Page 44 of The Tribes of Magic (Paragons #3)

KILLJOY

T he adrenaline faded, making way for panic and dizziness. I stumbled to the side, but Dante was there in a flash, steadying me. Pain blossomed in my head. I rubbed it. Rhett and I had bumped heads.

I stared down at him and croaked, “Is he all right?”

Dante leaned down and tapped Rhett’s face. Rhett groaned and opened his green eyes. His gaze was unfocused, flickering around. But when he saw me, he jumped up and tried to rush me again.

Dante held him back.

“Move it, Winters,” Rhett growled.

“I’m not letting you run over my sister.” Dante hit him with a hard stare. “ Again .”

“She’s the one who ran me over!” Rhett shouted.

He tried to push past Dante, but my brother was stronger. And Rhett’s head was bleeding. A lot. Also, one of his arms hung limply at his side.

Rhett redirected his fiery glare from Dante to me. “What are you playing at?”

I blinked back surprise. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You come here, pretending to be some weak little girl, and then you grab me and throw me like…like…”

“Like you’re a paper doll,” Dante offered helpfully.

Rhett looked away from me just long enough to glower at Dante. Then those angry eyes were back on me. “How did you get to be so strong? And why did you pretend to be so weak?”

“I didn’t pretend anything,” I told him. “I was weak. And then I wasn’t.”

“You aren’t making any kind of sense! What did you do to suddenly get so strong?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You weren’t this strong a minute ago. You cheated. You couldn’t even shift. You took some kind of strength elixir!”

I started to fold my arms across my chest, but stopped when I felt pain. I settled for planting them on my hips, which hurt less.

“When exactly would I have taken this elixir?” I demanded. “While I was running?”

“Maybe.” Rhett rubbed his bleeding head. “Or maybe you drank some potion earlier, and it took a while to kick in.”

I hadn’t had anything more exciting than a cup of orange juice and some scrambled eggs on toast this morning.

Jareth stepped in and looked us both over. “Rhett’s arm is broken, and he probably has a concussion.” His brows lifted.

“ He ran into me,” I said.

“And you still managed to beat the snot out of him. How?”

I was getting so tired of people asking me that question.

“You know what I am.”

“You’re a Polymage. You have the powers of all six Tribes. And yet five minutes ago, you could hardly do thirty pushups. Now all of a sudden you can KO my strongest fighter.”

Rhett glared at me. “She’s cheating.”

“What do I always tell you guys?” Jareth snapped at him. “Know your enemy. Not ‘try to tackle someone stronger than you and get your butt kicked’.”

Dante swallowed a laugh, and it turned into a cough.

Rhett took a moment to shoot him the evil eye, then looked at Jareth. “I’m telling you, coach. She’s cheating!”

“Stop talking before you give yourself any more brain damage.” Jareth considered me closely. “And you! What am I going to do with you, snowflake?”

I forced a smile. “Reward me for my quick thinking in the face of danger?”

Jareth snorted. “It seems the only one who was in danger here was Rhett. I shouldn’t be surprised you beat him. Kato always wins everything. In every Battle of the Tribes.” He sounded a little bitter about that. “It seems Kato is teaching you his Polymage tricks.”

If there was a trick to my magic, I’d sure like to know it. But I didn’t say that. It was better for people to think I was really powerful than for them to know the truth: that I had absolutely no idea how to control my wild magic.

Jareth shook his head. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

I blinked.

“Heal Rhett.”

I blinked again. “Excuse me?”

“You broke him. That means it’s your job to fix him again.”

My mouth hung open.

“You have the powers of all six Tribes. That includes healing.”

Everyone was staring at me. And I just stood there like an idiot.

Finally, I found my voice again. “Just because I’ve used different powers from different Tribes, that doesn’t mean I have all the powers of all six Tribes.” I glanced at the five ability badges on his shirt. “It’s not like you have all the Metamorph powers.”

His mouth was frowning, but his eyes were laughing. “Bring Rhett to the Clinic. The Sorcerer there will patch him up.”

I nodded at Jareth in acknowledgement, then stepped up to Rhett. “Ok, let’s go.”

“I don’t think I can make it. I’m horribly wounded.” Rhett pretended to limp. He tried to sound pitiful too, but he was clearly having way too much fun. “You’ll have to carry me.”

A few of his teammates laughed.

I ground my teeth. “Fine.”

I grabbed Rhett and tried to pick him up. He was even heavier than he looked. Somehow, I managed to balance him over my shoulder. I started walking toward the Clinic.

