She frowned at the knock on her door and answered it quickly. She’d been told that she would be left alone for the rest of the day to see how far she could get in the… school work. The idea of using that term made her feel stupid. She was doing high school homework, at the age of twenty-fucking-four.

She frowned at Jasper and Zander. Were they here to explain the massive surge of magic that had rolled through the house? It was obvious who caused it, but Sawyer didn’t know why. She also wasn’t sure she wanted to. Quinn’s feral magic made her hair stand on end. Whatever pissed him off that much wasn’t something she really wanted to experience.

“Guys,” she greeted them cautiously. “Want to come in?” She stepped out of the doorway and let Jasper move through while she was holding the door. She would be nice to him, he was on crutches. So after he was through, she released the door and watched Zander walk into it.

It got a laugh out of both her and Jasper.

“Damn it, Sawyer,” Zander growled, glaring at her as he came through the door. “Real cute.”

“I know.” Sawyer chuckled. “It’s not often I get to be called cute. Decided to make sure that happened once today.” There was a moment of silence before the glare on Zander’s face turned into a sly smile. Sawyer realized her mistake immediately.

“If you wanted to be called cute, there are other ways you can make that happen,” Zander growled, this time with a seductive edge. Sawyer’s next breath came out a little shallow and very airy. Zander had turned on the playboy act, and she had never liked when he got that glint in his eyes.

But what a wonderful glint it was.

“I’m sorry, Zander,” Sawyer huffed, trying to maintain some composure. “If I wanted to roll around and get sweaty with you, it would be on the mat, not in my bedsheet.”

“We could fuck there, too.” Zander smirked.

“I’ll just stab you, then.” Sawyer snorted. “If you think Jasper’s missing leg is bad, I can only imagine how you’ll feel about the body part I take from you.”

“That’s just fucking mean—" Zander coughed out, shocked, but Jasper cut them both off.

“That’s enough, you two.” Jasper groaned. Sawyer eyed him but found that he had a smile on his face. This was them. She and Zander at each other’s throats over some little shit, and Jasper putting his foot down between them. After everything, she could tell Jasper was happy they hadn’t lost this much. “We’re here to talk to you about something important.”

“A Quinn thing?” she asked, going to sit at her desk. Her box of weapons and that old, cold mask still sat there. When neither of the guys responded, she sighed. “I could feel his magic roll through the house. I thought he was going to bring it down. So if you have something important, it must be a Quinn thing.”

“Do… you want to start?” Zander whispered to Jasper, who nodded and then looked at her. She just leaned back in her chair as they both sat on her bed. The sight was nostalgic, them hanging in a bedroom, waiting to gossip about the people they lived with.

It was also painful in ways she needed to continue to ignore, if she had any sense of self-preservation. She watched Zander lean back, his shirt riding up, revealing those revolvers. Jasper got all the way onto her bed and made himself comfortable.

It was a painfully good view of them. She would file it away, with a touch of guilt, into her ‘spank bank’. She needed to stop picking up weird shit from Elijah. He was turning her into a pervert.

“Quinn can’t read,” Jasper finally said quickly, looking at her like he expected a bomb to go off.

“Huh,” was Sawyer’s only vocalization.

That wasn’t what she expected.

“Well… he can, but he couldn’t when he first joined the team. We’ve gotten him, slowly, to some level of literacy. He gets… prickly over it on occasion. We’re trying to help him. He can speak nearly every Native American tongue of North America and a few from Central and South America… but he can’t read or write… any of them,” Jasper continued. “And we are really only working on English right now.”

Sawyer continued to sit in silence and let the information sink in.

“It took us a good month or so to convince him to speak to us using only English. Apparently, Druids will mix languages together because they come from all sorts of different cultures. They also tend to stick close to the area in which they were born and—"

Sawyer raised a hand up to stop the rambling from Jasper. Thankfully, he heeded the sign.

“How old is Quinn, again?” Sawyer frowned. One of them had told her at some point, but it was escaping her.

“Twenty-five… is our best guess,” Zander groaned out.

Sawyer stood up and walked to her door, opening it for them.

“Thank you for letting me know, you can go now,” she said quickly. “I will do my best not to embarrass him. I know that’s why you’re telling me.”

“Sawyer,” Zander sat up quickly. “You’re kicking us out?”

“I’m going back to my own stuff,” Sawyer bit out. She needed to think, and she wanted to do it alone. “By the way, I’m probably capable of testing out of half this.”

