He can't leave.
Jake stands at the back door with his hand on the handle, but he can't turn it. It's not that it's locked—or at least, if it is locked, that's a different problem. The problem is that his hand simply refuses to go through the motions to open the door.
He wants to. He's tried. He's switched hands, even tried to open it with dragon talons, but his hands—in whatever form—won't do what he wants them to. There is no turning of the wrist, no twisting motion at all, regardless of how he tries to achieve it.
He is trapped.
When Susan had left him alone, he'd thought—hoped—that he could escape. That he could meet up with whoever had been sent to find them, head them off, distract them, feed them some sort of story to keep them away from this family. His family. His birth family. He knows it's a long shot, but it's something he wanted to try.
For them and for him.
Now, however?
Now, he's trapped by something more than iron bars, and it's terrifying.
Dragons can be bound by their blood.
He hadn't imagined this.
Of course, this may not be the binding. If it's some kind of ward on the shop that they put up after his capture, it is not one that can be broken with any words he knows. He only has basic training on that front, enough not to be a liability on a mission; it's hardly his specialty.
Rose has had more than the basic training, but he's not even sure she would be able to break through this.
Last time he remembered to ask, she'd had more work ahead of her, but lately….
Lately, he hasn't remembered to ask, and now it's too late.
Jake pulls his hand away from the knob—his hands still obey that command—and turns, pacing towards the desk. He's already tried the window and the other door at the front of the shop, with similar results, but he hasn't tried the desk. The desk might hold answers, and his time is far better spent in this part of the shop than the front when that's nothing more than a façade.
At least here, in the back, the truth isn't hidden. It's not obvious at first glance, sure, but it's not hidden. The desk may not be the centerpiece, but it is hardly as host to the commonplace as it may first seem. There are books there. Papers weighed down by a novelty mug full of pens. Potions of different colours in test tubes and jars, each adorned with a neat little label. One of them might help.
He doesn't know what this binding means for him. He doesn't know if it's as real as it seems or if it's a trick of some sort. Perhaps, if it's something they concocted just before he woke, then whatever they used to create this will still be sitting out where he can find it. Maybe, they won't have put it away yet, and then maybe he can break it, whatever it is, and free himself of this.
Once he's closer, Jake sees that the labels aren't in any language he can understand. Some of the books are little better, but from the titles he can read, none of them appear hold any information about something that would achieve this.
He's still reading through the titles on the books in the bookcases—and flipping open the most mundane to be sure the title matches the contents—when he hears someone descending the stairs and moving to stand behind him. He doesn't bother turning; he can't pretend he's been doing anything but looking at the books. He knows Susan may not be happy with what she might think is his attempt to gather information for the Huntsclan, but he doubts she'll be surprised.
Susan clears her throat, and then someone who is very clearly not Susan and never has been says, "I packed you two a bag. Did you want to take a quick look to see if you need anything else?"
Jake turns to see an average-looking white man smiling nervously at him and holding out a stuffed duffel bag. The smile falls from his face when Jake doesn't answer, and he places the bag on the floor between them a second later. His hands immediately tug his suit straight. It fits him well enough but is starting to fray at the cuffs. It isn't particularly memorable, and he's so nondescript that Jake could have passed him on the street and never looked at him twice.
It's an admirable quality for a friend of the dragons to have, but Jake can't figure out how he fits into this picture. Susan makes sense now, far more sense than she ever had before, but this man….
If he's a wizard employed to help the American Dragon, he is alarmingly good at his job. At least, Jake can only assume that blending in would be part of his job. Most wizards Jake knows—either by reputation or those who have been captured and interrogated—are loud, arrogant, flamboyant, flashy. They are vindictive, as ready to retaliate at any betrayal as they are easily broken, happy to spill secrets or sell out others if it means a chance at reprieve. There is a sharpness to them this man doesn't seem to possess, but anyone trusted by the dragons would be powerful and proficient.
Of course, this man simply seems kind.
He's talking again, already somewhere in the middle of a list of items that Jake assumes are packed into the bag, and then his eyes meet Jake's and he breaks off.
Jake shifts in the silence that follows but doesn't speak.
The newcomer does. "Sorry," he says. "Sorry, I— I guess I didn't think you'd be so tall."
