by Lan Chan
“Take me back,” I said.
He stepped up and grabbed my shoulder. “If you go, we’re done. I can’t survive this again.”
I blinked back the moisture that clouded my vision. To his credit, he did warn me. There would be times when he would give an order, and even if I didn’t like it, I had to obey. I’d thought that he was making progress, but the massacre of his family had imprinted on him irrevocably. I could understand that. There were parts of me that could never change as well. Like the fact that I loved him. Or that fact that it wasn’t enough.
This wasn’t a fairy tale. And I wasn’t a princess.
“I understand,” I told him. “Please take me back.”
Somebody inhaled. But it wasn’t Kai or me. I turned my head towards the sound. There was an unknown face staring out at me from the mirror. I blinked. Kai snarled. He went into the bathroom, ripped the mirror from the wall and smashed it to pieces against the vanity.
Too little, too late. We never cut the connection. The whole supernatural community had probably heard us fighting. Kill me now.
38
The world threatened to turn upside down when we landed on the other side of the teleport. Judging by all the gold trim and marble, we were in Seraphina. Without saying a word, Kai walked out the door.
“Alessia!” Nanna said. She came running into the room. Basil followed behind her with Nora and Mani. I was swept up into Nanna’s arms. She held me to her chest, refusing to allow anybody else to come close.
“Nan,” I choked. “I can’t breathe.”
She didn’t release her hold. She merely settled me back on the lounge as more people arrived. I buried my head in her shoulder, unable to hold back the fatigue as first the members of the Supernatural Council and then the Nephilim Council strode into the room. Heels clacked against the floor.
My eyes snapped open to find Jacqueline standing in front of me. Her ensemble was entirely black. The only spot of colour were her bracelets. Even her complexion was bleached of colour. But it wasn’t the bloodless starkness I expected right after a battle. She bore no injuries. Cold realisation clamped itself around my chest.
“How long?” I asked.
“It’s been three weeks since the attack,” she said.
I swallowed, trying to keep myself together. Another three weeks lost. I couldn’t fathom it. “The professor?”
She blinked slowly. “He’s alive. Just barely.”
I breathed out slowly. “How many people do you think heard my fight with Kai?”
“If they didn’t catch it the first time around, they will certainly be viewing it on repeat.”
“She can’t stay here,” Scott Brandis said.
“Agreed,” Victoria said. She eyed Nanna and me speculatively. “But then where do we send her?”
“We can’t send her anywhere,” Walter said. “She’s forsaken. As long as she’s breathing, they –”
Forsaken. The term bounced around in my head but wouldn’t settle. In Demonology 101, we’d learned that the forsaken were those humans who had had so much contact with the Hell dimension that they were intrinsically tied to it. Their essences were like ambrosia to demons. No matter where they went, the demons followed. Most possessed humans turned out to be forsaken. I didn’t understand. My hedge magic and the protections around the Academy should have stopped that from happening to me.
“...should be destroyed,” Tiberius said.
Basil latched my arm in his iron grip. “Don’t even think about it.” I had never heard so much metal in his voice.
“She called forth a legion of demons,” Orin said. “She can’t even help it. We can’t allow that to happen again.”
I screamed. It wasn’t very loud, but it had the intended effect of shutting them up. Taking a long, shuddering breath, I said, “Somebody tell me what’s happening.”
Basil crouched down in front of me. He took my hand. “You know what a forsaken is,” he said. I nodded. “Somehow you’ve become one of them. Your soul is a homing beacon for them. Using the strength of your magic, they will be able to breach any barrier that we can erect. That’s how they got past the wards at the academies.”
“But I haven’t had that much contact with demons.” My bottom lip quivered. I was so tired that I couldn’t piece together a proper thought. One thing I did know was that the known cases of forsaken was those people who had continuous and prolonged contact.
“Nanna was possessed for seven years and she isn’t forsaken.” I was all out of tact. But she didn’t seem to mind. She was smoothing my hair back from my face.
“Yours are extenuating circumstances,” Professor Avery said. “We believe your connection to Lucifer has amplified your susceptibility.” She cast a pitying look at me. “Which is why we must insist on removing her.”
“She cannot be allowed to continue at the Academy,” Orin said.
“She can’t be allowed to continue within supernatural society,” Tiberius added.
“What do you want to do?” Jacqueline snapped. “Do you want to murder a child for something she can’t help? Is that how we’re going to do this?”
“How else are we going to protect our people?” Tiberius said. “Your Academy was under siege and Bruce is just barely holding on to his life. And still you refuse to concede she’s a monster that never should have been allowed to live in the first place.”
“What if I leave?” I said.
“Where will you go that you’re not a danger to this dimension?” Professor Avery said. “You think you can just go back to the human world and hide? The only safe place for you now is the Dominion prison.”
Basil rose to his feet. “You don’t get to imprison her just because you’re afraid.”
“We will do what’s best for the populace.”
“We’re just going around in circles,” Megan sighed. She fixed me with her gaze. “I’m sorry, Alessia. Though we are loath to do it, the Dominion is the only place with enough protections to keep the demons from detecting you.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” a voice cut through the tension in the room. All heads turned in the direction of the doorway. One of the red-headed sorceresses that I’d met at the party for the Human League leaned against the door. Her amused expression made their solemn ones seem ridiculous.
