"I'll deal with the airline again," Call said.
To Finley's and Aislinn's questioning looks, Dad clarified, "Call was able to conjure up tickets and falsify paperwork for us to get out of England.
It's not the most glamorous use of magic, but it is certainly useful."
"Fair enough," Aislinn said. "In that case, girls, go grab your things. And Finley, go ahead and gas up the truck. We've got a long drive to the nearest airport."
As I looked around the room at all these people-my family-excitement thrummed through me. Yes, this might go down in history as the stupidest thing I'd ever done, but it felt so good to have a plan that I didn't care if it was a bad one. And looking at everyone's faces, I think they were all feeling the same thing. Well, except for Torin, who was just staring at all of us with a bored expression.
I followed Finley and Izzy out of the room and up the stairs. I was nearly at the landing when a light suddenly burned my eyes. At first I thought it was just the glare from the window at the top of the stairs, and I moved my hand to shade my face. That's when I realized that the light was coming from my hand. I watched as a bright golden glow encased my arm, then spread down to cover my torso. Izzy turned around, and I saw her mouth drop open. She reached for my sleeve, but as we watched, her fingers passed through me and my arm vanished.
The golden tendrils moved faster now, winding their way around my body like snakes. I watched as my legs became translucent and then disappeared altogether.
It all happened so fast that I didn't even have time to panic. All I could do was look down at Mom, who was running up the stairs toward me and shouting my name.
"Mom!" I felt my lips move, but no sound came out. Someone else was running into the hallway, and I thought it might be Dad. But then the glow covered my eyes, blinding me. There was the weirdest sensation of being bent and pulled, like someone was trying to fold my body in on itself, and I was moving so fast that every bone in my body rattled. It was like being yanked through a tornado.
And then, just as abruptly, everything stopped.
I was standing up, which seemed like a miracle, considering how badly I was trembling. My breath sawed in and out of my lungs painfully hard, and I studied my feet and tried to remember how to breathe without sounding like a hyperventilating walrus. Eventually, the wheezes became more like gasps, but there was still something wrong with my eyes. I'd been wearing dingy white sneakers, but now, my feet looked black. And was I wearing knee socks?
I blinked again. At the Brannicks', I had on jeans. Now from my knees up, I saw a swirl of blue, black, and green plaid.
And then I looked up, and suddenly, I wasn't gasping anymore. I wasn't even breathing.
The house was even more decrepit, and the ferns that bracketed the front door were dead. What had once been a "sag" in the front porch was now more like a crater, and even though it was August, there were no leaves on any of the oak trees that had once shaded the place.
I didn't know how, or why, but there was no denying it.
I was back at Hex Hall.
PART II
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here."
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
CHAPTER 13
I wasn't alone on the front lawn of Hex Hall. There was a crowd of kids milling around, maybe a hundred altogether, all looking as shocked and rattled as I felt. I spotted Taylor, a dark-haired shapeshifter I'd kind of been friends with, standing a few feet away. Her eyes met mine. "Sophie?" she said, confused. "Where did you come from?" She glanced down and seemed startled to realize she was wearing her Hecate uniform. "Where did I come from?" she added, more to herself than to me.
I shook my head. "I don't know."
A buzz began to rise from the group of students, and I could feel confusion turning to panic. Nearby, two faeries-I thought they were Nausicaa and Siobhan-embraced, brightly colored tears dripping from their wings.
As I moved through the crowd, I could only make out snatches of conversation, but I heard words like, "golden light" and "getting grabbed out of thin air." So whatever had happened to me had happened to the rest of them, too.
I'd been through a lot in the past few months, but this left me feeling paralyzed. I stood there on the lawn of Hex Hall, wearing my uniform, surrounded by my former classmates, and having no idea what to do. We'd finally made plans at the Brannicks'. Getting to Ireland, getting to Lough Bealach. Amassing a bunch of demon-glass.
My being magically transported back to Graymalkin Island-a place that had freaking disappeared-had not been in any of those plans.
Spinning around, I looked for more familiar faces. The whole area was surrounded by fog, obscuring anything past the oak trees lining the drive. Overhead the sun was a hot white disk behind gray clouds.
still confused, I started to walk toward the house. And then I heard, "Sophie." I turned around. Her pink hair faded and her face pale, Jenna gave a shaky smile. "There you are," she said, like we'd just been separated for a few minutes and not for weeks.
It's a miracle I didn't send her sprawling on the gravel as I ran at her and threw my arms around her. I could feel her tears on my collarbone, and I was doing my best not to get snot all over the top of her head, but we were both laughing.
"Oh, Tiny Pink Jenna," I half sobbed, half giggled. "I have never been so happy to see a vampire in my life." She squeezed me tighter. "I've never been so happy to be squished by a demon!" In that moment, I didn't care that I'd been pulled back to Hex Hall by some kind of scary, dark magic, or that I was probably going to get killed one way or another. Jenna was here, and she was alive, and we were together. Everything else was fixable.