The statement is so ludicrous that Jake knows he cannot keep the incredulity off his face.
He isn't tall.
By no one's definition is he tall.
Rose is taller than he is. Almost every girl in his age group is taller than he is, and so are half the boys. He's learned specific strategies when scouting and fighting and hunting that are useful because he isn't as tall as most of the others.
"I didn't, um, get a good look at you earlier, I suppose. I was thinking you'd be…younger. Shorter. I should really know better. You'd be thirteen now."
He shouldn't know that.
At least, he shouldn't know that if he's a mere wizard employed to protect the American Dragon. Jake's age—the age of Susan's lost son—is hardly essential knowledge, and he can't imagine that Susan would share a detail like that when he knows how careful she can be. She'd never hinted at her thoughts of him before; she would hardly say something like this to someone who isn't important to her for more than just the skills he brings to the table.
This man doesn't sound uncertain, though. A little embarrassed, perhaps. A little chagrined. Not doubtful.
"Sorry, you, ah, look to be about that age, you know?"
Jake doesn't know.
He doesn't trust this man, either.
"I can see your mother in you," the man whispers, confirming what Jake had already figured out: that this man is a confidant of Susan's. "It's just the shape of your face that get from—" He breaks off and smiles. "Sorry, uh, 99, isn't it?"
He waits, looking hopeful, but Jake doesn't want to entrust his name to someone he's just met, especially not if Susan hasn't already given it to him of her own accord.
Of course, Susan doesn't seem to believe it's his real name, for all that it's the one she'd given him. She might not have seen any reason to pass it on.
"Can you think of anything else you need? I'll try to find it for you."
It doesn't make sense. This man isn't a mere go-fer, someone employed for something as menial as finding and fetching things. They wouldn't trust him with any of this, speaking with Jake included if Jake hasn't missed his guess, if his usual tasks were so lowly. So why is he trying his best after his earlier slip-up to reinforce Jake's first impression and seem unimportant?
There's something he's missing, and he knows it, but he can't quite put his finger on what it might be.
Jake shakes his head and turns away.
Behind him, there's a quiet, perhaps involuntary, "No." A couple of heartbeats later, a hand lightly touches his shoulder. Jake flinches even though he'd suspected it might be coming, and the hand withdraws immediately. "Sorry," the man says again. "Sorry. I should have asked. I was only hoping— Do you think we could talk more before you go, 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall?"
Jake turns back to stare.
The man's smile grows wider before faltering. "Do you like that? It's a little long for a nickname, but—"
The sound of windchimes from the other room cuts him off, and they both look towards the beaded curtain that separates the front of the store from the back.
Fear curls in Jake's stomach.
He doesn't want it to be the Huntsclan yet.
"I should— I should see to that," the man murmurs. He glances around the room as if to find reason to delay further and snatches up the mug of pens from the desk. He turns away from Jake as the pens clatter to the desk, and there is the sound of shifting fabric before liquid begins to glug and splash into the newly emptied mug.
"I'll be with you in a moment," he calls out, and then he turns back to Jake. In a much quieter voice, he says, "Sorry. I thought they'd closed up shop."
They had.
Jake had unlocked it when he'd tried that door, but he's sure he locked it again. He can't fathom that he'd forget something that would so obviously indicate what he'd been trying to do.
Of course, a lock would hardly stop anyone from the Huntsclan. They know how to pick locks—mechanical and magical—and circumvent all sorts of basic wards. Anyone sent on a retrieval mission would be able to deal with almost anything more advanced, too. The Huntsclan would hardly want to risk its numbers by giving a couple of new recruits something important like this.
New members are more expendable, at least in the year before pledging, but he's hardly inexperienced and ignorant of how the Huntsclan operates.
He's too valuable to lose, even if they don't know how much information they could get from him about dragons.
"Can I just—?" The man raises his arms. "Really quick? Promise? If you wouldn't mind?"
He looks so hopeful, so pleading, it hurts. Perhaps it's the stress of the day finally getting to Jake that's making his heart ache, his chest tighten. Perhaps the vice constricting his heart is merely another consequence of this binding and it is only now settling into place in a way that he can truly feel. In the end, it doesn't matter.
Jake lifts one shoulder in a shrug but otherwise doesn't move, and the man quickly embraces him, though he's careful not to spill the contents of the mug over either of them.
