EVAN. TIME TO TALK TO GRAMYRE.

“Hey all,” Chris said, when he reached them, nodding in greeting. His presence at their table resulted in most of the occupants of the lunch hall watching them. How thrilling. Chris continued, “Angie, Evan! Nice to see you again! Hanging in there?”

Angie nodded. Evan shrugged.

Chris sat his bag down and plopped down in the second to last chair, next to Megan, even his plopping elegant. He grinned at the three of them, a winning smile, full of sincere interest and a hint of bemusement, and fixed his attention on Ryan. “You must be Ryan. I’m Chris Gramyre.” He leaned forward and offered his hand.

Ryan snorted and said, “Yes, you certainly are. Has anyone not been aware since, like, first period?”

“Well,” Chris said, with more bemusement. “No, but one normally introduces oneself when one meets…” He trailed off and gestured vaguely.

“But yes, Ryan d’Maughn, at your service,” Ryan said, bowing respectfully from his seated position.

“Nice to meet you,” Chris said, retracting his hand and bowing in return. “Rough morning by chance?”

“Oh, my day’s been great so far!” Ryan said with cheer. “But I have maladjusted emotional reactions to a lot of things so I wouldn’t take that as indicative of the overall tenor of the events of which we are to speak no more.”

“O-o-okay?” Chris said, seeming rather taken aback. “Um.” He glanced at Evan and Angie. Evan, who was pleased to not have to talk about any of the Exile shit with Gramyre right now[1], attempted to look appropriately against speaking any more of it, and tried not to look as resentful at Gramyre’s presence as he felt. “Okay!” Chris repeated. “I’ll worry about it later! So… uh. What do you know? She told you anything about our… encounter? Event?” He sort of shrugged.

[1] Evan hoped that at some point Ryan would explain it to Chris and also everyone else and Evan wouldn’t have to talk about it much more in the future. That’d be really swell.

“Nope!” Ryan said.

“Okay. Well, shall I?” Chris asked, glancing at Megan. She shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and proceeded to share what had happened to him and Megan, starting with him figuring out Katie Kay was yelling at the girl both Evan and Angie mentioned and ending with their bell charms flashing and changing into real bells.

He finished with, “Dr. Roi[1] said he’d never seen anything quite like it. He couldn’t explain the bells, and he couldn’t find anything odd or off about either of us. He did say our charms are still charms, but they both seem to have increased their class? Might went from Gamma to Delta, and Megan’s from Alpha to Beta. He wants to borrow them and do some tests, but we wanted to keep them for now.” He shrugged.

[1] Who Evan knew to be the head of Persephone’s Magical Arts department, due to Angie's extensive complaining about him.

“Sacred shit, Delta?” Evan said. Chris nodded.

Angie said, “That’s absolutely wild! I’ve never heard of a charm, like, changing form, or increasing in quality!” She held out her hand toward Megan and Chris. “Mind if I see the bells?”

“Oh, sure.” Megan pulled her charm off and handed the small silver bell over to Angie with a gentle jingle.

Chris, too, took off his bell and handed it over. As he did so, he said, “Soooo, what do you guys think? It seems to me like we’re all connected in some way? What with the auguries and our birthdays and this weird thing with our charms…”

Angie bent her attention to them, jiggling each to hear their bright chiming. After regarding them a few moments, she shrugged and passed them over to Ryan. “That’s absolutely fucking wild. They look the same, except they’ve got clappers now. Megan’s is definitely a higher class of charm than it was. I’d know, since I gave it to her.”

Ryan pulled out his phone, and started examining the bells through the camera.

“Is that a magnifying app?” Chris asked, pulling an IPhone of his own out. “Where’d you get that?”

Ryan stopped and glanced up at Chris. “Uh, something like that,” he said. “I wrote it myself, though. Not going to find it on the App Store.” His hands flicked over some of the screen controls, and he made an intrigued noise.

“O-kay,” Chris said, nodding slowly. “Didn’t realize that was possible, but sure.”

“There are developer tools for the IPhone you know,” Ryan said. “I run it using those.”

“Oh.” Chris peered at the bells and Ryan’s phone with interest as Ryan continued to examine the bells.

Angie shook her head. “To answer your question, Chris: yeah, I think we’re connected. The birds this morning talked about us being five now,” she said. “How we needed to be one and three—” She cut herself off, drawing a curious look from Chris, and said, “They saw this coming. I just didn’t know how to explain our birthday thing to you this morning. Wanted Megan to do it, honestly.”

“Well, that worked out great for you,” Ryan said. “Congrats!”

Angie rolled her eyes. “Thank you. We all felt something at the same time, I think. Ryan and I sneezed and got the hiccups too at the beginning of class, and definitely felt weird for a moment when we did. Evan said he sneezed, too.”

