My legs buckled. “Sophie!” Max screamed.
I looked up into his face. “Thank you.”
My eyes closed and the darkness took me.
I knew nothing for an age but pain. Death was supposed to be silent, wasn’t it? This wasn’t silent at all. I heard raised voices, the snap of metal, a woman weeping and then a lion roaring. A soft green glow lit up my closed eyelids. The hurt in my side flared for a second before warmth blanketed me. The pain eased considerably.
I must have made a sound because somebody’s cool, scaly hand pressed down on my forehead. And then, finally, blessed silence.
20
Somebody’s weave tickled my arm. My eyelids scraped open to find Mama snoring in the chair beside my bed. Her head was rested where she was holding my hand.
“Dad,” I croaked. “She’s cutting off my circulation.”
My dad leaped up from the couch across the room. “Sophie!”
Mama snapped upright like a soldier. “Oh Gaia!” she wailed. “You gave us such a scare. Don’t you ever do anything like that again. Do you know how worried we were?” She burst into tears. Dad wrapped his arms around her and held her.
I pleaded with him with tired eyes. “Maybe you should get some sleep, Nora.” Mama tried to wrestle with him.
“I’m okay, Mama.”
“You bet your butt you’re okay,” she said. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
Somebody cleared their throat. Doctor Thorne was standing at the crack of the opened door. It was only then I noticed I was in the Academy infirmary. Any notions of being dead were dispelled. No way would I have come back to the Academy if I died.
“Mrs Mwansa,” Doctor Thorne said. “The headmistress would like to speak to you.”
Mama’s back went stiff. “There are a few things I’d like to say to her too!”
Despite what she’d said earlier, my mother marched off to give someone else grief. Dad looked at me for permission. “Go,” I said. “Don’t let her get me expelled.”
He gave me a shaky grin and squeezed my hand. Doctor Thorne slid inside when they were gone. I thought he might check up on me but the first thing he did was use the mirror. Jacqueline’s face appeared.
“My apologies, Jacqueline,” he said. “I may have told a little fib just now. The Mwansas are coming to see you. They are under the impression that you wish to discuss something with them.”
Jacqueline sighed. Behind her in her office, I could see Professors McKenna and Mortimer sitting there. “Message received,” she said. “Oh and Sophie? I’ll need to speak to you when you’re ready.”
The message disconnected. Doctor Thorne huffed. “It might be a while until you’re ready,” he said absently. Then he made me drink something I was sure would burn my insides. I gagged.
When he was done torturing me, Doctor Thorne inspected my side. Where the angel blade had been stuck inside me, my skin was now a smooth, dark brown again. “How?”
“Malachi.”
“Oh. I thought he was away.”
“Max ordered him back. There was quite a lot of roaring and commotion.”
A stone lodged in my throat at the thought of Max. “How is he?”
Doctor Thorne waved a hand. “Oh, you know how these shifters are. Always snapping and snarling like they don’t need any help. He was in here for two hours and then he stormed out.”
“So back to normal again,” I said. Doctor Thorne smiled. If I wasn’t used to the animation of his reptilian features, I probably would have been freaked out.“What about the rest of the Academy?”
“Everyone has been treated. The wood nymphs even gave up some of their precious Arcana fruit to help with the efforts. There’s a lot of memory loss. Most of the younger kids still think they’ve been asleep this whole time. Jacqueline has decided it would be best if there was no mention of them being used to help bring a demon into the dimension.”
So effectively, I had almost died to save the school and only a handful of people knew about it. I was back to square one again. Figures.
My eyes grew heavy. When I slept, it was dreamless and voiceless. I woke up feeling completely refreshed. That feeling lasted for an hour while one of the goblins assisted me to shower. I came back into the room to find Jacqueline and Professor Mortimer waiting for me. My parents were beside them. Mama’s expression told me all I needed to know about the situation.
“The Council want to see me, don’t they?” The whole time I’d been awake, I’d had my fingers crossed that the deputy headmaster wouldn’t remember that I had my great-grandfather’s diary. Stupid vampire. Why couldn’t he have lost his memory like everyone else?
“This is ridiculous!” Mama snapped. “If it wasn’t for Sophie, the whole school would be demon chowder.”
“I understand how you feel,” Jacqueline said. “But Dmitri has invoked their jurisdiction, and protocol has to be followed.”
I thought I heard my dad mutter something about a stake through the heart, but Professor Mortimer was trying to get my attention. “Kitchen transmutation,” he said. I tried to make my features as neutral as possible. “Interesting. We’ll have to discuss it sometime soon.”
I didn’t think it was all that interesting. It sucked as an offensive magic. I could do small spells like the one with the wolfsbane, but nobody had the time to brew an entire potion in the middle of a fight. I wouldn’t always have Max to protect me.
“I don’t see why this can’t wait until Sophie is stronger,” Doctor Thorne said.
Jacqueline smiled in a very shifter way. “I believe the answer to that question is fear.” She signalled for one of the Nephilim guards standing by to teleport us. I had a second to be apprehensive before we landed in a room that looked very much like the human
