Bloodline Secrecy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 2), Lan Chan [readict TXT] 📗

Sophie wailed. “You seriously can’t expect us to spend our weekend doing this,” she said. “I mean, I have homework to do! And it’s mortifying.”

“It’ll build character.”

“Constant rejection does not build character. It crushes it. Why can’t Durin and Kai just demand that we get a seat on the Council?”

“Because that’s not how it works. We need a majority vote. They’ve done as much as they can to help us get our foot in the door. We need to make some noise of our own now. So let’s get moving.”

“By the way, girls, I’ve invited a few low-magic users over for a small gathering tonight. It would be nice if you could both be there.”

I had to drag Sophie out of the apartment before she had a meltdown.

“It won’t be that bad,” I said. It was certainly preferable to being stuck at school where I would be reliving my humiliation about what Bradley had said over and over again. The thought of it made my throat lock.

“You have no idea,” Sophie said. “Why are you so chipper about doing this anyway?”

I grew quiet. “Oh no you don’t,” she said. “I’ve had enough of the silent treatment. Spill.”

I didn’t want to say a thing. But it wasn’t like the Kai thing. Heaps of kids had seen my humiliation. I was surprised she hadn’t heard about it yesterday. Sophie had these huge dimples that made her face light up when she smiled. When she was pissed, those dimples turned into grooves.

“I’ll kill him,” she said. “How dare he!” She paced back and forth. “Does Basil know?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, Lex,” she said, grabbing me into a bear hug. “That’s so awful. Who does he think he is?”

“He’s Bradley Webb,” I said.

She let go and snarled. It was very leonine. “I don’t care if he’s the Second Coming,” she said. “He doesn’t get to speak to you like that!”

“Yeah, he kind of does.”

She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “What’s gotten into you? The Lex I know would be raging.”

I was raging. I was just trying really hard not to let it show. Because if I opened the trap door in my mind where I had shoved all of the bile and anger, who knew what the repercussions would be? I had even drawn a circle around my emotions, trying to keep them from spilling over.

“What’s the point?” I said. “So many of them have apparently seen what they think I’m going to do. No one believes me.”

“None of them want to believe you.” She looked down at the satchel of pamphlets I was carrying. “And this is probably why. Urgh. I hate it when Mama is right. It makes it so much harder to get out of doing stuff.”

It turned out Sophie was right too. We walked so many blocks I lost count. In the end we managed to round up a mere thirty signatures. Most of those were from boys who thought Sophie was cute or elderly supernaturals who were older than sin and didn’t know what we were on about. They just wanted to get us out of their faces.

It was beginning to grow dark when we decided to call it a day. The residential side of Rivia was as climate-controlled as the Academy. In the rest of Australia, it was winter, but here it was no colder than a mild spring day.

The breeze whipped my hair about. I closed my eyes for a second to take in the soft floral scents coming from the frangipani trees on the nature strip. Something rough felt like it scraped across my arm. My eyes snapped open, but when I looked there was nothing there.

Sophie stilled beside me. She had been vocalising all of the things she’d do to Bradley when her sentence cut off. Our heads turned to the right at the same time. We glanced down the small alleyway in between a tea shop that promised to revitalize your soul and a bar that was advertising that they could knock a shifter out cold with their brew.

The alley wasn’t like the ones I’d slept in when I was homeless. This was a neat, light-filled strip where someone was growing pot plants against a wrought-iron frame. The alley was empty at the moment but neither of us could take our eyes from it. Which, given the circumstances, was dangerous as hell.

I grabbed Sophie’s arm and pulled her away. Not before I caught a glimpse of a fuzzy shadow in the corner of my eyes. Sophie gasped. I started to run, dragging her along with me. At the same time, I drew a circle around us, imbuing it with every layer of protection I could think of. My skin buzzed with the pink glow of Sophie’s magic as she did the same. We didn’t stop until we were inside her parents’ apartment.

“Goodness,” Basil said when we barged in, “What’s gotten into you two?”

I keeled over onto the floor. I’d never run so hard in my life. Sophie held her side and gasped for breath.

“Girls,” Basil said. “What happened?”

“Shadow...alley....dark...” I heaved. How was I this out of shape considering how much running I did all of the time?

He caught on real quick. “Where?”

When we managed to get our breathing under control so that we could direct him, Basil got onto the MirrorNet and reported the incident. When Nora and Mani came home, it was to an apartment crawling with Nephilim guards. None of their wings were out but there was a certain awed impression that they always exhibited.

“What’s happening?” Nora said. She came up beside me and hugged me to her side.

“I told you this was going to be hell,” Sophie said as Mani grabbed her. She explained what we’d seen. When we were done with our story for the ten billionth time, the Nephilim finally left.

By then Sophie and I had managed to convince ourselves that we were totally blowing