“You need to test out of it all at once, though.” Jasper sighed, standing up slowly. “Thanks for listening.”

“Of course,” Sawyer whispered, patting Jasper’s chest when he stopped in front of her. He didn’t get moving again and she gave a heavy sigh. “Yes?”

“Don’t hold it against him,” Jasper pressed, giving her an intense look. “He’s really very intelligent.”

“I know. I would never hold it against him,” Sawyer kept her voice low. She did. She’d been through Quinn’s thorough survival training. She knew she had more to come now that she had magic back.

Once they were gone, she closed the door and went to lock it. And remembered, again, that her bedroom door didn’t have a lock. She really needed to get that taken care of.

She sat back down at her desk and frowned.

Quinn couldn’t read. Or rather, read well.

Did any of these guys have any experience in teaching someone to read? Why hadn’t they called for help or hired someone?

She knew the answer: because Quinn could be dangerous to someone he didn’t trust or like. She didn’t know much about Quinn, but she knew that. He was animal. He was strange. He walked to a different beat. He was the child of a Druid. He was the strongest Magi on the continent.

Quinn couldn’t read or write growing up.

She had taught someone how to read before. The thought brought tears to her eyes. She’d taught a few children how to read. Henry was just the first, but not the last.

She could do this where they may be struggling. She just hoped she didn’t get herself killed.

But she could do this for them. Since the hospital, she’d been ridden hard by the idea that they were giving her this chance. The shame of what she could do and what she had been would always be there, even if she could give the world the middle fucking finger. She knew that, but she could give this knowledge to them, this expertise in a sense. This was one thing that wasn’t criminal that she could do. Something not covered in blood and death. This clean knowledge of understanding how to help someone learn.

She could give Quinn this one thing.

She jumped up from her seat and grabbed her box of photos. She would need a few of these. She riffled through it and found the best photos she could. They would possibly help her.

The idea was taking a more solid shape.

She left the room once she had four pictures held gently in her left hand. She went down the stairs double-time and didn’t bother knocking on the door to Elijah and Vincent’s office. She phased right through it, ignoring the noise inside at her sudden entrance.

She eyed the bookshelf and looked for any books she thought would work.

“What in the hell, Sawyer?” Vincent snarled.

She finally looked over at him and noted his red cheeks and flustered appearance. The way he was tucked behind his desk like a child who was trying to hide something. She’d caught Charlie like this once or twice.

“Were you jacking off?” she asked incredulously. Then she shook her head and held up her right hand. “Don’t answer that. I’m sorry for barging in. My fault. I’m just looking for something.” It really wasn’t her business if he was beating his meat in the middle of the afternoon while alone in his office.

“And what, pray tell, could be so important for you that you just walked through my fucking door?” Vincent growled. His face was even redder after she spoke. Yup, she’d walked in on Vincent having a private moment to himself. Served him right for the time he interrupted her on that movie night, and he knew it. Prick. Attractive prick. Before she had known who he was related to, he occupied some of those imaginings. He probably still would, even now that she knew. She wondered perversely if he found her that attractive.

“I’m looking for nature books. Plants, animals… science,” Sawyer told him, going back to the bookshelf. Chess and war. Strategy. “Why don’t you have anything like that?”

“Jasper is the scientist,” Vincent snapped in embarrassment. “Not me. Why?”

Sawyer thought about it for a moment. She should tell him.

“I’m going to teach Quinn to read,” she sighed. She watched his anger at her intrusion crumbled. She watched his face become an unreadable mask of cold. This was the Vincent she knew best. This closed-off, cunning man who wants to know things.

“Oh, really?” he whispered, a chill on his voice. Ice cold.

“Yes,” she whispered back, giving herself the same deadly cold. Hers was better.

“How are you thinking you can succeed where we have had so much trouble?” he asked, his eyes growing angry again.

“Because I’ve taught children to read before,” she answered, not breaking eye contact. She knew he was feeling protective over Quinn. She had a feeling all the guys did in some ways. Quinn was turning out to be the most treasured member of the team. “What’s his current reading level? I know you must have gotten him started.”

“Middle school, would be the United States standard. Maybe seventh grade by testing,” he told her. He was softer this time, that deep pain sneaking through. “Sawyer, don’t overstep your bounds.”

“I can do this, Vincent,” she hissed.

“How are you so sure?” he growled back.

