Bloodline Academy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 1)

by Lan Chan

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve been doing this since you were a kid.”

  I wanted to point out that he’d known about being a light mage for his whole life. Yet he refused to light our way when the manticore had come for us. But I was still weak from my recovery and getting into an argument with him was just going to sap my energy.

  “How about we try something different?” I asked him. Reaching out for one of the bandages on the shelf beside my bed, I beckoned him forward.

  “Close your eyes.” I turned the bandage into a blindfold and tied it around his head. Repositioning him on the floor so that he had a clean sheet of paper, I asked him to draw.

  “But I can’t see!”

  “That’s the point!”

  After a couple of false starts and a lot of whining, he eventually gave up and just did as I asked. The results were much better than he’d previously had. When he ripped off the blindfold and saw his circle, he was actually laughing. “Wow!”

  “Now you just have to remember to add in the intent while you draw.” I smiled back at him, noticing again that he seemed deflated.“Are you okay?”

  He rubbed at his eyes once more. “Still can’t sleep. Some of the other boys keep trying to scare me.”

  “How?”

  He shrugged. “They move my stuff and then tell me they don’t know anything about it when I ask. They leave dead animals in my bed.”

  “What?” A dead animal wasn’t a prank. It was murder.

  “Nothing serious,” he paled. “Just, like birds and mice.”

  “I don’t think you can rate the deadness of an animal based on what species they are.” I stood up, my fists balling. “We have to tell somebody!”

  He dragged me back down by the scruff of my jeans. “We’re not going to do anything. If I say something, they’ll just ramp up the pranks. Anyway, they’re not actually killing the animals. They just steal them from the alchemy lab and leave them on my bed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There’s no blood in the carcasses.”

  My face was twisted into a grimace when the commotion outside filtered into the room. I heard a gruff voice and then a higher-pitched one arguing. It wasn’t until the voices came closer that I realised it was the doctor and Sophie.

  “You need to respect the patient’s wishes,” the doctor said.

  “I’m bringing her food!” Sophie shot back. She barged into the room and stood with her back to the door, glaring at me. When she noticed Fred, her brown eyes flashed murder. “Get out!”

  He didn’t need to be asked twice. He collected his things in a wide sweep of his arms and ran out faster than I’d ever seen him move. Doctor Thorne appeared at the door, pushing it open despite Sophie standing there leaning against it.

  “You need to leave,” he told her.

  She tipped her chin up and glowered at me. “It’s okay,” I said. “She can stay.”

  He glanced between us and then huffed and closed the door. Never one to keep quiet, Sophie stalked right over and stood in front of me.

  “What the hell is going on?” she said. “It’s been three days and they keep telling me you don’t want any visitors. I’ve been so worried!” She tossed the paper bag onto the armchair beside my bed. “And then I get told that people have seen Fred coming in and out of your room!”

  I hopped back up on the bed. “I just didn’t want to see anyone.”

  “How is Fred not anyone?” she said. Her lower lip quivered. “And since when did I become just anyone?”

  I stared down at her shoes. She was wearing a pair of ballet flats in a shade of pink that warmed her skin tone. “Well?”

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” I said. I’d missed her zany sense of humour like crazy, but there was a part of me that couldn’t forget what Kai had revealed. I wasn’t here because they wanted me. I was here because they needed me contained. Who even knew whether Sophie was a part of it?

  “What I want is the truth!” She stomped forward and practically jumped on to the bed. “Why are you dodging me?”

  “I’m not!”

  “Cut the crap, Lex! I’ve had enough experience being the outcast. I know when somebody is trying to avoid me.” The hurt in her soft, brown eyes made my insides ache. “You’ve been out of sorts since you came back from your private lesson with Kai.”

  Not for the first time I wished I was back on the streets. Out there I could run away. In here I was trapped.

  “I really don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Too bad! If you don’t want to be friends, then you at least owe me an explanation. Or are you too good for me now that you’ve proven your magic is strong?”

  I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “What does magic have to do with anything?”

  “Magic has to do with everything around here, and you have a lot of it. More than some of the high mages. More than maybe some of the Fae.”

  “Is that what you’ve been reporting back to the Academy? That I’m some kind of demon with strong magic who’ll eventually kill everyone?”

  I heard the voice in my head as clear as day. It had warned me that they wouldn’t accept me when they found out what I was. If this was the reaction when there was nothing concrete, what would happen when they found out what I was? Would I even be able to handle the truth?

  “Reporting back?” she stuttered. “Who would I be reporting back to? Nobody even knows I exist. Is this about me letting Basil look in on you?”

  I gripped the sheet and glared at her. “No. This is about my powers being weird and nobody trusting me not to be a demon.” I hopped off the bed and paced. “Except I don’t know if I’m a demon or not! Raphael said I’m not. But I keep hearing these voices in my head, and I can’t tell anyone about it because the first thing you’ll do is ship me off into a cell.”

  “You’re hearing voices?” It figured that would be the thing she picked out of what I said. When I whirled and pierced her with my gaze, she withered a little.

  “Yeah, I’m hearing voices. You can run along as tell them about that, and they can come and take me away. I don’t care anymore.”

