“What do you mean by explosion?” Marshall made sure his voice held none of the irritation he felt. People, he found, were at their best when calm, and he couldn’t expect them to be calm if he wasn’t.
Clayton, the tall, willowy man sent to deliver the request, was the same one who had greeted Marshall in the lobby. Clayton’s red hair did nothing to help offset the intense crimson blazing across his cheeks, and Marshall hoped, for the man’s sake, the appalling red wasn’t a permanent fixture on his face, but it was hard to tell. When Clayton had met him this morning it had been there, though in a more subdued incarnation. Only time would tell, Marshall concluded.
“Well, perhaps not an actual explosion. It could have been an implosion, but then again, there was a building we are pretty sure did explode. Probably.” Clayton’s soft British accent should have made him sound cultured, but it was difficult to associate said adjective with the young man who had just dropped—for the third time—the remains of the doorknob that had fallen off in his hand when he had opened the door to Marshall’s room.
“Maybe you could start from the beginning.” Marshall’s voice was a placid pond on a warm June day.
“Of course, Guardian.” Clayton managed to put the remains of the doorknob into his pocket, and the small victory appeared to have calmed him somewhat. “One of the air sprites blew into my office—quite rudely, I must say—and told me a guardian was needed at the cemetery. It showed us—Samantha and me—a projection of the Granary Burying Grounds, only it wasn’t there.”
“How did it show you a picture of something that wasn’t there?” Marshall kept his hands busy putting each roll of socks in order in his sock drawer. If he didn’t, his fingernails would soon be digging deep crescents into his palms from sheer frustration.
Marshall did his best not to announce to the world his anger management issues. Good guardians didn’t get emotional. Destroying a city block in the name of protecting the balance? Sure. As long as they didn’t get emotional about it, a guardian could wreak havoc with impunity. But gods forbid one of them get angry.
Not that there wasn’t good reason for that rule, but that didn’t stop it from chafing.
Clayton examined an index finger that had begun to seep blood from its encounter with the doorknob. “The projection was… Oh, just come with me, and it will show you.” Then his face flamed so brightly that Marshall feared the man was having a stroke. “Forgive me, Guardian… I didn’t mean… Oh, dear…” he stammered incoherently, horrified he might have offended Marshall.
Marshall put a friendly hand on the ginger man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. And please, call me Marshall.
“Thank you, sir.” The red receded from Clayton’s face a notch, but he was shaking hard enough for Marshall to hear the doorknob pieces jingling in his pocket.
Sighing, Marshall ran a hand through his hair, then he ran to the mirror to make sure he hadn’t made his hair look ridiculous, and he had to smooth down an errant honey-brown lock before he was satisfied with what he saw. “Why don’t you take me to the sprite so we can figure this out.”
Marshall followed the shorter man down the hall, allowing Clayton to lead the way.
Clayton’s fanboy behavior wasn’t a first for Marshall. While Clayton’s reaction was on the extreme side, many people Marshall met were nervous or awed by his presence. It was an unfortunate byproduct of Marshall’s job.
Out of all the members of the Guard, guardians were elite. Known best for blasting their way through problems, the rumor was if you needed to call in a guardian, it was probably better to leave town until everything had calmed down.
While some guardians deserved the reputation—like the members of Blitz—other teams, like Snow or Mist, did their job without anyone ever knowing they were there. A team’s name reflected what they specialized in, so being the leader of Fire made people understandably nervous around Marshall.
Once they got to the lobby, Marshall saw Samantha at Clayton’s desk, sitting inside a small cloud. Her dark curls clung wetly to her cheeks, and Marshall had to cover a smile at the stiff expression on her face that belied her attempt to not look as uncomfortable and damp as she was. As the host of the Boston chapter house, Samantha Gonzales was the Guard’s liaison to the magical community in New England. She did her best to keep good relations with everyone, no matter how soggy it got her.
Marshall bowed to the air sprite to show respect. The cloud coalesced into a humanoid form and bowed back.
“Okay, Fzzt,” Clayton made the air sprite’s name sound like something you might hear coming from a broken toaster. “If you would be so kind, please show Guardian Marshall what you showed us.” He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a bandage, applying it to his finger like he’d done it hundreds of times.
Fzzt expanded into a circular shape, hovered a few feet off the floor, and began to shimmer with a random assortment of colorful lights. The effect was beautiful but disorienting, so Marshall sat down in one of the red velvet chairs scattered around the lobby. Randomly keeling over wasn’t something people expected from a guardian.
Marshall was relieved when the light show became less random and formed an overhead picture of a cemetery.
“According to Fzzt, he was having a normal day in his part of town, playing with one of the local flocks when something… interesting happened.” Clayton’s quirked lip told Marshall that interesting wasn’t the word he would have personally chosen.
Marshall watched two figures walk into the cemetery. At first, they were too small to make out any details, but the air sprite must have found them interesting and gotten closer because the ‘screen’ zoomed in on the pair, showing a tall man climbing up a tree.
Marshall could tell right away what piqued the sprite’s interest. The man was dressed in black from head to toe and carried himself like a soldier in enemy territory. As the sprite got closer, Marshall recognized the near-dead, haunted look of a man who had killed more people than he could number.
