An annoying buzzing pulled me out of my dreamless slumber. I sleepily smacked the source: a dreadful machine. This was effective in silencing it. After enjoying the silence for a moment, I clambered out of my warm bed. A gentle tug on my reserves told me my magic was still functional, but still not fully replenished as I had hoped. The energy had returned Tuesday morning after a period of being completely absent. I was glad it had returned even if it coated my entire room in ice. I had used a rag to mop up the lingering water on my floor. After checking downstairs, I was mostly sure it had not dripped through. Not enough to be visible at least.
As I grabbed clothes for school, I silently cursed my radio for playing grating noise instead of a radio station like it was supposed to. I slowly got dressed, avoided a loose sphere that I should have picked up days ago, and then thumped down the stairs before going right back up to retrieve my backpack. After dropping my school materials by the door, I wandered into the kitchen to find my father already making toast. He looked surprised to see me.
"Did you leave your alarm on?" he asked.
"Huh, what do you mean?" I said as I sleepily retrieved the milk jug from the refrigerator.
"You don't have school today according to the calendar. I thought you'd jump at any opportunity to sleep in," he said. After I closed the refrigerator, I inspected the calendar pinned to the door. Today's date featured a handwritten note.
no school: professional development day
"Oh, I guess with all the tests and then the celebration last night I totally forgot," I mumbled as I collected a bowl and a box of cereal.
"How did those tests go?"
"Great, except for history. Which I fear I may have completely bombed. Even with all my studying," I said through gritted teeth. "I spent a week studying history, including study sessions with Chris at his house and in homeroom. All for nothing."
"So dramatic. Laura, maybe you did better than you thought? Plus, this is the first time you haven't been worried about trigonometry," he said with a smile.
"Trig has not been a problem," I said offhandedly, while I was thinking about all those multiple-choice questions on the history test I must have missed.
"That's new," he said.
It had not ever been a problem for me I realized, even if that had only been two weeks. What was once a solid wall to Lucas had become easy for the new me. As I filled my bowl with milk, it was now clear to me now that my experience with my math class and history class were caused by the same thing: part of me was Aurora. Aurora's long memory and accumulated history across all her bonds steamrolled Lucas's meager ten or so years of history knowledge. Aurora had better problem-solving skills and could have contributed to my easier time with mathematics. Lucas was not entirely erased though, parts of me were clearly influenced by him. My friendships, my pride, my curiosity, and my willingness to struggle towards things I believed in—rather than being compelled. For whatever reason those felt more like Lucas's traits than Aurora's. Other parts of me felt like neither of them; those were fully me, fully Laura. Considering both Lucas's go-with-the-flow style and Aurora's exacting precision, neither felt like they described me. My approach lay somewhere between those two. I was more adaptable than either of them, but also more impulsive too. That was an improvement on both of them. If I had to exist without them then—
The toast finished with a ding and my father placed eggs on his plate and moved into the dining room. "I have to be there early this morning. Sorry kiddo," he said as he left the kitchen.
I was also apparently very prone to getting stuck in my own head. That was also a Laura-only thing.
"Do not let them work you too much!" I called after him.
"Enjoy your day off. Don't burn the house down while I'm out," he called back with a laugh.
"I am more likely to encase it in ice," I mumbled to myself. I flexed whatever part of my brain was able to draw on my magic and I was relieved to find it was still there and ready. It occurred to me that magic was not supposed to be easy to use. That I could use it so easily felt wrong somehow. Using it should require a circle for humans. The thought ate away at me as I threw pecans in my bowl and joined my father to eat.
-*-
My father had eaten quickly and headed off to work while I continued eating. Eventually, I returned to the kitchen and picked up the phone. I quickly keyed in Dan's number and realized too late that I might be waking him up early. Someone picked up, likely his mother, and I asked for Dan.
"Dan, your girlfriend is calling," she said, her muted voice indicating she had turned away from the phone. I winced. She had to know about Jessica. I hoped she did not because otherwise her words felt needlessly mean.
"Who is this?" Dan asked, annoyed.
"Laura. I did not tell your mom I was your girlfriend," I said quickly.
"Oh," he sighed. "Why are you up so early?"
"I forgot that there was no school."
"I thought you liked sleeping in."
"That is what my dad said!"
"Well, you know, you used to sleep a lot. On the bus, in class, during movies—"
"I got it. I got it." I held my head with my free hand in embarrassment. "Why are you awake?"
"Laura, you called me! Were you trying to wake me up?"
"No?" I really had not thought this through. "You seem very awake."
"I work out every morning before school, and I don't want to lose the habit. Also, since you're up, do you want to meet up to talk about the plan? You said you were up for it today."