“Because I taught Henry how to read, and no one will ever be as difficult as he was,” Sawyer mumbled. She heard a choked sound from him at Henry’s name. “Then I taught four children after him, ones whose parents wouldn’t help, whose parents couldn’t be bothered.”

“Damn you,” he snarled. She couldn’t tell if he was pissed off, hurt, or some combination of both. It happened every time Henry was even mentioned. “Jasper has science books for whatever your heart desires. Get out. If he tries to kill you, none of us can stop him.”

She didn’t respond because she knew how stupidly dangerous this was. She just left because it wasn’t something she was going to acknowledge. She went immediately into Jasper and Zander’s office, startling them both. She had the courage to do it now, and she needed to use that courage. She remembered how defensive he was at breakfast. This could go horribly wrong. She was about to try and teach a wild animal a new trick, and it was likely he could tear her arm off for it.

“Science books, of any age range. Preferably high school level,” she rambled off quickly. “Now.”

“Okay…” Jasper mumbled, looking around. He rolled around in his chair to collect books. She watched him stack some books up, all well-read and worn from age and use. Perfect. “Sawyer…”

“Don’t,” she demanded. She was feeling raw. She needed a moment where someone didn’t question her again before she tried this.

Quinn was in his mid-twenties, and he couldn’t fucking read. She could help him. She knew she could, and damn it, she was going to. Quinn was going to be hard enough, she didn’t need every other man in the testosterhole she lived in questioning her at every turn. That was a word, right? A hole of testosterone. If it wasn’t before, it was now, she decided.

She snatched the books quickly when Jasper was done. She didn’t say anything as she left, phasing through the door. She couldn’t be bothered to open or close anything at the moment. She looked down at the books she had and crossed off two of the six as options. She wasn’t going to make Quinn read physics.

She passed Elijah at the back door, who stuttered at her sudden appearance. She ignored him, phased through the door, and immediately sublimated once she was outside.

She could change anything she was holding and wearing into smoke. Magic was neat like that, so she wasn’t trudging through the woods with several textbooks.

Why hadn’t the guys tried this? Her idea worked with younger children. Many times, children had a hard time learning to read because the subject matter wasn’t interesting enough for them to become engaged. Quinn was by no means a young child, but he had an air of inhuman about him. Maybe this could help. Maybe the simple approach was the best one.

She crept quickly in the smoke form all way to his camp and reformed in the center of camp. Quinn was sitting by the lean-to and brushing Scout. Shade growled at her sudden appearance. Quinn’s ice-blue eyes narrowed on her, and she felt suddenly very afraid.

“You know not to be here unless invited,” he snarled.

“Don’t kill me,” she said in a low voice, adrenaline pumping through her. She’d encroached on his territory. She was more worried about the wolf inside Quinn being upset than the man he appeared to be. Shade and Scout were brutal fighters, she had witnessed that. She could get away if he lashed out, but it would forever damage any budding friendship they might have had. “Hear me out.”

“Hurry,” he snapped. Both wolves growled. While they liked her, Sawyer knew they would always be loyal to Quinn, first and foremost.

“I think I can help you,” she whispered, holding out the books, “and I want to.”

The roll of magic through the earth beneath her feet made the blood rush from her head. She watched the earth crack open in faults around him, accidentally letting one of his log seats fall into the earth. Even the vegetation around her seemed to become a dangerous prospect, growing at a rate that she thought was only capable of being achieved by a Legend, the Druids.

“Quinn,” she hissed. “Stop. This.”

His answering, defensive snarl was deafening. She saw it in his eyes, the shame she hadn’t expected but should have. He knew he wasn’t normal. He knew he was too powerful, too wild for the rest of the world.

She’d walked into his sanctuary and brought the world with her, making it unavoidable.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she whispered, stepping closer. “Let me help.”

“No,” he growled. “Leave.”

She had two options. Leave and maybe never have the courage to even speak to him, or stay and risk a very painful death. At least Quinn was wild enough to make it quick.

“I’ll stay right here,” Sawyer said firmly. “Until you hear me out. Then you can decide. But I will not be scared away by a temper tantrum.”

The earth rolled again, nearly taking her off her feet. She stumbled but stayed standing and glared at him. He’d done that one on purpose. She moved as the ground underneath her cracked open. He could have pulled a trick like Talyn would have, pulling her into the earth, but he wanted her to leave, not be stuck there.

