“Do I look like I’m pissed off?” My voice was unnaturally even. His eyes grew wide and then narrowed. He turned his head up and sniffed at the air. The insult had my hackles rising.
“You would know if I was being possessed, Maximus!”
“Alright,” Jacqueline’s voice called from behind him. “That’s enough of that. I think it might be best if you made yourself scarce, Lex.”
I was being dismissed. That suited me just fine. But I sure as heck wasn’t going to run out of here like some little bunny rabbit. Instead, I turned back around and went into the ballroom. Many of the supernaturals had already left. There were Nephilim attendants trying to clean up the mess.
Chanelle and her mother were sitting on a set of chairs, speaking in low voices to the Nephilim Council. I ignored them as I glided towards Declan and Sam.
The former raised a brow at me. “It’s taken me two years to learn enough control to do that without potentially killing somebody,” I told them. “Don’t make the mistake of forcing this on someone unsuspecting. It’s not worth it. The Mwansas are your best bet if you want safety. I’ve trusted them with mine.”
With that, I left. Basil was waiting with Sophie outside. Everybody else seemed to have disappeared. His face was a play of consternation. “I know,” I told him. “But I’m done being silent while they treat me like crap.”
He blew out a breath. “I’m just worried that you’ve shot yourself in the foot.”
“As if I could possibly do anything to make them hate me even more!”
He took Sophie and me back home. Halfway through the transport, something brushed against my arm. The cloud of deadly darkness had no form. Cold fractured through me. It was so sharp that I came through the other side gasping. I clutched at my chest, feeling as though an icicle had pierced my heart.
“Lex?” Basil asked.
I was shivering. My breath came out in puffy white clouds. “Lex!” In the reflection of the mirror, I saw my lips turning blue. Sophie snapped her fingers in front of my face to get me to focus on her. She spoke a few words of an incantation. Pink light flared around her hands.
She slapped them on either side of my face. Her eyes closed as the magic took over. It permeated my skin. My sight pivoted to the Ley dimension. In it, my blue light had almost engulfed the starlit quilt. Sophie’s magic skidded through me. Where it touched the foreign object in my chest, it sizzled and turned to steam.
Sophie bit her lip and forced more magic into me. With an agonising breath, I called forth my own hedge magic to reinforce hers. For some strange reason, while inside of me, the hedge magic had become a strange aquamarine colour. Almost like some green had mixed with the blue. The icicle began to melt.
I opened my eyes to find myself sitting on the floor with my back pressed against the wall. Sweat poured from me. The hair that crowned Sophie’s brow clung to her skin.
“What the hell was that?” Sophie croaked.
“I think hell is an apt description.” I hadn’t felt anything that frosty since the cavern below the Fae forest. And the feeling of being caught when Astrid teleported me.
Basil’s face was lined with worry. He crouched down in front of me and lifted my eyelids. “I’m not ill,” I told him.
“Not that you know. Has this happened before?”
I shook my head. My limbs felt heavy. “Not like this. But weird stuff has been happening to me every time I’ve been teleported.”
Basil stood and began to pace the room.
“What’s happening?” Sophie asked. She mopped at her brow with her sleeve.
“Incidences of the Hell dimension encroaching over ours. Isla did say her father has seen more than one place where demons are congregating.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Basil turned away, his brows creased. “I have to go see the First Order.”
“Basil!” I said. “Focus.”
He shook himself. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t say anything for certain. I need to go. Stay here and don’t do anything insane.”
After getting changed and showering, Sophie and I got into our beds. “That was a crazy night,” Sophie said. “It feels like we have more of those than normal ones these days.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
I could feel her brimming with unspoken words. “What?” I said.
“I can’t believe how tacky that statue was,” she said. I got the feeling it wasn’t really what she wanted to say. At the moment, I couldn’t focus on anything too real.
“Tell me about it! The thing was an eyesore.”
“Did they really think it was going to go down well?”
“I don’t think they care.”
I wasn’t even sure when we both fell asleep. Green light covered me in comforting heat. I was wrenched awake again by enormous pressure squeezing my brain. My eyes blinked open one by one. I groaned and turned over. I could see the first rays of the morning sun through the window beside Sophie’s bed. She snored softly in her sleep.
I cast around for the source of the pressure. It wasn’t until the magic twisted itself into a knot that I realised something was scraping against the blood barrier I’d erected around the Grove.
Ten minutes later, I stood at the intersection where the Grove and Nightblood Academy met. In the Ley dimension, the entire area was shrouded in blue.
“What in the world?” Professor Mortimer said. I dropped back into this realm.
Scratching at my head where the pressure continued to press, I waited for the professor to make his assessments. Five minutes later, Jacqueline and the Headmaster Stan arrived. So did Professor Flint.
He gave me a surprised look before conferring with Professor Mortimer. I hung back next to the Arcana tree. Might as well do my chores while I was standing around waiting for the
