I scratched at my ear and looked at my feet. “I know. But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”
His mouth took on a grim line. When he was done, I couldn’t feel a link to either lines of magic. Not even the tiny flickers that remained after I was completely drained. Instead, when I went to reach for the magic, all I saw was a literal seal. A golden circle with Michael’s symbol on it. A winged lion with two broadswords crossed above it. Michael bowed before disappearing.
Eugenia wrinkled her nose. “Sanctimonious bastard,” she said. She held her hand out to Nanna. “We haven’t been properly introduced. Eugenia Markham.”
Nanna spoke to her while I sat there and stared. In one fell swoop, I’d just lost everything. Breathing was becoming difficult, but it had nothing to do with my injuries. My whole body felt numb. My chest ached. There was a big, empty hole in my stomach, but the thought of eating made the back of my throat taste bitter. I didn’t realise Nanna and Eugenia had stood until somebody shook me gently.
I looked up into Eugenia’s light grey eyes. She cupped my face in her sharply manicured hand. Her fingers were surprisingly calloused. Her voice was gentle but even.
“Remember that you’re a witch, sweetheart. The witch never gets the prince. But we have a lot of fun anyway.”
She said it like it was inevitable. Why fight it? If that was her version of comfort, I was in for a great time at Ravenhall.
39
The first fortnight in Ravenhall was an exercise in not losing my mind. The place was like one big sorority house. If the sisters didn’t like you, they could actually curse you and turn you into a toad. They lived in a commune very much like a witch’s coven that I had seen in the movies. Explosions rent the air at all hours of the night. Every day was a feast or some ridiculous ritual. There were chapters of Ravenhall that didn’t believe in clothing. Others thought that bathing eroded their powers. Max had been right. The stench hanging around the fens made me want to hurl.
Worst of all, unlike Bloodline, we were allowed to keep pets. Unfortunately for me, rodents were seen as very useful and cute animals. Nanna and I were given our own little cottage in the communal housing area. It felt like I’d been plucked from the twenty-first century and deposited into an inaccurate medieval play. Except at the end of it, I couldn’t just walk away.
My only saving grace was that Basil had argued black and blue with Eugenia to be allowed to stay with us. He spent a week building wards to keep out the smell and the nosy neighbours. We’d had several dozen drop-ins. After one of the sorceresses made a comment about how Kai should be sowing his wild oats with as many women as possible, I was ready to commit murder.
On day five, I had a run-in with the world’s biggest rat around the borders of the fens. From then on, I spent most of my time in the back garden.
That’s where I was when Eugenia found me one morning. She was accompanied by the last person in the world I wanted to see.
“What?” I asked in response to the grimace on Giselle’s face. “Don’t tell me, you don’t approve of this either?”
My temper was in huge supply these days. They came to a stop in front of where I was lying on a picnic rug. I had a sketchpad in front of me with several thousand circles drawn on every page and counting. It had started as an outlet for my pent-up rage. I refused to allow myself to think about anything to do with Kai. Basil was forced to go on the MirrorNet in his room because the network was awash with gossip. It was impossible not to be drawn into a debate about whether Kai and Chanelle would seal the deal before he turned twenty-five. Especially when that debate was shrieked at you by a hysterical sorceress from some dumb daytime MirrorNet gossip channel.
“So this is how you’re going to spend the rest of your life?” Giselle said.
“Seems like it.” I went back to drawing. The routine was still there. Every circle I drew was a representation of one I couldn’t draw with my sealed powers. I was still able to drop into the Ley dimension, but I could only observe it now.
Giselle looked like she wanted to say something. I stabbed at the circle I had just drawn. “The Unity Games are approaching.”
She was surely kidding. “What’s your point?”
“You’re still a contender.”
I glanced at Eugenia to see if she was listening to this nutcase. The sorceress’s gaze was locked on to my circle. I glanced down and my eyes bulged. I ripped the page out of the sketch book and tore it into shreds. Then I balled it up and tossed it onto the growing pile of discarded pictures that I had accidentally imbued with Angelical words. Writing them was vastly easier than speaking them. And nothing went boom when I did. Still, it wasn’t a good look. Her brow rose but Eugenia said nothing.
There was a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy at Ravenhall. They turned a blind eye to quite a lot of stuff that happened here in the name of magical freedom. Unlike the more staid supernatural society, the citizens of Ravenhall railed against being forced into hiding. They were all for integrating with and coming out to the human population. But I had a feeling that had more to do with the proverbial profit margin than any sense of political or dimensional pride.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I said, “I’m a magical dud now.”
“You still own a demon blade,” Giselle said.
“So what?”
“So there are people who have done more with less.”
“Well, then go and bug them about the games. I’ve got a lot of other stuff to do.”
Fresh out of patience,
