“We don’t have much time,” he said as he finally let me out of his arms. “Everyone else is unconscious.” He stalked over to the huge ebony piano and lifted it like it was a matchstick. Max pushed it against the door. The barricade wouldn’t last long.
“The deputy headmaster?”
Max grimaced. “I might have helped him get there a little.” I would have to question him about that later. “Please tell me you know how to fix this? I tried to contact the outside but the MirrorNet isn’t working.”
I scampered up the staircase. “Do you remember any of your dreams for the past few weeks?”
He came running after me. “Not really.”
“Do you remember chasing me in lion form?”
“No.”
“But you still did it. Have you seen Curtis, Bran or Marshall recently?”
We reached the top of the staircase. I jogged on the spot trying to remember which rooms belonged to Kate’s friends. “Not that I can think of. Why?”
“They’re the ones who control the wards and the portals to the outside. My guess is the demons have them under some kind of lucid hypnosis.”
“They’re Nephilim!”
“So what? They’re just as susceptible to demonic persuasion. Especially if it comes at them when they’re least likely to suspect it.”
He made an incoherent grunting sound. I categorised it as disgust. “Why aren’t we affected?”
I ignored the question, but he snatched my arm and turned me to face him. “Sophie!”
I tried to pry his fingers off. No dice. “Are you going to be pissed if I tell you the truth?”
“I just left my brother to come after you. Stop acting like you can’t trust me.”
It was the complete opposite exactly. He was just about the only one I did trust. Losing him now made me apprehensive. “Sophie.” His voice grew deeper, coaxing. I bit my lip.
“I tampered with our food,” I said. It was supposed to be a joke. He didn’t laugh.
“You do that often?”
I nodded. “A lot of the time it’s unintentional. I like to cook. It makes me happy. My magic passes that on to the food. This time, I did it purposefully. I knew something was wrong, but I kept forgetting what it was. Until whoever it was broke into my room.”
“You couldn’t have done it on a bigger scale?”
I gave him a hard stare. “Nobody will let me anywhere near the dining hall because they’re afraid I’ll poison everybody!”
The irony of the situation almost had me weeping. We didn’t have time for that either. Max’s right eye twitched. His irises were bleeding gold. It was then I remembered his sense of smell. “You know Kate, right?”
He nodded. Of course he did. She would fall over herself if he walked past. “Do you know her friends? Can you take me to their rooms?”
It said a lot that he didn’t ask why. My human legs must have been too slow because halfway down the hall he grabbed me and ran. We came to a stop in front of a door with the name Jenny Liu on the plaque. Jenny wasn’t in here, but the state of the place made Max growl. Lack of discipline was something to be ashamed of for shifters.
Jenny was half human, though. Her jewellery was all over the bloody place. I dumped the contents of her entire top drawer on the floor. Max crouched down beside me. “What are we looking for?”
“Cheap African souvenir necklace.”
Max sniffed. He got up and marched over to Jenny’s nightstand and brought back a small, shell-shaped box. Inside was the necklace in question. I made a note to use his nose more often.
“Break it.” I held my breath as he crushed the wood in one hand. Nothing miraculous happened. We did this twice more. Inside Debbie Conway’s room, my nerves frayed as her necklace snapped in half in Max’s hands. All was quiet.
I’d never been at an exorcism, but I’d read about it and there was supposed to be more fanfare than this. If nothing else, demons were whiney bastards who kicked up a huge stink when they were banished.
“Dammit! I was sure it was one of those necklaces that started this!” Disappointment had me wanting to tear my hair out.
“What else could it be?” Max asked. A feral edge crept into his voice. The longer we messed around in here, the closer his brother came to being drained.
“I don’t know. The relic could be anything. A handkerchief, a music box, a bloody piece of string –”
My eyes widened. I shoved my hand into my pocket and brought out the leather chain of Kate’s necklace. Max inhaled. “What’s that? It smells bitter.”
Undoing the dull copper clasp, I ran the length of the knotted rope along my palm. “Smash the beads. Undo the knots.”
For someone with such big hands, Max was surprisingly dextrous. He undid the first knot in seconds. My throat locked at the sound of wind being sucked into a void. I grinned. A moment later, my hubris was rewarded with a soul-shattering shriek.
What I heard wasn’t the wail of a weakened demon. It was the bellow of a demon who was casting off its chains for the first time in millennia. We were too late. A thunderous boom rocked the Academy. The wall shook so much I flattened myself on the ground. Max leaned over me, his balance much better than mine.
When the shaking stopped, we ran down the staircase. Max boosted me up onto his shoulders so I could see outside of the high bay windows. “What’s happening?”
My voice died in my throat. It took me seconds too long to register what I was seeing. The view towards the portal field was obstructed by other buildings and the tree line. But I had no issues spotting the
