by Lan Chan
“Woo,” Diana said, “you should see the death glare Chanelle is giving you.”
“Screw her,” I said.
Jordan clapped his hands. “The elite guard have manufactured trials that will test the contestants to their limits. In previous years, only those students at the top of their Houses have been chosen to participate. This year we make an exception. A human student will be competing in the Unity Games as a representative of the low-magic users.”
“You mean she’ll be trying to claw her way up supernatural society,” one of the girls sitting close to Chanelle called out. That elicited more clapping.
Jordan stared them down. I was beginning to like him. Then he made a preposterous suggestion. “Let’s welcome this year’s contestants to the stage.”
He started reading out the names of the four Dominion Academy students. They were all mages. Talk about your stereotypes. All four of them were thin, studious types. They walked up to the stage in an orderly fashion.
Then Headmistress Carmichael read out the names of the Pantheon students. I didn’t hear the first two. They were both Fae. “Barbara Whitley and Chanelle Laurent.”
The Pantheon students cheered and whistled. Diana booed. If she could get away with it, she would have thrown something. Everyone around us did the same on principle. I wished for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Why did that never happen when I wanted it to?
Headmaster Stan of Nightblood Academy was next. He read out the names of two necromancers. Unlike the mages of the Dominion, these two were tall and well-built. A vampire was next on the roster. And then, because the universe loved tormenting me, “…Andrei Popescu.”
Nightblood were the only ones who clapped as Andrei bounded down towards the stage. He had his hands clasped behind his back. Having reached the bottom of the amphitheatre, he leaped onto the stage without using its short steps. Andrei flashed a grin at me.
I glued my attention to Jacqueline. She read out the names of the Bloodline contestants. “Bradley Webb.” The Nephilim cheered. Even the ones who went to Pantheon. Jerks united. “Evan McKinnon.” Evan stood but didn’t move towards the stage.
“Maximus Thompson.”
All the shifters lost their minds. Max didn’t move either. I cocked my head to the side.
“Alessia Hastings.”
The whole assembly turned silent. For a single beat, all their eyes fixed on me. I could feel the heat clawing up my neck. Diana nudged me. I sat perfectly still. “Get up,” Diana hissed out of the corner of her mouth. She might as well have been speaking Alacanthean.
My body was weighted down. Kai turned in his seat. He gripped the back of his chair like he was using it as leverage to get up. I snapped out of it. Though my bones felt like they were made of marshmallows, I weaved my way to the aisle and started walking to the stage. The stadium erupted into a wave of sound. Most of it was booing and whispering.
As I stepped past, Max and Evan flanked me on either side. They had waited for me. The needles that had hooked into my throat eased. I pinned my gaze to Max’s back as we stepped up on stage. A sea of supernaturals inspected me. Contempt was the only word I could have used to describe the way the other contestants regarded me.
How did I get myself into these situations?
Only then did it really hit me that I had agreed to join a supernatural contest where all but two of the other contestants were out to kill me.
“Students,” Jordan said, “meet this year’s contestants.”
The student bodies got to their feet and cheered. I couldn’t help feeling that they were cheering for my death.
13
The rest of the assembly passed by in a blur. When it ended, Diana pushed our way out of the amphitheatre. If one more person accidentally on purpose ran into me, I was going to scream. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
“The headmistress wants to see you,” Alex said. He pointed at Sophie. “You too.”
“Why?”
In answer, Alex showed us his back and disappeared into the crowd.
“We’ll meet you for lunch,” Sophie told Diana.
“This is so weird,” Sophie said. Last night’s construction had fused the four Academies into one. The huge front lawn of the main Bloodline Academy building was now intersected with four other buildings in a circular fashion. The buildings shared a main quad. It was positively bursting with students.
I dropped into the Ley dimension. It was like a unicorn had thrown up all over the place. A great deal of work had gone into joining the Academies as seamlessly as possibly. But as I knew firsthand from stitching up Basil all those times, no patch job was ever without flaws. Tiny slivers of darkness ran along some of the seams. They glowed the same blue as my hedge magic. Worse still, my aura had grown once more.
“How lost are we right now?” I asked Sophie. Her voice dragged me back to reality.
“It’s just this section here where they’ve moved the bloody kitchen garden!”
She and I were both highly incensed by the decision. “I think we should give up and ask for directions.”
Her nose scrunched. She craned her neck to the sky and then towards where the dining hall still mercifully existed. “Okay.” Moving to the side of the walkway, Sophie slapped her hand on the stone birdbath and announced that we needed to get to Jacqueline’s office.
In front of our very eyes, golden arrows appeared. I couldn’t help feeling slightly nostalgic. Just last year I’d had to rely on these same arrows to get around.
We arrived at the new location of Jacqueline’s office to find it occupied with Sophie’s parents and the former members of the Soul Sisterhood. Alex muttered something as we walked in about there not even being guards at the door. I couldn’t help agreeing with him in this instance.
“Mama?” Sophie asked. “What’s going on?”
