The Thief

and he shouldn’t think he had to resort to bullying. If no one ever made Rhys compare his situation to others, he’d never know he had options.

“Everything alright here?” Tailor said, coming up behind me, eyes on Rhys.

Rhys regarded Tailor narrowly, his dislike plain. “Nothing that’s your business.”

A muscle under Tailor’s eye twitched. “Everything that happens inside these walls is my business, Ryan. The rules are the principal’s, but I’m the one who enforces them.”

“And what about outside?” Rhys said lowly. “Are you forgetting whose jurisdiction that is?”

“Certainly not yours,” Tailor said, tone flat. “You’re on the wrong side of the mirror, Ryan. I don’t know what your mother’s led you to believe, but you don’t have a kingdom here.”

“Yet,” Rhys said.

Tailor’s gaze was cool. “Don’t say that in front of the principal,” he said, with exaggerated pleasantry.

Rhys glared at him, and, with a look in my direction that might almost have been remorseful, he stalked off into the crowd.

“Royalty,” Tailor sighed. “They think they own everything.”

Does he know? I couldn’t even look at Tailor now, even though I really wanted to. I wanted another look at his eyes, to see if maybe the color matched mine. Had he known the whole time? Did he have any idea?

“Have you seen Charlotte?” he asked, surveying the crowd. “She’s supposed to be grading this mess.”

“She was talking to Gabriel awhile ago,” I said.

“One of these days,” he grumbled, almost to himself, “she’s going to do something she can’t take back...”

“And you’re going to say ‘I told you so’?”

He glanced at me, his flat brown eyes like a solid negative force. “Or nothing,” I amended.

“Forget it, I’m going to check the classrooms,” he grumbled, heading off for a side door to the stairwell.

I turn back to fiddling with my display, wondering why men only ever seemed to be scary. Where was Mac when you needed balance?

As if summoned, he appeared at my elbow. “Holy crap you will not believe the day we’ve had,” he said. Destin and Bea were weaving through the crowd behind him.

“Have you seen John Tailor?” Bea asked, expression intent.

“He was just here,” I said, confused by everyone’s collective unease. “He went to look for Charlotte. I’ll go get him - can you watch my board until Camille gets back?”

“Umino grabbed her when we came in, to get her ready for kendo stuff,” Mac said.

“She was with you?”

“Just go get John,” Bea said tersely. “We’ll explain everything when you both come back.”

“A-alright,” I said, slipping through the crowd to the door Tailor had used. I went up the stairwell and out the door to the second floor. I spotted someone down the hall, looking over the banister at the atrium below. I approached, thinking it was Tailor, but I soon realized it was Gabriel.

“What are you - ” I started, but he clapped a hand over my mouth and pointed to the three people in the atrium below.

Tailor

There she is.

I come around the hall and can see her in the foyer, talking to someone whose back is to me. A man, with dark hair and a long wool coat. I assume it’s Gabriel. They’d been spending far too much time together. Charlotte has always had the worst taste in men, and it had only deteriorated when her older brothers left town. She has this habit of attaching herself to people who see her as nothing more than a resource. Gabriel is by far the worst person I can imagine her with.

I’m about to call out to her, berate her for abandoning the festival, and the students she’s supposed to be grading. But before I can, the man spots me, recognition sparking in his bright blue eyes, and he immediately bends down to kiss her. It’s a kiss for my benefit, I know instinctively. Just as he intends, I freeze, blood running cold. Simon.

I’ve always known, somehow, that he would come back eventually. But this is not what I’d been prepared for. Simon pulls back from Charlotte, smirking at me over her bright copper hair.

I was wrong. This is worse than Gabriel.

Charlotte turns, flushing bright red. “Oh! John...look, Simon’s come home!”

“Is that what this is?” I say, tone as flat as I can manage.

“Look at you, Tailor, you’re a step away from being an old professor. Just what I expected,” Simon says, giving me an evaluating look and curling a possessive arm around Charlotte’s shoulders.

I haven’t seen him in over a decade, but he hasn’t changed much. There are lines starting to show around his forehead and two-day stubble on his face. A little ragged around the edges, maybe. A little dark around the eyes, a little cruel around the mouth. But some girls go for that.

“I’m - I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Charlotte says. “I know you were worried about him, but I knew he was fine.”

Damnit, Charlotte. He can’t be serious about her. He’d always ignored her. This is some sort of punishment he’s arranged for me. Because as much as I’ve wanted to forget, Charlotte always did like him. All of the awful boyfriends she’s had over the years, may have just been replacements for Simon. She’d been a wreck when he and Kyra had run away senior year.

“I wasn’t really all that worried, to be honest,” I say.

Simon leans against the banister in the foyer, as if he owns the place. It ticks me off. He’d never been part of this school; he’d left before it was even built. I’ve never had any true claim on Charlotte, but Havenwood is a part of me. I hate it most of the time, and maybe it’s the spell binding me to the foundation talking, but this is my school, not his. I am not his subordinate here.

“Aren’t you going to tell him our happy news, Charlotte?” Simon says.

Charlotte fidgets.

“There’s going to be another Graham,” he says smoothly. “A real one, this time.”

I look at Charlotte. At her stomach. She flushes harder.

“John, don’t look like that,” Charlotte pleads. “It’s good news.”

Then why do you look so guilty? I think. There’s a sort of buzzing in my ears. Half of me wants to run away, at least until I hit the limit of the binding spell. The other half wants to murder Simon where he stands.

“That’s more like it,” Simon says appreciatively, eyes on my expression. “Do you get it now? You know what it feels like?”

“What what feels like?” I say through my teeth.

“Are you seriously going to pretend it never happened?” He’s suddenly seething, pushing past Charlotte to get in my face. “I suffered in ignorance for years because of you, trying to understand why my powers wouldn’t work in my own home. I was free of you...I should have been fine. But every night I came home to my apartment, there was a little brat waiting, and my powers would curdle and die. Did you think I’d never figure it out? Did you think I was that stupid?”

I’d stopped breathing while he spoke. “No,” I say, a horrible night of despair I’d tried to forget pushing its way back up into my memory. I hated her so much, for the way she manipulated Simon. And me.

Charlotte is looking at me like I’m a stranger. Panic rises, but I push it down. “No,” I say. “You’re imagining things, Jul isn’t - ”

“So you’re saying you never slept with Kyra?” Simon demands, and I flinch at the words. Said out loud, they seem real. I want it to be impossible. That night should never have happened.

“Tell me the truth!” Simon shouts.

My voice sounds over-quiet in the wake of his outburst. “Once,” I say, swallowing. “Only once...”

“Once is all it takes, buddy,” Simon snaps. “Do you have any idea what you made? I’ve done the research. I