Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

fewer students, but it hit me when we were lining up to enter the room that I didn’t know half of these faces.

“Who are all these people?” We got through the door amidst a lot of jostling. Diana elbowed someone in the back. The Fae turned around, her face thunderous.

“Watch it!” she snapped.

“Or what?” Diana said. “This isn’t your Academy!”

Only then did it dawn on me. “Are we–” My question was cut short by the way the Fae’s glamour shimmered as her eyes widened. Her mouth opened slightly, tiny fangs elongating her canines. They might have been different races, but the Fae had the same reaction to me as the shifters.

Diana pulled me away. “This is going to be fun,” I muttered. “I take it we have to make nice with the other Academies again.”

Diana shook her head as we found our room and she dived for a bench at the back. “None of the other Academy heads wanted to risk opening their doors again. Jacqueline is the only one who still thinks it’s safer to learn here than it is to go off half-baked on their own. Half the students from the other Academies transferred.”

“Well, then maybe you shouldn’t antagonise them on the first day.”

She made a face. “I will if they get in my way. And also, right back at you!”

“I haven’t done anything.” She raised a brow and my words dried up.

“Which is it, Soph? Did you murder someone or not?” Her confident tone said she knew.

“I see the shifters aren’t the only ones who have given in to their baser instincts.”

She flashed her teeth as me. “Who the hell are you calling basic?”

“Let me guess,” Kieran’s voice said. I glanced up into laughing hazel eyes. “Diana’s not happy about our new classmates.”

He slid into the seat in front of us like nothing had happened in the past six months.

“She’s not the only one,” Orla piped up. She waved at me and crammed her small stature into the edge of our table.

“This is a two-person bench!” Diana informed her.

“I’m tiny!” Orla shot back.

“Okay, relax, please,” I said. “People are looking.”

James McTavish strode past. “It’s not them that are the problem,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be rotting in a jail cell?”

“You’ll understand the meaning of the word rot shortly if you don’t get out of my face,” Diana told him. I shivered at her tone. Sometime in the last six months, she’d gotten mean. I wrapped an arm around her and rested my head on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, Di.”

“No, it’s not.”

No, it wasn’t. But it wasn’t worth getting into a fight in class either. She sniffed. “So you haven’t changed at all.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that to me like it’s a bad thing?”

She placed her hand on my thigh and squeezed. “Unless you’re some kind of psychopath,” she said, “murdering people kinda changes you. Maybe you should remember that for your story.”

I couldn’t say anymore because Professor Suleiman arrived. Moving languidly behind him was Noah. They exchanged brief words before Noah slid past us and went to the back of the room.

“Why does he look familiar?” Diana asked absently.

“Book of Beasts,” Orla offered. “The boy who survived Sophie’s great-grandfather.”

“Oh.”

“Thanks, guys,” I muttered.

Professor Suleiman cleared his throat. He surveyed the class which was overly crammed. Ours wasn’t the only bench that housed more than the allotted two bodies. “I’d like to imagine that this is a reflection on my teaching prowess, but we all know that would be a lie.”

The Bloodline students laughed nervously. “You all know by now that I’m taking over some of Professor McKenna’s classes. I’ll try and do my best to muddle through it.” His gaze landed on me and halted. He tipped his head but didn’t linger.

“Those of you who aren’t Bloodline natives may wish to brush up on the Academy’s policy on terrorising each other. Now, more than ever, it will not be tolerated.”

“What if we’re not the ones doing the terrorising,” the Fae girl who had clashed with Diana in the hall spoke.

I elbowed Diana when her mouth opened.

“We are in this together or we all die. It’s that simple.” He wouldn’t hear any more about it, and I was glad. A smile tugged at my lips when I thought of Lex’s love-hate relationship with the professor. She whined and moaned every Dead Language class while he coddled her as though she was a puppy in training. Both of them went away frustrated, but they both always came back for more. Talk about abusive relationships.

“Open your textbooks to chapter three,” Professor Suleiman instructed. I had to share Diana’s textbook. The shame of being unprepared for class made me irritated. I’d always had all my things ready for the start of the new year. Sometimes I even read ahead. I supposed my only saving grace was that Celeste didn’t seem to have returned this year. It was almost a shame. My health elixir would have blown her out of the water.

The days of harmless potions were a thing of the past. As indicated by the top of chapter three: offensive binding potions.

“Umm...” Orla said. Her eyes skimmed down the page. “All these potions use blood.”

The air rushed out of my lungs. Professor Suleiman didn’t move an inch. “Yes, they do,” he said. “Blood is a powerful binding agent in this dimension. To fight the malachim, you must first force them to remain here physically.” He glanced around the room. “James, Keith, and Shawn are the only ones who would have a physical advantage. The rest of you will need to find other ways.”

“I thought you said blood magic is heavily regulated,” Kieran questioned.

“Under the circumstances, the Council have decided to relax that edict.” It was at that point when Alex appeared at the door pushing a cart loaded with ingredients for potions. Sitting atop the carts were two boxes of glass vials filled with blood.

Instinctively, my arms retracted under the tabletop. My hands fisted together as I bit down and held my