  Except I did seem to care because suddenly the world was all blurry and my nose was blocked. I took a step forward. My foot slipped on a felt-tip pen Fred had left on the floor. My arms cart wheeled as my legs separated. I was going to either execute a perfect split or I was going to bash my head against the floor.

  Sophie hopped off the bed and caught me just as my ass was about to drop. My momentum dragged her down too. We tumbled, rolling around on the floor. I wasn’t sure which one of us got the giggles first, but one minute we were screeching and falling and the next we were on our backs, side by side, laughing our heads off.

  The door opened. “What’s going on here?” Doctor Thorne said. But we were too breathless to answer. He muttered and left us alone. I was the first to regain composure. Pushing myself up into a sitting position, I winced at my tender tailbone. I’d smashed it on the way down.

  Sophie drew up a moment later. My tears had turned into tears of laughter, but when I looked into her eyes, they spilled over.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I lost my mind a bit when I thought I was losing you.”

  “How in the world would you lose me?”

  She shrugged. “You were in that class with all those cool third-years and then you came out not wanting to talk to me. I thought maybe they convinced you low magic isn’t good enough.”

  “One of those third years engineered getting me stabbed,” I reminded her.

  She scratched at her head. “Yeah, now that I think about it, that’s pretty bad.”

  “It’s not just bad! It’s deadly.”

  “But Kai saved you.” Her lips tried to pull into a smile, but she flattened her hands against her cheeks and evened out her expression. It worked for about two seconds before her smile threatened to come through.

  “Oh why bother,” I said.


  She burst out laughing and threw her arms around me. I stiffened, still wary of being betrayed. But she held on tighter. I thought of everything she’d done for me since I’d come here. Also I’d just told her I was hearing voices in my head and she hadn’t immediately shipped me off to the headmistress. So I let my body relax and hugged her back. Something unlocked in my chest. A bundle of nerves that I hadn’t even known I’d been tensing.

  Now seemed like the perfect opportunity to ask about something that had been niggling at me for a while. Her reaction to losing my friendship had brought it to the forefront again. “You said you haven’t had a roommate in six months. And I get that the other kids avoid us because we’re not popular, but I have a feeling it’s something more than that.”

  Her cheek rippled. She blinked slowly and then swallowed. I knew something was definitely up when she looked down at her hands. They were now balled into fists in her lap. “My great-grandfather was a serial killer. That’s why nobody wants to be my friend.”

  Okay, I hadn’t been expecting that. My slack-jawed reaction caused her lips to press into a thin quiver. “He harvested blood and essence from supernaturals to perform black magic rituals.” She told me the story. My mouth dropped wider and wider until I must have looked like one of those carnival clowns.

  “And everyone around here thinks you’re the same?”

  She nodded. “It doesn’t help that he was a kitchen wizard too.”

  Something occurred to me then. Sophie was no slouch in the magic department. She was a low-magic witch but she was top of our Potions class. I had a feeling she hid most of what she could do. Now I understood why. Something else occurred to me.

  “They know who your ancestor is…yet they let you serve them food…”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re nice to me.” For some reason she smiled softly.

  I reached out and held on to her hand. “Screw them. At least your family is interesting. I mean, being related to Fae royalty is so boring.”

  She didn’t smile outright but her strained expression eased a little. “I’d never spy on you,” Sophie said.

  “And if I’m a demon in disguise, I’ll try not to kill you.” She shoved me in the shoulder good-naturedly.

  “They suspended Brigid. And Isla got a written warning.”

  “Oh good,” I said. “Another thing for them to hate me for when they eventually get back here.”

  “Brigid might not come back at all. Kai was so pissed he’s pushing for them to expel her.”

  I gawped. “Can he do that?”

  She nodded. “He’s the last of Raphael’s line. Which means he has a seat on the Council. And they have the last word on what happens in our world.”

  I sputtered. “How is that even possible? He’s not that much older than us!”

  She shrugged. “Money and power are the same in the supernatural world as it is in the human world.” I wondered when I started thinking of the human world as not being my world anymore.

  “It’s not great that you’re hearing voices,” Sophie said after a beat.

  I filled her in on everything that had happened. “Do you think it’s anything to worry about?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Basil doesn’t think anything can get past the sleep circle, so it’s not me accidentally conjuring demons in my sleep.”

  She blew out a breath. “Well, given what I’ve seen, you’re probably right. But we still need to tell the headmistress about it.”

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to saying that.”

  She held out her hand and I took it. I discharged myself from the infirmary and we headed towards Jacqueline’s office.

  Alex, her admin assistant, was at his desk. I’d learned that he was a mink shifter. He took one look at us and waved us in. Jacqueline was in a gunmetal-grey suit today with heels that had leather straps that crisscrossed over the ankles.

  “Lex,” she said. “I’m glad to see you’re out of the infirmary. What can I do for you?”

  There was no sugarcoating what I had to say so I just came out with it. I bit my bottom lip when I was done, my gaze tracking to the door because I expected it to burst open at any minute. Then I’d be dragged off to the supernatural prisons dotted throughout the country. I’d had a lot of time to kill in my three days in the infirmary. Fred had been good enough to get me some interesting books. One of them was on the supernatural penal system. Now I’d developed an unhealthy fear of the high mages who watched over the prisoners. They were called the Dominion and they scared the bejesus out of me.

