“Yes. Have a seat.” Valek settled behind the desk. “What happened when I took off after Alea in the forest?”
“That was Alea?” Janco asked with a groan. “That means there areeightof them now.”
“Yes. That’s about all I found out before she attacked me.”
“It’s more than we had before,” Ari remarked. “I wasn’t sure who to chase after at first. You both took off in opposite directions, but we’re trained to never leave our partners, so I went after Janco. He didn’t get far before the magic wore off. Or she stopped sending it. Then we tracked you and heard the branch crash in the distance. By the time we found you, the mag—Alea was gone. The limb was too heavy for us to lift. We ran back to camp, woke the Commander, and you know the rest.”
“Thank you for rescuing me.”
“Part of the job,” Ari demurred.
“Not a damsel-in-distress, but I’m sure I can embellish the story a bit.” Janco grinned.
“When you saw the bees, what did you feel?” Valek asked.
Janco’s smile died. “Panicked. They were crawling all over me.”
“Did they sting you?”
“Well, no ’cause they were imaginary.”
“But you felt them crawling.”
“Oh! Well, yeah. I guess that was me being twitchy.”
“Have you ever felt twitchy when you were around Yelena?” he asked.
“Why do you—Oh.” Janco’s gaze grew distant. “Not really. Well, at the end there, after she had her…epiphany about fighting and was hard to beat. I’d get this…” He rubbed his forearms. “Tingle.” He shrugged. “I just thought it was me. The expectation of a good fight usually gives me goosebumps.”
“What about when the Sitians visited?”
“Ah. Fourth Magician gives me the creeps. I know she’s a nice magician, but…” He shuddered and then turned to Ari. “Remember that time we were practicing in the storeroom?”
“We practiced there hundreds of times.”
“When the Sitians were in the castle, and we had that strange, intense conversation as if we were solving all the world’s problems?”
“Yeah, I was agreeing with you. That almost never happens.”
Janco ignored the comment. “I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. Not quite the creeps, but definitely weird.”
“And what about at Brazell’s manor house? When you fought your way to the room with the victims?”
Another shudder shook him. “Everything about that manor house gave me the creeps. But I was focused on fighting, I didn’t notice anything else but block, block, dodge, stab, stab, duck, and repeat.”
Ari grabbed Janco’s arm. “The door.”
“What door?”
“When we reached the end of the hall and Fourth Magician opened the door to that room. You flinched or something, and the guy you were fighting stabbed you.” He turned to Valek. “Do you think Janco is sensitive to magic? Is that the reason for his twitching? I thought it was just his intuition and experience.”
“I do, but I don’t know how reliable it is. We need to experiment, but we don’t have the time or resources right now. However, I’m ordering you both not to tell anyone.”
“But Alea must know,” Ari said. “Doesn’t she read thoughts?”
“Yes, but neither of you would have been thinking about that. Just that Janco was feeling twitchy. Plus, I’m hoping she takes that knowledge to her grave.”
“Why not tell people?” Janco asked.
