“You know I don’t work for you, right?” he’d asked when I’d put through a call. “And I don’t want to be an accomplice to any of this in case Fur-face gets wind of it. He tore apart the entire east wing of the elite guard cells when he got out. I don’t think they even know how to rein him in.”
That was the last thing I needed to hear about right now. “Listen. Either pass on the message or give me back the ring so I can do it on my own!”
That went down like a lead balloon. Without Gabriel’s Key, he could kiss sneaking into Seraphina goodbye.
“Fine. I thought you were meant to be the nicer human!”
Three days after the incident in the conference room, Max emerged from the Cabin. As per my agreement with Gwen, I hadn’t made any attempt to contact him, nor had I made any inquiries about him. It meant everyone around me had to zip their lips. The only way I’d known was because the air in the Reserve became charged and thin, like it was holding its breath waiting for a reaction from him. When it didn’t come, I breathed a sigh of relief, even as something chipped at my soul. Just because he didn’t kill everyone on sight didn’t mean he was stable, though.
As a mercy, I went from Laila’s house to the Academy and back again. I didn’t spend evenings with the kids in the field. Then again, nobody else did either.
“Everyone is on eggshells,” Laila informed me. “At the moment he’s worse than a demon.”
I was a pariah again. It seemed that in their minds, the sin of rejecting their alpha was on par with sacrificing people and stealing their essences. Everyone was taking it as a personal insult.
“What?” one of the wolf girls snapped at me on my way to the Academy. “Is he not good enough?”
I knew her. She was the ground-beef-lasagne-and-toasted-herb-bread girl. I couldn’t remember their names, but the food stuck with me. I wanted so badly to tell her that Charles said her lasagne tasted like ass. What I did was increase my stride towards the portal field. It was strange not to have Noah with me when I entered the Potions classroom. When I spotted the person sitting at my usual table, my chest lightened for the first time in weeks.
“Hey, Soph,” Trey said. His smile was hesitant.
I dropped my backpack and almost strangled him with the force of my hug. Despite my joy, I kept it brief. It had become habit to count the seconds of physical contact so my scent wouldn’t rub off on anybody. That I had to be so cautious was one of the reasons my eyes teared up when I looked into Trey’s face.
“You’ve shot up again,” I said like it was an accusation.
“It’s been eight months.” His voice was tight. “I’ve only just decided to forgive you for disappearing.”
He didn’t even pretend to pay attention while Professor Suleiman was going over the ingredients for our latest potion. It only caught his attention when the cart of blood was rolled into the room and his nose twitched. “What the hell?” he said.
“Things have changed around here.”
“I’ll say.” He eyed me where I was sitting there, not following the lesson plan either. “Shouldn’t you be jumping up and elbowing everybody for the best ingredients right about now?”
I only grimaced at him while I waited for the rest of the class to become distracted with their potions. “Does it not concern you that they’re working on a potion to knock out a rogue shifter?” I asked in an effort to try and distract him.
“How exactly are they going to get a shifter to drink a potion while they’re being attacked?” he asked.
“Did you forget everything you’ve learned while you’ve been away?” I asked. “See this?” I pointed to the silver tubular instrument that looked like a cross between a straw and a smoking pipe. “It’s used to disperse the potion into the air.”
He rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Uh huh. How easy is it to operate something that small and intricate in the middle of a fight? It’s hard enough with an actual weapon. Why do you think most mages don’t bother with potions unless they have time on their hands?”
He laughed at my scowl. “Face it, Soph. You’re the only one who might have a chance with using potions if there’s something coming at you, and that’s got nothing to do with the actual potion.”
He was lucky that there was a break in the number of students approaching the professor or I would have come back at him with something really insightful. The professor glanced up at me from where he sat behind the desk flipping through a Potions textbook.
“I honestly don’t know how she keeps any of this straight,” he muttered. Come to think of it, the ingredients trolley did seem to be in a slight state of disarray. There were things all mixed together inside a glass jar like he’d just hastily scooped them inside after the last class. “Some of these things look exactly the same as the other!”
“I think those ghost flowers are separated by scent.”
His nostrils flared as he huffed. “I will be more than a little relieved when Professor McKenna wakes up. Now, what can I help you with? Bearing in mind that Professor McKenna’s notes say that you’d already bypassed the fourth-year syllabus before you finished up last year.”
I scrubbed at the back of my neck. “Actually, I was hoping to talk to you about words of light.” His eyes lit up. “Oh, well why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“The thing is, I was wondering about possession.”
“Possession?”
“Yes. Demon possession. Do you know anything at all about a person being able to exorcise a demon from themselves when they are possessed. Maybe with a word of light?”
He scratched at
