by Lan Chan
“I’ll come with you now,” I said. “But only so you can show me the Academy. And Nora and Mani are coming with me.”
Sophie cleared her throat. “And Sophie.”
“Blue,” Kai said.
“Humans only,” the blonde woman said. “Under no circumstances will the soul gate allow monsters to enter.”
“I wish you would stop calling them monsters,” Sophie said. The blonde woman and her short-haired companion exchanged a chagrined look. It was one full of knowing. Like they had Sophie pegged.
“Do we have an agreement?” the blonde woman said.
“Fine,” I accepted. Kai dragged me back from the front of the group.
“You have no idea what you’re walking into,” he said when I turned towards him.
“That thought had crossed my mind.”
His green eyes sparked with uncertainty. “They’re pretty adamant about you not being able to cross their soul gate,” I told him. “I’ll be fine. The place is tiny compared to Bloodline. What could possibly go wrong?”
His eyes darted to the grey swell beating at the rocks. “You can’t protect me from everything,” I said.
“I can try.”
For a moment the nightmare of his death tried to sink claws into me. My chest ached as an image of his lifeless body gripped me. Sensing the fear that suddenly took hold of me, Kai brushed a strand of hair away from my cheek. That simple touch reignited the warmth in my chest.
“Be careful,” he said. The scar on his brow creased as he strained to remain as calm as possible. It had to be killing him to let me go without him.
I nodded. “I’m not in any hurry to be a hero.” Walking back to the front of the group, I blew out a breath.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said.
The blonde woman reached out and placed her hand on the iron gate. Instead of swinging open, the bars shimmered until they became what appeared to be a solid film of pearlescent light. The motes inside danced with specks of green and gold.
“Come,” she said. She walked backwards, hit the barrier and slid straight through. Sophie and I looked at each other. The barrier seemed harmless enough.
Ever the curious teacher, Professor Mortimer stepped forward and brushed his hand close to the flickering source of energy. The gate didn’t like it. Sparks of electricity whipped from the seemingly benign entity. It snapped and snarled. The professor retracted his hand. But not before the soul gate snatched at him and flung him against the side of the bus. Jacqueline stepped to his aid. When she propped him up, every hair on his body was singed. His head hung limply to one side, smoke billowing from his cardigan.
“As I said,” the blonde woman commented. “The soul gate will not allow monsters to enter.”
She turned to me and smiled. Whatever else they were selling, these humans would not forgive the supernaturals from trespassing into our dimension any time soon.
7
The groan Professor Mortimer emitted had me nervous. Kai knelt down beside him, his hands already glowing with healing green light.
I stepped to the side, no longer sure if I wanted to go through the barrier. If I wasn’t fully human, or mostly human as some would suggest, the soul gate might deal me the same treatment.
“Don’t worry,” the blonde woman said. “The gate wouldn’t deny one of ours.”
It was Sophie who bit her lip and stepped through the barrier first. She’d been so quiet on this trip, but I had a feeling she was determined to make sure they were who they said they were. The soul gate didn’t react. Taking her lead, Sophie’s parents did the same. And then there was only me on this side.
The other humans looked at me. Some of their stares were expectant. Others were understanding. The look Sophie gave me was conspiring. We had fought to belong together. There was no way I could back down now. Curling my hands into fists, I took the plunge. The sensation of teleporting had always been a tingle around me. The feeling of walking through the soul gate was nothing like that. For a moment, the energy engulfed me. It smothered me until I felt like something had reached into my mouth and was forcing my lungs to collapse. There was a brief moment of panic. Something cold and dark danced at the edge of my vision. It scraped its consciousness over me as though peering right into my soul.
The dark power inside of me reared up. It coursed through my body as though trying to purge the magic of the soul gate from me. Where the two sources of magic collided, my nerves fired. If I could, I would have yelped. It was the blue of my hedge magic that created a buffer. When it slid between the two forces, their erratic struggle ceased.
I couldn’t have been in there for more than a second, but my life flashed before my eyes. A short but recently eventful life. A shudder of unbearable sadness shot through my chest. And then I was on the other side. The blonde woman had a slight frown on her face. I caught it just as she was attempting to neutralise it.
“What happened?” Sophie said. “You stopped halfway through.”
I massaged my brow with my fingers. It was only when I turned my face up that I realised there was moisture on my cheeks. Swiping the tears away hurriedly, I smiled at Sophie.
“Not sure,” I said. “But I damn well don’t want to do that again.”
“There’s no need to,” the blonde woman said. On this side of the soul gate, her voice turned sweet. “This way.”
I waited for Nora and Mani to follow her before I fell in line behind them with Sophie at my side. The guy and the short-haired woman took up the rear.
“I apologise for the theatrics,” the blonde woman said. Her shoulders slumped a little. She flexed her fingers and some of the hostility seeped away. When she turned around to smile at me, it seemed genuine. “I’m Samantha,” she said. “My companions are Sean and Jessica.”
“Theatrics?” Nora asked.
