by Lan Chan
I could tell he wanted to launch into a whole thing, but Samantha cut in before he could. “You must understand why we’re reluctant. Their track record hasn’t been stellar. We might not be long-lived but our memories are just as clear. The last time we had a treaty they broke it and tried to massacre us.”
I had no explanation for it. There was no excuse. “Please.” I was never going to be an expert negotiator.
Samantha blinked at me. She leaned forward. “Only if you promise to give Terran a real chance.” How did this become about me?
“Okay. Although, I haven’t technically been invited to the negotiations.”
“Of course you have,” Samantha said. “You’re one of us. Therefore, you will be there.”
“What about Terran?”
“What about it?” She looked at me expectantly.
“Shouldn’t someone stay behind to guard the place?”
I was completely confused by the laughter. The perplexed expression on my face must have alerted them to my state of mind. Samantha reached across the table and patted my hand.
“This isn’t a prison, Alessia,” she said. “We’re part of this world. We might possess powers that are unusual, but that doesn’t preclude us from living our lives.”
“You mean, I can just come and go whenever I feel like it?”
“Within reason. You’re obliged to go to your classes. We’re here to train, after all. But your weekends and free time are your own. Though I’m told you don’t have your license.”
“I’ll get it soon. Can I also get a job?”
“Slow down,” she said. “You’re only here two days a week and alternating weekends. I’m not sure there will be all that much time for you to get a job on top of everything else.”
Oh she was good. The only way I’d be able to juggle all I wanted was if I increased my time at Terran. Rather than give me time to ruminate, she continued. “That’s settled then. We will all attend the treaty negotiations. Although I suspect only myself, Jessica, and Ben will be able to officially negotiate.”
“Ben?” I asked. Sean had introduced me to his roommate Ashton, who was the only other boy in the Academy.
“My husband Ben,” Samantha said. “He’s on the board of Terran Academy.”
“Oh. Right.” That made sense. I wasn’t sure why I’d thought they would all be single given they spent so much time here. Then again, she had painted a pretty good picture of freedom in this place.
“You don’t live here?” I asked her.
“Sometimes I stay overnight. But I have my own home in Geelong.”
When lunch was over, Samantha beckoned at me. “Come.”
“I should help clean up,” I said.
Melissa wagged a finger at me. “Oh don’t you worry, my love. We’ll put you on the cleaning roster soon enough.” She took the plate from my hands and disappeared with it.
Everybody else streamed out. There was no way I would remember half their names on the first day. Heck, I couldn’t even remember the names of some of the students in my year at Bloodline and I’d been with them for a while now.
Samantha led me to a room a few doors down from the kitchen. When we stepped inside, I saw it was set up as a little office. Outside the window, I could see directly along the path that showed me a view of both the soul gate and anything coming down the road towards the school.
“Take a seat,” Samantha said. She sat down behind the desk and waved at the seats in front of me. I sat on my hands but leaned forward to take a whiff of the blousy gardenias in her bud vase. I relaxed a little.
Samantha passed a silver laptop over. And a phone. I stared at both of them. “What’s this?” She didn’t know whether to smile or frown.
“Are you asking me what they actually are or why we’re giving them to you?”
I swallowed. Then laughed nervously. “Sorry. I’ve just gotten used to not relying on technology.”
“Hmm.” It was an unpleasant sound. “You are very much of this Earth, Alessia. You are human. We use technology.”
I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. “I know,” I said. “But I kind of wasn’t in a situation where I could afford a phone or tablet even before I joined Bloodline Academy.”
“Well then, we’re going to have to help you relearn all of it. That’s what living in this world means. We don’t hide ourselves away and make our own rules.”
“They do it for a reason.”
“Really? What reason is that?”
“Their presence would terrify most humans, for one thing.”
I couldn’t believe it when she nodded. “Maybe at first. But you’d be surprised how quickly most humans can adapt to things.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Nor what I’d seen.
“The ones who break are ones who would have broken over something else anyway.” That didn’t exactly sound like such a supportive statement. She had switched on the laptop while we spoke. Now she turned the screen to face me. On it was a spreadsheet with what looked like a timetable. There were two on the screen. She toggled from one to the other like some kind of tech expert. She was about Nanna’s age. Their computer literacy skills were at polar opposites. My nanna thought tech was the devil’s work. Now that statement had a whole new meaning. I saw that Melissa had been right. I’d been added onto the roster for chores.
“These are the classes that you’ll be attending,” Samantha said. “We’ve swapped out your Herbology classes for a one-on-one Horticulture course that will get you accreditation the same way any other human university will. The advantage we have is that our classrooms are small. You’ll get the kind of attention you need to ensure your gifts are nurtured. From what I understand your magic circles are quite advanced. We’ve got a range of skillsets here, but you’ll fit right into the basic magic class.” She pointed to two classes over the two days that were highlighted in yellow. “These are the ones that you will not be permitted to miss under any circumstances.”