"I thought we might talk about it at lunch. Maybe everyone should come over here though?"
"Your house is a better bet than mine. My sis is bouncing off the walls," he said as a shout from what I suspected was his sister came across the phone connection. "You gonna call everyone else?"
"Yes, but what about your sister?"
"Mom is here. They'll be fine. I'll be over around noon. Bye."
"Goodbye," I said and pressed the switchhook. "Only two more calls to make."
-*-
Despite Sarah's declared embargo on discussing magic, Dan had briefly mentioned his plan last night while we were wrapping up our third game of Carcassonne. Chris was very interested and Sarah was not. Sarah demanded that we wait until the next day to speak any more about it. Evidently, Chris and Sarah had both been expecting to meet up today and both of them were awake when I called. Sarah was surprised that it was me calling instead of Chris. "I would have expected he would be jumping at the chance," she had said. Her still exasperated tone told me a night's rest had not improved her opinion of Dan's idea.
I passed the time until noon by dragging my mother's safe out to the dining room area. It was the only place where four people could comfortably sit and talk. I started emptying out the safe contents and placing them on the table in case they might be useful. As I got to the bottom, I was reminded of the sealed cardboard box labeled in ominous red text stating to only open it in case of an emergency. I felt a chill as I ran my finger across the plastic and decided to leave it at the bottom of the safe. It was not an emergency just yet.
The empty necklace box reminded me of my mother's necklace, and I went upstairs to retrieve it from my bedside table. As I stepped into my bedroom, I landed my foot squarely on one of the polished stones and slipped. I crashed into the door on my way down and barely stopped my head from slamming into the floor.
"Well, that could have hurt a lot," I mumbled as I picked myself up.
I took the next few minutes to pick up all the agate spheres and shoved them back into my bedside drawer. Each of them crackled and faintly vibrated with energy except for one that I found underneath my bed. With the room finally safe to traverse, I carefully put on my mother's necklace and then decided that all the magic junk was coming downstairs. I completely pulled out the bedside drawer and placed it with the other items from the safe on the dining room table.
None of my friends were here yet so I began to flip though one of the notebooks. The confusing diagrams and circle diagrams were not exactly decipherable, but I kept flipping for a while. Eventually I gave up on the inscrutable diagrams and retrieved the novel I had been assigned in English. I was starting to get behind on it. I read the book with a few breaks until the doorbell finally chimed.
"It is open!" I called as I returned to flipping through my mother's notebook.
"Hey Laura!" Sarah said from the front door. She was carrying a bag of candy including a grocery bag of licorice, various bags of hard candies, and some loose foil-wrapped chocolates.
"Be careful of the vials," I said, restraining myself from leaping out of my seat, as she poured out the bag. Thankfully, she had done it far enough away from the safe's contents that they would not mix. "I do not want food to mix with some of the weird spooky magic powders."
"That could be terrible, who knows what that could do? You might turn purple or something," Sarah said with a grin. "What is all this stuff anyway?" She picked up one of the vials and squinted at the label.
"Not sure. At least the vials are labeled. Not that 'copper filings' tells you why it is here. Maybe they are various focuses for circles like the iron in a deflection ward? I think this notebook is the instruction manual, but it is a giant mess of partial notes."
"What about this one?" Sarah flipped one open and showed me the first page.
"I think that one is my mom's journal or a timeline of events at least. She was measuring the ambient arcane level of the town. There are maps," I said as I flipped over to the deflection ward page of my notebook and set it down.
"Oh yeah, wow. These are really detailed," Sarah said as she stared at one of the hand-drawn colored maps of Thread Creek from twenty years ago. "Was she looking for something?"
"Based on her notes I think she was making sure someone else did not find something. She never mentions what it is. Maybe it moves around? That might be why she was tracking the magic level? I have no idea why she was even doing all this. She was not bonded to a guardian as far as I know," I explained. At least Aurora had not been aware of another guardian active about twenty years ago. "Maybe Corona knows something?"
I watched Sarah flip through the pages and she said, "I can, uh, ask? She is asleep right now." Then her eyes looked past me and turned vacant. It was an eerie thing to witness in the dead silence of the house. With her eyes still unfocused, she asked, "what was her name again?"
"Laurie."
After a short silence, Sarah's eyes fluttered and refocused on me. She shook her head with no definitive answer. Corona did not know either. Several knocks at the door made me jump and I took a second to relax with slow breaths.
"Door is open!" I called.
Dan and Chris both walked in together. Chris was carrying a box filled with supplies and Dan locked the door behind him. I distantly heard the chirp of a car locking after Chris set down the box on the table. The large wooden compass and loose squares of cardboard stuck out above the rim of the box. Chris retrieved a paper bag from inside and passed sandwiches around the table.