“Yes,” Sean said. When I glanced back at him, the bravado he wore like a shield was gone. “It isn’t often that monsters come to our gate, but when they do, we prefer to show our most aggressive faces.”
“The way animals puff up their chests to avoid a fight,” Sophie suggested. Sean grinned. Though there was some reticence behind it.
“Given your affiliation with shifters,” he said, “I don’t know how comfortable I am with that comparison.”
“You seem to know a lot about us for having just met,” Mani said.
“We make it a habit of keeping ourselves informed of every Earth-magic user,” Jessica said. She cracked her knuckles. The sound was like firecrackers going off.
“And how do you do that when our communities are shielded from the human world?”
Samantha sniffed. “Those barriers that the monsters erect aren’t anything to write home about. They call us low-magic users like our magic is lesser. They’re just afraid of what we can do.”
We reached the door of the mansion. “Why a house right on the beach?” Nora asked as Samantha pushed the door.
“Our magic is enhanced by saltwater,” Samantha said. “It strengthens the wards around the school and helps to keep the monsters out.”
I could feel Sophie’s spine stiffen every time the word monster was used. It made me wonder if she was offended for the supernaturals or if the word itself was unpleasant for her. I stepped quickly into the mansion and breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed. It sealed the entrance and pushed the sound of the waves into the background.
The scent of tuberoses and lilies smacked me in the face. In an open garden they would have been enticing. Inside this building, they were cloying. Samantha must have noticed the look on my face because she hastened to explain.
“We just did a cleansing,” she said. “We’re trying to get the sage and rosemary smell out.” It seemed like faulty logic to me.
“What were you trying to cleanse?” Mani asked. His nose scrunched up.
“Bad memories. Bad intentions. It’s one of our New Year’s rituals. We’ve had a turbulent few months.”
“Tell m
e about it.”
Samantha cringed. Her straight back gave way a little. She turned towards Nora. “Rumour has it that you’ve managed to convince the monsters to allow human representatives on their Council.”
Nora nodded. “That’s right.”
“We would consider it your duty then to demand the return of our sister.”
I almost choked. “No way,” I said. “Giselle tried to kill me.”
Samantha was halfway up a short flight of stairs that led to a mezzanine floor. She gripped the globular decoration on the wooden handrail. “She is one of ours. If there is justice to be dealt, it should be by us. And for the record, she did not try to kill you. She tried to liberate you.”
“Yeah, right. I think trying to liberate my soul from my body counts as trying to kill me.”
“There’s no way the Council is going to agree to release her,” Mani said. “She murdered one of their ranks and tried to do the same for the others.”
“I say again,” Samantha said, “if we had one of theirs, they would demand we hand them over.”
“Would you even bother to contain one of theirs?” Sophie asked. Her arms were crossed over her chest.
There was collective silence. Ha! I didn’t think so. Samantha’s lips pulled up at the side. Right now she looked every bit the annoyed shifter. “Why should we give them mercy when they have never given us any? After they used us to help them beat back Lucifer, they attempted to eradicate us. It is only the soul gate and Gaia’s gifts that have allowed us to remain hidden for so long. Will you at least suggest her release?”
“I don’t know what part of no way you don’t understand,” I said. “And Giselle wasn’t the only one. There were two others who helped her. Do you know where they are?”
The smirk she gave me said she did. And that she wasn’t going to tell me any time soon. “Unlike the monsters, we trust our own to their missions. How they choose to conduct themselves is their own business.”
“So you raise assassins and then set them free.”
My words washed over them like acid. “This is part of the reason why you must come here,” Samantha said. “You think like you’re one of them. They are the ones who shouldn’t be here. We’re just doing what we can to fight back.”
“Has a Sister ever murdered a human?” I asked.
“Never.”
It was an absolute. “What if they did?”
“Then we would turn them over to the police.”
Serves me right for pressing the issue. What got me was that they were starting to sound reasonable. This was going to be interesting.
She led us up to the mezzanine level that then split off into two different hallways. “This side of the Academy is where the bedrooms are,” Samantha said. “Our classrooms are on the lower floor and in the surrounding grounds.”
“What kinds of classes do you provide?” Nora asked.
“We have a mix of Earth-magic classes for the students who aren’t Soul-marked. Those who are get trained specifically for those skills.”
That answered the question that had been burning in me since Sean stepped out of the Academy. The Sisterhood had that moniker for a reason. They were an all female group. It meant that there were other low-magic users here. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if I had been picked up by the Sisterhood instead of Kai.
“How many students do you have?” Nora kept pressing. I was glad she was here because all I could think of was that we were walking through the hallway of yet another magical school. One which none of the Council had known about until I had received the letter a few weeks back. If the soul gate was anything to go by, it meant that there was magic here comparable to theirs.
“Thirty or so,” Samantha said. She gestured to what appeared to be a communal kitchen.
“So few,” Mani observed.
Samantha nodded. “It’s true we don’t have numbers on our side. That’s why we have to contend with other means of overcoming the monsters.”