I squinted to see what they were. Advanced Combat and Soul Splitting. I couldn’t help grimacing. “Ummm...I think you might be disappointed with my level of physical ability.”
She smirked. “You underestimate yourself. As have the monsters.” She tapped at her own laptop. “The demon blade you possess, did you bring it with you?”
“No.” As much as I wanted it for protection, I hadn’t been comfortable taking it with me when I’d left Bloodline.
“Perhaps that’s a good thing. We’re not even sure if you’d be able to get it past the soul gate.”
“We didn’t pass the soul sate on the way in,” I reminded her.
“And you don’t need to again. But be assured if you attempt to bring in anything that isn’t of this Earth, you will feel the repercussions. We might be very few, but our duty to the Earth dimension is taken very seriously.” She let the silence hang for a second. “Which is why I regret that I am going to have to ask if there is anything you can tell us that might give us an advantage over the monsters during this negotiation?”
My hand stilled over the webpage I’d opened. I had been typing in my great-grandmother’s name into the search engine.
“Beg your pardon?” I might be shocked, but my manners had improved.
“We are at a numbers disadvantage,” she pressed. “We need to know what the monsters are planning.”
I still couldn’t get it through my head what she was asking me. But when I looked up into her face, it was no longer softened by good humour. She might not be a shifter, but her eyes were predatory and they were fixed on me.
14
I retracted my hands from these gifts that now appeared to be bribes. “I’m not sure what you think I’d know that could be of any use to you.”
“You’ve been around them for an extended period of time,” she said. She steepled her fingers and rested her chin on them. “Is there any reason they would suddenly want a treaty now?”
“You mean aside from the fact that Giselle wen
t on a killing spree? I imagine that’s a fair incentive.”
She had been doing a good job of imitating a statue. But when I mentioned Giselle’s name, her fingers tightened. “Giselle is one of our best,” she said, like it was some kind of justification.
“Why would she choose to work inside a supernatural prison with the very monsters she despised?”
“Why not?” Samantha asked. And I realised in that second it was a good question. Given everything I’d just found out about the Sisterhood, why wouldn’t they want to work in the prison with the sole purpose of keeping those monsters they despised locked up.
“I have no insider knowledge,” I said. “I’m still just a student.”
This time, her smile was wide. “You’re involved with the youngest member of their Council. Your school houses some of the most powerful monsters in the world. The soul gate is one of our greatest protections. We created it to be fatal to the monster species. The mage who touched it should have been killed. There are things you know that you might not be aware of that could help us.”
“Help you do what exactly? The point of the negotiations is to come to an agreement about co-existing peacefully together.”
“Peace is an illusion they have created,” she said. “We haven’t had peace since the first barriers came down. Do you have any idea the things that go on without the knowledge of their Council?” She saw on my face that I didn’t. “Well then, your time at Terran will be enlightening.”
“What about the demons?” I asked. I felt like we were losing sight of what it was both species were meant to be fighting against.
“Demons,” she hissed. “They brought them into this dimension and allowed them to run rampant. Why is it our responsibility to clean up after them?”
“But we have the same goals.”
“No, Alessia. We have shared interests. That doesn’t mean we want the same thing. We are here for the protection of humans. You’ve seen how human witches and wizards are treated by the monsters. They both fear and pity us. You of all people should understand that. They must have reacted poorly to the knowledge that your powers might be far greater than their own.”
It was true. There were some who had actively gone out of their way to make my life miserable. But for the most part, they had been scared. I was…attached to the one Nephilim who had pestered me about what I really was.
“But you’ve said that Gaia is missing and that makes it easier for demons to take hold of human hosts. Wouldn’t it be quicker to ask for the Council’s help in locating her?”
“We haven’t had any luck finding her. If our own can’t do it, what makes you think the monsters can do any better? Giselle lived right under their noses for years and they had no idea she was there. Their senses are attuned to other things.”
“If they knew Gaia was missing, they would want to help find her.”
“They already know,” she said. “You can bet your friend and her parents have told them. Yet where is their offer of assistance?”
We were going around in circles. I found this whole thing pointless. “Doesn’t the fact that they took me in and gave me a place to live prove that they’re not all bad?”
“If I found a priceless weapon, I would do everything in my power to keep it with me too.” For some reason, her words made me think of Lucifer and not the supernaturals. It occurred to me that the curse he placed on me might not work on humans. But when I tried to utter the words, my throat locked up immediately. I dug fingers into my thigh and strained to get the sentence out. Anything to alert someone to the fact that Lucifer was in control of some part of me. I was breathless all of a sudden.
“Alessia? Your face had gone all red.” She leaned forward, her eyes wide.
“Water?”
She poured me a glass from the jug on her desk. I chugged it down. When I cleared my throat, my voice was okay again. So long as I steered clear of what Lucifer had forbidden me to reveal, I would keep being able to talk.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s nothing I know that will help you. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not evil.”
