“And you’re just as ugly as ever,” he said. “You should invest in contacts to hide those eyes.”
I was about to fire off another jab in our verbal sparring match when I realized the scar wasn’t the only new thing about Eric. His core pulsed with vibrant strength, and his aura hummed with vitality aspects.
“Wow,” I said. “You were busy over the summer. Advanced all the way to disciple, huh?”
My friend beamed at his accomplishment. Advancing from adept was an impressive achievement. Most of those who managed that feat were well into their middle years when they became disciples. Eric and I had done it before graduating.
“The Guardian Corps kept me busy.” Eric’s words dragged me out of my thoughts. He dropped his tray down across the table from mine and took a seat. “I don’t think I’ve ever trained so hard or fought so much.”
“That’s saying a lot,” I said. “They worked you harder than your Battle Federation trainers?”
“You have no idea,” Eric said. “And the food was terrible. I was starving the whole time I was there.”
Like me, Eric needed a lot of food to satisfy his advanced core’s energy needs. We’d piled our plates high with mounds of shaved roast beef, hills of mashed potatoes drenched in brown gravy and crowned by dollops of butter, enough spears of asparagus to outfit a small army, and an orchard’s worth of sliced apples, pears, and orange wedges. Hahen had promised me I’d need less food as I moved past disciple status.
“Have you seen Clem or Abi since you got back to school?” I asked. “Clem called me from Kiev a couple of weeks ago. The connection was so bad I thought they’d stationed her on the wrong side of the moon.”
“Last I heard, she was supposed to arrive yesterday,” Eric said in a low voice. “There’s been a lot of trouble with the portals, though. I talked to Abi a couple of days ago, and the Portal Defense Force has him zipping all over the world to help tighten security at transit stations. It’s bad in the Americas, but the situation’s way worse in Europe and China. Ukraine’s got everything locked down, too. I bet that’s why she’s late.”
Preoccupation over where my friends were made it difficult for me to enjoy my meal. I knew the meat was tender and juicy. The fruit was crisp and sweet, the mashed potatoes hearty and filling. It might as well have been sand, though, because I couldn’t focus on any of it. It was just fuel going into my engine to keep it running while I idled.
That’s how I’d felt ever since Hahen had brought me a mysterious letter. Even now, I could see the silvery envelope in my mind’s eye. The paper was creased and discolored, weathered by decades, maybe centuries. A few small tears on the back flap revealed tantalizing glimpses of the page within, faint lines of looping cursive showing through the thin paper. And yet, as fragile as it looked, I hadn’t been able to open the envelope.
Hahen had pored over it and pronounced the scrivenings that sealed the thing could only be opened when all the impacted parties were present. Whatever that meant.
Eric snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I jerked back to the present.
“Oh, you are awake,” he said. “It looked like you were eating on autopilot.”
“He might as well be,” Abi said as he arrived at our table with a far more modest plate than Eric or me. “You, too. As much as you’ve got on your plates, you won’t have time to even taste it all.”
Eric and I pushed back from the table to give Abi a hug once he’d put his own food down. My friend was taller and broader at the shoulder than I remembered. A quick glance told me his core hadn’t advanced, though, and I imagined he’d been too busy to work on it while zipping around the world on Portal Defense Force business.
“It’s good to see you both, my friends,” Abi said and took a seat. “And I’m so glad to be away from the craziness out there, at least for a little while.”
“And we’re—” My voice locked up in my throat at the sight across the dining hall.
Clem had changed her look again. Her hair was long and black, with bangs hanging down over her eyes like a veil while braids at her temples held the rest of it back from her face. The hem of her robes nearly dragged the ground, and their cloud-like pattern shimmered and transformed with every step she took. A slit up the side of the robes showed flashes of her knee-high black boots polished to a mirror sheen. The tapping of those heels as she crossed the room ticked down like a metronome. When my friend arrived at the table, she gave us all a dazzling smile.
“Hi, guys.” Clem dropped into her seat and leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “Sorry I look like such a wreck. It was a nightmare getting out of Kiev. I spent half the day waiting for them to clear me for travel. And that was after they saw my diplomatic visa. I feel terrible for everyone else stuck there.”
Abi, Eric, and I glanced at one another nervously. This felt like a trap. Clem could have stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine for dangerous teenaged spies, and now she was complaining about her appearance. I decided my best option was to lead with a compliment.
“You look amazing,” I said, and Eric and Abi nodded their agreement. “Seriously. How was the rest of your summer?”
“Less than stellar.” Clem sliced through a piece of roast beef with a knife and fork, then plucked it off the tines with her teeth. She washed it down with a sip of water and somehow didn’t mark the glass with her lipstick. “It’s like we talked about a couple of months ago.
