Mark of Four (25 page)

Alayne rubbed her thumbs together, not sure what else to say. “It’s good to see so much influence going for a good cause.”

Silence fell before Sprynge spoke again. “Well, Alayne, I hate to cut this short, but I’ve got class prep to do. Keep working on bringing up those grades.” He motioned toward the door.

Alayne rose from her chair.

“Exams right around the corner, Miss Worth.” He eyed her over the top of his glasses as she opened the door.

Alayne nodded, and her head felt heavier than lead.
And exams are my deadline to find the Vale for the Shadow-Casters, or Marysa dies.
“Thank you, Professor.” She exited through Tarry’s office.

Jayme waited for her on a couch in the common room. “So, how did it go?”

“I don’t know, Jay. I don’t think he’s guilty.”

“Why not?”

Alayne plopped down on the couch and threw her head back to glare at the ceiling. “He’s used his connections with the High Court to get their spy network to look for Marysa. I mean, how
could
he be the Shadow-Caster? If he’s the one who hid her, then why go to all the trouble?”

“You really don’t think he’s the one?” Jayme took her hand in his, playing with her fingers.

Alayne brought her head up to look at him. “I don’t know. I thought I had it narrowed down. I’m absolutely sure it wasn’t Kyle; obviously it wasn’t you or me. The other students were all unconscious. The three professors—uh, ex-professors—were Shadow-Casted, so unless someone was hiding in the tunnels nearby, it
had
to have been Sprynge.”

Jayme chewed on his bottom lip, stretching out her index finger, tracing it with his thumb, and then bending it double again. “What if one of the ex-professors actually
wasn’t
Shadow-Casted. Is there any way to know?”

Alayne fingered the end of her braid. She had assumed they were telling the truth when they claimed to be Shadow-Casted, but what if they had been themselves the whole time? Or what if it had been only
one
of the professors, the other ones Shadow-Casted so they wouldn’t do anything out of line?

“I don’t know, Jay, it’s a possibility, I guess. Maybe we should go talk to Felycia—I want to see if any of the students talked to her while they were recovering, told her anything useful.”

Jayme looked doubtful, and Alayne yanked his hand in irritation. “It’s a stone, Jayme. I’m not leaving any of them unturned, even if they seem highly unlikely.”

W
hen Alayne
and Jayme entered the common care ward, Alayne was surprised to see Kyle sitting on one of the beds, watching Felycia as she deftly wrapped his wrist in a bandage. He gripped the bed so tightly with his other hand that his knuckles turned white.

Alayne gasped and wove through the beds toward him. “Kyle, what did you do to your wrist?”

He forced a grin. “Something really dumb, so I don’t think I’ll tell you, ‘cause you’ll just question my intelligence.”

“Like I haven’t already done that multiple times. Come on, what did you do?”

He blushed as he tipped his gaze away from her. “I tripped over my skates on my way off the ice today.”

Jayme snorted. “Awesome, Pence.”

Kyle’s jaw hardened, but he didn’t respond. “Speaking of ice, I wanted to ask you if you would switch with Cole during our next game. He’s come down with a bout of pneumonia and might not be able to play. Kenton could take his spot, but I prefer him on defense, so I wanted to know if you’d move up, and Kenton could take your spot if needed.”

Alayne shook her head. “I don’t feel right playing, Kyle. I haven’t been to practices in ... well, a long time. The team’s learned to function without me, and frankly, I’m exhausted.”

Kyle shook his head. “Layne, I get that you’re worried. We all are. But you need to do something to take your mind off of it. You’re going to drive yourself insane—literally, I’m afraid.” He bumped her leg with his shoe. “Come on, Worth. Play with us.”

Layne stared at him for a long moment before shrugging at last. “I guess. You know as well as I do that I’m not a great offensive player, but...”

“Stop beating yourself up, Layne. You’re fine.”

“Anyway,” Jayme interrupted, “Felycia, when you get a second, could we talk to you?”

The nurse looked up as she wound the tape twice more around Kyle’s wrist. “Sure.” She eyed the finished product and nodded once. “I think that should do you, Mr. Pence. Keep ice on it, but if it starts any abnormal swelling, come see me right away.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He started to get up and move away, but Alayne stretched out her hand and laid it lightly on his arm.

“Hang on, Kyle. You’re part of this, too.”

Kyle and Jayme both eyed her with surprise. She shrugged defensively. “Well, he is. He was there.”

Jayme sighed and turned to the nurse. “Right. Well, we’ve been discussing what you told Alayne about Shadow-Casters casting from a distance, and how their hold gets more tenuous the farther away they are. We were wondering about the—the students. Do you think—”

Felycia was already shaking her head. “Nope. Didn’t happen. The condition of those kids when they arrived leaves no possible way. None of them would have had the strength to do even a minor throw-cast, much less a Shadow-Cast, which takes infinitely more skill and concentration.”

“I see,” Alayne said slowly.