"I dropped by the sandwich place. Nothing too crazy today," Chris said.
"You picked Dan up?" I asked Chris, surprised.
"It's a long bike ride, especially right after a workout," Dan said with a shrug. "Okay team, are you ready for the plan?" he said as he eagerly sat down.
"You've been thinking about this all night, haven't you?" Sarah said.
"Well, I couldn't break your rules last night," Dan shot back.
"And yet you did."
"That was only a preview! The plan is we go to the address on that receipt. We all apply deflection wards, and we crash in there with all our magic ready to go. So far, we've overwhelmed anything we've come across. Worst case we just block the way with ice and leave," Dan explained.
"That sounds absurdly dangerous," Chris said.
"Well, it sort of needs to be. How else will the guardian enchantment on the town activate to protect you?" Dan asked.
"Wait," Sarah yelped, looking nearly dumbfounded. "What the hell did Chromos tell you? Was this stupid as hell idea his?"
"If a human capable of receiving a bond is in danger it would reliably cause a guardian to appear if the enchantment is active and the same threat is considered a serious threat to the town," I said quietly.
"Laura!" Sarah was now clearly frustrated. "This was your idea?"
"No, I only told Dan what I knew about how guardians work. I assume Chromos agreed or at least did not disagree," I explained as I watched Chris's face. He rapidly went from a look of fear to excitement. He would get the guardian he wanted.
"What's the problem Sarah? I thought you liked taking risks?" Dan asked.
"Right up until we killed someone! She was a real person, not a monster. That location is going to have non-magic people working there. It's a storefront or something," Sarah said frantically.
"Sarah, they're killing people," Dan said sternly. "We can't wait until we just stumble across those responsible. That's how more people die. That's how they catch us by surprise. We have to find them first and act when we're prepared. And when they're not."
"Is that Chromos talking or you?" Sarah spat.
"Why? Is Corona saying the same things to you?" Dan said evenly. Sarah glared at Dan without saying anything. Dan continued, "Well, if you're not up for Corona's responsibilities she can bond with Chris."
"Oh, screw you. I'm not giving up. It's just so fucked up, okay?" Sarah said, clearly frustrated.
"Additionally, such a bond is not possible. Sarah was my only possible partner. Both that night and now," Corona said through Sarah.
"Right. Well, I wouldn't inflict Chromos on Chris. Or anyone, really. So that leaves Aurora's replacement," Dan said.
"I've got a deflection ward, I'll be fine until the guardian shows up. It's the same kind of protection you have," Chris said to Sarah.
"If the guardian shows up," Sarah said.
"If this place is even dangerous," Dan said. "Could be a dead end."
"What is your plan if we run into people Dan? I doubt they're going to just immediately attack us with lighting like last time," Sarah said, crossing her arms. "It's not like we're the police."
"We ask if they know Kimberly Ashford and go from there," Dan said.
"I am not sure that is a good idea," I said.
"If this person says that they worked with her you're just gonna kill them too?" Sarah blurted.
"Whoa. Sarah, relax," Chris said. "I don't think four high school students showing up to this place is a great idea." He punctuated his point by pulling out the receipt and flattening its folds against the table.
Sarah grew visibly frustrated and looked like she was about to scream. She took a deep breath just as I was about to stand up and make sure she was alright. "Fine! Corona. I'll give this idea a fair shot. I do want to help my friends," Sarah said while rolling her eyes. She leaned over the finance carbon copy and said, "Maybe if we go about this in a smart way. What if we say we're there to move the 'pallet' listed on this receipt? I doubt Kim would want to move it herself. And it's not like she can send a bunch of shades into town."
"Might give us a reason why we are all wearing deflection wards or the guardian-based equivalent," I muttered.
"Can they tell the difference?" Chris asked.
"If they can, and they attack us, then we know they're not on our side, right?" Dan said slamming his fist into his hand.
"Hey, muscles for brains, just because they see us coming with magic defenses and then get scared doesn't mean they're targets," Sarah said, glowering at Dan.
"They're strictly for protection. If they start slinging offensive spells first then we know," Dan complained. "Kim likely wouldn't want her lackeys to be at risk even if she didn't trust them. She would give them something."
"Also, if we go there and the place is practically glowing with magic then we might want to wait until there are fewer people inside. Possibly rethink this entirely," I said. "We should do at least some investigation from a distance."
"No better time than the present," Dan said as he stood up. He had already eaten his sandwich during the discussion.
"Wait. First, we're all putting deflection wards on. Even you two," Chris said pointing at Sarah and Dan. "We need to play this safe. Also, you'll have multiple layers of protection so you should go in first."