“They’re not all monsters,” I said. Kai aside, I kept wondering what they would think of Doctor Thorne. His appearance would likely give most humans pause. But I would bet my life he didn’t have a destructive bone in his body. This despite the fact that, as a basilisk, he had considerable dominion over the lower-ranked para-humans.
Jessica had moved forward in our procession. I saw her lips tip up. “Just wait until you’ve been here a couple of weeks,” she said. “I can guarantee some of the stories you hear from the real-life experiences of our students will make you think otherwise.”
I slumped against the wall. The thought of coming here and leaving Bloodline had my palms sweating.
Jessica pushed open a door that revealed a communal kitchen. Gleaming silver appliances mixed with black marbled surfaces. There was a skylight above that let in sunlight. The place was empty except for a big-boned woman in a pleated red dress and chequered half-apron. She waved at us but was hampered by the tray of pastries she was balancing.
“That’s Melissa,” Samantha said. “She’s a hearth witch and our head chef. As much as we can, we try to eat together in the dining room.” She pointed to the long table that was located on the other side of the room. It was big enough to hold dozens of people over.
“Anyone for coffee?” Sean asked. Now that there was no longer the perceived threat of supernatural creatures, he had lost some of that slick air that I had mistaken for sleaziness.
“I wouldn’t mind some,” Nora said.
“Me too,” Sophie agreed. I shook my head. How odd for coffee to make an appearance again. Most of the supernaturals had no use for human stimulants. They didn’t bother drinking it. I hadn’t realise how much I had come to take that for granted. Coffee was on the bottom of my list of favourite things. That sentiment was sacrilegious amongst most human social groups. But for me the smell of coffee was synonymous with cold winter nights in which I had to wake up while dew still coated the grass. I had to get out of whatever corner I’d slept in so that the cops didn’t notice me and try to throw me back into the system.
We entered the kitchen, and Samantha waved at us to take a seat. She returned shortly after with a tray laden with coffee essentials. While Nora and Mani poured milk and sugar into their coffees, Samantha turned to me.
“I apologise for the way you found out about Bethany Hastings,” she said. “I had no intention of revealing that to you so publically. I just didn’t know what else to do to get through to you.” I swallowed. She made a motion like she was going to touch my arm but thought better of it. The trap door in my chest thumped. I pushed against it, to keep it closed.
“You’d get a proper education here,” she went on. “Some of our courses like Horticulture are even university accredited.”
“You should have led with that.”
She scratched at her cheek. “I thought perhaps given where you’ve been living, something a bit more mystical might have appealed to you.”
They really did think I was some kind of monster captive. To be fair, from the outside that’s how it would appear to me as well. I went to Bloodline Academy, but it hadn’t been through my own choice. I’d gone because there were no other choices besides possibly the Dominion prison.
Nora tapped her spoon onto the side of her cup. She set it down when our attention returned to her. “What would Lex be doing once she does finish school?”
Samantha pulled out one of the leather-backed chairs and sat facing them. “She could integrate back into the human world like many of our students have in the past. Her skills could be utilised for various jobs.”
“And if she chooses not to get a job?”
“Terran could provide her with employment.”
Nora stirred her mug as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “And what job would that be?” She took a sip. Her eyes never left Samantha’s over the rim of her cup.
“She would assist with the protection of the human species.”
If
I had a drink, I would have spat it out at this point. “You mean you hunt demons too?” I asked.
Samantha nodded. “Not just demons, though.”
The pointed look she gave me said it all. They didn’t consider demons their only enemy. I would be expected to hunt down the supernaturals as well. “How do you distinguish between which supernaturals are doing harm and which ones are just minding their own business?”
“We leave it up to the individual to make that assessment.”
“And if they assess wrong?”
There was a collective shrug from the Terran natives. Right. So this was a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of establishment.
“I know it goes against everything you’ve been taught for the past year,” Samantha said. “But given the current climate, we can’t afford to be discerning. That’s where we went wrong in the past. We allowed the compassionate side of us to forgive too much, and now we’re paying for it.”
“What do you mean ‘the current climate?’” Mani asked.
Samantha cocked her head to the side. “You haven’t heard?”
He shook his head. Sean got up and went to grab some of the newspapers sitting in the magazine racks by the other entrance. He brought two issues of The Age newspaper back and set them on the tables in front of us. The headlines splashed across the front of the papers were about a cyclone that had come from nowhere and was currently destroying the coast up near Port Douglas.
“This is the sixth natural disaster in the past year,” Samantha said. She flipped open the first page of the newspaper and then pointed at another piece. The headline was about a school shooting in the States. In another couple of pages, there was a piece about a man who had taken people hostage in an office building in New South Wales. Closer to home, there were reports of the overcrowding in some of the psychiatric hospitals. Two men who had been arrested and charged with possible terrorist attacks in the city were recently diagnosed with mental health issues. They were being treated at the same psychiatric hospital where Nanna had been living.
“This is a clear sign of imbalance,” Samantha said. “These disasters and the behaviours are out of the ordinary. Too many of them too close together.”