“It’s not,” Dad said. “But if you’re willing to listen to me, and to learn more about what it means to be a demon, you’d understand that the Removal is not your only option. There are ways of…well, fine-tuning your powers. Of lessening the chances of hurting someone.”
“‘Lessening’?” I repeated. “But notremoving, right?”
Dad shook his head. “I’m going about this all the wrong way,” he said, sounding frustrated. “I just want you to understand that…Sophie, have you given any thought to what it will be like once you’ve gone through the Removal? Provided you survive it, of course.”
I had. It sounds dumb, but one of the first things I’d thought of was that I’d look like the Vandy: covered in swirling purple markings, even on my face. It wouldn’t be an easy thing to explain away in the human world, but I was hoping “crazy spring break” might work.
When I didn’t answer Dad right away, he said, “I’m not sure you understand what really happens in that ritual. It’s not just that you won’t be able to do magic anymore. You will be destroying a vital part of yourself. The Removal gets into your blood. It rips out something that’s as much a part of you as the color of your eyes. You weremeant to be a demon, Sophie, and your body and soul will fight to keep you that way. Possibly to the death.”
There’s nothing you can say to a speech like that. So I just stared at him until he finally sighed and said, “You’re tired, and this was a great deal to tell you on your first night. I can understand if this is overwhelming.”
“It’s not that,” I said, but he just kept on talking, something I was beginning to learn was an annoying habit of his.
“Hopefully, after a good night’s sleep, you’ll be more receptive to what I have to tell you.” He glanced at his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was supposed to meet with Lara fifteen minutes ago. I trust you can find your way back to the house.”
“It’s right in front of me, so yeah,” I muttered, but Dad was already walking down the hill.
I sat in the gathering darkness for a long time, watching Thorne Abbey, trying to absorb everything Dad had just told me. I’d been sitting there for about ten minutes before it occurred to me that I hadn’t asked him anything about the demon kids and what they were doing here. Or how they even existed. Finally, I got up, dusted off my jeans, and headed back toward the house.
As I walked, I thought about what Dad had said. I’d only had my powers for a few years, but they were a part of me. For the first time, I admitted to myself that the thought of slashing the magic right out of myself—and maybe dying in the process—scared the heck out of me.
But I couldn’t go through life as a ticking time bomb either, and no matter what Dad said about “fine-tuning” my magic, as long as I had powers, exploding would always be a very real possibility. Somehow, my whole existence had become a really complicated word problem.
I’d always sucked at those.
There was no sign of Dad when I got back to Thorne, and I trudged up to my room. Earlier, I’d been starving, but the conversation with Dad had killed my appetite. Despite my long nap, all I wanted to do was take a hot bath and crawl into bed.
But when I got to my room, I saw that my bed had already been made up. Had it been servants, or did they now have some sort of tidiness spell?
Then I saw the photograph propped on the pillow.
I wondered briefly if Dad had put the photo there himself as I reached down and picked it up. My hands trembled a little. It was a black-and-white shot of about fifty girls in the front garden of Thorne. Half of them were standing, while the other half sat on the ground, their skirts pulled demurely around their legs. Alice was one of the seated girls.
I studied her face for a long time. Somehow, it had been easier to think of Alice as really possessed, a soulless creature using my great-grandmother’s body as a tool.
It was harder to think of Alice’s soul still being in her body when I sliced through her neck with that shard of demonglass.
I traced her features. What had she been thinking the day this photograph was taken? Had she thought Thorne Abbey was overwhelming, too?
For all I knew, she’d stood in this very room more than sixty years ago. The thought sent a shiver down my spine. I wanted to ask her if she’d had any sense of the horrible thing that was about to happen to her, if she had wandered the halls of Thorne feeling the same sick feeling of dread that coiled inside me.
But Alice, frozen in 1939, smiling and human, didn’t have any answers, and there was nothing in her face to suggest that she’d had any hint of what the future would hold for her.
For me.
chapter 9
Dad wasn’t around the next morning. I woke up early and took a marathon shower. Trust me: if you’d spent the last nine months sharing a bathroom with all manner of supernatural creatures, you’d be pretty psyched about a private shower too. Sometime the evening before, all of my bags had been unpacked, and my clothes were neatly folded in the painted dresser. Remembering how nicely everyone at Thorne had been dressed yesterday, I briefly considered digging out the one dress I’d brought. In the end, I settled on another pair of jeans and a cranberry- colored T-shirt, although I did wear a nice pair of sandals instead of my ratty tennis shoes.
I stopped by Jenna’s room before heading downstairs, but she wasn’t there. Cal’s door was closed, and I thought about knocking on it before reminding myself that it was kind of early, and he was probably asleep. For just a second, the image of a sleepy, shirtless Cal opening his bedroom door popped into my head, and my face flushed as red as my T-shirt.
I was still kind of flustered when I practically ran into Lara Casnoff in the main hallway. She was wearing another dark suit and was somehow holding on to a sheaf of papers, a cell phone, and a steaming mug of coffee that smelled so good my mouth started watering. “Oh, Sophie, you’re awake,” she said with a bright smile. “Here”—she handed me the coffee—“I was just bringing this up to you.”
“Oh, wow, that’s really nice of you,” I replied, mentally adding Lara to my list of People Who Are Awesome. At Hex Hall, we were practically blasted out of bed in the morning by an alarm that was somewhere between a foghorn and the baying of hell hounds. People bringing you coffee in bed was a way nicer way to wake up.
“Also, your father wanted me to tell you that he’s been called away on business today, but he should be back later this evening.”
“Oh. Um…okay, thanks.”
“He hated to miss your first day,” she said, frowning slightly.
I couldn’t hold back a sarcastic laugh. “Well, Dad’s missed a lot of my first days, so I’m pretty used to it.”
I think Lara was going to rush in to defend Dad, but before she could, I asked, “So in which of the nine thousand kitchens could I maybe find some cereal? I skipped dinner last night.”
Immediately, Lara was all business again. “Oh, of course. Breakfast is being served in the east dining room.”
She gave me directions that included three right turns, another flight of stairs, and a “conservatory,” whateverthat was. When I stared at her blankly, she waved her hand and said, “I’ll just show you myself.”
“Thanks,” I said, trailing behind her. “Maybe by the end of the summer I’ll actually get the layout of this place down.”
Lara laughed. “I’ve been coming to Thorne Abbey for decades, and I still get turned around.”
“Wow,” I said as we proceeded down a long hallway lined with pictures. I did a double take as I passed them. There were portraits of werewolves in eighteenth-century costumes, their silvery fur poking out from underneath knee breeches, and one image showed a family of witches from what looked like the 1600s—lots of lacy ruffs around their necks—all of them levitating underneath a tree, silvery sparks of magic dancing around them.
