He exhaled slowly. The frustration radiated off him in waves. The second warning bell rang. “I have to go.”
Without waiting for a response, I tore away from him and across the lawn towards Herbology.
Kai wasn’t kidding when he said he was stretched thin. I didn’t hear from him all weekend. By the next Tuesday, I was starting to worry a little. He never went this long without checking in. Had that idiot Fae really kicked up a stink? Was Kai trying to handle it without me knowing? I would strangle that Fae if I found out that was the case.
I spent the morning worrying and was two minutes late to my first Exorcism class. My concern was alleviated when I pushed the door open and found Professor Mortimer in front of the classroom.
“Sorry, Professor.”
He nodded at me but didn’t say anything. I scanned the room for an empty seat and wanted to curse aloud. Not only was Brigid sitting in the corner with her minions but there was a potential serial killer next to the only empty desk.
“Alessia,” Professor Mortimer said. I jumped and made my way to the desk. Andrei tracked my every move. How do I play this? There was no way to react that he wouldn’t take as me being creeped out by his presence. What in the world was he doing in this class anyway? The answer presented itself when Professor Mortimer turned his back to write something on the board.
Andrei leaned over so that he was bare inches away from me. The room was one of the smaller ones we had at Bloodline. It was the same one Peter used when we occasionally had to be in the classroom for some theory. Andrei dropped something on my desk. It was smaller than my palm and scrunched in plain notebook paper. I hadn’t even seen his hand move.
Professor Mortimer turned back around. “Okay, class,” he said. “I understand many of you have already been out in the field to observe an exorcism. You would have seen by now that the circumstances really do depend on the demon in question and also the host. Who can tell…”
I didn’t really hear the rest of what he said. The thing on my desk moved. It was barely perceptible, but it happened twice more. It took me a while to place what it reminded me of. By then, the blood had seeped through and was soaking the paper. I turned my head to glare at Andrei. His attention was fixed to the front of the class as though he was listening intently. I didn’t buy it for a second.
Not wanting to give him the satisfaction, I sat there and forced myself to concentrate. It was difficult. I was pretty sure I had a still-beating heart of some poor creature on my desk.
“…there are many ways for this to happen,” the professor said. I didn’t have the slightest clue what he was talking about. The others had opened their textbooks. I eyed the page of the girl to my left and took my textbook out of my backpack. That presented another problem. The beating heart was smack in the centre of the table. There was no room for me to open my textbook.
My magic bubbled in the pool. I took a deep breath. What was the protocol here? Was I meant to just sit here meekly and take this shit?
While I contemplated my next move, Andrei raised his hand. “Mr. Popescu?” the professor said.
“Professor,” Andrei asked, “say a human comes from a line that has a predilection for demon possession. Are they more likely to be susceptible?”
The professor frowned. “I’m not sure what the equivalent classes are at Nightblood Academy,” Professor Mortimer said. “But that is an established inconsistency that you should have learned in your second year. Just because someone has a relative who has succumbed to possession, it doesn’t mean they are more susceptible.”
“What if they’re pushed,” Andrei asked. “What if they are being bombarded constantly with demonic energy? Wouldn’t that make it inevitable that they will either lose their minds, or their will could be weakened to the point where they succumb?”
I glanced up from my textbook-positioning quandary to find the whole class looking at me. There were a few unknown faces but at least half the class were Bloodline fourth-year students. Did that make them more or less likely to believe that I was slated for demon possession?
The professor leaned on his desk with his arms crossed. “It would depend on the person,” he said. “Some people may surprise you with their resilience.”
“Or the level of their acceptance,” Brigid said. Oh, right. I guess her annoyance at the other Academy students didn’t amount to a truce between us.
“Everybody has a breaking point,” Andrei said. The fist-sized heart beat a couple of pulses.
“Isn’t that what we’re here to learn,” I said before I could stop myself. “What to do when somebody reaches their breaking point and when to call it quits on trying to save their life versus a merciful death? I know I draw the line when children are involved.”
There was a collective widening of the eyes. Andrei chuckled. “I guess this is going to be an interesting class after all.”
The professor was frowning again. After a second, he cleared his throat and continued. “I want you to turn to page eighty-four of your textbooks. We will begin by going through the magical devices that aid in an exorcism. In a few weeks, if I judge that we have made enough progress, we may have cause to engage in a practical exercise.”
I pushed my chair back and propped my textbook between my lap and the edge of my desk. I stayed that way all through the class. It was impossible to take anything in with the sound of the heart beating