“We got the hiccups!” Megan said.

“I didn’t get the hiccups, though,” Evan said.

Angie said, “You were alone, and you’re not really magical. That might be why.”

“Well, cool,” Chris said. His gaze was on Megan as he spoke. “I like you guys already, so honestly I’m cool with this.”

“Oh?” Megan asked. Her cheeks looked kind of rosy to Evan.

“Yeah!” Chris said. “Evan and Angie don’t seem to think my steps turn the ground to silver, which is refreshing, let me tell you. And I don’t know. Something about you guys just makes me feel posi.”

“Glad to hear it, big guy!” Ryan said, grinning, and handed back both bell charms to their respective owners.

“Uh, cool!” Chris replied, clearly still not quite sure how to take Ryan.

“So… who’s guarding the table while the rest of us get food?” Evan asked.

“I can!” Chris said. “I brought my lunch.”

“You… brought your lunch?” Evan asked, baffled and letting it show on his face. “You?”

Chris shrugged, leaning down and messing with his bag. “I have this really good cheese and some pretty good meats, too.”

“What, did you bring a charcuterie board?” Ryan asked with a smirk.

Chris shook his head as he pulled out what looked like an enchanted bento box, if the gold sigils on the lacquered exterior were any indication. “The board wouldn’t have fit in my bag.”

They all stared at him. “I was joking…” Ryan said.

Chris shrugged. “It would be easier to eat this with a board, but I’ll make do.”

Angie rolled her eyes and said, “Well, we better go get food. I assume you didn’t bring a lunch, Megan?”

Megan shook her head, so they rose and, excepting Chris, dispersed out into the lunch room.

Evan and Ryan headed toward the Japanese station, where Ryan could get katsu and Evan could get ramen, which, if you didn’t get the fancy kind with egg and shit, counted as a standard dish and thus didn’t cost anything (as it was covered by the standard food stipend).

“What do you think?” Ryan asked after they’d stood in line for a couple of minutes.

“About Gramyre?” Evan asked.

“No, about elephants in the ballet,” Ryan said with an eyeroll. “Of course about Gramyre!”

Evan took a deep breath and turned it into words rather than a sigh. “He seems nice? This magic thing is pretty wild? I don’t know how I feel about, like, being mystically connected to him. Seems… awkward if we don’t end up getting along.”

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“I think we will,” Ryan said.

Evan had his doubts, but he kept them to himself.

“You should ask about hunting,” Ryan added. “He says he likes us already. This couldn’t be more perfect for you.”

“When I’m ready, man. I’ve had, like, a conversation and a half with him,” Evan said. “It’s not likely to happen anyway. Light Bearers almost always hunt alone.”

“Not on the east coast,” Ryan replied. “Much more normal for Light Bearers to hunt with partners or even whole parties over there.”

“Even inside cities?” Evan asked. “Barely a point to it, when it’s mostly just spawnlings that can get over the walls. They’d be splitting tiny little bounties.”

“I think a lot of people would be happy to get five or ten silver for killing a meter-long monster that’s barely a threat. If it’s just you and him, you’ll be looking at an average of fifteen, yourself. And with your shooting you’ll have no problem at all with spawnlings.”

Evan shrugged. “I mean, yeah. He probably won’t want me along for that reason, if nothing else. He’ll get bored, in between my company and my taking all the kills.”

“He’s not going to be bored by your company,” Ryan said. “It’s not like you can chat on patrol anyway. You’ll need to listen for Beasts.”

Evan perked up a little. “That’s true…” he said. “At least I won’t have to figure out what to talk about…”

At this point they reached the front of their line, got their food, and headed back to the table.

They arrived a few moments before Megan, who had some sort of Indic curry. Chris’s bento box was open, revealing what indeed looked a lot like charcuterie, with multiple cheeses, fancy thin meats, crackers, apple slices that weren’t at all browned, even a little, and some sort of pickled vegetables. Evan felt a stab of jealousy. He didn’t even know what that stuff might taste like—he’d never been able to afford charcuterie in any form, unless you counted Lunchables.

Megan looked just a little disappointed as she settled in. Ryan said, “What’s up, Meggles?”

“They don’t have vada pav here,” Megan said.

“You’d rather have vada pav than a nice curry like that?” Evan asked. It was also probably outside his means.

“Yes,” Megan said.

Evan shrugged. “Well, I’m sure you can find somewhere to get it.”

“Yeah, but I want it here…” Megan said.

“Petition the school to add it to the menu,” Ryan advised. “Considering your parents, they’ll probably listen.”

“My parents aren’t that important,” Megan said. “There’s lots of people with more important parents than mine in this school.”

