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Who paid my fees? Who intervened to keep me here? Who convinced the Headmaster to turn a blind eye to my earlier cheating of the system—and to the fact that I apparently belong to a witch family?
Maybe he doesn’t believe I’m any real threat, though. When I mentioned the name, everyone had seemed surprised but not afraid. The reign of the witches is over. The bloodline of the Apollinari has thinned out.
And I’m one of them only in name.
I don’t realize when I close my eyes but sleep takes me through dreamland swiftly, through the Church, my room there, the scraggly little vegetable patch, the orchard. Ophelia is at the window, calling something out to me, but the wind snatches at her words, turning them into unintelligible notes of music.
“I don’t understand!” I call back but she only smiles. I have her diary in my hand but inside there are only symbols I can’t decipher, and when I turn the diary upside down, the letters slither and fall off the pages, hitting the soil like thick black oil.
That makes me sad. So very sad. I kneel in the dirt in front of the Church and cry.
“Come back,” I sob, “don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to stay here, I don’t want to be away from you…”
But the face at the window is not Ophelia’s anymore. It belongs to a woman I don’t recognize and yet deep in my heart I’m certain I know her.
“Mia!” someone calls. “Are you in there?”
Her face starts to fade and a dark sense of foreboding fills me. I try to get up but I can’t, the mud and oil sucking at my knees, at my feet, pulling me down as I struggle.
“No. Don’t go,” I call out. “Don’t leave me. No!”
“Mia, wake up. Mia!” The voice slices through the world, a man’s voice, erasing the images and sounds. I’m on my side on my bed, in the girls’ dormitory, my hair in my face, shivering.
A dark shadow leans over me and I sit up with a gasp.
“Fuck,” the shadow says and a tall boy steps back, hands lifted. “It’s just me. You okay?”
“What?” I blink and see dirty blond hair. “Jason?”
“Hey. I knocked but nobody answered and with Zoey’s gang hanging around, waiting to pounce, I thought…” His voice changes. “Mia. You’re crying.”
My vision is blurry. When I wipe a hand over my cheeks, I find my fingertips wet.
Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans, he approaches the bed warily. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. A dream.”
Those green eyes seem concerned. “Zoey hasn’t managed to get her hands on you already, has she? I came as soon as Miss Worthy told me that you were in your room.”
“Why would she tell you where I am?” I mutter, my mind twisting as it tries to wrap itself around the fact that he came to check on me. That he was worried Zoey might get to me first.
“I went to talk to her. In fact…” He pulls his hands out of his pockets, folds his arms over his chest. “We all did.”
“All?” I cock my head to the side. “As in…?”
“All four of us. The purebloods.”
I fight a smirk. “Calling yourselves that now? Like a boy band?”
He winces.
“How is Emrys?” I tuck my bangs behind my ears. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s a tough demon. A proud one, too. I told him not to play Scale-ball today but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
“As if you’d have done it differently,” I sniff.
He grins and my heart flips over. “Yeah, it’s a matter of macho pride. What can you do?”
