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

someone who had no idea where she was actually going. Sophie trailed behind despite her protests. The boys’ wing of the dorms was on the other side of the building. I had to walk down the staircase, through the foyer, and up their parallel flight of stairs to get to the boy’s landing. From there, I had no idea where to go. There weren’t names on doors or anything.

“706,” Sophie said quickly.

“Say what?”

“He’s in room 706.”

I gave her a goofy Cheshire grin. “Do you want to just show me the way?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glanced both ways like she was crossing the street. Then she almost sprinted through the corridor. Unlike the girls’ dorm, this place smelt weird. Not a nice weird, either. There was a whiff of day-old mozzarella and sweaty gym socks. We took a right, then a left, and then walked all the way down one side.

It was a bad day to decide to break the rules. With everything that was happening, the boys were out gossiping just like the girls were.

“Wooo,” one of the guys said as we walked past. He was hanging out of an open door, talking to someone inside. Sophie ignored him when he tried to step in her way. I wasn’t so lucky. The guy was our age. I think I’d seen him in one of my classes but couldn’t remember which one.

“What’s the rush, baby?” He reached out to block my way.

“The rush is so I don’t break your face if you touch her,” Max’s voice called out. “If Durin doesn’t do worse to you when he finds out you’re harassing the girl who saved his life.”

The boy paled. I saw then his eyes had gone a sandy yellow. Shifter. He dropped his arm and retreated into the room. The door clicked closed.

I hurried to where Max was looming over Sophie. “You guys shouldn’t be here,” Max said.

“I already told her that.” She was pointedly looking at anything but Max. I saw his nostrils flaring but it didn’t look as though he was put off by whatever he smelt.

“I’ll be quick,” I said. “Have you heard from Kai?”

He frowned. “Only at the beginning to say he’d be away for a few days.”

“How did he seem?”

He caught on to what I was implying. “Not homicidal.”

I nodded. My shoulders relaxed a little. “Okay, cool. Thanks. Can you do me a favour and not let him know I was here?”

“I think that would be in all our best interests,” Max said.

Rather than question him about it, I left it alone and was about to leave when I turned back. “Bearing in mind that I have no money,” I said, “what does your brother like?”

“Why?”

“He invited us to his birthday.”

Max had a pretty good poker face for a shifter. The only time I’d ever seen him really lose his temper was when Sophie was involved. But something in his features darkened now.

“Just show up,” he said. “He’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that you’re his friend. Since the attack on Durin you’re almost a celebrity in the Reserve.”

I didn’t know what to think about that. But since Sophie grabbed my arm and dragged me out of there, I didn’t have time to ask him any questions.

18

The Nephilim were noticeably absent from classes for the next week. Even though she’d given me grief, it was kind of strange not seeing Maddison’s know-it-all hand shooting up any time the professor asked us a question in Demonology 101.

Over the coming days, news began to trickle in. There were official reports of course that Artemis had been murdered by an unknown assailant. He’d been in the Fae city of Morgana at the time. The fact that there were few traces of physical evidence that could be picked up even by supernatural means pointed squarely in the realm of the Soul Sisterhood.

Basil was glued to the MirrorNet. He gave us more gossip as soon as we walked in the door, but there was very little that was actual fact. Sophie’s parents confirmed that it was now impossible to get to any of the Councillors no matter how much they tried.

Nora sighed when we called her after class one evening. “I guess we’ll just have to keep the campaign going in the background while we wait for the shock of it all to die down.”

“Or, you know, the Sisterhood could kill off the Councillors and we’d just take over,” I muttered.

“Don’t even joke about that,” Mani said.

“I’m not joking,” I said. “How is it possible that we have no defence against the Sisterhood? They’re assassins for goodness sake! You’d think someone would have cottoned on to that the last time they went on a killing spree and come up with a way to stop them.”

“After they disappeared, the supernatural world sort of forgot about them,” Nora said.

“Because they were low-magic witches,” Sophie said. “And everyone just wrote them off as crazy.”

“Hubris is often the downfall of the mighty,” Basil said.

“Now seems like a fortunate time to be a doll,” I said.

“Not really!” he hissed. “They’re called the Soul Sisterhood for a reason. They could go after me just as easily as they could anybody else!”

Hmm. He had a point there.

My next appointment to see Skander was cancelled under the current circumstances. That made sense even if it was frustrating. I spent every second evening in the Grove, trying to learn to meditate. The nymphs had decided that my head was too busy. They’d dropped a book about ancient methods of meditation on my head and flown off. It took me forever to read it because I kept dozing off.

I knew the day Kai came back to school because I walked into Demonology 101 to find Cassie beaming.

“How is he?” I asked, sliding into the chair beside her.

“Very quiet,” she said. “He’s tired, I think. But I’m glad he’s back.”

Though I would never admit it out loud, the knot in my chest unwound. I knew there were