was no fool.

Alex couldn’t imagine Thomas would fail to notice the pointed look Lena had given Alex. If he had, Thomas said nothing, merely urging Lee forward with a swinging hand.

“This is Senior Ward Jackson Lee, one of our top students.” Thomas clapped Lee on the shoulder. “And he has volunteered to help you acquaint yourself with the facilities, get you to your appointments and lessons, and generally help us by seeing to your needs.”

“My needs, huh?” She turned those blue-green eyes to Lee and swept them over him again.

• He stood mute next to Thomas, overwhelmed by her energy, her bright bloom, and her attitude.
  

There’s no way this is going to work.

She tossed her hair back, and it slipped free from her ears to fall around her freckled face again. “Hello, Ward Lee.” She flashed a dazzling smile. “Or should I call you Warden Lee?”

Alex snorted softly. Yes, he could see this was going to go exactly as he expected. It was too bad his duties pulled him back to Azcon. The poor kid would need help. Ward Lee couldn’t possibly be ready to handle Lena Gracey.

Lena tried hard not to like Jackson Lee. She’d made it clear in the beginning that she wouldn’t be charmed by his easy company, no matter how lonely she became. Except at some point over the last month and a half, she had been charmed.

He walked back to her now from the cafeteria line, where he’d returned because she’d forgotten the maple syrup. She liked to dunk her toast, along with nearly everything else, in the sticky sweet. She’d discovered its rich taste, more complex than the honey those in Zone Three had access to, on her first breakfast at Fort Nevada. It wasn’t all she’d discovered.

Jackson had a graceful lope that reminded her of Reyes’s sinuous, confident movements. Unlike Reyes, he was neither jaded nor buried up to his neck in plots and counterplots. Reyes was a rugged mountain—beautiful to look at, but remote, exhausting, and dangerous. Jackson was a lush valley. His quiet offered comfort and recovery.

Then why can’t you stop thinking about Reyes?

Jackson eased the little bowl of syrup onto the table as he rounded it to sit across from her, as he had every morning since Reyes had brought her to Fort Nevada. His narrow brown eyes, set high above prominent cheekbones on his long face, met hers, and he gave her a questioning smile.

“You didn’t remember something else you forgot, did you?” Even his quiet, even voice spoke of his good nature. She had never liked her boys earnest before. Maybe the good food and easy days at Fort Nevada were making her soft.

“No, Jackson. Just eat your breakfast.” She took a few bites of syrup-dunked toast before remembering and, exasperated with herself, mumbled around a mouthful of toast, “Thank you.” A tiny piece of toast landed between them on the table. Lena’s hand flashed out to swipe it away.
Ah, yes, Magdalena Gracey, such a damn lady
, she mocked herself.

As if he hadn’t noticed, he raised his gaze to hers without glancing down at the telltale sticky smear. A genuine smile, broad and white with teeth, spread across his face. “You’re welcome.”

“What’s on the agenda for today?” she asked, trying for crisp and detached to cover her mortification. Did he have to be so…gentlemanly? The word would have made her wrinkle her nose in distaste before she’d experienced Jackson Lee’s daily attentiveness.

He swallowed the last bit of egg and took a moment to sip from his juice to clear his mouth.
That’s what thoughtful people do, Lena,
she told herself,
so they don’t spit food across the table when they talk.
He swallowed again.

“Well, you’re scheduled to give me a private lesson this morning.” He glanced up; her wide, wicked grin made him flush. “And, uh, afterward, um, you will go have a history lesson with Guardian Erwin. He’s cleared his classes so he can clear up some of the history you’re lacking.”

She’d had periodic classes with the Guardians—the instructors responsible for educating the Wards—and the need for more wasn’t a surprise. She had wide gaps in her knowledge. She had thought she knew the history of the Great Disaster, but recently a Guardian had referred to the Dust as “nanites,” and when she’d responded with a blank stare, he’d sighed and told her she needed to spend time with Guardian Erwin. Apparently, today was the day.

“While you’re having your lesson,” he said, and then pointedly looked down at his plate, “Agent Reyes is coming in for a scheduled meeting. I get to go.” Jackson tried to mumble the words because he knew the mention of Reyes might set her temper off. If only he could keep the excitement from his voice.

This hero worship of Reyes served as proof of Jackson’s imperfection. She’d wondered if there might be more to it. Perhaps he was another beautiful, unattainable gay man like Ace, destined to be a wonderful, and very platonic, friend? But after several weeks of spending every waking moment together, that definitely wasn’t the case. They’d progressed beyond sidelong glances and zing-tinged chemistry, thanks to her shameless aggression, and were moving nicely toward…more.

Jackson wasn’t gay. He didn’t want Reyes. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to be Reyes. Her sigh fluttered the cloth crumpled beside her left hand.

He laughed to himself. His amused eyes, the corners turned up with dual laugh lines, met hers across the table again. “Why do you always do that?”

She arched a brow. “Because I don’t like him. Because he tricked me into coming here. Oh, how about because he’s evil?” None of that was true. He wasn’t evil. He hadn’t tricked her, not really. And as for not liking him….

It was one snotty hug, Lena. You’re acting like a child. Get over it already. He has.

She just couldn’t bring herself to let go of her indignation yet. He’d brought her here and dumped her without another thought. He’d been back. There had been meetings with Councilor Five, even check-ins with Jackson. Not one word to Lena, though. Not even to knock and barge in and say, “Hello, how are you coping?”

It had hurt, which was stupid because there had been
nothing
between them but a few days of intense drama and a bit of oversharing about mutual miserable childhoods. Then what she could only imagine was a deliberate slight had pissed her off. She decided to get over it as best she could—she’d enjoy the time she had here with the one person who did care whether or not she was coping. And she wouldn’t think about Reyes constantly. She sure as hell wouldn’t miss a man she barely knew.