"Right," Dan said. He sat back down as Chris retrieved the spell's materials. "I guess I haven't cast a spell yet. This might be cool."
Sarah and Dan both had no issues applying their own circle-based deflection wards. The spell did not seem to have a negative interaction with their guardians and worked flawlessly. Corona did explain she had to retract her veil to allow the spell to work. She claimed she could assert her own defenses as soon as Sarah's ward was extinguished. Sarah and Dan effectively had two layers of defense now.
"We really should have done this sooner," I muttered as Dan completed his cast.
"Better late than never. Chris, you driving?" Dan said.
"Yeah," Chris said as carefully aimed his Volvo's key fob inside the house and pressed unlock.
"Shotgun!" Sarah called as she ran to the door.
I sighed as I quickly finished the last few bites of my sandwich before following them outside and locking the door behind me.
-*-
Chris drove and I pointed out the alley we found. We drove by at normal speed, which did not give a good opportunity to see much. The door to the business was closed and no one was standing outside.
"If it really is a storage company then they'll have a truck loading area in the back," Dan said.
"Easy enough to check," Chris said.
He turned at the first opportunity and pulled onto the service road behind all the shops on the main street. It was a one-way road but in the middle of the day there were no other cars moving back here. Occasionally, there were a few parking spots available. They were for smaller businesses which rented out only the back of a building.
"I think that's it," Dan pointed at a semi-truck loading bay with no truck parked there. The roll-down door was fully up. Shelves with a few pallets stored within were visible from the road. "Looks like they're doing some business at least."
"Tell me you're not thinking of going in that way," Sarah said. "We should talk to them at the front."
"They will know what we look like in the future if we do that," Chris said.
"And the door is open right now," Dan said.
"So, we just put on ski masks and rob the place?" Sarah huffed.
"Fresh out of ski masks in this car," Chris laughed.
"If we break in, they would be much more likely to be aggressive and use magic if they have it," I said carefully.
"Or just call the police," Sarah said.
"Hey now, we're not breaking or trespassing. Yet," Dan said. "We're just visiting. Kim told us to just waltz in and check on her items for her."
"What if it's up on one of the shelves? We would need a forklift to get it down. We should go in the front door," Sarah said.
"Are you okay with them knowing what you look like?" I said.
"You wouldn't happen to know any spells that disguise people?" Chris said after he pulled into an empty parking spot a few buildings away. Sarah turned to face Dan and me in the back seat.
"No. It is not exactly something that a former ice guardian would know," I said. "Maybe there is a circle-based spell that could do it. Unfortunately, the deflection ward is the only one I have gotten to work. What about you Chris?"
"Huh?" Chris said, turning around in his seat to look at me.
"I saw you were trying circles on Friday, likely from the book, and you did take the photos at Kim's house," I said.
"Nothing has worked so far," he shrugged.
"Someone has to go in. Sarah is right—" Dan started, but he was cut off by Sarah, "I'm right? Wow, someone write that down."
"We shouldn't just jump to breaking in. We have the receipt number. Sarah and I just have to ask to see it. We look inside to get an idea of what we're dealing with," Dan resumed.
"Why just us?" Sarah asked.
"We have the guardians Sarah. Laura and Chris don't. They'll cover the exit," Dan said. "You two," he pointed at Chris and me, "need to be at the back door and watch for us if we need to make a quick exit. Make sure no one closes the door or parks a truck in the way," Dan said.
"How do we do that?" I asked.
"Get creative," Dan said as he exited the car.
"That is not helpful, you know?" I said as I scrambled out after him.
"Freeze their engine block or something," Dan laughed. I only sighed in response.
"Cut it out you two," Sarah said as she rolled her eyes. "So where is the receipt?"
Chris pulled a paper out of the central console, handed it to Sarah, and said, "Good luck."
"Keep an eye out for us and when we're clear I'll signal you. Then we'll meet up back at the car. If things go sideways…" She trailed off.
"You'll hear her fireworks, I'm sure," Dan said.
"Wait, how are you going to signal it's safe?" Chris asked.
"I can make a very bright flash of light with one of Corona's spells. Even directional if I cup it in my hands when I cast," Sarah explained.
"How does that work?" Chris prodded.
"I have no idea," Sarah shrugged.
"We will keep our eyes out for it," I said.
As Dan and Sarah walked around to the front of the buildings I looked Chris over. He was visibly nervous and I said, "hey, you can stay here if you want."
"Danger is kind of the point, isn't it?" Chris said. He started walking along the back of the block of buildings and his voice dropped to a whisper. "This is the only way to make the guardian appear."
My stomach churned. This was such an awful idea.