“Whatever you think,” Ryan said. “I bet vada pav wouldn’t be that hard to add to the menu. It’s a fried potato dumpling in a bun, it’s not like it would be hard to add.”

“Maybe,” Evan said. “Do they fry anything else at the Indic station?”

“Impossible to say,” Ryan said with a shit eating grin, because he definitely knew.

Megan looked at them both as if they were crazy. “Samosas?” she asked. “They have samosas.”

“Megan, it’s the first day of high school,” Evan said. “I have not been to the Indic station yet. Are the samosas a no-cost dish?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Megan said. “At least the vegetarian ones.”

“Nice,” Evan said. “I’ll have to hit those up later this week.”

Angie returned with a tray with two double cheeseburgers and a giant pile of fries, along with a can of Ultra Pibb Xtreme II Turbo Remix. “Can you fucking believe they don’t have Dr. Poppy?” she said as she settled into her seat.

“That’s weird,” Evan said.

“Contracts,” Ryan said. “They probably only have Cokey-Cola products.”

“That stinks,” Angie said. “They make all my least favorite sodas.”

Chris was looking at Angie’s food, then at Angie, then back at her food. “That’s, um,” he said. “That’s a lot of food. I’m not even sure I could eat that much.”

“I got this condition called emberbelly syndrome,” Angie said. “Physiomystical in nature. Among other issues it gives me a really high metabolism.”

“I fucking guess…” Chris said.

Angie shrugged and dug in, starting with a big bite of her burger. Megan watched, a concerned expression on her face. With her attention elsewhere, Chris seemed to take the opportunity to study Megan, though “study” might have been the wrong word—gaze moon-eyed at her seemed like a more appropriate phrase.

Evan watched Chris watching Megan and Megan watching Angie, trying to keep his conflicting emotions off his face. Happiness and resentment warred within him, along with a bright thread of hope—if this worked out, if Gramyre became their friend, then surely Evan would be able to hunt with him. Surely.

“You three going to eat or what?” Ryan said, and took a bite of katsu.

Chris and Megan both jumped, then quickly started eating. Evan shrugged and dug in, too.

After a minute or two, Ryan, between bites of his katsu, said “So Chris, what’s your game? Quiet and haunted? Loud and proud? Tastefully demure? How you play this thing?”

“Um, what?” he replied.

“Being a Light Bearer,” Ryan said, with a touch of impatience.

“Oh,” Chris said, and took a sip of his drink, which appeared to be iced tea. “Matter-of-fact, I suppose? I don’t mind talking about it, but I don’t really like to bring it up unless I’m asked. Feels braggy.”

Both girls had leaned in toward him, the better to hear. “Consider it asked!” Angie said with what would have been surprising impatience, if it weren’t for the fact that Evan knew she fucking loved Light Bearer’s tales and missed hearing Virginia’s.

“Ha! No, I don’t mean—you haven’t actually asked a question. What do you want to know?” Chris looked at the girls with an amused smile.

“Let’s start with: what’s your style?” Ryan asked, then sipped his lime seltzer.

“I trained for years with blade and brand[1], like my father,” Chris said. “I ultimately shifted to a hand-and-a-half style[2], a year or so back. I’m good, but I was never quite able to get the hang of treating the fire part of the brand as fire, which is a really important part of using that weapon.”

[1] This was a style that involved a spiked iron baton with a torch chamber in the head, usually filled with Bearer’s Pitch, used as an off-hand weapon along with a one-handed sword or saber of some variety. It was a bold, at times risky, and powerful style, as it involved using the Light Bearer’s Flame as a weapon far more regularly than many styles, with a correspondingly greater risk of setting something important on fire. Such as the Light Bearer.

[2] The use of a sword balanced for wielding with either one or two hands equally well.

“One might even say the most important part, if one doesn’t want to set oneself on fire,” Ryan said, dryly.

“Exactly,” Chris said with a sage nod. “Not to mention I favor high mobility, and flips and rolls are easier to pull off without a metal torch in your off-hand. Charms and wards are all good and well, but the best way not to get hurt is to not be there when the Beast tries to get you.”

“Who’s your teacher?” Megan asked, eyes wide. “Anyone we’d know?” Evan blinked hard at that, and Ryan looked surprised too. How into Light Bearing and tourney was she now?

“My parents. More my father, ‘the youngest scion of the Providence Gramyres, a modest family that has long dwelled within that fair city,’ ” Chris said, making his voice slightly gruffer, telegraphing the fact he was quoting. He shrugged. “He ‘runs no schools and leads no delves,’ but he’s a capable trainer. My mom taught me how to dodge properly, though.”

They all nodded. “You’re not from… New England? Right?” Angie asked.

Ryan agreed. “Not with that accent.”