So stop it already, little idiot.

Jackson shook his head, but his face stilled into seriousness. “Alejandro Reyes is a good man.”

She snorted. “I think you’re confusing being good at what he does with being good. And any man who does what he does, as well as he does, is by definition not a good man. Someday you’ll be old enough to know that.” That much
was
true. She hadn’t reconciled what she knew and the stories she’d heard about his exploits with the poetry-quoting man who’d stuck his neck out for her over and over, even if he had hauled her to the last place on earth she’d have chosen.

“I’m older than you are.”

“Chronologically, yes. Not in the ways of the world, Ward Lee.” She folded the last quarter of bread around the end of a smooth-skinned sausage and submerged them in the syrup before leaning across the table so she could stuff the dripping mass into her mouth. She gave him a closed-mouth grin of contentment and hummed.

Maple syrup was the true blue secret to happiness. She didn’t know why the Council of Nine didn’t ship it off to every Zone in big vats. If they did, all discontent and crime would disappear with the regular ingestion of the sticky perfection. Look at her: she was a happier girl already. As soon as she cleared her mouth, she told him so.

He shook his head as if he could read her thoughts. He glanced up at her. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

She smiled serenely, swirled her fork in the syrup and licked it from the tines. He did a double-take before he returned to his eggs, a slight flush creeping across the golden brown skin of his face. Hmmm. Thoughts of Reyes fled.

That’s an interesting reaction, isn’t it?

Jackson finished his eggs and then cleared his throat. “We should go get started, yes?”

She dropped the fork onto her plate and helped him clean up the detritus of their meal. “Yes,” she laughed. “Absolutely.”

She followed him to the out-of-the-way classroom they’d had her working in. They had started with teaching her centering and focus techniques. Washington wanted her to teach others to do what she could do. They hoped better control of her Spark would translate to being able to train others. So far, the attempt had been a resounding failure.

No one had been able to duplicate any of her offensive skills. She’d heard that Reyes, in a single evening lesson, had taught a group of Senior Wards how to protect themselves from intrusions into their personal Dust. And Jackson had shown remarkable aptitude manipulating the Dust to heal. The men could learn new skills, they just couldn’t learn them from her. She suspected the failure had more to do with her lack of trust than with any lack of ability in herself or others.

Which was as good an explanation as any as to why she could teach Jackson. She’d never met anyone as steady and reliable. She felt safe with him. She laughed to herself as she crossed the room and hitched herself up onto a tall desk. He didn’t always like how safe she felt with him.

He had paused by the door to fiddle with a rattling air vent. He hated distractions while he worked. While his back was still turned, Lena pulled out the small knife she’d palmed at breakfast. He needed an ego boost after failing abysmally at every attempt to use the Dust offensively. She could give him that. What he couldn’t handle healing, she could take care of herself.

She drew the blade across the inside of her hand. The skin parted and blood pooled in her cupped palm. Jackson turned at the sound of her soft gasp.

She bit her lip. “New lesson.”

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. “I
hate it
when you do that.”

“You can’t practice healing if you don’t have something to heal. You’re an amazing healer, Jackson. You’ll be better than me someday. You need the chance to practice.”

“I don’t. Not if it means you hurt yourself.”

“Well, done is done,” she said. “Are you going to come fix me or leave me to sit here and bleed?”

“I should let you bleed.” He crossed to where she perched on the desk. He shook his head at her, a final admonishment before he took her hand in both of his. Even when angry, he had a gentle touch.

As he focused, her hand warmed. Her flesh knit back together. When he finished, he exhaled in relief and rubbed his thumb across her palm. He continued stroking even after he’d rubbed away the blood.

It felt good. It kept her focus solely on Jackson.

He sighed. “Please don’t do that again.”

She laughed. “You know if you couldn’t heal it,
I
could. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. It’s a big deal to me. I don’t like the idea of you being hurt. There’s been enough pain in your life, dammit. You’re overdue to feel good for a change.”

She’d been waiting for the opening. She flashed him a grin. “What did you have in mind?”

He tried to lean back, but she shifted their grips and tugged on his hand to keep him close. She was small, but she was strong. And Jackson never put up much of a fight anyway.

He sighed. The sound fell somewhere between frustrated and longing. When he spoke, his voice was husky. “Lena. This isn’t a good idea.”

“You say that every time,” she whispered. She slid one hand up his arm and pulled him closer.

He took a step, angled his body toward her, and leaned in. His free arm slipped around her back, sliding her down the desk until her body pressed into him. He leaned his head down, touching his forehead to hers. His breath warmed her lips. His whiskey gold eyes, inches away, stared into hers. “That’s because every time it’s a bad idea.”

“And why is that?” She curled her hand around the top of his arm where the thick muscle rounded up into shoulder. His shoulders were her favorite feature.

He shook his head, a small movement, before he pressed his lips to hers. Like every time before, electricity arced between them, fed by their control of the Dust. With every small fluttery kiss across her lower lip, it was pressure and electricity and release. He exhaled hard against her skin, and she caught her own breath. Jackson’s kisses were like nothing she’d ever experienced with the normal boys of Azcon. These kisses were filled with electric heat and longing as the Dust surged inside of her. She’d only felt that swirling, gathering pressure from the Dust with one person before….

She pushed away the intrusive thought. Rejecting the memory of Reyes, she leaned into Jackson’s kiss.

He lifted his hand from her back to stroke her hair back from her face. His eyes were dizzy. “Ah, Dust, Lena, you have no idea how much I wish you could be mine.”

She curved her lips up under his. “I can be.”