Free Lies and Prophecy by Marie Brennan

desk chose that moment to begin chiming softly, and our heads both whipped around. “Blast! We’re overdue in the Arboretum.”
    I stared at him blankly. Then memory returned. The equinox: the Palladian Circle was holding a Sabbat ritual. “Crap. I have to get my things.” I grabbed the tarot deck and headed for the doorway, then paused. “Thanks, Robert. I still don’t know what it means, but I feel better anyway.”
    He nodded. “Any assistance I can offer is yours, my lady.”
    ~
    Later that night, when the ritual was over, and the celebratory dinner, and the singing of “Happy Birthday” deliberately rendered in thirteen keys at once—a real achievement, when only seven people were singing it—I went into the Arboretum, feeling my way carefully in the new-moon darkness, stripped off my clothes, and jumped into the Copper Creek.
    It was tradition, dating back to my childhood in Georgia. There, I would spend an hour floating in our pool, thinking over the previous year. Minnesota in late September was not so congenial to that, at least not by my standards. But I kept the practice up in modified form, meditating upon the bank, then jumping into the water at the end. Why should a little hypothermia get in my way?
    My meditation this year was a disaster, though. Happy thoughts about possible Guardianship kept being interrupted by logistics—what requirements would I need to complete before applying to graduate programs?—and personal hurdles—what would my mother say? Once I swept those concerns out of the way, I hit the underlying foundation of tension, the Moon and the Tower, and my gift’s refusal to tell me anything more about them. Finally I gave it up as a bad job and dove in. There was a second tradition to follow, this one dating from my freshman days at Welton, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
    Two years ago I’d been hurrying home from my dip, cursing my own idiocy and cataloguing better ways to continue the practice, possibly involving indoor pools or even bathtubs. I hadn’t been looking where I was going, beyond a serious desire to get home before I died. My path cut through the center of campus and the massive monument there: a huge circle of dark green marble, edged with the seals of all the countries that abided by the sidhe-blood laws laid down in the Cairo Accords, and ringed with three grey marble arches symbolizing telekinetic disciplines, telepathic disciplines, and ceremonial magic. I’d been halfway across it and thinking only of home.
    And then something brought my head up with a jerk.
    Someone else was there, approaching from the opposite edge, a wraith all in black, with hair that looked silver in the moonlight and skin as pale as bone. And his eyes….
    I met his gaze before I knew what I was doing, before instinct could warn me away. That we had a wilder on campus was common knowledge, but unlike some people, I hadn’t gone out of my way to gawk. Quite the opposite, in fact—until now.
    Wrenching my gaze down took a herculean effort. And then a second one, to keep walking, to nod as I drew near. As if he were just another student, passing in the night.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    His voice reflected oddly from the stone. I blinked, and he clarified. “You’re shivering. And wet.”
    I touched my dripping hair and blushed. “Oh. It’s my birthday.” Which didn’t explain anything, so I babbled onward. “I do this every year—go swimming on my birthday—so I jumped into the Copper Creek.”
    He nodded, as if that made sense. I glanced down, saw he had a fistful of battered-looking late roses. “CM assignment,” he said, when he noticed me looking. Then he handed one of them to me. “I’m Julian. I’m sorry to have startled you.”
    No last name given, but I didn’t need it. I knew what he was, and that his surname would be Fiain.