Bloodline Secrecy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 2) by Lan Chan (best e ink reader for manga TXT) 📕

“And how are they going to get those things to work around magic users?”

Basil shrugged. “They’ll just have to stop using magic.”

I held him at arm’s length to get a good look at my handiwork. “That should hold for a little while.”

He slumped. “A little while at least.”

“Have you found anything in the books in the library?” I asked.

“Not a thing. I’ve been through the entire Life Magic section and they all seem to point to the same direction. Once the vessel is destroyed, my soul will join those in the realm of the angel of death.” He paused. “I’ve been around for a long time. Most mages can’t claim the same thing.”

I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “Keep looking,” I said. “Surely there’s something that can be done.”

“Not unless we learn black magic and superimpose my soul into someone else’s body.”

I immediately thought of the way the Soul Sisterhood had tried to harvest Kai’s soul. I shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about. Killing somebody else to steal their body wasn’t even an option.

“What do I do now?” I said, flopping back down on the bed.

“You rest.”

“I’ve been doing that for days.” It occurred to me that nobody had come to check up on what I had done. When I mentioned it to Basil, he huffed.

“That’s because they have no idea how you did what you did.”

I told him about one of the Shadows calling me a traitor. The implication being that I was one of them. “That’s the thing they’re most worried about,” Basil said. “Better not mention it to them. If the Sisterhood thinks you’ve been given part of their gifts, it means you’re part of their society. They will stop at nothing to bring you in.”

“Why now?” I asked.

Basil hopped onto my chest. He sat down so that I was looking at his form with my hands tucked under the back of my head. “Nobody tells students this, but there has been a marked increase in demon activity since the beginning of the year. The alarms in Seraphina are constantly ringing. Every day there is a new threat. It feels almost as though the barrier to the Hell dimension is growing thinner. Demons are infiltrating the minds of mortals at an unprecedented rate.”

“Why haven’t we heard anything about this?”

“You’re children, remember?”

I didn’t feel like a seventeen-year-old. My bones sometimes felt like I’d been alive forever. Then something occurred to me. “You said it’s been happening since the beginning of the year, right?”

“Right.”

“You mean the beginning of this year? When I first started school at the Academy.”

He turned then and looked at me. “It’s just a coincidence.”

It probably was. I was getting as paranoid as Kai. I mean, it was ridiculous to think that the rise in demon activity had anything to do with me being introduced into magical society.

“It’s definitely a coincidence,” Basil repeated. Except I heard the sudden contemplation in his voice. In my mind, I saw Lucifer’s smiling face.

I remembered his conviction that it was my blood that would break his chains. The ones that the seraphim had placed on him. I was being crazy, right?

23

I resumed my usual schedule the next day. Waking up earlier than normal, I dressed in my uniform of jeans and a long-sleeved top and trudged over to the Grove. Time to face the music. It was better to do it quickly like ripping off a bandaid.

When I placed my hand on the fence around the Grove, an electric shock ripped up my arm. “Ow!”

I frowned. There was a force field around the Grove. Breaking through would have to involve a lot of pain. I was so not going to do this every single day. They were probably hiding in the bushes laughing at the fact that I was getting shocked.

“Hey!” I shouted. “That’s not funny!”

No response. I hadn’t expected one. Instead, I placed my palm on the fence again. The same electrical shock snaked up my arm. It raised all of the hairs on my body. My teeth chattered. When I drew the circle around myself, it clashed with the electricity for a moment. There were a few seconds where both forms of energy collided. They warred with each other until I pressed my other hand to the fence and fed more power into the circle.

The force field shattered. I heard the cry of anguish as though the Grove itself was displeased. Concerned, I hopped the fence and sank down into the path on the other side so that nobody outside could see me. I drew the circle to amplify the Ley lines and saw the web around me. The Grove was exactly where it had always been. In fact, the blood circle I’d placed around it was still intact. If anything, it seemed to pulse with reinforced vigour.

“What’s their problem?” I muttered.

Since none of them deigned to appear, I went about my daily morning chores as if nothing happened. It wasn’t until I was watering the Arcana tree that I swear I felt it shivering. It looked like the lightest wind was whispering through its leaves and branches except there was no wind today. The Grove was silent.

I placed my hand on the tree’s trunk. The well of hedge magic inside me rippled. “What the –? Purple! Can you please come out?”

I sat down on the grass with my back pressed against the Arcana trunk to wait it out. The tree was so big now that the trunk could take my extra weight bearing down on it. It was ten minutes before I felt anything stirring. And even then, it was only the softest sound of one nymph as she cautiously fluttered out of the underbrush.

“What’s gotten into you?” I asked.

Purple pointed straight at me. “I don’t get it.”

She flew right up to me and smacked me across the head. It stung just as badly as though somebody ten times her size had struck me. I jumped up to my feet. “What