The Protection of Ren Crown (11 page)

I jolted to my feet, panic running through me, and yanked open the door. “Go. Now. You are in danger here. You need to go.”

When no one moved, I strode over and pulled Will upright and tucked a hand underneath Neph's elbow, lifting her to her feet as well, adrenaline giving me strength. “You need to leave for your own safety. Now. Olivia, start packing.” I gave Will and Neph a firm push toward the doorway.

Will threw his hands out against the frame of the door, like a cat being forced where it didn't want to go. “What? No.
All
of us need to go. This is no time to be stubborn. This is not magic we know how to defend against.”

My
magic.

“I can't leave,” I responded. I planted a foot and leaned my shoulder into Neph's back, pushing her against Will and trying to force them through. “Stop catting against the doorframe, Will.”

Will gurgled out a few choice expletives. Neph's inarticulate sounds were way more exasperated.

Concentrated on jamming them through the opening, I threw an order over my shoulder, “Olivia,
pack.
”

“No,” came the instant reply.

“Ren, you have to come too,” Will said, still swearing as I put myself in a less steady, but far stronger, diagonal position that Christian and the football team had used on the practice equipment on the field. I pressed harder, sandwiching the three of us together.

“I can't.
Let go, Will
. Olivia said I couldn't return to the Second Layer until I 'dimmed' or fixed whatever broke free on me.” My wild hand motions were wasted on him as he was entirely focused on setting his feet against the doorframe.

And Olivia never joked.

“You can't stay here,” he argued, huffing as he lost an inch of ground and had to lock his elbows again.

“I can. I have enough wards up now to give anyone a nasty surprise, but the ones in place only protect
Crowns.
And I need to make sure. I have to protect my parents until I fix this. I'll be back soon. Olivia,
pack.”
I attempted to corral her into our shoving sandwich solely through harsh glares over my shoulder.

Olivia's expression was blank and unresponsive to my glowering. “No.”

“I need you safe. It's not safe here.”
I'm not safe.

“No.” Her tone brooked no argument.

“Olivia—”

“No.” Her gaze was immovable and held mine.

“You know better than anyone what I've been trying to do with the wards.” I grunted as Will got a foot in place and started exerting pressure backward. “Raphael placed the original ones. He placed them over a period of a month, and probably while slowly sucking away any pre-Awakening magic that I leaked. He never let me paint before my Awakening but he was always encouraging me to draw totems and other weird things.”

Like abstract concept assignments on drawing
invisibility.
My mouth tightened. I could hear his silky words in my memory: ‘Concentrate on making that which is visible
invisible.
Project the suggestion of invisibility. Of the eye sliding right by.’

God, it sucked. He always knew exactly what to say to get me to create. And how to betray me when I needed help. At the reiterated thought of how his actions had stopped me from resurrecting my brother, I couldn't stop a half-sob from emerging.

Olivia abruptly stood and strode toward us.
Finally.
I ruthlessly shoved thoughts of Raphael's betrayal and losing my brother into the background.
I would never fail again in protecting my loved ones.
I could get Olivia to go with Will and Neph back to safety.

Olivia strode up to Will and gave a sideways karate chop against the inside of his elbow. He squawked and his arm buckled, breaking his position. The suddenly unchecked momentum in his direction thrust the three of us through the doorway and into an ungainly sprawled pile in the hall. I blinked at the cream carpeting an inch away from my face. Blood flow slowly made its way down my neck and into my hanging head.

“Ugh. Olivia,
why?
And Ren, why do I always end up beaten on the floor when I come to your house?” Will's glasses were skewed diagonally across his face, his gaze hampered by the trim board near his nose.

Between us, Neph was pliant, and where the bare skin of our wrists met I could almost feel the calming and healing spirit that always hovered around her. I could almost sense that spirit flowing through Will too. Like we were a sandwich full of homemade ingredients. Already off-center on the pile, I reluctantly pushed myself free of them, making sure not to step on any limbs.

I collapsed against the nearest wall and let my head drop into my hands. “I'm sorry.”