She didn’t seem all that surprised. “That’s okay. It was worth a shot. I think I might have been slightly disappointed if you had betrayed them.” It was then she noticed what I was looking at on my laptop screen. “Don’t bother,” she said. “Hilary erased herself from the world. She was eccentric like that. You won’t be able to find anything on there.”
“Did you know her?” I moved to the edge of my seat.
“I thought I did.” She looked down at her hands. She fidgeted a little with the cuticle in a way that seemed juvenile. “I never suspected her capable of what she did. There was just no reckoning for it.”
“Surely you must have known or heard of something.”
“You don’t understand.” She shook her hands in front of her like she was trying to fling away an evil spirit. “Your great-grandmother was a legend. She was born of full Sisterhood blood. Her magic circles were the stuff of legends. But those kinds of people tend to also be the erratic ones. She saw things that others didn’t. It made her paranoid. Sleep often eluded her. I remember once finding her out in the ocean. She was just sitting there talking to the water like it was alive.”
“Maybe it was,” I said.
Samantha smiled. “Maybe. It was just an odd sight. But then, that’s what your great-grandmother was.” She shook herself of those memories even though I could have sat there all day listening to them. “She was fanatical about her personal life too. She didn’t want anything to do with any technology and refused to allow us to use methods that weren’t natural. In that way, she had a lot in common with your monsters. That’s why it was so easy for her to disappear when she did. We just can’t work out how in the world and for what reason she took Gaia with her.”
“How do you expect me to find Gaia for you?”
“We’ve tried everything,” she said. “We’ve used every spell and every circle in our arsenal. We’ve had human scientists on the payroll in the guise of trying to find stolen artefacts. All of it has been in vain. But you have something we’ve been without. You’ve got her blood.”
I heard the fervour in her voice. It made me shiver. Apparently, I had everybody’s blood, but it wasn’t doing me any good. “You want me to perform blood magic?”
She immediately shook her head. “That sort of magic isn’t something we condone. We’ve known too many witches and wizards who gave in to it for the power it would give them over the monsters. It asks too much. But we’ve tried to summon Hilary’s spirit to guide us, but we’ve never managed to make contact. We’re hoping you’ll be able to.”
Nora had been right. This was way too much pressure to be laying at my feet. But what choice did I have?
“If I do this for you,” I said, “you need to promise me that you’ll go into these negotiations in good faith. Some of the monsters you keep talking about are my friends.”
“You’re asking a lot.”
“So are you.”
We stared at each other. I felt the slightest brush of a foreign circle around me. “You look like her, you know.”
“Who?”
“Hilary. She had those same big, blue eyes that refused to cower for anybody.”
If she was trying to soften me up, I was sad to say it was working. “We have an agreement,” she said. She looked at the clock.
“It’s getting on in the afternoon. I’ll let you go and get settled in. Rachel will be ready for your first class in an hour.”
“Rachel? Isn’t she a student?”
“She’s a student for the other classes, but she’s our accredited Horticulture teacher.” Samantha grinned at the stunned look on my face. I left feeling slightly uneasy. Nothing here was as it had seemed. It was both good and bad. That was the part that scared me. I’d become so used to thinking I knew who the enemy was. What would I do if both the humans and supernaturals were good and they ended up trying to kill each othe
r anyway?
15
Rachel wasn’t in our room when I went in to unpack. It didn’t take very long. I splashed some water on my face in the bathroom down the hall and then went outside. There was still a little bit of time before I had to meet Rachel, so I headed towards the animal pens.
After five minutes, I could tell that I had misjudged the distance between the house and the rest of the pastures. I picked up speed and walked past some chicken, geese, and pigs. Then there were the stables.
“Can I help you?” a male voice called out. I turned to the right and found Ashton striding towards me.
“Umm... I wanted to see my dingo.” Now there was a sentence I never thought I would ever say. It wasn’t illegal to keep dingoes as pets, but I hadn’t even had a goldfish. Now I had another animal dependent on me.
Ashton was dark-haired and even darker eyed. He was broader than Sean with stocky shoulders and legs that had been made for hauling heavy things. He smiled at me, his cheeks creasing. “You’re about two minutes in the wrong direction,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He took me back along the path and showed me where I should have veered right. “It would be nice if there were signs.”
He contemplated this. “I suppose that’s true. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a newcomer.”
That shut me up. I found the dingo in an enclosure that was as big as a basketball court. He was walking around in circles, sniffing at the grass. It was so lush and green that I imagined it confused his senses after the red dust and scraggly desert plants. He spotted me and came running over. I lowered my arm over the fencing. He licked at me, and I couldn’t help flinching at the foreign feeling of his rough tongue. It wasn’t unpleasant so much as unexpected.
“Does he have a name?” Ashton asked.
“I suppose I better give him one.” I’d never even thought about it before. It wasn’t as though I’d had to name anything besides my demon blade. Even that was kind of a botch job. “What do you think?”
“Hmmm. He looks a little bit wild.” He frowned when he caught sight of the scars. “What are these from?”
