“I wouldn’t dare.” He shoved off the bed and onto the floor. He grabbed a spare pillow and tucked it under his head.
“You can come up here as long as nothing happens.” I bit my bottom lip.
“I can’t make that promise.”
Neither could I. “I can sleep in Max’s bed,” I said.
His face went completely still. “Stay where the hell you are.”
I burrowed under the covers. Then I leaned my head over the side. “I’m not really tired and –”
He reached out and took my hand. A tingle of angelfire ran up my arm. Before I knew it, my eyelids were drooping.
24
I passed Max in the hallway when I snuck back to my room. “He better not have tried anything,” Max said. The bloody nerve of him pulling that protective crap given where he’d been all night.
“Ditto to you, buddy,” I said.
He gave me a feral grin. I increased my stride. Inside the room, I found Sophie sitting up in her bed with a dazed look on her face. We stared at me each for a moment before bursting into laughter.
“You would tell me if something happened, right?” I asked her.
“In a heartbeat,” she said. “As if I could contain it.” A grin split her face. I hadn’t really been worried. Max had too much honour to try anything in the dorms.
“How did it go with Andrei?” Sophie asked.
“I think we’ve come to an understanding,” I said.
I was wrong.
I knew I couldn’t poke a vampire without some blowback. I just never expected it to come in the form of flowers. “Umm...” I said, as I stood by what had become my desk in Exorcism class. The offending bouquet of long-stemmed red roses sat in a clear crystal vase. There wasn’t a note, but everyone knew they were from Andrei. The vampire was unrepentantly grinning at me.
“What the hell is this?” I snapped. I couldn’t see past the flowers. Nor could I sit down because of how wide they were.
“An apology,” he said. “Can you ever forgive me, squirt?”
If the glass vase weren’t so heavy, I would have picked it up and brained him with it. If I could open up a portal, I would be able to just chuck them in there. Professor Suleiman came to my aide. He was completely no-nonsense. This kind of prank must be at the top of his list of irritations.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“Someone left rubbish on my desk. Can you please do something about it?”
He quickly obliged. With a flick of his hand, he made the flowers disappear through a portal. “Please sit down, Alessia. We have a long way to go.”
Tell me about it. With one last glare at Andrei, I tried to ignore him as the professor began to write unintelligible words on the chalkboard. I didn’t know why I found it so difficult to get these deal languages to sink in. My brain was a sieve.
“Words of light,” Professor Suleiman said. “Often overlooked for their more avant-garde counterparts, words of power. In the realm of exorcism, they are your best tool. These are the words passed down to us from Gabriel the Messenger. The only one of the archangels to remain in the heavenly dimension. These words force a demon to leave its mortal host. We will be concentrating on them until I’m assured every single one of you can recite them in your sleep.” He was looking straight at me without blinking when he said this. No doubt he was cursing that I had decided to take this class given how poorly I did in my other Dead Language classes.
Andrei made low snoring noises. I put my hand up and rested my head on my fingers to block him from view. It was easy enough to copy the words down in my notebook. It was another thing altogether to translate them into speech.
Andrei was irritatingly fluent. I sat there trying to get my mouth to even form the words.
Professor Suleiman tried to lift my spirits. “Truly you are improving, Alessia.” His gaze flicked to his shoes and back again.
“I suck!” I dropped my forehead to the tabletop. This after our Dead Languages class earlier in the week when Alacanthean finally came up on the syllabus. My brain had short-circuited for the whole lesson.
“You can’t be good at everything. Imagine what the Council would do if that were the case. Your pronunciation isn’t too bad. As long as you remain focused with your intent, I think we could be close to the baseline.”
“Does this mean we can start the practical portion?” I asked, looking up again.
“Perhaps.” It would help if he didn’t keep looking the other way.
I was still trying to get my Alacanthean vowels straight during lunch. At the same time, I was half-heartedly listening to my friends talking, when all of a sudden, they went quiet. Somebody kicked me under the table.
“Ow!” I glared at Diana who sat diagonally across from me to the left. “How many times have I told you those boots are –”
For some reason Sophie and Diana scooted to the left to make space at the end of the table. Down the line, Sean stood up. He and the Evil Three occasionally joined us for lunch. The boys were trying to include him, but the Terran mindset was hard to shake. A shadow passed over his face. Without a word he got up and left the table.
“What’s gotten into him?” I asked.
“I don’t think he likes me very much,” Kai said with a wolfish grin. He plonked himself down in the space Sophie had made for him. Then he spread his elbows out and she got sandwiched between him and Diana.
“You know there are other tables,” she said. “That one over there is a two-seater.” She pointed to a small