It was a tense minute or so. Quinn finally walked closer, a stalking figure. He stopped right in front of her, and she looked up to meet his eyes.

“Say it, then leave,” he growled.

“What does Vincent make you read?” She asked, wanting to confirm her theory.

“Literature. Plays. That sort of nonsense,” he growled, a light of confusion entering his eyes. “Stuff required for the tests. I don’t understand most of it.”

“What if I taught you to read with something you’re genuinely interested in?” She showed him the books again and sighed. She threw the two physics books into one of the cracks he’d made. The other four were all about plants and animals. North American vegetation, birds of the Northern Hemisphere, extinct animals from the Ice Ages, domestication. These were things Quinn would hopefully be interested in. “You might know all of this already, which will help you. You’ll just learn how to read it off the page. And it’s more advanced than what Jasper is teaching you, which probably held you back. I think this may help you. Give you incentive to learn more and find reading less arduous and stressful.”

He maintained his hard glare and looked down at the books.

Silence dragged on. And on. And on.

“I’ll read them myself,” he growled, taking the books from her. She let him. If he wanted to try on his own, that was good. When he hit something that he didn’t understand or had a hard time with the text, she hoped he would come to her. It was a start. It was something she could do for them.

“I’ll go,” she whispered.

“Please,” he snarled.

Before she turned away, she noted how close he held the books to his body. Shade and Scout hadn’t moved the entire time, but now both were trotting over, much calmer than before.

The books would be too hard for him; she’d done that on purpose. He would need help, and while that seemed cruel of her to do, she needed him interested in the text enough to want to learn. That want had to outweigh the difficulties of reading.

She walked slowly back to the house. The moment she was out of the woods, she took a deep breath, and her body began to shake.

“Holy shit,” she groaned, doubling over and losing her lunch.

She’d faced death many times in her life. Most of those times, she was a witness or the deliverer of it.

Only once before had she been the near-victim. Quinn, in the woods, living in the same house as her, scared her more than Axel and the Ghosts ever could.

Power like that. It was unthinkable in a normal Magi. Quinn might behave strangely, thinking strangely, but at the end of the day, he was a normal Magi. He wasn’t a Legend whose ranks included Druids, Vampyrs, Dopplers, and so much more.

It made her wonder just how powerful Druids, like his mother, really were. Luckily, they were normally peaceful.

Her legs shook as she started walking again. Elijah stood on the back porch, pale as a dead man, his arms crossed. And for the first time since she’d met him, absolutely furious.

“Are you mad?” He growled as she got closer.

“No, but you are.” Two different definitions of mad, she knew, but she felt it was worth pointing out. “He took the books.”

“Excuse me?” Elijah roared, stomping to her in the grass. “You do not get to go out there and fuck with him, Sawyer!” Elijah pointed to the woods. “I don’t care what you’re trying to do! I don’t care if Vincent or anyone else thinks it’s even remotely okay! You hurt Quinn and I’ll fucking do my best to end you if he doesn’t.” He ended in a dangerous snarl.

“He took the books,” Sawyer said louder, with a growl of her own. She didn’t really know what else to say to him. She didn’t know how to bring Elijah back down from an anger she had never witnessed.

“He could have killed you! And damn it, he would have felt guilty for it! Because you—"

“He took the books!” Sawyer finally roared, cutting Elijah off.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Was this her first argument with the cowboy? He was so easy to get along with that she could barely stay mad him for capturing her. She also hadn’t had the mental energy to be angry at the time. She was too busy guarding her secrets and trying to figure out how to get out of the entire situation.

She had found the one button to not push with him. She filed it away to think about later, along with a heaping pile of other shit she still needed to process when she was ready.

“What’s your game, Sawyer?” he asked quietly, as other footsteps could be heard. The back door swung open and closed. She didn’t look over to see who was there. When she was done here, she was going to get out as fast as possible.

“I can teach him to read,” she mumbled, swallowing. “I’ve taught children—"

“Quinn isn’t a child,” Elijah replied back, a little defensively.

“No,” Sawyer agreed, “he’s not. But that doesn’t mean the same techniques won’t work. None of you are teachers. I had an idea, and I was going to make it happen. I can do this because I have before.”

“You aren’t even educated. Leave it to us,” Elijah snapped, turning away from her and leaving. That comment hurt. It stung like a son of a bitch. She looked up to the porch and saw Vincent and Zander standing there.