  Jacqueline contemplated what I’d said. She folded her hands in front of her on the table. “How long has this been going on?” she asked. I looked at my own white-knuckled fists.

  “Since the first night I was here.”

  “I see.” She picked up a notepad and pen. I glanced at Sophie but she just shrugged at me. Passing the notepad over, I saw that Jacqueline had written my name on the top. “Could you write down everything the voice has been telling you?”

  I did so, but after a while I realised it was kind of repetitive. Jacqueline seemed to think so too. “Well, at least this corroborates the stories.”

  “Corroborates?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re not the only one who has been hearing voices. Quite a few of the students, mostly the low-magic users, have reported the same thing. It’s the reason why I had to put out that bulletin.” I turned to Sophie, but she shook her head.

  “Not me. I sleep like a log these days.”

  Jacqueline smiled. “Thank you for coming forward, Alessia. Just...next time try and do it earlier.”

  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Relief rattled through me as Sophie and I made our way back to the dorm. I wasn’t the only one who was hearing voices. Who knew it was such a relief to be part of the crowd?

  It was just past lunchtime. There were fewer students around. Normally as we climbed the staircase there was a stampede going every which way. Today, I could throw my arms wide and not hit another soul. I was about to comment on it when the reason hit me.

  “It’s Saturday,” I said, turning to Sophie. “What does everyone do on Saturdays?”

  “If they’re normal they’d be asleep. Which is exactly what I’m going to be do–” She reached out to clutch at my arm. I walked into her. Now she was shaking me and giving me a look that screamed elation. The reason for her sudden agitation was leaning against the wall beside our door. Kai was in full asshole mode today. He was dressed head to toe in black and glaring at anyone who walked past.

  28

  There was no doubt he was here for us. As we approached, one of the other girls stopped to speak to him. He just shot her a dark look until she squeaked and left.

  “I know we don’t like him right now,” Sophie hissed out of the side of her mouth. “But Oh. My. Gaia.” I’d noticed she called upon a different entity than I did. As a low-magic witch, Gaia was our deity. I just couldn’t get used to the idea even if it made a lot of sense.

  Sophie clamped her mouth shut when we reached our door. Kai peeled himself off the wall and turned to me. “I asked them to let me know when you got out of the infirmary,” he said.

  “Did someone forget to mention that the girls’ dorm is off limits to boys?” I said. Sophie’s foot came down on my big toe. It hurt like hell, but I smiled through it. I must have looked deranged.

  “Nothing is off limits to me,” he said.

  I had to prop Sophie up by the elbow because she almost fainted. “Can we help you with something?” I forced myself to say.

  We were loitering outside the door like a bunch of creeps. But for some reason I really didn’t want to let him inside.

  “I need to speak to you and the doll.”

  “The doll has a name!” Basil yelled from inside. Sophie opened it and he stood there with his rounded hands on his squishy hips. If ever there was a kill face, Basil had it going on.

  Sophie walked through the door and sat down o
n her bed. Kai and I looked at each other. I’d seen myself in the glass doors on the way to Jacqueline’s office. I looked like death warmed over and left out in the sun. In contrast, the colour was back in his cheeks. The black shirt was a great foil for his eyes. Standing there in the hallway with the walls so close on either side, I noticed just how big he actually was. I could barely see the light from the window behind his back.

  “I’d rather not do this in your bedroom.”

  I snorted. “You’re the one who came here, remember?”

  “It was this or a bulletin.”

  “Next time choose the bulletin.”

  He grabbed my wrist to stop me from turning. Basil all but growled. I sighed. “What is it now? Do you want to stick me with the pointy end of your sword again?”

  On the bed, Sophie made a choking sound. Okay, I had to admit that sounded a bit off. But still, the point was valid.

  “I’m done chasing my tail about what you are,” he said. “You, me, and the doll are going to have a chat.”

  I tried to dislodge him. “Basil isn’t supposed to leave the room.”

  Basil cleared his throat. “Oh well, if it’s for the good of the Academy then I guess we’ll just have to bend the rules a little.”

  Basil marched out of the room before I could object. Kai followed him. “I’ll see you later,” I said to Sophie who was half rubbing her eyes and half staring out to make sure she didn’t miss any of the drama. “You better tell me everything,” she said.

  I shut the door on her and almost had to sprint to catch up. “Where are we going?” I puffed. Three days of being cooped up in the infirmary meant that my exercise routine was even more non-existent than before.

  “The library,” Kai said.

  Normally, the library would have been the first place I’d scoped out on the premises, but with everything that had happened, I’d let it slide. I knew I’d made a mistake when Kai led us through the warren of wings and pushed open the ornate double doors. The book nerd in me had died and gone to heaven.

  The room was more of a tower, a domed skylight the centrepiece that let in ample light and kept the dust and cold from turning this place gloomy. Row upon row of books lined all of the walls. A wooden staircase wound around the edge, leading to upper stories filled with even more books.