Chapter Two: Awakened by Joy
Guardians of the Twilight Lands, the Sixth Book of Unexpected Enlightenment
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Chapter Two: Awakened by Joy
“Wake up, sleepyhead!” Joy O’Keefe shouted right next to Rachel’s ear.
Rachel struggled to open her heavy eyelids. Strands of dreams still entangled her, trying to draw her back into slumberland. Surely, it could not be morning already.
“It’s after eight!” cried Joy. She was a bubbly young woman with mousy brown hair. “And there’s an Agent here to see you.”
“To see me?” Rachel echoed blearily.
Was it only eight in the morning? That meant she had received less than four hours of sleep. She had intended to sleep until noon, possibly all day. Who in their right mind would wake someone up early on the morning after a ball, and how could Joy be so cheerful when she herself had not even left for bed until after one in the morning.?
Rachel’s thoughts moved sluggishly, trying to work out why an Agent might wish to see her. Was she in trouble for sneaking into the boys’ side and nearly getting staked? Did Roanoke Academy send Agents of the Wisecraft for such offenses? That seemed harsh.
“Who—?” She struggled to sit up, eyes not quite open. Her cat, Mistletoe, lay curled up against her side. The black and white cat purred softly. “Did you recognize the Agent?”
“Nope. Don’t think I ever saw him before,” Joy announced cheerfully. “It wasn’t Darling or Standish or someone famous.”
Rachel yawned and rubbed her eyes. “So he was a male? What did he look like?”
“He was very tall and wonderfully handsome.” Joy giggled and spun in a circle, spreading her arms. “I wouldn’t mind being interrogated by that Agent!”
“Tall and…” Rachel closed her eyes, thinking.
From her perfect memory, she brought up the faces of all the Agents in the Wisecraft—well, all of them as of last summer. It was possible they had hired new ones. The Agents, the law enforcement of the Wise, were perpetually short-handed. It had been that way ever since Aaron Marley and the Terrible Five had slaughtered all of the previous Agents in one stroke, nearly twenty-eight years earlier. The Wisecraft had never entirely recovered.
Reviewing the Agents, she looked for candidates who were unusually handsome and tall. Most Agents were healthy and athletic, but a few stood out as particularly stunning. Agent Michael Garbarino, with his dark intense eyes, was astonishingly handsome. Rachel happened to know the young man was a selkie who spent his downtime as a seal; however, Garbarino was not tall. James Darling was dashing, and Rachel secretly thought the dark-shinned, dreadlocked Dorian Standish—the Agent from Prester John's Kingdom—was the most handsome of all; however, Joy knew both of them by sight and had already declared it was not either of these. The unusually observant Agent Sherlock Moth of London was startlingly good-looking, probably the effect of his elf blood, but he was not especially tall either. Agent Rupert Larson, also of London, was strikingly tall, but, while not unpleasant, Rachel would hardly have called him “wonderfully handsome.” The same went for Agent Bridges. That left…
Rachel’s eyes flew open. She made an impatient noise in her throat. Jumping out of bed, to the dismay of her cat, she rifled through her trunk until she found her green photo album. Opening the album, she held it up for Joy to see.
“Did he look like that?” she asked, pointing at a picture.
“Yes. That’s him!” cried Joy, clapping her hands. “How did you come to have that picture? Do you ogle it in your free time? Does Gaius know? If I had a boyfriend, I don’t think I would want him to know I was ogling Agents. Can I have a copy?”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “That’s my father.”
The look on Joy’s face was priceless.
* * *
Four minutes later, Rachel bounded down the staircase. She had nearly run down in her nightgown, but it occurred to her that, while it was perfectly appropriate for a young girl to greet her own father in her night clothes, she might be seen by others. In the interest of propriety, she had changed into her black academic robes and had gathered her normal accouterments: her neck pouch, the necklace her brother Peter had given that protected her from the paralysis hex, the silver wand that had been her grandmother's. She had paused before the mirror on Nastasia’s vanity, wiped the sleepy sand from her almond-shaped eyes, brushed back her black shoulder-length hair, secured it with a hairclip sporting a red bow, and donned her mortarboard cap, pushing the black tassel to one side. She started to climb under her bed to grab Vroomie, her bristleless, but decided against it. It was unlikely Father had come to take her flying. Finally, she grabbed her red wool duffle coat, in case he wished to take her out of the dorm. Her coat matched her hair bow.
A few crimson-wrapped Korean treats remained from the Lunar New Year’s festivities. She stuffed them into her pockets. Then she ran all the way down the four flights of stairs.
Ambrose Griffin stood in the foyer of Dare Hall. Tall and calm, he had dark hair and implacable hazel eyes and wore the uniform of the Agents of the Wisecraft—a tricorne hat, an Inverness cloak with its half cape, a medallion on a chain around his neck displaying the Wisecraft insignia of a lantern surrounded by stars. An enormous fist-sized diamond tipped his fulgurator’s staff. He rested the staff against the wall and caught his youngest daughter around the waist, swinging her in a circle. Rachel laughed and smiled back at him, but she wished he would put her down. Much as she usually enjoyed this greeting, operating on less than four hours of sleep was making her feel dangerously close to nauseous.
