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

I’d obviously slept for much longer than anticipated because when I opened my eyes, the sun was higher in the sky than I’d thought.

“Shit!”

I made a run for it, grabbing my backpack and bolting. By the time I got through the door of the junior campus, half of Demonology 101 was over. Any chance of sneaking into the room was gone. All I could do was breeze in and hope not to get chewed out.

“We were about to send a search party for you, Miss Hastings,” Professor Magnus said.

“I’m so sorry, I got caught up in the Grove.” No need to tell her it was because I was sleeping.

Cassie glanced sideways at me. I thought there might have been something in my hair. She started writing on a piece of paper. When she slid it over and I read it, my heart stopped.

Where is your blade?

I reached behind me to swipe at empty air inside the scabbard. Crap! I must have left it on the lawn when I woke up. Throughout the end of first period I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think of was someone else finding it and taking it away.

The Grove was off limits to anybody who wasn’t accompanied by a professor or someone else who had permission. There were two Herbology classes this morning. If one of them was scheduled for the Grove, I was in trouble.

My foot tapped on the floor until the bell finally rang for the end of class. I shot straight up thinking I would run back and get it. I was halfway out the door when something occurred to me. Yesterday I had successfully called the sword to me. Granted it was a shorter distance, but maybe I could do the same now. I closed my eyes and tried to find the thread in the ever-expanding Ley-line image in my mind. I drew the same circles I had done on the blade and checked my signature as well.

Come, I ordered.

All of nothing happened. Right, I guess that was about as much help as a hot wind in a desert.

I needed to go back and get it. On the other hand, if I skipped out on class I was going to get in trouble. I was already going to be late. By the time I got to the Grove, the second Herbology class would already be there. If someone was going to take the sword, they would have plenty of time to do it before I arrived.

Kicking myself for being irresponsible, I ran back into the building to my next class which was Magical History. Cassie was already there.

She brushed aside a lock of hair. “Are you okay?”

There was an envelope on my desk. “I may or may not have lost my demon blade.”

She bit her lip. “Hmmm. That’s a problem. Although, you know those blades are very possessive. They don’t just get stolen.”

“Are you sure?”

“Maybe you should spend a bit more time learning about demon blades,” Cassie said. Awesome. I was getting life tips from a twelve-year-old. The thing that got me was that she was right. I did need to spend more time learning about the sword and less time thinking about how useless I was with most other weapons.

Feeling a bit better, I was able to marginally concentrate on the next lesson. My care factor had been low recently because we’d gotten to the Fae section of the history books. I didn’t particularly care that the Fae were the penultimate rulers of their dimension which included beings like goblins, nymphs, mermaids, and basilisks. I cared even less that Brigid’s family had actually been Fae royalty until the barrier went down and they were forced to abandon their home world.

It wasn’t my fault the seraphim had started a war. It didn’t mean she had a right to treat me badly. When the professor asked students to read from the textbook, I swiped the letter off the table and opened it.

It wasn’t actually a letter but an invitation. An invitation to Charles’s thirteenth birthday party. I leaned forward as far as I could in my chair and kicked the back of his. When he turned around, I waved the invitation. He grinned and gave me a thumbs up.

For some reason I teared up a little. My first birthday party invitation. It didn’t matter that it was for a kid or that it was being held somewhere I didn’t know in Rivia.

When class was over, I tapped him on the shoulder. “Is your brother going to be there?”

He groaned. “My mother is making me invite him.”

“Can I bring Sophie?”

He made a vomiting gesture. “Yeah, okay.”

Lost sword or not, this morning was definitely looking up.

16

Not for the first time since arriving at the Academy I cursed the fact that there was no magical way to communicate to my friends that I would be late to lunch. The Grove was oddly quiet when I arrived. I ran to the spot under my Arcana tree to see if the demon blade was there, but the grass was perfectly undisturbed.

“Shit!”

I backtracked and looked all along the path to and from the Grove. I looked in the long borders in case it had fallen out of the scabbard. I knew that was hardly possible but by then I was getting desperate. I was sweaty in minutes. My heart was beating like a drum in my chest and my ears. This just wasn’t happening. How in the world did I manage to lose a demonic weapon? One that was apparently very difficult to lose.

After what felt like hours, I dropped down onto the grass and put my head between my legs. Great. I’d only just gotten permission to visit a serial killer tutor and now I didn’t have anything to be tutored in.

I was about to get up and admit defeat when a flurry of colours whipped around me. Something thudded on the ground in front of me. The