Scott Brandis gritted his teeth. “This is none of your business, Eugenia.” He went to block her as she swept into the room. The green dress she wore hugged her body, revealing a supermodel figure.
“I’m here to give you the solution to all your problems,” Eugenia said. “We’ll take her to Ravenhall.”
Victoria snorted. It sounded dusty in her throat. “You’re dreaming.”
“Am I? Right now, your choices appear to be kidnap and life as a fugitive or murder.”
“You’ll have the same problems,” Orin said. “She’ll call the demons and they’ll overrun the fens.”
“Not if she’s sealed. There are enough of us on the...shadier side to mask her aura.”
My head swivelled from one side of the room to the other. “Sealed how?” I asked.
“If the seraphim seal your powers away, the demons won’t be able to detect you,” Jacqueline said. “But it also means that you’ll become completely human. No more bone magic. No more hedge magic.”
“Ravenhall will protect her,” Eugenia assured me. I didn’t like it when Kai suggested it and I didn’t like it now. But with Eugenia, I might have some semblance of free will rather than being ordered around for the rest of my life.
I glanced down at my hands. My thoughts reverted to that day at Terran when Gaia had tried to convince me to take my own life to stop Lucifer from ever being able to break free. I’d refused then. And look what happened. Now that I knew what life was like with powers, would I be able to forget them? My head sank low. I thought of all those times I’d hidden from the human monsters and felt helpless. Back then I had made myself a promise that I’d never feel that way again. Was I wil
ling to go back to that state?
And then I thought of something. If I didn’t have my powers, I wouldn’t be able to release Lucifer from his holding place. A tiny spark of hope ignited in my chest.
No, little one, Azrael’s voice said in my head. The seal will help stop you from calling forth demons, but your blood remains the same. Spill enough of it in the right way, and Luc will be freed.
Damn. What was I thinking trying to outsmart the Prince of Darkness?
What should I do? I asked Azrael.
A long stretch of silence. What do you want to do?
Can you just drop the cryptic free will crap for a second and impart some bloody wisdom? Right. So super tiredness equalled no filter. I thought for a second he’d abandoned me.
You survived seventeen years by your own sheer determination, Azrael reminded me.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go to Ravenhall.”
The sorceress grinned.
The sealing took no longer than a moment. Megan called the seraphim. Michael placed his hands on my collarbone. I stared into his ethereally handsome face and wondered how his line had departed so fully from the warrior in front of me. He was formidable, but there was compassion in his blue eyes and warmth in his smile. His essence chased through my body, locking away the magic. He frowned for a second.
“Your hedge magic is different,” he said.
I scratched at my ear and looked at my feet. “I know. But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”
His mouth took on a grim line. When he was done, I couldn’t feel a link to either lines of magic. Not even the tiny flickers that remained after I was completely drained. Instead, when I went to reach for the magic, all I saw was a literal seal. A golden circle with Michael’s symbol on it. A winged lion with two broadswords crossed above it. Michael bowed before disappearing.
Eugenia wrinkled her nose. “Sanctimonious bastard,” she said. She held her hand out to Nanna. “We haven’t been properly introduced. Eugenia Markham.”
Nanna spoke to her while I sat there and stared. In one fell swoop, I’d just lost everything. Breathing was becoming difficult, but it had nothing to do with my injuries. My whole body felt numb. My chest ached. There was a big, empty hole in my stomach, but the thought of eating made the back of my throat taste bitter. I didn’t realise Nanna and Eugenia had stood until somebody shook me gently.
I looked up into Eugenia’s light grey eyes. She cupped my face in her sharply manicured hand. Her fingers were surprisingly calloused. Her voice was gentle but even.
“Remember that you’re a witch, sweetheart. The witch never gets the prince. But we have a lot of fun anyway.”
She said it like it was inevitable. Why fight it? If that was her version of comfort, I was in for a great time at Ravenhall.
39
The first fortnight in Ravenhall was an exercise in not losing my mind. The place was like one big sorority house. If the sisters didn’t like you, they could actually curse you and turn you into a toad. They lived in a commune very much like a witch’s coven that I had seen in the movies. Explosions rent the air at all hours of the night. Every day was a feast or some ridiculous ritual. There were chapters of Ravenhall that didn’t believe in clothing. Others thought that bathing eroded their powers. Max had been right. The stench hanging around the fens made me want to hurl.
Worst of all, unlike Bloodline, we were allowed to keep pets. Unfortunately for me, rodents were seen as very useful and cute animals. Nanna and I were given our own little cottage in the communal housing area. It felt like I’d been plucked from the twenty-first century and deposited into an inaccurate medieval play. Except at the end of it, I couldn’t just walk away.
My only saving grace was that Basil had argued black and blue with Eugenia to be allowed to stay with us. He spent a week building wards to keep out the smell and the nosy neighbours. We’d had several dozen drop-ins. After one of the sorceresses made a comment about how Kai should be sowing his wild oats with as many women as possible, I was ready to commit murder.