“Hello, little dart,” the Duke of Devon said in his elegant British accent as he placed her on her feet. “I am sorry to wake you so early after our late night, but we have some questions that no one else seems to be able to answer.”
“Of course,” said Rachel, taking his hand.
He led her out the door and across campus toward the docks, making her grateful she had taken time to dress.
“What shall we do about the loss of the Heer?” she asked, hoping the Wisecraft had a simple, clear solution. Her sister Sandra had mentioned that Father had a plan. She might have merely meant that he would send the Agents who were now crawling all over campus, but Rachel hoped he had an actual fix. “How do we reinstate the Roanoke Covenant?”
Ambrose Griffin shook his head sadly. “I do not know. That remains to be seen.”
Rachel bit her lip, disappointed.
She and her father walked across the snow-covered campus, along the tree-lined path, through the ruins, and down the stairs of Bannerman’s castle. Instead of continuing to the docks, her father headed south, across snowy fields. Rachel looked around. Then she remembered back, allowing her perfect memory to reveal anything that might have been obscured. The only difference was an Agent’s tricorne hat and Inverness cloak draped between two of the boulders near the shore.
“Who left a hat and cloak?” Rachel asked, gesturing at the garments.
Her father had to squint hard to see them.
“Michael’s in the river talking to Old Man Hudson,” he replied, “but even the river himself claims he cannot make heads or tails of it. Can you tell me what happened last night?”
Rachel pressed her lips together. Dazzling sunlight reflected off the snow, pristine except for a few animal tracks. Rachel, in her sleep-muddled state, kept blinking. She shaded her eyes and gazed over at the dark waters of the river.
She knew what had happened. She could tell him, but should she?
“Didn’t Sandra tell you?” she asked hopefully.
Her father nodded. “She told me what she knew, but there were things she could not explain. What happened to the river? Did it attack Amber and Andre the Second? Did you see a monster? Was it Hudson himself? Tell me in your own words what happened.”
The river? Oh. She sighed. There was no particular reason not to tell him, especially since her brother Peter also knew what had occurred.
“No. The river was not involved. I tried to kill the Master of the World. Then I changed my mind. If you doubt me, ask Peter,” she answered gravely.
“You tried—” Her father’s voice rose. “You tried what?”
She met his gaze stoically. “He did such terrible things to our family. Mummy said she thought about killing him every night. Peter and I thought his death might make her happy. At the last minute, however, the Comfort Lion objected, so I forgave him.”
“You forgave the Comfort Lion?”
“No. I forgave Andre the Second. I don’t hate him anymore.”
Her father frowned at that. “I don't know which is more disturbing, your trying to kill him or your forgiving him. He did us great harm.”
Rachel said seriously. “I discovered a trick that does tremendous damage. It required lightning imps. There were some about, so I tried it. Then I changed my mind and deflected the attack into the river. It caused … a bit of a splash.”
“You can say that again,” murmured Agent Griffin under his breath. Aloud, he explained, “We received complaints from Cornwall-on-Hudson.” He gestured toward the town on the west bank of the river, northward of where the Roanoke Glass Hall stood on the far bank, beneath Storm King Mountain. “Apparently, the houses near the shore were pelted with water.”
If she had been less tired, she would have nodded gravely. Instead, to her horror, she giggled. She pressed her fist against her mouth, hoping that would stop it, but it did not.
“Sorry about that.”
“You did that?” he asked incredulously. “Truly?”
She nodded. Not meeting his eyes, she admitted, “I made the crater on the Tor, too.”
He lifted his hat, ran a hand over his hair, and then returned the tricorne to its place. “I heard about that. Might I ask how you did it?”
Rachel opened her mouth and froze. “Um. The spell I used… is confidential.”
“Confidential to whom?” her father frowned.
“Ouroboros Industries.”
His eyebrows shot upward. “O.I. is teaching freshmen proprietary spells?”
“No. William shared it with me, and I… modified it.”
She did not add that she had shared the secret of this crater-causing spell with her second cousin, Blackie Moth. He was building a railgun for O.I. that had been commissioned by the King of Transylvania. Why the King of Transylvania wanted a garlic-shooting railgun to fight vampires, no one had explained.
“Ah. That’s a pity. Though I really think you…” Suddenly, he straightened and looked toward the bare trees of the forest to their east. “What was that?”
Rachel saw nothing. She thought back. The corner of her eye had caught a dark shadow. She examined the memory, making out the shadowy shape of a large dog.
“Barghest,” she said warily, moving closer to her father.
“Can’t be.” He shook his head, still scanning the tree line, though he put a protective hand on her shoulder. “There are no barghests on Roanoke Island.”
“It was a barghest. I remember the shape clearly. I’ve fought a barghest before.”
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