“I can’t believe you just leave it lying around,” Sophie said.
The demon blade was treacherous. Sophie’s older cousins were fascinated with it. So were the pack of shifters who lived in the compound. They made it a game to see if they could trick the blade into recognising them. But after the blade went haywire and almost cut her male cousin in half, they were forbidden from going anywhere near it.
We heard footsteps in the hallway. “Oh God,” Sophie said. “It begins.”
The door opened. Her parents came back with the headmistress. Jacqueline Pendragon gave new meaning to the term statuesque. Even during the off-weeks, she was dressed in structured suit pants and a metallic gold blouse that set off the lighter tones in her hair.
“Welcome back, ladies,” Jacqueline said. She purposefully eyed the blade in my hands. “Nora tells me you’re going to accompany her to the shifter Reserve.”
“Under duress,” Sophie explained.
The edge of Jacqueline’s mouth tipped up. Basil and I exchanged a glance. I wondered if Jacqueline knew the real reason why Sophie was having a panic attack. The Reserve was where most of the shifters who weren’t integrated into the human population lived. It had been explained to me that the area was magicked to appear as though it was a sprawling nature reserve combining the natural environment of the shifter’s animal halves. Kind of like the billabong and swamp areas we had on campus for those students who were otherworldly. During breaks, most of the shifters, including one insanely hot lion shifter, went home. And we were about to gatecrash the place to speak to their Council representative.
“Be that as it may,” Jacqueline said, “I happen to agree with Nora. It’s about time there was some proper representation in the ranks.”
“You don’t think the high mages represent us?” I asked.
She raised a brow at me. “I seem to recall you were the one to ask that question, Lex.”
“Yeah, but I was half delirious at the time!”
She smiled outright this time. Her focus returned to Nora. “The shifters are definitely your best bet for support. I’m just not sure if you’re catching them at the right time.”
It was a full moon cycle. I’d been around long enough to know that the shifters tended to get a bit rowdy during this time. Nora just grinned.
“Now is the perfect time,” she said. “They’re all aggressive and enraged. They’ll see the injustice of it, and they’ll feel like it’s their duty to help us.”
If there was one thing I knew, it was that Nora understood how to tame a wild animal. She’d had the shifters in Zambia eating out of her hands. Literally.
That’s how we found ourselves standing in the portal field for the second time that day. It was the arrival and departure point for most of the portals. Before my very eyes, a suitcase on wheels appeared beside Nora. It was a strange hard-plastic case that was transparent. Inside, the case was stacked with separators. Air holes were strategically placed to allow for ventilation. There was a massive pie sitting at every layer. The smell of stewed fruit, berries, and crusty pastry would have made my stomach grumble. But I remembered that first day in Zambia when she’d tried to cook us breakfast and set the kitchen on fire.
“I assume Sophie made those,” I said. She laughed.
“You bet your butt.”
“Any magic in there?”
She only winked at me.
Sophie was chewing on her nails. I swiped her hand from her mouth. “You’ll be fine,” I said. We stepped through the portal.
All of my platitudes flew out the window a moment later. As my foot touched down on the other side of the portal, a pair of unbelievably green eyes met mine. Sophie and I both squeaked at the same time. We’d materialised in a structure suspended in the treetops. It was like a tree house magnified by a thousand percent. The room we were in was surrounded on two sides by floor-to-ceiling glass. The view it afforded was an extensive network of wooden and rope bridges that turned the area into a community of buildings. But the majestic view only registered in a tiny part of my brain. The rest of me was trying not to react to the sight of Malachi Pendragon and the girl who was clinging to him like her life depended on it.
2
Sophie stepped closer to me. I shook my head at her. A slice of unbearable irritation shot through my chest, but I bit my tongue and reminded myself that I’d been the one to push him away. So I had no right to feel anything if he moved on. That’s what I kept telling myself as I fisted my hands behind my back.
I refused to look at the girl directly. The blurry, two-second vision I’d had of her was enough to make my blood turn cold. If someone had ordered up a girl who was my complete opposite, that’s what they would have gotten. Legs, boobs, blonde. It was a killer combo. Someone murder me.
Sophie’s eyes bugged out. It was only then that I noticed Max and another boy standing just behind Kai. This time I reached for her. She clenched her fingers around mine once and then let go.
“Mr. and Mrs. Mwansa?” Kai asked. He managed to extract himself from the girl. “Durin is waiting for you in the convention room.”
Why? I kept screaming in my head. I knew he and Max were close but of all the places he had to be, why did it have to be here and now?
He took Nora’s suitcase from her. My left eye twitched. I bit the inside of my cheek drawing blood. It was a poor distraction.
We followed him through the network of
