He guffawed as we made contact. There was a small smile on his face as he set me right. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a student in such a hurry to get to the library,” he said.
Something about him made the hum of awareness in my blood turn into a buzz. “Professor,” I asked. “Do you still have Kate’s necklace?”
He scratched at his beard. “What’s left of it. Most of the pendant crumbled into dust. Why do you ask?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure why. There was no way to explain it. Why was I so concerned about Kate’s cheap souvenir? I excused myself and speed-walked into the library where I proceeded to check out the Book of Beasts for the fifty billionth time. The library assistant didn’t even bat an eyelid. I had a copy of my own back in my room but that was a newer edition. Over the years, some of the stories had been cleaned up a little because the species they belonged to had protested the way they had been portrayed. This book was a first edition. That was why I was issued a pair of magicked gloves to turn the pages. It was also why the book wasn’t allowed off the library premises.
“Remember, Soph,” I kept telling myself. I turned the pages one by one hoping the pictures of the gruesome creatures would jog my memory. Two hours later, I’d gone through most of the book to no avail. I’d even sat there staring at the portrait of my great-grandfather thinking that maybe it had something to do with him.
Outside the window, the moonlight shone through the clouds. It was so bright that I hardly needed the Fae lamp to see. A wolf howled in the near distance. From this part of the library, I could see the edges of the high walls that made up the shifter Run. It was where the shifters could go when they needed to turn. I wondered if Max was there tonight.
Thinking of him brought back the strange behaviour he’d shown when the two girls had arrived. Fatigue washed over me. The way the light slanted made me think it was pretty late. The library was open all hours. Its current clientele of mostly vampires told me I’d stayed way too late. After returning the book, I shouldered my backpack and stepped out into the courtyard.
One of the Nephilim guards flew overhead. I couldn’t tell who it was from this distance, but it was comforting to know they were up there. It was part of the reason why I wasn’t afraid even though I was walking back to my dorm in moonlit darkness. Okay, I was slightly jumpy when the bear’s growl filtered through the expansive lawn. It wasn’t an unusual thing to hear at this time of the month. But something about the sound seemed ominous tonight.
I passed by several vampires on the way. Unlike what popular human culture would have you believe, these interdimentional beings weren’t dead. They were just another species of supernatural. The vamps slept like the rest of us, and these vamps were cranky. One of them ground their teeth at me. I felt the pulse in my neck jump in response.
It lit a fire in my heels. I lowered my head and ran the rest of the way back to the dorm. As I ascended the staircase, an opaque mass appeared in my periphery. To my mind, it looked like a swarm of insects. I tried to turn my head towards it. The thing disappeared when I tried to look at it directly. A cold hand drew an icy line down my spine.
I reached my door to find it hanging wide open. A whimper snagged in my throat as I took in the scene in front of me. Somebody had ransacked my room. My mattress and pillow were slashed open. Their foam and feather filling lay like ash on the floor. My closet doors had been flung open. All of my clothes were strewn about the room.
They had tried to open the chest and were unsuccessful, so they had instead bashed in the lid with some kind of blunt object. Worst of all were the claw marks on the walls. They underlined the scrawled writing that dripped down the wall. My only consolidation was that the crimson font wasn’t written in blood. It was food die. The expensive kind I’d bought to use for baking.
The message could have been more original. I supposed some messages were classics. It read: Leave or die.
12
When other people got stressed, they overate or slept. When I was stressed, I cooked. “Are you sure you don’t want to just sit down?” Mama asked. I threw her a look. She held up her hands in surrender.
We were inside the Potions lab while Professor Mortimer and the Nephilim checked out the scene in my room. After taking a scraping sample of the food die, I’d walked steadily to Jacqueline’s office. She wasn’t in, of course. It was too late at night for that. I’d pressed my palm to the mirror on her assistant’s desk and left a message. Less than two minutes later, Jacqueline and the professors had swarmed on me along with a small troop of Nephilim guards. My parents arrived shortly after.
Dad sneezed. “Smells really spicy, Soph.”
No kidding. I was chopping up fire breather peppers. They were a special plant from the Fae realm. There were rumours that they were once used to feed dragons. I dropped a few into the chilli I was making and then fed some to Charming. He stood beneath the cauldron stand, his mouth open, blue flames bursting from his throat. The rest of the peppers went to his siblings who were racing around in their enclosure.
While I concentrated on
