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“Then he is a monster,” said Susan, her voice catching. “They’re all monsters, everyone who’s working for him….”
“Can I just remind you that I’m working for him, too?”
“Aleksandr’s thoughts have ever been of the greater good, and nothing else,” said Grandma X. It was hard to tell if she was trying to soothe Susan or agreeing with her. “He wouldn’t rescue his own daughter if she was in Jack’s position.”
“So what do we do to help him?” asked Susan.
“He is not helpless,” Grandma X said, “and Lottie is there, too. They are both resourceful. Together, I believe they will find a way.”
Susan’s fist hit the table with a loud bang. “I’m supposed to go to work tomorrow. How can I do that before we get Jack, Tara, and Kyle back? How can I do anything?”
“Yes. I’ll be doing everything I can, given the restraints I am under. A Warden’s promise is binding….”
“I think that’s our cue,” whispered Jaide to Stefano. “They could be at this for hours.”
She and Stefano inched past the doorway, into the laundry room where the bikes were kept.
“Ahem,” said a feline voice from behind them. “Where do you think you’re off to?”
“It’s okay, Ari,” said Jaide, turning. She had the excuse ready. “We’re going to check the wards.”
“Now? At this time of night?”
“It’s not that late. And there’s no trace of The Evil at the moment. I just want to make sure that’s not how it’s getting in.”
“I’m going to check with your grandmother.”
The sound of raised voices made him pause in mid-step.
“On second thought, I’ll just get Kleo.”
He scampered off, and Jaide and Stefano continued untangling the bikes. There were just two of them, but until they were separated it seemed like there were eight wheels, five handlebars, and at least six pedals to negotiate.
The two cats returned with Kleo in the lead.
“I understand that you, Jaide, have been inducted into the full knowledge of the wards of Portland,” she said. “What about Stefano?”
“Well,” said Jaide, “he did pass the second Examination, and you wouldn’t want me riding around on my own, would you?”
Kleo was forced to concede that last point.
“If you discover anything at all, you’ll call.”
“Yes,” Jaide said, tapping the pocket containing her phone and tapping her head, too. Thanks to the ability to teep, she would never be out of touch again. “I won’t take on anything alone, I promise. My Gifts are still feeling weak.”
Kleo studied both troubletwisters with cool, appraising eyes. “Very well. I will inform your grandmother when she is less … busy.”
“Thank you, Kleo. We just can’t stand sitting around doing nothing, that’s all.”
“I agree,” said Ari with a flick of his tail. “Maybe I’ll come with you.”
“You can’t,” said Kleo. “Warden Companions are not normally privy to the knowledge of the wards.”
“I know, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to know.”
“Ari, you are incorrigible. Did your oath mean anything to you at all?”
Sensing another argument on the way, Jaide took the opportunity to open the back door.
“Bye, Kleo. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Jaide wrestled her uncooperative bike out into the night air, and Stefano followed. He was too big for Jack’s bike, and his knees stuck out at an odd angle.
“You make it look easy,” he said as they pedaled out of earshot. “I’ve never tried to talk my way past Hector like that.”
Jaide looked both ways and turned onto Parkhill Street. “We don’t do it very often. Only when we absolutely have to.”
“Even so, Santino wouldn’t let me. He’s such a goody-goody. His secondary Gift is the same as Aleksandr’s — that is, to make people do as they’re told. He just hates it when I …”
He trailed off with a furious expression. Jaide studied him out of the corner of her eye, while avoiding potholes in the lane.
“What happened in the blue room?” she asked, deciding to take a chance. He owed her. “When The Evil drained my Gift, how did it do that?”
His expression turned inward. “That was me,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t do it, but The Evil was using my secondary Gift. I’m not very strong, not normally, but I can make myself a lot stronger by stealing power from other Wardens. That’s how The Evil drained you, Jack, and your grandmother, and punched a full-on hole to its home. It’s all my fault.”
“Having a Gift isn’t your fault,” she said. “None of us chose them. And I guess they don’t choose us, either. They just happen to us, just like you happened to be there when The Evil needed you. It saw an opportunity, that’s all.”
He nodded but didn’t seem terribly reassured.
“It’s still stealing,” he said. “And stealing is wrong.”
“Lying is wrong, too,” she said, “but sometimes you absolutely have to.”
“Like back there.”
“Yup.” She tried to sound nothing but certain as they turned onto Dock Road. They were halfway to the oval. It wasn’t too late to go back.
“Sometimes I wonder how different we are from The Evil,” Stefano said, his face shadowed and brooding.
That shocked her. “We’re nothing like The Evil!”
“Sure we are. We keep secrets, we steal people’s memories, we don’t fit in —”
“Yes, but not because we want to. If The Evil wasn’t trying to take over the world, we wouldn’t need to fight it!”
“What if it’s the other way around?” he asked.
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Surely no one could think that the Wardens were the bad guys after all the terrible things The Evil had done. The Compendium was full of them, pages and pages of atrocious tricks and schemes and lives lost trying to push it back. For thousands of years, The Evil had shown itself to be nothing but … well … evil.
Looked at that way, Jaide could totally understand Aleksandr’s determination to ensure his plan succeeded. If it wasn’t her brother and her friends trapped in
the Evil Dimension, she might have been willing to make a small sacrifice in order to ensure the safety of everyone else.
But it was, and she wasn’t. And as they pedaled across the grass to the now fully erected tent, where a Warden disguised as a security guard flagged them down, she knew exactly what to say.
“I’m Jaide Shield and this is Stefano Battaglia,” she told the guard. “We’re lightning wielders, and we’re volunteering for Project Thunderclap.”
* * *
Aleksandr interviewed them personally, scowling at Jaide like a moody lion from the other side of a metal desk. His office was a tent within the main tent. The entire space had been divided into many different sections. Through the flimsy canvas walls Jaide could hear hammering and Wardens shouting orders. There was a lot going on at a rapid, frenzied pace.
“Why are you here?” Aleksandr asked them.
“Like I told the guy outside,” Jaide said, “we want to help you get rid of The Evil. And you need all the help you can get, right? It’s not going to be easy.”
“We need Wardens, not troubletwisters.” His scowl deepened until his eyes practically disappeared into his eyebrows. “You are not disciplined enough. Have you forgotten what happened during the Grand Gathering?”
“No, but you see, here’s the thing.” Jaide had known that he would bring up the Grand Gathering, and she hadn’t known how to handle that until the conversation with Stefano on the way there. “You don’t need me to be disciplined, because you’ve got Stefano here. He’s a year older than me and a lot more disciplined. And he’s a lightning wielder, too. And he’s got a Gift that can take my strength into him. All I have to do is be there and he can do all the work.”
“Hmmm.” Aleksandr made a steeple out of his fingers. “That is an interesting suggestion. You have been training under Hector Shield, Stefano, is that correct?”
Stefano jumped a little at Jaide’s side.
“Yes, sir.”
“And it is true that you have this Gift of which Jaide speaks?”
“Yes, sir, it is. I mean, I do.”
He shot Jaide a look, as though she had betrayed a confidence. She just shrugged. He hadn’t said it was a secret, and besides, lives were at stake.