Chris laughed. “Indeed not. My father was the youngest of three first-born cousins in a family in which every first born male descendant since time immemorial has been a Light Bearer, in a city with no shortage of established families of Light Bearers.

“He decided that he needed to set out to ‘find fame, fortune, or fate,’ though that’s practically traditional for younger Gramyres. He wandered town to town, Bearing Light all across the eastern seaboard. Real knight-errant stuff—he's a hero in some places. He did it until he met my mother—step-mother—who was studying law at Duke and funding it with hunting. Once he met my step-mom, a little after I was born, they settled down in Raleigh until my mom got a job offer out here in May. We’ve just finished really settling in."

“Is your father still in the game?” Ryan asked.

“’Fraid not. A Nightmare-class Deep Woods Beast did a number on his leg a few years back—some sort of fungal poison that resists most healing. And he was pushing forty anyway,” Chris said. “He walks with a limp and a cane now, though the cane is mostly because he likes carrying a cane.”

“Youch,” Evan said. “Deep Woods Beasts are nasty—good camouflage, looking like a tree. And the fungal ones are the worst.”

“Yup,” Chris agreed. “Now he just sits around haranguing me and Cat all the time.” He smiled fondly.

“Cat?” Evan asked, raising an eyebrow, wishing he could pull it off the same way Ryan could.

“Catherine,” Chris amended. “My younger sister. Half sister.”

Megan asked, “Your dad harangues her because she’s a Light Bearer too, right?”

“Sure is,” Chris said, smiling proudly. “She’s the first daughter of a Gramyre to be one since 1723. It’s probably because our mother’s family, the Hayasaka, are similar to the Gramyres, but matrilineal, with every daughter of every branch being a Light Bearer. They split us up a touch, so Father trained me more while Mom trained Cat more. Cat’s going to inherit Mom’s ancestral blades.”

“That’s so cool!” Megan said.

“Okay, how was the trip?! Interrobang?!” Angie asked, her voice quiet but high-octane. This prompted a guffaw and a series of aftershock chuckles from Evan (“Interrobang? We haven’t said that since like sixth grade!”), and a look of mild bemusement from Chris. Hushed and almost awed, intent on Chris, Angie went on, “Did you come by land, sea, or air?” This was the most normal Angie had acted all day, that Evan had seen anyway. Of course, she also desperately wanted to travel and experience new places, and loved stories about travel—she had ever since she was a kid.

“Land, by train,” Chris said. “It wasn’t nearly as exciting as you think it would be, though. No Beast attacks or anything.”

“Unsurprising,” Ryan chimed in. “Trains are plated in steel, have tiny windows, are going one hundred plus klicks per hour, are armed with cannons, and have been all those things for over a century. There’s no Beasts left dumb enough to attack them. At least in daylight.” He raised an eyebrow at Chris.

Chris shrugged. “We always stopped for the night in towns and cities.”

“Okay. That’s fine,” Angie said, less hushed and less awed. “Did anything cool happen?”

“Well, I did join in on a couple of twilight wilderness hunts in the towns we stopped for the night in. That was pretty cool,” he said, grinning.

“Wilderness hunts!” Evan exclaimed despite himself. “As a firstager! Cool!”

“Tell us about them, you goof!” Megan said, and whapped Chris on the arm without real force. Evan noticed that her cheeks seemed awfully rosy for a bit after.

“Okay,” Chris said, leaning forward, “So we were stopped in Wichita for the night, right? Oh yeah, so, for the whole trip my father reached out to the local Bounty Authorities each night to see if there was room for me to get up in some action without stepping on any toes.

“So in Wichita and Kansas City, they have a lot of problems with these swarms of locusty-ass Beasts out in the plains that are always getting too numerous. They devour everything alive out there, and can easily get over the outer walls and do a number on people and crops.”

“Beast Type five oh nine five?” Evan asked. “‘The Swarms of the Broodmothers?’”

Chris gave Evan an scandalized look and said, “Shhhh! I mean yes, but spoilers!”

“Well it’s out of the bag now. There are broodmothers in this story,” Ryan said. “Do we even want to hear a story with broodmothers?”

Angie snorted.

Chris chuckled. “Bah,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, the BA there runs extermination raids outside the walls to try and keep those things’ numbers in check. They really need two Light Bearers per squad for these, because it’s just too easy for the Beasts to get past the gunners, and if the Light Bearer goes down they’re all fucked. So to prevent that, they double up their Light Bearers so they can watch each others’ backs and so there’s redundant Light.”

Megan and Angie were leaning in, rapt, their hands propping up their chins. Ryan was being more casual, but he was still totally focused on Chris. Evan kept watching his friends as much as he did Chris. He was terribly aware of how many eyes were on their table. But he still listened.