The Thief (19 page)

Camille nodded this
time.
Speak to Gabriel all you
want,
she thought.
We’re winning.

Jul’s look, however, was one of fear.

Umino gave her an appraising look. “Just
make sure your work is done,” she told the tall girl.

“
Yes ma’am,” Jul copied her
earlier nod, but with a more frantic motion, in repetition. “I’m
sorry, ma’am, it won’t happen again.”

So that’s how it was. Jul would assume she
was a direct pipeline to trouble now.

“
Very well, you may both
go,” Umino said, waving them out.

In the hall, with the door shut behind them,
Jul let out a long sigh of relief. “That could have been a lot
worse,” she said. “Your um, guardian? Will they be mad?”

Camille snorted. “Gabriel? No. High-five,
probably.”

Jul smiled. “You’re lucky.”

Camille shrugged.
Luckier if he’d let me in on his plans.
But if Jul hadn’t burst in, Umino’s punishment
might have been much worse...

Camille looked at the other girl and
inclined her head down the hall. “Coming?”

“
Oh! Yes,” Jul said. “I
guess algebra happens no matter what.”

“
Too bad,” Camille agreed,
as they walked.

“
I mean, if we’re going to
get sentenced to trash detail, you’d think they’d have the decency
to cancel classes. You caused a riot.”

Camille snorted a laugh again.

“
Oh, excuse me, I mean you
retaliated against an act of terrorism. Which inadvertently caused
a riot.”

“
A riot,” Camille said,
trying out the word. “Me. A riot. Badass.”

“
A food fight is a riot with
edible projectiles,” Jul maintained. “We could advance warfare by
decades if we could convince all sides to just use leftovers as
ammunition.”

Camille shook her head, smiling. “Good
plan.” Jul was pretty clever when she wasn’t apologizing.

They turned a corner, and Jul put a hand
over her mouth, stifling a gasp. Rhys Ryan stood in the hallway,
expectant.

“
I just wanted to remind you
about the display for the festival,” he said pushing his dark hair
out of icy cold eyes. “You’re both responsible for it,
remember?”

Jul was looking anywhere but at Ryan,
paling.

“
Your paper?” Camille
returned.

Ryan’s attention slid to her, briefly.
“Finished,” he stated, then held out a folded scrap of paper to
Jul. “Some suggestions.”

Camille went to take it, but Ryan held it
out of her reach. “Suggestions for someone who can actually read
them,” he said, and Jul reluctantly took the paper, a light tremor
in her fingers.

“
As you were,” he said
dryly, and left.

“
Teme,
” Camille muttered under her breath, then looked up at Jul.
The guy had her spooked, alright. It was none of her business. She
should leave well enough alone. “He did what?” she
asked.

“
I just don’t...um...he
scares me,” Jul said quietly. “We, uh...” she coughed. “He’s right,
we really should start putting the display together.”

Camille nodded. Might as well get it over
with.

“
Do you know a good place we
could meet?”

She considered. “The cafe. It’s near.”

“
Oh, that one down the
street? They don’t mind people working on stuff in
there?”

“
I live there,” Camille
said.

Jul blinked slowly, processing the idea.
“Oh. Oh! That’s...kind of awesome.”

Camille shrugged. Maybe. She didn’t have a
lot to compare it to. It was bigger than her old flat and it always
smelled like frosting and coffee. If you were into that kind of
thing.

“
How about this weekend?”
Jul said.

“
Friday,” Camille said.
“Closes at 6.”

“
Cool,” Jul said. “I’m sure
we can figure something out.”

Or you could explain what’s
really going on...
Camille thought, but
they continued on to class in silence.

Later that night, Camille heard a knock on
her open door. “What do you want?” she asked, sitting on her bed,
bent over her homework.

“
I’m looking for ice,”
Gabriel said, sounding unsteady. “Do we have ice?”

“
Have you checked the
freezer?” Camille asked with sarcasm.

“
I think I used all that...”
he said.

Camille looked up; Gabriel was standing in
her doorway, glancing forlornly at a dark liquid he was swirling in
a glass.

“
I had the loveliest time,
catching up with an old friend,” Gabriel said. “My oldest friend in
the world. You wouldn’t know her, don’t ask.”

Camille’s eyebrows raised. “Are you
drunk?”

“
Please, I used to drink a
whole bottle of whiskey in one sitting,” he said, dropping into the
chair by her dresser with less than his usual grace. “Granted,
that’s been...” he blinked, eyes unfocused for a moment. “King’s
blood, almost a decade. Alright, maybe my tolerance isn’t what it
used to be.”

Camille shook her head. Sometimes, he did
not seem like a responsible adult. “You should just go to sleep,
old man.”

“
No, no, no. We survived
another night, we should celebrate.” Gabriel took another swig of
his drink. “How about a story? I haven’t told you a story in
forever. You used to love them.”

“
I used to be able to order
off the kids menu,” Camille said dryly.

“
You don’t have to be a kid
to order off the kids menu,” Gabriel stated loftily. “That’s where
all restaurants hide their chocolate milk. You’ve got to give up
this idea that you can be too old for things. Now. Once upon a
time, there were seven heroes.”

Camille groaned. “They became too proud of
their gifts, an old witch cursed them, they transformed into
monsters and became what they’d hunted. Pride goeth before the
fall. The end.”

“
You’re no fun,” he frowned.
“Alright, once upon a time, there was a man with three sons -
”

She rolled her eyes. “He couldn’t afford to
keep them, they apprenticed to three different masters, they each
nearly lost their gifts to a crafty innkeeper until the youngest
son won it all back. Use your opponents strengths against them. The
end.”

“
Your memory is a little too
good,” Gabriel complained.

“
You tell the same stories
over and over,” Camille pointed out. “After a few years, the twists
stop surprising you.”

