“I know who you are,” he said. When I looked down at him in surprise, he smiled a pointy-toothed grin at me. “My sire works with our king. He says when Alessia Hastings bonds with Malachi Pendragon, we won’t have to wear clothes anymore.”
I choked on my own spit. There were so many things wrong with what he just said that I couldn’t even pick one to dissect. Thankfully, we’d reached the spot where the infirmary used to be. It was missing. In its place was yet more rubble.
“Over here,” Doctor Thorne’s voice called from behind a pillar of stone that was just sitting out in the open.
I dragged Billy with me. A tent had been erected beside the ornamental lawn just in front of the Fae forest. Neither of those things was in the right place. Doctor Thorne’s hard reptilian eyes looked at Billy. “Another casualty?”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “There’s more than one?”
He pulled open the flap of the tent to reveal several Bloodline students in various stages of injury. “It happens every Unity year. Frankly I’m surprised you’re not one of them.”
“Give it time. I have a new patient for you.”
Billy held tight to my fingers. He wouldn’t look up at Doctor Thorne. The doctor tried to appear innocuous. Oh, right! In another lifetime, basilisks and dragons would have crunched on goblins for breakfast. I kept forgetting Doctor Thorne had mind-control powers over the para-humans.
“It’s okay,” I told Billy. “I’m in here all the time.”
He shook his head at me. In the end, I stayed with him while Doctor Thorne patched him up with some extra-dimensional herbs that made me want to gag. Billy drank the sludge like it was a milkshake. Though he’d been afraid, he was a breezy patient.
“You should take notes from Billy,” Doctor Thorne told me as he did his final check-up.
“How’s that bedside manner coming along?”
“I’ve decided it’s surplus to my requirements. You’re just about the only human who ends up in here, and well, I don’t think kind words work on you.”
Everyone was a comedian.
It was nightfall by the time I dropped Billy off at the junior Academy. We walked around aimlessly for ages because everything had moved.
I was getting sick of all the strange new faces. And even sicker of the too-interested glances they snuck at me. There was a crowd gathered at the entrance of the corridor to my room.
When they saw me, the crowd parted. I shouldered my way through them, worried that something had happened to Sophie. I kept thinking about the kids in the infirmary. But when I got to the front of the crowd, Sophie was just standing there mute. She pointed at our door. Somebody had hammered a nail into the wood. Hanging on the nail was Kai’s mother’s necklace. Blood dripped from the emerald pendant and was pooling on the floor. What got me was the poorly scrawled message also done in blood: Nice to meet you, squirt.
10
Professor McKenna cleared the hallway with her mere presence. She was Sophie’s favourite teacher, so naturally Sophie called her on the mirror as soon as we walked inside the room. I stood at the door guarding the evidence.
Sophie was all jittery by the time Professor McKenna arrived. I forgot this wasn’t the first time somebody had messed with her room. Our room. I was giving her a hug when a low growl permeated the small space.
“Move!” Max snarled. The silly students who lingered ran for their lives.
“Really, Mr. Thompson,” Professor McKenna said. “You’re the one who isn’t meant to be in this hallway.” She didn’t actually kick him out, though. I was still mid-hug with Sophie, but the way she and Max were making eyes at each other made me roll mine. I disengaged and she sort of forgot I was even there.
I heard Max’s low rumble behind me as they disappeared around the corner. Professor McKenna brushed a bit of her magic over the blood. “Anything?” I asked.
“It’s the same blood from inside the cartons from the dining hall,” she said. “It’s the message I’m more concerned about. You know who did this?”
Snitches get stitches. But how could I deny it? “Umm yeah. But I didn’t actually get their name.”
She pursed her lips. “We’re not going to get to the bottom of this if you won’t tell us who did this, Alessia.”
Oh, I knew why he’d done this. He was a lunatic. “I don’t know if I want to get to the bottom of it,” I said. I glanced at the necklace. “I mean, technically they did me a favour.”
The professor huffed. “Well, I can’t detect any signs of foul play aside from the obvious. Can you feel anything malignant?”
“No. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“An idiotic prank, then,” Professor McKenna said. “They do this every Unity semester. It gets tiresome. Judging by the blood, I would hazard a guess there was a vampire involved. They’re so unoriginal.” She flicked her hand and the blood disappeared. I held my breath as she unhooked the necklace and handed it to me.
She left to help with the magical construction. “Do not spend all night in here,” I heard her say as she rounded the corner. Max’s response was a contained growl. Five minutes later, Sophie managed to extract herself.
“What the hell is this about?” Sophie said, closing the door behind her. I lay on the bed, one arm over my face like some fragile Elizabethan lady. In my head, I was trying to recount the worst possible ways to inflict pain on a vampire.
While she worked on the spell that would stop anyone from entering, I drew my usual protective circle and reinforced it with a bazillion layers.
I’d put the necklace down on my bedside table. “Beats me. I met this psycho vamp today, and I think he’s playing tricks on me.”
Sophie turned around from where she was standing. “Which psycho vamp?”
“I don’t know, Andrei something.”
Her face became ashen. “Andrei Popescu?”
I shrugged. “We didn’t
