Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3), Lan Chan [best way to read an ebook .TXT] 📗

It was Sophie who bit her lip and stepped through the barrier first. She’d been so quiet on this trip, but I had a feeling she was determined to make sure they were who they said they were. The soul gate didn’t react. Taking her lead, Sophie’s parents did the same. And then there was only me on this side.

The other humans looked at me. Some of their stares were expectant. Others were understanding. The look Sophie gave me was conspiring. We had fought to belong together. There was no way I could back down now. Curling my hands into fists, I took the plunge. The sensation of teleporting had always been a tingle around me. The feeling of walking through the soul gate was nothing like that. For a moment, the energy engulfed me. It smothered me until I felt like something had reached into my mouth and was forcing my lungs to collapse. There was a brief moment of panic. Something cold and dark danced at the edge of my vision. It scraped its consciousness over me as though peering right into my soul.

The dark power inside of me reared up. It coursed through my body as though trying to purge the magic of the soul gate from me. Where the two sources of magic collided, my nerves fired. If I could, I would have yelped. It was the blue of my hedge magic that created a buffer. When it slid between the two forces, their erratic struggle ceased.

I couldn’t have been in there for more than a second, but my life flashed before my eyes. A short but recently eventful life. A shudder of unbearable sadness shot through my chest. And then I was on the other side. The blonde woman had a slight frown on her face. I caught it just as she was attempting to neutralise it.

“What happened?” Sophie said. “You stopped halfway through.”

I massaged my brow with my fingers. It was only when I turned my face up that I realised there was moisture on my cheeks. Swiping the tears away hurriedly, I smiled at Sophie.

“Not sure,” I said. “But I damn well don’t want to do that again.”

“There’s no need to,” the blonde woman said. On this side of the soul gate, her voice turned sweet. “This way.”

I waited for Nora and Mani to follow her before I fell in line behind them with Sophie at my side. The guy and the short-haired woman took up the rear.

“I apologise for the theatrics,” the blonde woman said. Her shoulders slumped a little. She flexed her fingers and some of the hostility seeped away. When she turned around to smile at me, it seemed genuine. “I’m Samantha,” she said. “My companions are Sean and Jessica.”

“Theatrics?” Nora asked.

“Yes,” Sean said. When I glanced back at him, the bravado he wore like a shield was gone. “It isn’t often that monsters come to our gate, but when they do, we prefer to show our most aggressive faces.”

“The way animals puff up their chests to avoid a fight,” Sophie suggested. Sean grinned. Though there was some reticence behind it.

“Given your affiliation with shifters,” he said, “I don’t know how comfortable I am with that comparison.”

“You seem to know a lot about us for having just met,” Mani said.

“We make it a habit of keeping ourselves informed of every Earth-magic user,” Jessica said. She cracked her knuckles. The sound was like firecrackers going off.

“And how do you do that when our communities are shielded from the human world?”

Samantha sniffed. “Those barriers that the monsters erect aren’t anything to write home about. They call us low-magic users like our magic is lesser. They’re just afraid of what we can do.”

We reached the door of the mansion. “Why a house right on the beach?” Nora asked as Samantha pushed the door.

“Our magic is enhanced by saltwater,” Samantha said. “It strengthens the wards around the school and helps to keep the monsters out.”

I could feel Sophie’s spine stiffen every time the word monster was used. It made me wonder if she was offended for the supernaturals or if the word itself was unpleasant for her. I stepped quickly into the mansion and breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed. It sealed the entrance and pushed the sound of the waves into the background.

The scent of tuberoses and lilies smacked me in the face. In an open garden they would have been enticing. Inside this building, they were cloying. Samantha must have noticed the look on my face because she hastened to explain.

“We just did a cleansing,” she said. “We’re trying to get the sage and rosemary smell out.” It seemed like faulty logic to me.

“What were you trying to cleanse?” Mani asked. His nose scrunched up.

“Bad memories. Bad intentions. It’s one of our New Year’s rituals. We’ve had a turbulent few months.”

“Tell me about it.”

Samantha cringed. Her straight back gave way a little. She turned towards Nora. “Rumour has it that you’ve managed to convince the monsters to allow human representatives on their Council.”

Nora nodded. “That’s right.”

“We would consider it your duty then to demand the return of our sister.”

I almost choked. “No way,” I said. “Giselle tried to kill me.”

Samantha was halfway up a short flight of stairs that led to a mezzanine floor. She gripped the globular decoration on the wooden handrail. “She is one of ours. If there is justice to be dealt, it should be by us. And for the record, she did not try to kill you. She tried to liberate you.”

“Yeah, right. I think trying to liberate my soul from my body counts as trying to kill me.”

“There’s no way the Council is going to agree to release her,” Mani said. “She murdered one of their ranks and tried to do the same for the others.”

“I say again,” Samantha said, “if we had one of theirs, they would demand we hand them over.”

“Would