“
You want a new story, is
that it?”

“
If I have to sit here and
listen to you slur through a fairy tale,” she said, “at least make
it one I haven’t heard.” Why was he being so weird?

He regarded her blearily. “Have it your way.
Once upon a time,” he murmured, “there was a horrible, selfish man
who had only ever caused problems for anyone he met. His gifts
brought pain and misery for others, and he was convinced that it
was the only way he could live. That it was just part of his DNA,
and that the only way to be happy was to continually feed his
avarice. Then one day, an angry little girl kicked him in the shins
and he was forced to take her home and feed her.”

Camille sighed. “I think I know this
story.”

“
But you haven’t heard it.
So shut up. The girl was a monster. She broke his valuable things
he’d spent years hoarding, drew on his walls, refused to take
baths, put pins in his shoes, wouldn’t speak English, insisted on
eating things that smelled horrible, and the only way to calm her
down was to tell her long, complicated stories. He figured this was
karma, getting him back.

“
He had never spent long
amounts of time with anyone, you see, much less a child. He had
developed obsessions with certain people before, but obsessing is
very different from truly knowing someone, living with them and
learning to take the good with the bad. He had no inkling of what
‘camaraderie’ or ‘family’ really meant. But with each passing
bedtime story, with every begrudging trek to a ramen shop, things
changed. They changed so slowly, at such an imperceptible
gradation, that he didn’t notice. They became accustomed to one
another, the angry girl and the selfish man. He began to think of
her less and less as a temporary nuisance, and more and more as a
permanent fixture. But he didn’t fully understand the extent of the
change until the day he was sent a letter.”

He leaned back in the chair,
staring up at the ceiling. “It was written by a powerful woman,
from an even more powerful family. She demanded the girl’s presence
in a faraway school. She offered him a great deal of money and
priceless artifacts if he would relinquish guardianship of the
girl. The man was affronted - offended - that she would assume he’d
turn her over for
things
. But then he remembered that
things were all he’d cared for in his long life; how could someone
expect differently of him? He told the woman no, but unfortunately
it only made her assume the girl was that much more of a prize. She
began to make threats, questioning the validity of his
guardianship, insinuating the man was hiding from something, making
accusations the girl was too dangerous to be ‘loose’ in the world.
Still he refused. He decided instead that it was time to make a new
plan.”

He took a heavy breath. “The man was
selfish, first and foremost. That had not changed. What surprised
him was that his system of measuring value had been upended by a
scrawny orphan who tormented him with grilled mackerel for six
years.”

“
I never made you eat
mackerel,” Camille muttered.

“
You made everything smell
like it,” he returned, grimacing as he upended the last of his
drink. “Anyway, the new plan was to make the girl so incredibly
badass that no matter what she encountered in the world, she would
survive it. By this time the man had realized that the girl
possessed a great deal of power, and he resolved that she should
learn to use it better than he had with his own. He wanted to save
her from what he’d decided was the worst fate - looking into the
face of the person you care about the most and telling them that
your entire, overly long life has been a total failure.”

“
Not a total failure, you
make good melon bread.”

That surprised a chuckle out of him. She was
unaccustomed to serious Gabriel and it worried her when he lost his
humor. “Ah, yes, thank you, I forgot. So the man bit the bullet,
dragged her kicking and screaming to the faraway school, because if
they were going to blackmail her into attendance, he was going to
be there to make melon bread.” He glanced up at the clock. “And
then the angry girl went to sleep, because she had class with a
grumpy English teacher in the morning.”

He rose, walking to the door, empty glass in
hand.

“
Does this story have a
happy ending?” Camille asked.

He regarded her for a moment. “Ask me
later,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

Chapter 11

Jul

Mirror, 4pm

Tell anyone, and you’re dead.

That was all it said, in a neat, no-nonsense
script. I’d unfolded the piece of paper Rhys had handed me several
dozen times and I was still no closer to understanding his motives.
Was he my enemy? He certainly didn’t seem like my friend. Did he
just want to talk? Even if only that, did I really want to hear
what he had to say?

As much of a threat as he seemed to be...if
it led to my mother, I did. I absolutely did.

I gingerly stepped through the mirror’s
frame, feeling the bizarre climate change from the humidity of the
orchard to the chill of the stone stairwell. I climbed the steps
with trepidation. I felt more like an intruder, this time. Bea was
working at the library again this afternoon, so I’d had to walk
home - but at least that meant I had some time to sort this out
with Rhys in the Tower. Maybe he’d explain how all of this was
possible.

A bleary face appeared in a small mirror on
the wall when I reached the gleaming white atrium.

“
Master Rhys awaits you in
the library,” the face said, and then faded away.

I pushed aside the curtain. The sight of all
those books still took my breath away. Rhys looked up at my
entrance. He was seated at a wide table, books spread out around
him.

“
Hi,” I said sheepishly.
“Please don’t...um...destroy me.”

“
I won’t,” he
said.

Tendrils of glass curled up from the floor,
snaking around my legs and rooting me to the spot.

“
Yet,” Rhys amended, rising
from the table.

I twisted in my bonds, but the glass was too
thick - I was trapped. My heart hammered in my chest.

Rhys approached a few steps, but kept his
distance, well out of reach. “How’d you get in, hunter?” he
demanded. “Are you a hybrid?”

“
H-hybrid? What? I’m a girl,
I’m just a girl, I don’t know what you’re saying!”

“
Not convincing,” he stated
coldly. “You’re a Graham and you made it into my mirror, and you
want to pretend that it was an accident? Do I look
stupid?”

“
Yes! I mean no!” I
floundered, as Rhys’s pale eyes sharpened. “I mean yes it was an
accident - I was just following directions.”

“
What
directions?”