“Humans don’t get invited to the Academy, love,” the demon said. “So, you’re one of us, all right. The only reason why all of us showed up is because none of us has any idea what you are yet.”
Cassie frowned. “All of you showed up? Well, where are the others then?”
Alec shrugged. “On their way.”
Others? The Academy? There were more of them—an entire school of them? And they wanted me to join them?
I wanted to get up and start running, but with this one guy being able to pop up out of thin air, I doubted I would get far, so I tried to keep calm even though my heart hammered in my chest.
“Which one are you?” I asked Cass. “Warlock, or demon?”
“I’m neither?” She shrugged, staring down at the table. A faint blush had crept up her cheeks, and I knew she probably felt embarrassed for keeping something like this from me, but that didn’t stop me from being mad at her. We told each other everything! I’d told her how horrible it had made me feel that my father just up and left, how insecure I felt about not a single guy in high school being even remotely interested in me. Everything. Every single thing, I had told her. And then I figured out, on my birthday none the less, that there was an entire part of her life that she had kept secret.
“I’m a siren,” Cassie eventually confessed.
Demons, warlocks, and now freaking sirens? “Next you’re going to tell me vampires and werewolves are real too.”
“Oh, they are,” the demon said. “Very real. And a total pain in the ass.”
“Shut up, Christian.” Cassie snapped at him, and then turned to look at me. Tears were reflected in her gaze. “I’m really sorry, Dev. Really. But if we tell humans about our existence, it means banishment.”
“Sometimes even death at the stake.” A nostalgic smile crossed Christian’s features. “Ah, the good old days, that delicious smell of witchy flesh on fire…”
“Can you keep your mouth shut for a second?” Cassie rolled her eyes at him before focusing her full attention back on me. “So, I couldn’t tell you about who I really am. But I never lied to you about anything else. I did go to college, just not community college you thought I was attending. Last year, I enrolled into the Academy for the Wicked.”
“And what is this ‘Academy’ exactly? It’s a school for… you people?”
“‘You people’?” Alec chuckled. “That includes you too, princess, so you might start thinking of your future home in a slightly more affectionate way.”
The door to Joe’s Diner opened. The trademark ting-a-ling sound of the wind chime above the door disrupted our conversation, and to my horror, Alfred came stomping in. I quickly got up from my seat—an angry Alfred was even more frightening than a warlock and a demon stopping by for lunch. As usual, Alfred had drunk too many beers at the pub and his alcohol-induced rage was directed toward me. Even when drunk, Alfred wouldn’t be abusive toward the customers who were his livelihood, but the hired help who spent twelve hours a day on minimum wage in the midst of summer? Why not?
“You!” Alfred pointed his finger at me, and I braced myself for the unescapable speech he was about to unleash on me. “Sitting down, having a break, eh? You lazy cretin.” He waved his arms around frantically, slurring his words. “The moment I turn my back, you stop working. Can’t expect you to do one single thing right.”
He then glanced over at Cassie and the others and noticed the broken glass. “What the hell?” He yelled, turning his anger back toward me. “What, are you too lazy to clean this up? Go fetch something to clean that up, you lazy bi—”
He hadn’t even finished the word ‘bitch’ when someone snapped his neck. For a moment, Alfred’s alcohol-clouded eyes stared into mine, then his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and his head fell to the side.
I reached out, trying to stop Alfred’s body from slumping to the ground. I grabbed him mid-way through his fall, trying to support his weight. But instead, the weight of his corpse brought me down with him, and I landed on my knees next to his body.
No one screamed.
Why was no one screaming?
The room seemed cloaked in an unnatural silence, as if a cocoon was wrapped around myself and the weird strangers who had managed to ruin my birthday by not only showing me that evil was real but also bringing it onto my footsteps. Prime example of that was Alfred’s dead body slumped over my arms.
My gaze was drawn to the person standing behind Alfred, the person who had effortlessly snapped the old man’s neck and ended his life.
This creature was supernatural, all right, judging by the enormous black, bat-like wings sprouting from his back. The wings then folded behind his back, disappearing, but for the moment I’d seen them, they had mesmerized me. So magnificent and so terrifying at the same time.
Which was, coincidentally, a good description for the man himself. He had bright red eyes, glowing like the devil’s, and shoulder-length black hair combed to the side. He wore a tailored suit that made him appear slightly older than the others. Everything about him screamed confidence, even the way he adjusted the sleeve of his shirt, oblivious to the carnage he’d just committed. As if killing a human being meant nothing to him.
Maybe it meant nothing to all of them.
Demons, warlocks, these were creatures of evil. The ‘Academy for the Wicked’ wasn’t called like that because all its occupants liked to sing ‘kumbaya’ around a campfire. Even sirens were evil, luring sailors to their deaths in the