She looked back toward the woods.

This meant something to her, but it was so much more than giving something back to them. Something in her resonated with Quinn now like it did with kids she’d helped. She ended up not needing the pictures, so she took them out and looked at them just for herself. They once had needed her. She ran a finger over Henry’s face and held back the tears.

“Sawyer,” Zander called out. There was a sharp bite to his words. They didn’t trust her to do something nice for Quinn. They had told her she couldn’t embarrass him but nothing else. That hurt more than she’d expected it to. She couldn’t blame them. “Come inside.”

It also pissed her off.

She turned slowly to the three of them on the porch and glared. She walked to the porch holding the pictures in her hands.

When she got to them, she shoved them into Elijah’s chest.

“Tell them that I’m not good enough to help,” she snarled viciously. He took the pictures from her, and she dove between Zander and Vincent to get inside before either could stop her.

She beelined for the gym. She needed to hit something. She needed to hit something hard.

She stumbled at the bottom of the stairs, the angry tears filling her eyes.

She was an uneducated, killing machine. She couldn’t be trusted to help in any other way. She pulled off her top as she moved toward the punching bag. Someone else had been hitting it earlier; she could see where the recent blows had landed since it was an older bag.

She didn’t bother with gloves or hand wraps, bare knuckles slamming into it. At one point she screamed. She hit the bag hard enough that it popped a small hole, and sand fell to the floor. Frustrated and pissed off, Sawyer roared, still trying to hit it.

When she couldn’t hit the empty bag anymore, she sank to her knees in the sand and cried.

She was sick to her stomach with the thought that Elijah might be right. Maybe she wasn’t good enough.

It was dinner time when she got up and moved to clean up the mess she had made. None of them had come to bother her. Not a single one. For that, she was thankful.

She needed a broom or something. She needed a few trash bags. She would find those near the kitchen, where they were all probably sitting.

She schooled her face into cold, unfeeling disinterest. Vincent might use it more often, but she was also a master of putting it all away, every shred of emotion and thought. She’d done it for every assassination she’d ever accomplished. She climbed the stairs out of the basement. She could smell whatever someone was cooking but ignored her stomach. The day had been much too eventful for her, so she wasn’t going to eat with them. She probably wouldn’t eat breakfast with them the next day.

If she never saw them again at this point, it would have been too soon. Fuck them.

She knew where the cleaning supplies were kept—in a closet the old lady used. Sawyer brushed passed Jasper to get to it. He just watched her. She could have cloaked but one of them would have noticed, and that wasn’t trouble she wanted.

She continued to ignore him as she took what she needed back to the gym.

It took her over an hour to clean up the sand and the ruined bag. She swept up every piece of sand she could find after using the dustpan to shovel it all into trash bags. Sawyer didn’t leave a single shred of evidence that she’d broken the punching bag; only its absence would give it away.

When she went to lift the three bags of sand, she groaned. She once again had two options.

“Ask for help, or sublimate all of it with me and probably hit burnout,” she mumbled to herself. “I’m feeling a bit stubborn.” She ended in a soft growl.

She got her hands wrapped around all the bags’ ties. Then she sublimated, reeling in pain at the energy she expended for the task, but she had to hold it as she raced up the stairs and to the front porch.

She released the moment she could and collapsed to her knees. Using her powers all day, then physically wearing herself out, hadn’t been the best idea.

“Fuck.” She gasped, still reeling a little. She’d never burned through her Source that quickly. She still had what felt like a drop in the bucket to keep her from hitting burnout.

“Sawyer?” Jasper called out from inside. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped. Wasn’t that cliché? She winced, knowing her words and tone were totally at odds. Which meant he was just going to ask more questions.

“Are you?” Jasper sounded worried. “You didn’t eat. You came up but then went back down to the gym.”

“I broke the punching bag,” she growled.

“Why didn’t you ask for help?” He huffed, opening the front door to actually look at her. She glared at him.

“Because fuck all of you, that’s why,” she snarled.

“What?” Jasper frowned at her and seemed shocked.

“Ask your fucking buddies,” she hissed, standing up. “I’m going to shower and sleep. Goodnight.”

She moved around him, squeezed through the door, ignored Zander standing in the hall, and made it back to her room. She stopped at her desk and cursed quietly. Elijah probably still had her pictures. She would get them back tomorrow. He wasn’t stupid enough to ruin them.

He’d be a dead man if he did.