Neph's fingers were around my wrist almost immediately, her touch creating warmth that seeped into my skin. I gave her a watery smile. Will was sitting with his knees drawn up on the other side of the hallway, sheepishly running his hand up the back of his head.

“I'm sorry too,” Will said. “The first thing is to figure out how to dim you—or whatever.” He waved his hand in a vague circling motion toward my head.

His gaze went back to my room and to the devices that he had been playing with earlier. “And with some advanced preparation...there is nothing stopping us from coming back tomorrow with better personal defenses, more information, and a plan. I...I have some thoughts. Let me research some things tonight.”

Will was sporting the glint in his eyes that meant
serious illegal business
would be forthcoming.

Neph cocked her head. “Based on what you've said, you shouldn't leave the wards at all, Ren, if you can help it.”

“Can do. Olivia,”—I made a shooing motion at her—“pack.”

“No.”

“
Yes
.”

“Are you going to eject me from your house and protection, Ren?” She looked at me coldly. “Because I'm not leaving otherwise.” She shoved Will's and Neph's things into their hands, addressing them. “The taxi will be here in five minutes to take you to the coffee shop.”

I hadn't even heard her calling one.

“Olivia—”

“You don't understand, Ren,
I know
,” she said, her voice was cold, but her body language indicated that she was hanging by a thread. “We discussed this in the car already. And I don't need you to understand anything other than
I'm not going
.”

Will and Neph busied themselves by standing and mindlessly fiddling with their packs—adjusting the straps on each other's shoulders. They judiciously did not look our way.

Five lost arguments and five absurdly short minutes later, I watched the yellow cab disappear from view, then trudged back to the family room where Olivia was being tightly hugged by my mom on the couch.

“Oh, Ren.” Mom's expression was distressed, and she pulled me down into their crushing hug as I entered.

I gave her an awkward pat in return. What was going on? I looked over to Olivia for direction, but she was staring wide-eyed at my mom as if my mother was some sort of rare magical creature.

Catching my gaze, Olivia shook off the expression and jerked her head to the left. I followed her gaze to the late night newscast on TV.

The announcer said, “Five men were attacked in gang-related violence in an area of the city usually free of gang activity. Authorities have said this was a random event. All five victims suffered brain related injuries and are currently under watch at St. Mary's. In other news, a tsunami has decimated the western coast of—”

The newscaster enumerated a devastating death toll in some faraway place, but my mind was stuck on the “gang” violence and brain related injuries.

My mom's hug grew more fierce. “That's right near where you were going! You just missed it. My baby. Not again,” she whispered almost too low for me to hear. I didn't have to hear it, though, to understand her freak out. Christian and I hadn't been lucky enough to avoid the same type of incident four months ago.

I gave in and returned the embrace fully.

Dad gave me a bear hug with whispered endearments, and Mom hugged the stuffing out of Olivia again. Mom petted her hair in an entirely surreal gesture. One didn't “pet” Olivia Price. Mom was obviously unaware of this.

“I'm going to make popcorn.” Mom wiped her eyes and hurried out of the room. I hoped she wasn't going to start scrubbing the kitchen again… Or start crying.

I looked at the new drawings that were pulsing with energy on the walls around us in an artistic blend of the abstract, geometric, and fanciful. I had carefully hung them throughout the house in the last few days. The designs—the very fibers of the paper—were full of magic as powerful and intense as I could manage under the constraints of my brief library time. Normal people would see them as static pictures, instead of the vibrating forces that they appeared to me.

Without being able to use active magic in the house, hanging them had only been possible for me because of Raphael's base wards.

My lips tightened.

“Ren?”

“S'okay, Dad,” I said, without looking at him. “It'll be okay.”

I hugged my cuffed arm close to my chest. It had to be.

~*~

I had given Olivia my bed and slept in the trundle beneath since the start of vacation.

Tonight, though, Olivia was lying as stiff as a mummy on the bed, her arms tightly crossed and the side of her body pressed against the wall, leaving a conspicuous amount of empty space next to her.

