She sniffed and came over to where I was rehydrating shitake mushrooms while my hot and sour soup bubbled. It wasn’t traditional Zambian fare but while at home I’d become obsessed with the cable food channel. The wolves watched it like nobody’s business. Then they prodded me to cook all of the things until I couldn’t stand it anymore and relented. Not all kitchen witches actually enjoyed cooking. Mama was proof of that. She couldn’t boil an egg. The one time she did, it burst into full-feathered flight because she’d done something screwy with her magic. Grammy was an amazing cook. She passed the love on to me.
“You’re really good at that,” the professor said.
My lips twisted into a wry smile. “Would you like to inspect it for supernatural essence?”
“Only if you promise it’s not high-magic sorceress.” She draped her arm over my shoulders and pulled me to her side. Unlike human teachers, supernaturals tended to be on the touchy-feely side. “Don’t worry. They’ll eventually get over it.”
Like with Mama, I wanted to ask her when eventually would be. Instead, I passed her a spoon. She closed her eyes as she tasted the soup. “My goodness,” she said. “It’s wonderful.”
I beamed. The shifters who were congregated outside Max’s room at the infirmary didn’t care if the soup was wonderful. I wasn’t blind, though. I saw the way their noses twitched. If I had been anyone else, they would have been all over me. But I wasn’t someone else.
“Are you deaf or something?” a long-legged brunette snarled. She snapped her teeth at me. They were pointed at the edges. Shifters tended to feed off the energy of their dominant member. If she was like this, I couldn’t imagine how Max must be feeling.
“I’m sorry,” I kept saying. “I just thought he might like –”
“Nobody cares what you think, murderer spawn,” a no-necked boy interjected. If I didn’t know he was a shifter, I would assume he was on steroids. “You’re lucky we’re not allowed to put you down on sight.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” a gravelly voice said. “None of you should be here. Mr. Thompson requires rest.” I turned to watch a pearly skinned basilisk approach us. He walked on his hind legs. The white lab coat he wore was ill-fitting over his sinewy frame. It bulged in the lower back where his tail swept out behind him. The shifters bared their teeth at him. Doctor Thorne’s second eyelids blinked.
“I’m going to count to ten,” he said. I turned on my heels. “Not you, Sophie.”
A growl rumbled in No Neck’s chest. “You can grumble all you like, Johnny. This is my infirmary. I am alpha here. So unless you’d like your father to get wind of your disrespect, I’d get going.”
Johnny’s top lip pulled back. But I could tell by the way his ears flattened that the thought of being considered disrespectful was more important than the idea of protecting his friend. I held on to the container of soup and flattened by back against the wall as the pair departed. Not without a backwards glance full of menace. The doctor snorted. A puff of smoke billowed from his scaled nose.
“You can’t see him,” Doctor Thorne said. “He’s still in recovery. That was a potent spell. I had to treat it with Himalayan yeti tears before it stopped smouldering. His body is still trying to heal itself. If it doesn’t improve, I might have to recall Malachi from his mission.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to stop the tears from spilling over. The enormity of what I’d done slugged me in the chest. Malachi Pendragon was the last of Raphael’s bloodline. The only Nephilim healer left in existence. He was also a Bloodline student and Max’s best friend. Before the end of semester, Kai was asked to deal with the aftermath of a demon coming through a portal in the Bermuda triangle. To take him off that assignment meant that Max wasn’t showing signs of improvement.
I looked down at my pathetic attempt to help with Max’s healing. Next to Nephilim healing powers, my soup seemed wholly inadequate. All I had at my disposal were my good intentions and whatever that translated to with my kitchen-witch powers.
Doctor Thorne’s cool hands covered my own. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to have something that doesn’t come from the infirmary kitchen. I’ll make sure he gets it.”
I allowed the doctor to pry the soup from my hands. “I’m really sorry,” I said again. That was all I could come up with. The sound of my apologetic voice must have triggered something in Max because a roar like the one he’d emitted last night broke through the quiet of the infirmary. One of the patients down the hall started whimpering.
“Goodness,” Doctor Thorne said. “He’s unnaturally aggressive even for a shifter. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was possessed. Run along, Sophie. I’m sure he’ll be fine in a few days.”
When Max bellowed again, it was so full of uncontained fury that I scampered away. Back in my room, I didn’t feel like eating either. But the last thing I needed right now was to go to bed starving. So I forced down spoonfuls of soup as I sat staring out the window at the mist that was rising over the lawn. For the first time, I wondered if my peers were right. Maybe genetics really were the blueprint of someone’s nature. Maybe despite everything I was doing to distance myself from my great-grandfather, I would end up like him anyway. It was with that thought that I curled up in bed. It was no wonder I had a nightmare.
7
It was a known fact that I had a suggestible mind. That’s why I never watched horror movies. Even though I knew all
