Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3) by Lan Chan (best short novels .txt) 📕

point. Why the hell wasn’t I allowed to see my own grandmother? I hadn’t even noticed I was gripping the edge of the plate until it scraped against the desk.

“Perhaps you can describe to me what you’ve seen,” Samantha said as she patted my hands away from the plate.

“The last time I saw into her aura it was laced with all these strings of blue,” I said. “The kind of blue like this.” I stood up and drew a circle on the wooden floor in the open space between her desk and the window. Normally I let the circles remain invisible, but this time I commanded my power to illuminate. I’d never get used to the stunning glow of the perfect circle. It soothed some of the burning in my chest at the thought of Nanna.

Samantha came out from behind her desk. She tiptoed around the outside of the circle. “Your magic is precise,” she said. “Who taught you this?”

“Nanna.”

“But she’s non-magical.”

I scratched my head. “But it’s true.”

“How well do you remember your early childhood? Are you certain there wasn’t anyone else there when you were very young?”

It hit me then what she was trying to say. I wracked my brain for some kind of memory of my great-grandmother being in the picture. But there was nothing there. My earliest memory had been of lying on my belly on a picnic blanket drawing circles while Nanna weeded the garlic bed. “There’s nothing I can think of.”

“May I?” She raised her hand to my forehead. I nodded.

The touch of her soft lined hands on my temple was strange. I could feel the vibration of her power which had a bright cream glow to it. I closed my eyes for a second, willing the surge of my own power not to break against hers. It appeared that whatever was inside me didn’t like the idea of someone else invading our space.

The black-and-blue vastness undulated. It reminded me too much of the unpredictability of the ocean. Samantha’s light flickered. I opened mine to find her entire body phasing in and out of this reality.

Her light touched the smallest surface of the pool of my energy. My body reacted without conscious thought. The blue parted to allow the darkness within access to her power. She gasped and ripped her hand away just as the blackness wrapped tendrils around her. I shoved her at the same time, wrenching her away before the darkness took hold.

She stumbled into the edge of her desk. Her hands balanced on either side of her. “My goodness,” she said. “That’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

I hung my head. Damn. All of the hopes of learning what I was dashed against the waves inside my mind. “Yeah, nobody else can figure out what it is either.”

When she glanced up at me, her eyes were shining. “I didn’t say I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Only that I’ve never come across it before. At least not in a practical sense.”

“Beg your pardon?”

She smiled at me, her delight causing lines to appear around her eyes. “You’re a bone witch,” she said. “I had thought we’d lost that line.”

“A what now?”

“The very first of the Sisterhood that walked this earth had the ability to tap into the well of existence. Our powers are based on balance. Life and death. Your hedge magic provides you with life...the darker magic...”

I massaged my forehead. “Are you telling me I’m some kind of necromancer?”

I’d read about those mages who had the ability to use blood and dark magic to bring people back from the dead. It sounded like an unholy practice. That’s why it was strictly forbidden at Bloodline and heavily regulated in the supernatural community.

Samantha made a face and I sighed with relief. “No, nothing so gruesome. But your power, it allows you to tap into the essence of the departed. The earth itself is a mix of things that have given up their bodies to nourish the living. It’s symmetry.”

I had to sit down. The window ledge was the closest thing. She watched me carefully. I didn’t like it. “What?”

“You said you’re bound to Azrael in some way...”

“Yes.”

“By all accounts, he is the archangel of death.”

“No way. He ferries souls to the afterlife. He doesn’t kill them.”

“Sometimes, he must make a decision about what lives and what dies.”

I had to agree that certainly sounded possible. And then something hit me. The thing that had eluded me about why Lucifer was so hell-bent on me joining him. If Samantha was right and my ability was linked to Azrael in this way, then there was a possibility I could kill the seraphim. Did he want me as an ally because I would defeat him as an enemy?

My heart stuttered. And in my mind, the sound of the devil laughing rang in my ear.

20

Samantha noticed the alarm that settled over me but she didn’t understand the source of it. My hands were shaking. I tried to sit on them. “It’s okay,” she said. “This ability doesn’t mean you’re touched by death. After all, look at the good you’ve managed to do with it.”

The shock of her words rattled me. “You mean like binding the soul of a mage to the body of someone who had just died?”

She held her hand to her lip. I wasn’t sure if it was involuntary or if she did it to hide her displeasure. “Yes, well, maybe this once we can overlook the monster-reviving thing.” She wiped her hands on her thighs. “Your power does prove slightly difficult. The bindings around your grandmother are chaotic. Not something that would be done slowly over an extended period of time. Then again, you had no idea what you were doing. It’s puzzling. I can see the bonds you’ve formed with her. But there are so many wrapped around her it’s like she’s cocooned.”

“I might as well be a spider, huh? Don’t spiders wrap their victims in gossamer before sucking them dry?”