“Safety sleeping?” I asked as lightly as I could, knowing that I had to take the lead. If someone had told me months ago that I would be leading any social interactions, I would have laughed.

“Fine.” She gave a wave, as if long-suffering, but she didn't have to move an inch, already in sharing position.

I pushed in the trundle and climbed in with her, our shoulders touching as I got comfortable. Olivia stiffened, then relaxed. I could feel the low hum of sympathetic magic circulating between us. It wasn't live, active magic, it was just a simple connection. Since I was connected to the wards, and Olivia's innate, natural magic was mixing with mine, the entire ward set would strengthen as a matter of course. Probably not enough to keep Raphael away, should he decide to do something, but enough to enhance the protections already in place.

Enough to fortify the newly wrought wards that I had constructed in Olivia's presence. They had to be enough.
Please.

I stared at the ceiling for a long while. “My magic—”

“A rock is just an object until it is picked up and used to bash in someone's skull.”

“But—”

“That someone illegally took your magic and chose to use it in such ways is not on you.”

I nodded shortly, jerkily. “I'm sorry for throwing you lip over toe through that doorway. And yanking you through the painting.”

“Well, you should be sorry for those things.” She tried to make it sound like a joke, but it fell flat in the silence of the room. I could feel the comforter tug as she gripped it harder.

“We were going to die,” she whispered, looking up at the ceiling. “Had our positions been reversed, I would have let go of you.” Her voice was barely audible—a confession in the dark. “I wouldn't have thought otherwise.”

I gently nudged her shoulder. “Letting go would have been the smart move.”

She didn't respond.

“It would have,” I repeated.

“Ren—”

“Liiiiiv,” I drawled out, trying to tease her out of the shaken, strange mood that had suddenly overtaken her.

“I don't...I don't know how...” Her voice trailed off miserably.

I turned my head toward her. “You are my friend,” I said definitively. “We are friends.”

“Okay. Yes.” Her voice was even shakier.

I turned back and gave her another light bump with my shoulder, letting it rest there. I could feel some of her tension physically drain away. “Let's get some sleep.”

Surprisingly, she dropped off to sleep immediately, which allowed my own tension—forcibly subdued so I could help Olivia—to creep back into existence.

With thoughts of protection—successes and failures—heavy on my mind, my thoughts invariably turned to Christian and his life and death. My brother—who I had always protected, usually from his own hilarious schemes—had pushed me to the side when we'd been attacked by rogue mages four months ago. He had used that single moment to save me instead of using his newly awakened magic to save himself.

I couldn't let that kind of thing happen again.

I thought of Olivia's words of a rock being just a rock. I wrapped the idea around me, but I couldn't reconcile the matter in my head. Once the rock was used as a weapon...it was considered a weapon.

It was a long time before I fell asleep.

Chapter Five: The Enemy Within

Five bleary mornings later saw Will, Neph, Olivia, and I huddled in my room watching a looped cycle of news reports, listening to Second Layer gossip, and doing “dimming” work.

The Second Layer had enacted more serious security measures and most of the major cities were locked down. I had seen news feeds of Alexander Dare helping with security on three separate occasions. I could pick him out of a crowd of five thousand combat mages—it was a little sad.

With the new security measures, returning through the checkpoint would be a concern, but I was decidedly grounded, at present. And my magic was “lurching” increasingly beneath my cuff, trying to escape.

Will had the good idea—and sheer balls—to suggest using the leech, Olivia's container, and the four person ritual we had used last term to heal campus, in order to “fix” me. That Olivia had been displeased with the suggestion, was an understatement.

Arguments. So many arguments.

Olivia had been pretty harsh with her thoughts about Will's motivation. One thing about Will's delinquency, though, was that while he misused magic,
very
frequently, he never misused friends. Constantine, on the other hand...

I rubbed my fingers along the postage-sized stamp of material that Constantine had given me for my birthday. There was nothing remarkable about it in size or shape, but nothing about Constantine or anything he created was unremarkable. I poked the middle and a ripple ran along the tiny fibers. The entire paper lengthened with the motion, more fibers rippling out to accommodate the change in size.