When we pulled apart, I noticed a new bloodstone hanging around her neck, this one larger and more ornate than the one she used to wear.
Jenna followed my gaze and gave a watery laugh as she slid the stone on its chain. "Yeah, I upgraded," she said. "I got it from Byron. Swore it was one-hundred-percent shatterproof."
I raised an eyebrow, taking in the elaborate silverand-amethyst setting. "It's also one-hundred-percent tacky, but if it will keep you safe, then I'm all for it."
"I'm going to get you a matching one that says 'BFFs' in like, runes or something." I laughed at that, probably harder than the joke deserved, but I was so relieved to see her that I felt downright giddy. "So you really were with Byron this whole time?"
She nodded. "Yeah. That night, after you got back with Call and Archer, the other Council members came to my room. They took me to this insanely creepy place." Jenna shuddered at the memory, and I had a feeling I knew exactly where she'd ended up: the dungeonlike chamber underneath Thorne Abbey that served as a kind of magical courtroom.
"Lara Casnoff wanted me staked," Jenna said, and my hands reflexively squeezed hers. "She said it was stupid to ever allow vampires to cohabitate with Prodigium, so I had to be executed. Mrs. Casnoff asked to be the one to do it." Now my grip on Jenna's hand was so tight, it must have hurt her. I imagined Jenna, terrified and shaking, being led upstairs by someone she'd once trusted, knowing death was coming.
I would kill Mrs. Casnoff. I would blast that stupid hairdo right off her head, once I had my powers back.
"Thank God for her," Jenna said, and I blinked.
"What?"
"It was Mrs. Casnoff who contacted Byron. She took my bloodstone from me because she said she'd need some kind of proof I was dead.
Apparently when you stake vamps, their bloodstones explode. Then she snuck me out of the house using this passage behind-"
"Behind a painting," I finished. I'd escaped Thorne Abbey the same way.
Nodding, Jenna said, "Right. Byron met me at the edge of the property and gave me this." She lifted the clunky pendant from her neck. "He took me back to his nest in London, and let me tell you, this place has nothing on Lord Freaking Byron's nest for weirdness. But Vix was there," she said, smiling a little. Vix was Jenna's girlfriend and another vampire.
But then all the amusement faded from her face. "I heard about Thorne. All Byron learned was that your body wasn't found. For like, a month, there was no news, and I thought..."
I wrapped my arms around her again. "I know," I murmured. "I thought the same thing about you for a long time, too." She sniffled and pulled away, rubbing her nose with her hand. "Anyway, then he started hearing these strange stories that you were with the Brannicks."
"I was," I said, and when Jenna widened her eyes at me, I raised a hand and said, "It is a very long story, and I promise I'll spil all later.
Condensed version: my mom is a Brannick, I am the unholy love child of a Brannick and a demon, and the bar for family dysfunction is now set super high."
Jenna, to her credit, knew when to just roll with it. "Okay, then."
"The more pressing question right now is, why are we back at Hex Hall?"
Jenna looked around, taking in the unnatural fog, the dilapidated (well, more dilapidated) feel of the house. "Something tells me it's not for a class reunion."
"Did you get pulled through some kind of magic tornado, too?" I asked her.
"No, I flew in here as a bat. It's a new thing I learned from Byron."
"Ha ha," I said, swatting at her arm.
She smiled back and said, "Yeah, same thing, actually. Like being yanked through the air at nine bajil ion miles an hour." Her face grew serious. "What kind of magic could do that? Look around, Soph. There's like, at least a hundred of us here. All pulled from God knows where at the same time. That's not just hard-core, it's-"
"Scary," I finished.
The rest of the group was starting to coalesce around the front of the house, and I had the unsettling feeling that we were all waiting for someone-or something-to come out the front door. Like at any second, Mrs. Casnoff was going to step out, and it was just going to be another school year. Jenna and I stayed close together, and we hung to the back of the crowd.
Someone on my other side nudged my shoulder, and I shifted closer to Jenna to make room. And then a hand closed over mine.
Before I even turned my head, I knew.
"Mercer." Archer smiled down at me. "Fancy meeting you here."
As much as I wanted to, I couldn't just throw my arms around his neck and kiss the heck out of him. And I really wanted to. So I settled for lacing my fingers with his and pulling him slightly closer.
Archer here, safe, his hand in mine. And Jenna, pressed tight to my other side. My heart was so full, I could hardly breathe, and even though I tried to keep it light, my voice was strained when I said, "Of course. Everything going to hell, and you turn up. I should've known." He shrugged, even though his eyes were burning with the same emotion currently racing through my veins. "Eh, Italy was getting boring.
Figured I might as well see what you ladies were up to. Jenna," he said, nodding across me.
I could feel Jenna stiffen slightly; The Eye had killed Jenna's first girlfriend, who'd also been the vamp that made Jenna. Needless to say, she wasn't exactly Archer's biggest fan. Still, she gave a curt nod. "Archer."