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

me shave my legs. I had to take off my sports bra too. I had trouble getting the halter collar of the dress on. It buttoned up the back but the strap itself was beaded with hundreds of small crystals. I prayed it was sturdier than it looked. When I finally heard the snap button slot into place, my relief was palpable. The dress covered my chest and flowed down into an A-line tented swish. It was double-layered adding volume to draw the eye away from what was a shocking amount of leg. Even for me.

“How is it?” Sophie asked.

I took a breath and stepped out. They were both staring at me. Sophie’s face broke into a smile. “I cannot wait until Brigid sees you in this,” she said.

“You don’t think it’s too short?” I could feel the breeze on my butt.

“Nonsense,” Celine said. “That’s the one advantage of being small. You can get away with very short.”

I turned around in front of the mirror. When I inspected it more closely, it actually almost hit my knees. The design was what made it seem sexier than it was.

“Well?” Sophie said.

I handed over the manna card. Celine glanced down at it when she went to ring up the purchase. “You’re the girl Malachi Pendragon bought a dress for,” she said.

“She’s the girl Malachi Pendragon is dating,” Sophie said, her eyebrows pumping.

“She’s the girl who is going to run away if you both don’t stop saying his name like that.”

Celine’s mouth twisted into a knowing smile, but she said no more.

I almost passed out when I saw the number of zeros after the total. My dress box was much smaller than Sophie’s. I still carried it in front of me like it was going to explode.

“Can you please relax your arms,” Sophie said. “You’re hitting people.”

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the amount of money we just spent.” My gut felt heavy. The homeless girl in me was waving red flags. I was this close to having a panic attack when Sophie slapped me. Hard. Right across the face.

The pain ripped me back into the present. I pressed a hand to my cheek. “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay, I think I needed that.”

I still carried the box like it was precious all the way back to the house. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take that?” Mani asked. I shook my head.

When we arrived, it was to a house full of people we didn’t know.

“Guess what?” Basil said.

He hopped too close to the box. I snatched it away from his suddenly hyper presence. “What’s going on?” Mani asked.

“The venue my friends chose for dinner had double-booked,” Basil said. “So Nora said we could meet here!” One of his so-called friends was a goblin with sharply clawed hands. I practically ran to the bedroom to avoid anyone slicing the box up.

32

Now that she was basically a Councillor, Nora was already working on getting in good with the locals. Basil’s friends were super local. One of them actually lived around the corner. The goblin apparently worked for a dwarf mining company that regularly dealt with humans.

It left Mani, Sophie, and me to do the cooking and cleaning. I was not a good cook. So cleaning it was. I spent much of the night washing dishes. Then I turned into a waitress. What was happening here?

“See what I mean?” Sophie said. “Not exactly glamorous.” She was taking to it like a natural. After all, it wasn’t much different to what she did in the dining hall.

She was eyeing the frizzy, blonde-haired witch that Basil had spent the whole night talking to. The woman was probably in her mid-thirties. She was tall and slim. Her clothes were all black accentuated by hanging crystals. She had a wrap on over her ankle-length skirt that had frills on it. Basically, she looked like a magic shop threw up on her.

“Basil looks like he’s having a great time,” Sophie said.

“He looks like he’s ready to jump in her lap,” I noted. It was kind of cute. How in the world did they even find each other? This MirrorNet was some kind of…magic.

He was still buzzing when we returned to the Academy. “The dorm room isn’t going to be so much fun now that I’ve tasted freedom,” Basil said.

I didn’t know whether I should be alarmed or not. “You remember that your purpose is meant to be staying by my side, don’t you?” I asked him.

“Of course.”

“Try not to sound like you resent it so much.”

“Oh hush,” he said. Then he got back on the MirrorNet to speak to his lady friend.

“Her name is Odette,” Basil corrected me when I complained to Sophie about it. We promptly forgot about him when Diana came around to look at the dresses. She whistled when I told her how much the dresses cost.

I was still feeling guilty about it the next day when I walked into Arcane Magic. Normally I tried to leave Kai alone in any classes we had together. Today I made a beeline to where he was already seated with Max on one side and Adam on the other. I had been avoiding Adam all semester. It wasn’t that we’d gone on one date. It was more that he really did seem like he wanted to be everybody’s friend. Never mind that those people might not be the nicest. I ignored him when he smiled at me.

This was no time for politeness. “Can I speak to you?” I asked Kai.

That surprised everyone. “You okay?” he asked. He got up from his seat. His eyes brushed up and down me like he was trying to check for injuries.

“I’m fine.”

We walked out of the room and a little down the corridor beside the lockers. I held the manna card out to him. “I went a little overboard,” I said. “And I bought Sophie’s dress too. It was a lot of money. Like a lot of money. So if