The nurse dumped her bandage clippings in a bowl and headed for the station at the head of the ward. Alayne shook her head. “Another dead end,” she whispered to Jayme and Kyle.

“At least we’re narrowing it down. It had to have been Sprynge or Casters in one of the neighboring tunnels,” Jayme said.

“Narrows it down so much. There’s only a hundred other possibilities to consider. Maybe I should be looking for a list of Casters wanted by the High Court.”

“That shouldn’t be hard,” Kyle grunted. “Comes up nearly every night on Continental Media.”

“Good point,” Alayne nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that’s it then. What are you doing?” She stared at Kyle as he quickly ripped the tape from his arm and tossed it onto a nearby tray.

“There’s nothing wrong with my arm,” he muttered. “Not even a twinge of pain. I don’t need to go strutting around like an invalid when I can’t even feel anything.”

Alayne shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She turned to go.

“Come practice with us tomorrow, Layne,” Kyle reminded her as she brushed past him. “It’ll be good for you.”

“Sure, sure.” Her smile felt stretched and fake. “See you there.”

“
S
hh
,” Alayne said, standing at the door to her dorm room. She peeked out into the hall, but no one was around. She shut the door carefully. “Cornelia’s the hall monitor this month, and she tried to turn me in for my alarm being too loud once. I think she’d be especially delighted to find you in my room.”

Jayme looked up from the floor where he sat piecing her mirror shards together. “It’s not like she’d find us doing something improper or anything. Just fixing broken equipment. But,” he continued hopefully, “if you’d rather...”

Alayne beaned him with a tiny shard of glass. It bounced off his shirt and fell to the floor with a small clink. “Jay, we’ve got to concentrate. This is going to take forever.” She leaned over the pieces and bit her lip as she studied them.

Jayme’s hand tugged her braid. “I think Kyle had the right idea.”

“What idea?” she snapped as she yanked the braid out of his grip.

“You’re driving yourself crazy.”

“Jay!” she exploded, “Marysa’s—”

“Gone, I know,” Jayme said quietly. “And I’m working just as hard as you are to figure out any clues. But Alayne, have you looked at yourself lately? Have you
heard
yourself?” He brushed his knuckles along her upper arm. “You need to give yourself a break, just for a few minutes now and then, okay?”

Alayne’s shoulders slumped as she stared at the mirror pieces. She slowly nodded.

“Come on, smile for me, Al.”

Alayne pasted a watery smile on her face. “I’m concentrating too hard to smile.” She pointed to the other side of the room. “And your work space is over there.”

“Well, I concentrate better over here,” he murmured, pulling her close and nuzzling her ear. “Something about the air on this side of the room.”

Alayne struggled to release the tension that riddled her muscles as Jayme playfully tackled her. A giggle escaped her lips, surprising her. Jayme’s lips spread into a wide grin, and he buried his face in her neck and ran his fingertips lightly up her ticklish sides. The giggle turned to a shriek.

“You were the one telling
me
to hush,” Jayme laughed.

A door slammed in the hallway. Jayme pulled away and helped Alayne sit up.

Alayne held her breath, only releasing it when the footsteps faded out of hearing. She straightened guiltily. “Fine, you might have a point about relaxing now and then, Jay, but honestly, I feel horribly guilty, laughing when—”

“I know.” Jayme watched her intently. “I do, too. But now we have more energy to put into helping find her, right?”

A corner of Alayne’s mouth lifted. “I like you, Cross.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Worth.” With a reluctant sigh, he glanced back at the mirror. “I suppose we’d better get to work on this thing. It’s gonna take us a million years as it is,” he grumbled.

“Let’s hope not.” The deadline to find the Vale pounded a steady pulse behind Alayne’s temples, a countdown that grew shorter every day. She sifted through the shards, searching for like edges.

“Al?”

Alayne glanced up at Jayme’s curly head, bent over the pieces in front of him. “What?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

Jayme raised his eyes to meet hers. “For taking a risk on a guy like me. For being my best friend. For—everything.” He shrugged.

They stared at each other. Alayne smiled, a true smile this time.

T
hey worked
on the mirror for a week. The larger pieces were an easier fit, but when it got down to the fragments, Alayne became so frustrated, she ordered a break after only minutes.

Jayme sorted through the remaining tiny pieces. “I’m going to kinda miss this. Sneaking up to your room every day, dodging Corn.” He grinned at Alayne.

“Walking up eighteen flights of stairs,” Alayne muttered as she dropped a piece into place and smoothed it to fit.

“You’d think they would have fixed that by now.”

“It builds character, remember?” she said absently. “Since I haven’t had any other chances to build character this year...”

Jayme fitted two more pieces of the mirror and touched them with glue. Alayne caught him casting a furtive glance her way. She knew he wanted to take her mind off Marysa. She wasn’t surprised by the upbeat tone of his next question, although it was the worst possible topic to try to lift her gloom. “It’s the beginning of April. Exams start in four weeks. Think you’re ready for that yet?”