Jacqueline waved us in. The two seats directly in front of Jacqueline’s desk were free on account of Matilda and Giselle being freaks and leaning against the back wall. Nora was the only one sitting down. Jacqueline was perched on her desk.
When we were seated, Jacqueline sighed. “Firstly, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
She let the topic drop. “A message finally came through from the Human League in the middle of the assembly,” Jacqueline said. “The Council are going to try and reach out to them for a meeting.”
“What does that have to do with us?” I asked.
“While the League are around, we’d like them to have an escort,” Nora said. “Someone relatable. Jacqueline and I both think you’re the one for the job, Sophie.”
Sophie sputtered. “Why? I don’t have time for this! I’ve got a major Potions exam this semester and I’m trying to figure out the ingredients for…” She snapped her mouth shut.
I could have killed her. “For…” Jacqueline prompted.
“Just something I think is going to really push me ahead of Celeste,” she said. Nice save. She was lucky she was a good liar. If she’d have let slip that she was trying to recreate the spell that her great-grandfather had invented at my insistence, we would both be in much deeper trouble than we already were.
“This shouldn’t take up too much of your time,” Nora said. “We just need them to see we’re not here under any duress.”
Was it Matilda or Giselle who made the strangled sound? Nora chose to ignore them. Sophie was a much easier sell than me. “Yeah, okay,” she said.
“Fantastic,” Jacqueline said. “We’ll speak to Max later. The two of you can decide how you’d like to tackle the project.”
I bit my lips together to stop from reacting. “You’ll do what now?” Sophie said.
“Max,” Jacqueline said. “He’s our top Dimension Integration student. When he’s not all fur and teeth, he’s a perfect example of how we’re not all here to kill humans.”
I wanted to point out the obvious. That it was because most females looked at Max and their logical brain cells exploded.
But I sensed that keeping my mouth shut right now was the only way forward. Sophie did the same. Then something occurred to me.
“Why am I here?”
“We know there’s already a lot of pressure on you right now,” Nora said. “But there is a lot riding on whether you win the games. We’re going to need to make sure you’re a real contestant when the games begin.”
“Umm…how am I not a real contestant?”
This time, Giselle actually snorted. “You cringe every time a monster waves their weapon at you,” she said. How the hell did she even know that?
“G,” Matilda said. It was a very half-hearted warning.
“Don’t start,” Giselle said. She glared at me. “You’re the weakest damn Sisterhood candidate I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t particularly like you either,” I sneered at her.
“Who cares? That won’t make a difference when you get your ass handed to you by that Nephilim girl.”
“Alright,” Jacqueline said. “That’s enough. The long and short of it is that we want you to be as prepared for these games as you possibly can be. Most of the other contestants have been training all year. They will be training up until the very second it begins.”
The pieces finally slotted in place. I stared at her. “You are not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”
After a brief silence, she said, “I’ve agreed for Giselle to train you for the games.”
I almost broke the arm of the chair. It made my shoulder hurt but I swear I heard cracking. “What alternate universe am I in?” I said. “Have you forgotten what she did?”
Nora patted my shoulder. “She will be under surveillance at all times. But there’s too much at stake for you to just wing it, Lex.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I just got humiliated in front of all four academies.”
Giselle slammed her fist against the wall. The sound of it almost made me jump out of my skin. “And yet you didn’t do a thing about it. If a monster comes at you, you attack.”
I turned my palms up to the ceiling in a gesture of bewilderment. “Do you not think I’m taking this seriously?” I asked.
Jacqueline tilted my chin up to look at her. “It’s not that you’re not taking it seriously,” she said. “It’s that we have concerns about how calm you’re being. I’m worried you haven’t processed this, and by the time you do, it could be too late.”
I threw my arms up in the air. “Okay, fine,” I said. “Let me be trained by yet another nutcase. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Jacqueline dismissed us. “Four in the afternoon,” Giselle spat at me before I could close the door. “Do not be late.”
That was just great. Trained by a psychopath.
It was a toss-up between the two of us for most shellshocked. We were on our way to meet Diana at the dining hall when Sophie just paused in the middle of taking a step.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
The whites of her eyes could light up a room. “What happened in there?” she stuttered.
I bit my bottom lip. “I think you got roped into spending a lot of extra-curricular time with Max.”
Her mouth opened but no sound came out. For a moment, something dark swam beneath her eyes. She clamped her jaw. “I swear,” she said, “if I didn’t know any better, I would think my mama is trying to set us up!”
I couldn’t help grinning. It was a popular theory that Basil and I were also secretly cultivating. Having lived inside the shifter compound in Zambia most of her life, Nora had no compunctions when it came to shifter-human bonding. Anyone with eyes could see Max was crazy about Sophie.
I grabbed her hand and dragged her forward. “What are you complaining about?” I asked. “You get to spend your afternoons drooling over a hot shifter. I’m the one who has to make sure a nutcase doesn’t kill me.”