Each step was harder than the last. My magic was burning off, along with my adrenaline.

And Rhett wasn’t helping. He was doing the famous dead-weight attack, making himself as heavy as possible.

Dragging out my misery. He was so annoying.

When I finally made it to the door of the Clinic, I was so tempted to bang his big head on the doorframe on the way in.

I didn’t. I didn’t want to sink to his level. So I set him down on his feet, careful not to add to his injuries.

I’d never been to the Clinic. It was very clean, very sterile, and very shiny.

The floor looked like a super-glossy black-and-white chessboard.

Bizarre paintings hung on the walls. A rune was at the epicenter of each picture.

I recognized them as the runes Sorcerer Knights used to cast magic, but I couldn’t read any of them.

“I will be with you in a moment,” a Sorcerer Knight called out to us from the other side of the room.

The cot he stood over was occupied by an Apprentice covered in burns. Using an ornate pen, the Sorcerer Knight drew runes on the burnt Apprentice. Every rune healed a section of the boy’s skin, until there weren’t any burns left.

“You may go,” the Sorcerer Knight told the Apprentice. “But remember: the next time you decide to play with fire, make sure there’s water nearby.”

“Killjoy.” The Apprentice said the word with a smile, then he jumped off the cot and skipped out of the room like he hadn’t been completely covered in burns just a few moments ago.

The Sorcerer Knight tucked his pen into his shirt pocket. When he turned to face us, I got a better look at him. He was about nineteen or twenty and had black hair. The sides of his head were shaved short, but the hair on top was long—with the tips dyed the same shade of crimson as his outfit.

“The first few weeks of the year are always so full of injuries,” he said. “Too many injuries caused by crazy kids who can’t control their magic.” His brown eyes locked on to me, then narrowed. “Can you control your magic?”

The honest answer was no, but I knew that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

The Sorcerer sighed. “Take a seat on one of the cots. And just so you know, there’s absolutely no spell casting allowed in here. Only I am allowed to do magic in here. For everyone’s safety.”

“I can control my magic,” Rhett insisted.

The Sorcerer gave him a brief once-over, then declared, “Your injuries would suggest otherwise.”

“That’s her fault.” Rhett pointed at me.

The Sorcerer’s black brows peaked. “Oh? Did the girl half your size beat you up?”

I choked down a laugh.

Rhett glowered at the Sorcerer. And cracked his knuckles.

“Super-strength counts as doing magic.” The Sorcerer pulled out his magic rune-writing pen. “That’s a little FYI for your benefit, just in case you were planning on trying something stupid, Muscles.”

“And if I were?” Rhett made himself big. “What could you do about it?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid. No one’s found a cure for stupidity yet.” The Sorcerer gave him a breezy smile.

I snorted.

Rhett spun around and hit me with a glower that was probably supposed to look intimidating. “Something funny, cupcake?”

“It isn’t you who’s funny, in case you’re wondering.” I gave my eyelashes an innocent flutter.

Rhett clenched his fists.

“None of that now,” the Sorcerer said. “No need to get irritable because she’s more powerful than you.”

Rhett growled.

The Sorcerer patted his shoulder. “Very good. You keep yourself busy getting in touch with your inner animal. Meanwhile, I’ll heal you.” His hand locked on to Rhett’s shoulder, and he pushed him onto the mat.

I’d decided that I sort of loved this Sorcerer. He was cool. Not dark and gloomy and scary like most of them. He wasn’t even wearing buckles and spikes. And he didn’t have any eyeliner on at all.

Instead, he wore a subdued, modest set of hospital scrubs and a pair of hygienic gloves. The only thing to give away that he was a Sorcerer was the red color of his outfit. And the diamond-shaped ability badges on his sleeve.

The first badge was a white cross on a green background, which meant he could heal wounds. I’d seen him demonstrate that power when he’d healed the burns on that Apprentice’s body.

The second badge featured a clock with the hands pointing backward.

From my reading, I knew that was the symbol for reversing time.

The question was how far back he could reverse time.

According to one of the books Kato had loaned me, most Sorcerers could only turn back the clock a few seconds or maybe minutes.

Inside the diamond border of his third badge, a building was putting itself back together.

A small, circular clock hung over the building, exactly where the sun would be in the sky.

That badge meant he could also reverse decay and destruction.

For instance, he could restore a building that had fallen apart.

Or rejuvenate a plant that had begun to rot.

Some Sorcerers with this ability could even bring things back to life.

I read the name tag on his shirt, then met his eyes with surprise. “Killjoy?”