"Stay safe, Jakeroo," the man whispers, but he's pulling away even as Jake stills.
Jake doesn't release his breath until the man has been gone long enough that the beads separating the two sides of the shop have nearly stopped swaying.
He can't hear anything above him now, and all he can hear from the shopfront is a low murmur. The man's voice. No surprise there.
Maybe it isn't the Huntsclan.
Or maybe, if it is, the ones sent to retrieve him are employing the same trick he'd just used.
Silence is a weapon many people underestimate, usually to their detriment.
He is still looking to the front of the shop when there is a touch on his arm, and he twists away before he realizes it is only Susan. She's dressed in the same coat and shoes he always sees her in, but she has the duffel bag slung across her shoulders and hands him a large brown coat and a black backpack. He shrugs on the coat first; from its size, he suspects it belongs to the man he'd been speaking to. As he takes the backpack, he notices the main zipper pull has broken off and was replaced by a paperclip, and once it's on his back, he can feel that one strap is looser than the other. He starts to adjust it, but Susan touches his hand and shakes her head before pointing to the back door.
The door he can't seem to open.
He shakes his head, and she spares a second to look disappointed before she takes him by the hand and pulls him across the room on silent feet.
The door handle turns easily for her, and she tugs him outside before closing it gently behind him. She doesn't release his hand. Instead, she turns to him and lifts her eyebrows in a silent question.
There's only one thing she'd be asking right now that he would answer, so he raises one hand to point in the direction of the cave where he'd failed to meet Rose.
That had been months ago now. Months since he'd helped trap the American Dragon, only to get captured in the process. Months since he'd met Susan. Months since he'd been lying to Rose—or at least not confiding in her as he once had. He only ever wanted to protect her, and now he can't even do that.
He wonders what she's thinking.
He never meant to abandon her.
He doesn't want to leave her behind, but he isn't sure he has a choice now.
It's not like he can go back for her.
He wants to, though.
She's his best friend. She's the only reason he lasted as long as he did, straddling two opposing worlds. And she compromised herself for him.
He'll never be able to repay her as it is.
Jake finds himself slowing mere blocks from the shop, but Susan puts a hand on his back to give him a gentle push forward. "Not yet."
He leads on, doing his best to stick to the shadows without appearing to do so, and Susan does an alarmingly good job of following suit.
In hindsight, it shouldn't surprise him. Her identity and all the training she surely would have had as a consequence notwithstanding, he's already seen her skill on this front. After all, the first time he'd tried to corner her, she'd turned the tables on him. At the time, he'd thought he'd been too distracted and had managed to tip her off. Now, he knows it's entirely too likely that she would have noticed him even if he hadn't slipped up.
He takes a roundabout route to the cave, complete with occasional backtracking, but Susan never questions him. As long as he's moving, she doesn't even comment, not even to complain when he takes a few less conventional routes or makes her jump a fence. (She does need his help over that one stone fence he used to get caught at until Rose taught him a trick for climbing it, though from the grateful smile on Susan's face when he offers his hand, she hadn't expected him to give it.) He tries to stay away from popular paths used by the Huntsclan, but he can hardly avoid them entirely.
The pace he sets isn't gruelling, but it's steady, and he guesses they'll still get to the cave before the last of the light fades.
Susan pulls out a bottle of water from one of the pockets in the duffel bag and takes a few swigs before offering it to him. He takes it gratefully—he hasn't had any water since the handfuls he'd drunk from the tap in the washroom—and slows slightly for her sake. He can find the cave easily enough in the dark if he has to, especially if he allows himself to use his dragon sight.
Still, he doesn't know what they'll do once they're there.
He doesn't know what he'll do once they're there.
He's trying to run away from the Huntsclan. The Huntsclan. No one has done that successfully. Susan's presence will hurt as much as it helps, and if—when—they're captured, if they find out her relation to the American Dragon—
If they find out her relation to him—
If they find out what he is—
Jake shudders, waves off Susan's look of concern, and squares his shoulders. There's no sense in worrying about all that when his mind is better off staying focused on the task at hand. He needs to keep an eye out for someone tailing them; chances are good he'll recognize someone from the Huntsclan before Susan would.
While the coast is clear, he does the only thing he can: he keeps going.