Sophie blanched. The weak grip she had on my hand turned to steel. “These games aren’t a joke, Lex. You saw what it was like inside the Shadow Ball arena. Imagine that times a hundred. They won’t drag you out unless you’re in mortal danger.”
“I know! I’ve seen the bloody footage.” It made me consider quitting supernatural society.
She sighed. “It does feel like you can’t seem to go five minutes without getting in trouble. Sometimes it makes me think you might have a target on your back.”
I didn’t believe in premonitions. I steadfastly refused to. It was a slippery slope between premonitions and prophecy. But something she said made me shudder. Any of the supernatural sorceresses would probably swear that a shade had walked through my soul. I swiped at my nose. That couldn’t be true. I would have seen it if it happened.
At least that was what I told myself.
We were outside the dining hall now. Or what had become of the dining hall. Both of us were so scattered that we just walked in the general direction until we hit a gaggle of people.
“Did we take a wrong turn?” I asked.
Sophie scanned the area. “I don’t think so.” She pointed over the top of the crowd where an enormous pavilion had been erected. The layout of this place had changed while we were in the assembly. “Communal dining hall. Bruno told me a few weeks ago that we would all be eating together.”
“Does that mean you have to work with kids from the other Academies?”
Her grimace was becoming more leonine every day. “There are some Dominion kids,” she said. “But apparently Pantheon and Nightblood don’t lower themselves to working.”
“So who makes their food?”
“They hire workers. Most of them are para-human.”
I groaned.
“You can tell it’s a Unity year,” I heard Isla say behind me.
“It’s a Unity year,” I mimicked in a singsong voice.
Without turning around, I heard her gruff laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re over it already?” she said. “It’s only day one. Just wait until it ramps up closer to the actual games.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
She gave me a withering look. We might be sort-of friends but that didn’t mean she’d suddenly turned into a soft-touch. “Do you even think before you get yourself into these situations?” she asked. My blank stare said it all. “There is a tradition of pranks associated with the Games. I thought you already got hit by one.”
She scanned the crowd. Her gaze landed on the group of vampires lingering by the water fountain. Over here I couldn’t move an inch without invading someone’s personal space. Where they stood, it seemed like someone had erected a forcefield. The crowd was giving them a wide berth.
Andrei was amongst them. He sat on the ledge of the wall, leaning over and watching me walk by.
“He didn’t even get in trouble for it,” Sophie said.
“I didn’t rat him out,” I informed her.
Isla huffed. “Even if you did, nothing would have happened. You know he’s related to Victoria Amos, don’t you? A little prank means nothing to them. They summon demons in classes, for goodness sake!”
“How is that acceptable?”
“How do you think they train?” Isla asked. “Half of them are bloody necromancers. They have to invoke demons.”
“Are you saying that while they’re here, they’re going to be summoning?” She shrugged. “Jacqueline said they weren’t allowed to do it on Bloodline soil.”
Isla grabbed my jaw and turned it to where the new dining hall intersected with the vast lawn that ran around the area. “Bloodline ends just about there,” she pointed out. “Jacqueline doesn’t have jurisdiction over the rest of the land. What they do there is their own business. And I can tell you now, their business is messed up.”
I couldn’t believe it. So much so that I must have appeared shaken when we finally got our food and found the rest of our friends.
“What’s wrong with her?” Roland asked. “Something I need to worry about?” It would have been touching if he didn’t grab a mirror out of his pocke
t to get in touch with his supernatural version of a bookie.
“Did you guys know that Nightblood conjure demons in their lessons?” I blurted out.
“Yeah,” Trey said. “It’s why there aren’t any other species in their Academy besides vamps and necros.”
“Why are they allowed to do it at all?”
I could see Sasha’s eyes twitching. It occurred to me that my prejudice was showing. “Sorry,” I said. “Is that offensive?”
Sasha shook himself. “I forget sometimes that you didn’t grow up in our world,” he said. “There’s no doubt Bloodline’s curriculum is the best. That’s why we’re flooded with Nephilim and Fae. But there are some people in the vampire community who think Jacqueline does too much to try and shield us from the darker arts.”
It was true that in the scheme of things, Bloodline had a relatively small population of students from the vampire community.
“How come you don’t go to Nightblood then?” Diana asked.
Just then Andrei and his horde glided past us. They wore oppressiveness like a shroud. There was an air of gloom around them that was almost reminiscent of the despair I felt when I’d fallen into the Hell dimension.
Sasha jerked his head in their direction. “There’s a reason why only about sixty percent of Nightblood students graduate. The rest have to be put down before they even make it to this age. All that interaction with the forces of Hell eventually wears you down. I like my head where it is.”
Trey asked me the million-dollar question. “I heard Andrei left you a present last night. What in the world did you do to him?”
Sasha snorted. It was a strange sound coming from the often-composed vampire. “She doesn’t need to do anything to him. Her very existence is enough.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He watched me for a moment. If I had not seen past the cold exterior he wore, I would have shivered at the arctic blue of his eyes. I kept forgetting that in the scheme of things, some of my friends were slightly scary. “Your boyfriend didn’t tell you?”