Alayne touched another piece with glue and laid it on the mirror. “No,” she whispered. She’d pounded out her terror for Marysa in the beat of her footsteps every morning as she jogged the perimeter of Clayborne. She’d poured out her fears in the library books she’d scanned and rescanned as time passed. As the days went by and the deadline drew closer, her panic had grown. She knew Jayme felt helpless to comfort her, and even if she
could
have told him about the Vale, she knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything, but she did appreciate his efforts.

The mirror pieces blurred in her vision, and she swiped angrily at her eyes. “I hate crying.”

Jayme reached across the glass and caught her hand in his. “It’ll be okay, Al. Something will crop up that we’ve missed all along and just didn’t think about, and it’ll make all the sense in the world.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Don’t cry, Al; you make me want to cry, too.”

Alayne sniffed and rubbed her nose on the back of her arm. “Boys don’t cry.” Her voice was rough.

Jayme lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t want to know how many times I’ve cried this year alone.”

“What? Why?” Alayne stared at him.

“Remember the night I caught you and Kyle on the dock?”

“Like I’ll ever forget the way your face looked then.”

“I cried my eyes out for hours, sure I’d lost you for good with the way I was acting. And Kyle was being so horribly
nice
that night. I was about to punch out his lights.” Jayme smiled ruefully at the memory.

Alayne sniffed and rubbed her nose on her sleeve. “But then we made up pretty decently, I thought.”

Jayme shrugged. “Yeah, it wasn’t bad.”

Alayne reluctantly allowed a smile to curve her lips upward. “When else did you cry?”

“I cried a couple of times in the cave when it looked like I might not ever be able to get back to you.” He rubbed his hand along his jawline. “I thought we were done. It was so long, and hope seemed so far away.”

Alayne watched him as he dropped into silence and memory. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said.

He shook himself. “Thanks to you.” He turned his attention to the mirror again, lining up the last few pieces to glue.

“It’s coming together.” Alayne surveyed their work. “Granted, it’s hard to see your reflection in such a shattered mirror, but I think we did a pretty good job.” She walked to her dresser drawer and yanked out the piece of mirror she’d found in her mother’s folder. She carried it over to the floor, knelt, and fitted the piece right into the empty spot near the top of the mirror.

Something very strange happened. The lines criss-crossing the mirror began to disappear. Line by line, thread by thread, they ran together until the entire mirror was once again a solid sheen, reflecting the room back at them.

Alayne’s mouth dropped open. She turned to Jayme. His eyes were wide. “What just happened?” he whispered.

“So the last piece was the key.” Alayne watched her smooth, line-free reflection.

Jayme laughed. “All that work, and nothing to show for it. I mean, look at it.” He motioned to the mirror. “It doesn’t look like we’ve done anything at all.”

Alayne ignored his joking. “Are you ready?”

Jayme sobered again. “Go for it.”

Alayne glanced nervously at the mirror and took a deep breath. “Uh, could I see ... my mom and dad, please?”

Nothing appeared. Alayne didn’t know what to think. Had they killed the magic somehow by completing the mirror? She tried again. “Bryan and Wynn Worth, please?” No picture appeared.

She glanced at Jayme, her heart sinking. She started to lower the mirror back to the floor, but before she could, the glass slowly swung open on a hinge from its frame.

Electricity shot up Alayne’s senses. Instead of the dull, thin carpet of the floor behind the mirror, Alayne’s living room
at home
appeared.

Alayne leaned toward her parents’ living room. She felt Jayme grasping her shoulder. “You’re not going without me.”

And suddenly, there they were. Inside the living room. Alayne turned to see where the mirror was, but it had disappeared. “The mirror?” she gasped.

When you’re ready to return, it will come.
The words were not audible, but Alayne could hear them as if they had been spoken out loud.

The clatter of a pot sounded from the kitchen. Alayne jumped. Squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath, she grasped Jayme’s hand and pulled him around the corner where her mother stood, emptying soup from a pot into two bowls.

“Mom?”

Wynn shrieked, dropping the pot with a clang to the ground. Soup splattered across the tile floor. Wynn sagged against the kitchen counter, her hand over her heart.

“Alayne, what—how did you get here?” She swallowed hard and looked around. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine, Mom. Just—let’s get this mess cleaned up, and I’ll tell you all about it. Where’s Dad?”

“He’s out back. He’ll be in for supper in a minute.” She hurried over and hugged her daughter, squeezing her tightly. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad to see you. I’ve missed you so much.”

Alayne returned the hug because that was what she was supposed to do, but anger kept her stiff. She stepped back before her mother had fully released her. She glanced over at the mess, but Jayme had already flown the pot back to the stove. He’d gathered up all the soup splattered across the floor into one big heap and was in the process of dumping the whole thing into the sink.

Alayne cleared her throat. “Mom, this is Jayme. I wanted you to meet him at Christmas, but he was gone on a field trip while you were there.”

Wynn looked him up and down. She took his proffered hand hesitantly. “Hello. Alayne’s mentioned you a few times in her letters.”