With surprise, he noted the man’s companion was his complete opposite. He was smaller than the soldier by almost a foot and looked like a harsh word would blow him away. His small body curled in on itself like he was trying to keep from being noticed, and the paper-thin black hoodie he clutched around himself did little to disguise his delicate frame, giving Marshall the impression of a fairy being forced to attend a yoga class.
Before he had time to wonder at the unlikely couple, a rust-colored distortion rippled around them, bounced off, and hit the tree behind the two. When he saw the soldier throw himself at the boy to protect him from the blast, Marshall felt blooming respect but tucked it away until he could watch the entire scene play out. For all Marshall knew, the soldier was trying to gain the boy’s trust and would end up killing him in order to steal something.
The debris from the exploded tree made things harder to discern, and the air sprite had a different idea than Marshall did about what was interesting enough to pay attention to. Right now, the sprite was focusing primarily on the pattern made in the air by the smoke and blossoms from the tree as they drifted to the ground, but he could tell by the number of colors splashing against them that the couple was pinned down by spell-fire from more than one attacker.
All magic had a flavor, and it varied from person to person. Those strong enough to sense this flavor experienced it in different ways. Like most magic users, Marshall sensed magic as color. Currently, he could see two distinct colors crashing over the boy and his companion, sometimes mixing together to make some truly spectacular combinations.
The thing he found most interesting was that none of the spells actually hit the pair. They were bouncing off and dissipating entirely or coating the area around the two but leaving a neat little hole where the intended targets sat. When the boy moved around, the shield stayed in place, but when the soldier moved, it inched over, echoing his movement. Marshall was pretty sure the shield was centered on the man, which made no sense. It was clear from the moment Marshall saw him that the man was a norm. His aura was a pure, unbroken black, and no magic user carried weapons like this guy did.
“Why does the kid keep doing that?” Clayton’s voice interrupted. “I didn’t notice the first time I watched this, but—look, he did it again!” He walked over and pointed to a flare of pink that went from the boy to the soldier when he touched him, causing the man to fall over into a lifeless heap.
“Why would he want to incapacitate the only person who could help him escape?” Samantha’s voice was incredulous. “Maybe he’s stealing the soldier’s essence to power a spell?”
“No.” Marshall’s sense of magic was better than most, so now that he was paying attention, he could see exactly what was going on. “He’s not doing it on purpose. The soldier is sucking it out of him. And look, it only happens when they touch. I think the boy is an empath.”
Samantha raised her eyebrows. “An empath? I’ve never heard of one strong enough to knock someone out with a touch.” Watching the fight had taken away her public relations persona and replaced it with who she really was—a librarian who loved a good mystery. “At this boy’s age, he should be trained enough to keep from accidentally spilling out into another person like that. Who is he? Do you recognize him?”
Neither Marshall nor Clayton had and said as much.
“Why is there no sound?” Marshall knew air sprites were able to zero in on any sound for miles in any direction, and he wanted all the information he could get for this investigation.
Clayton looked at the sprite for a moment and cocked his head, clearly hearing something Marshall and Samantha couldn’t. “He said today is a silent day for him. Sometimes he likes to go quiet for a while just to change things up.” Another pause and then he said, “We’ve completely ruined it for him today, and he’s pretty mad about it.”
“My apologies, Fzzt,” Marshall said, aiming for somber. It was important to be respectful to elemental sprites.
Marshall’s attention was jerked back to the scene before him when a deep, blood-orange magic joined the silver and rust that had been pelting the couple. They all watched in fascination as the air sprite moved backward to encompass the whole battle, probably having had enough of spells flying through and around him. The spells wouldn’t hurt Fzzt—nothing much could—but they would be irritating.
The ‘screen’ jerked sharply, and the three watchers could now see who was attacking the unlikely couple. “Stella Blaike!” Samantha exclaimed.
“And Sterling and little Helen, too,” Marshall confirmed.
“The boy looks a bit like them, doesn’t he?” Clayton squinted. “A long-lost relation, perhaps. Come to watch the fight for the family mantle? I’ve heard Matriarch Elanor isn’t doing terribly well these days.”
“For the gods’ sake, niño, stop touching the poor man!” Samantha yelled at the same time Clayton said, “Aaaand he’s out again.”
When the three witches huddled together, Marshall knew things were about to get ugly. He found himself rooting for the boy and his soldier and tried to stop. Even though the boy looked small and helpless, he knew it meant nothing. Marshall had been mistaken before, and the price was too dear to pay ever again.
When the building collapsed behind them, it was clear the witches, at least, were not on the side of the angels.
“This has gone too far.” He jumped to his feet and began to pace, wanting to do something, but he also knew he needed to see the rest of the fight before he could act.
“What is he doing now?” Clayton was referring to the gestures the boy was making with his hands.
Marshall focused on the boy. “I would say he’s casting a spell, but there’s no magic behind it.” That wasn’t quite right though. There was something churning up inside the boy, but it was unfocused and kept dissipating before anything could happen.
When the soldier scrabbled away from the boy, Samantha cheered. “Soldier boy finally got the memo!”
Marshall noted when the soldier pushed away from the boy, he took his shield with him. But when he saw the pink firestorm erupt from the boy’s body, wild and unconstrained, Marshall lost his train of thought. The boy was definitely not an empath—they were notoriously bad at combat spells.
It was starting to look like there might be no good guys in the fight after all. Family power struggles were always messy. They were rare though, because no one wanted the attention of the Guard.