On day five, I had a run-in with the world’s biggest rat around the borders of the fens. From then on, I spent most of my time in the back garden.
That’s where I was when Eugenia found me one morning. She was accompanied by the last person in the world I wanted to see.
“What?” I asked in response to the grimace on Giselle’s face. “Don’t tell me, you don’t approve of this either?”
My temper was in huge supply these days. They came to a stop in front of where I was lying on a picnic rug. I had a sketchpad in front of me with several thousand circles drawn on every page and counting. It had started as an outlet for my pent-up rage. I refused to allow myself to think about anything to do with Kai. Basil was forced to go on the MirrorNet in his room because the network was awash with gossip. It was impossible not to be drawn into a debate about whether Kai and Chanelle would seal the deal before he turned twenty-five. Especially when that debate was shrieked at you by a hysterical sorceress from some dumb daytime MirrorNet gossip channel.
“So this is how you’re going to spend the rest of your life?” Giselle said.
“Seems like it.” I went back to drawing. The routine was still there. Every circle I drew was a representation of one I couldn’t draw with my sealed powers. I was still able to drop into the Ley dimension, but I could only observe it now.
Giselle looked like she wanted to say something. I stabbed at the circle I had just drawn. “The Unity Games are approaching.”
She was surely kidding. “What’s your point?”
“You’re still a contender.”
I glanced at Eugenia to see if she was listening to this nutcase. The sorceress’s gaze was locked on to my circle. I glanced down and my eyes bulged. I ripped the page out of the sketch book and tore it into shreds. Then I balled it up and tossed it onto the growing pile of discarded pictures that I had accidentally imbued with Angelical words. Writing them was vastly easier than speaking them. And nothing went boom when I did. Still, it wasn’t a good look. Her brow rose but Eugenia said nothing.
There was a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy at Ravenhall. They turned a blind eye to quite a lot of stuff that happened here in the name of magical freedom. Unlike the more staid supernatural society, the citizens of Ravenhall railed against being forced into hiding. They were all for integrating with and coming out to the human population. But I had a feeling that had more to do with the proverbial profit margin than any sense of political or dimensional pride.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I said, “I’m a magical dud now.”
“You still own a demon blade,” Giselle said.
“So what?”
“So there are people who have done more with less.”
“Well, then go and bug them about the games. I’ve got a lot of other stuff to do.”
Fresh out of patience, Giselle crouched down and yanked the sketchpad from me. She tossed it into the newly turned garlic bed.
“Hey!”
When I jumped up to retrieve it, she grabbed me by the bicep. “Whether you have your powers or not is irrelevant,” she said. “They’re sealed. Not gone. One of these days, they’ll have to unseal you.”
“Not likely.” A note of underlying bitterness filled my words.
“Or you could bust yourself out.” She was completely cuckoo.
“My powers were sealed by Michael himself. There’s no way I’m going to be able to bust out of anything.”
Giselle sneered. “So once again they’ve asked you to bend over so they can give your ass a nice kick, and you’re just going to bury your head in the sand and take it?”
I tried to throw her off, but she latched on and wouldn’t budge. “I drew demons through a portal without even knowing it!” I seethed.
“And?”
“Wha…” If that didn’t make an impression, I didn’t know what else to say.
“You’re Lucifer’s blood. Did they think you were going to s
hoot rainbows from your fingertips? Yeah, you brought demons forth. But you also compelled thousands of them and then smashed their minds to dust.”
I deflated against her grip. “And how many people died while that was happening?”
Sophie had told me during our last mirror conversation that Evan had sustained life-threatening injuries as well. So much so that he’d had to give up his spot in the games.
Giselle grabbed me by the collar. She lifted me upright so that I was looking into her icy blue eyes. “This is a war,” she said. “People die.”
“Thanks for the lesson.” I swiped at her hand.
Eugenia scratched her cheek. “You need to get out of the house, witchling.” I ground me teeth at the nickname. It reminded me at every turn that I wasn’t a witch anymore. “You’ve barely left the street since you got here.”
“What is there to leave for?” I snapped back.
Eugenia waved her hand. “Come on! The least you can do is wash the break-up stink off and show your face so the world doesn’t think you’re some sad, mopey girl who is pining away for Malachi Pendragon.”
If she thought saying his name would goad me out of my apathy, she was in for a rude awakening. Diana had already informed me that Kai had regressed into a Nephilim caveman. Everyone was giving him a wide berth. All of these rumours about him and Chanelle were unfounded. During the day, I could reason it all away.
It was at night that it became unbearable. I’d wake up soaked through with sweat, feeling like I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t see him or speak to him. It wasn’t even just that I missed him. It was like a part of me was gone. The odd thing was that I dreamed of him too often. Vivid dreams in which my frantic emotions were mirrored back at me. I couldn’t do anything but sit up and stare at the moon until dawn eased the feeling.
Nanna’s approach broke me out of my reverie. She wore gardening gloves and there was a packet of seeds sticking out of the very fashionable fanny pack around her hips. She wielded the hand trowel like a weapon.
