Rachel Hawkins: Demonglass

I’d never asked Cal what he’d done that had landed him at Hecate Hall. He just didn’t seem like the type of guy to do the dangerous spells that usually got warlocks sent to the school. He’d decided to stay on after his eighteenth birthday, although I’d never been clear on whether that had been by choice. But the farther we got from the school, the more troubled he looked.

Even Jenna, who usually acted like she was composing a thesis on all the ways Hecate sucked, looked wistful.

I stared at the bit of roof I could see against the blue sky, and a strong sense of foreboding came over me, as though the sun had gone behind a cloud.

The three of us will never come back here.

The thought was so startling that I shivered. I tried to shake it off. That was ridiculous. We were going to England for three months, and we’d be back at Hecate by August. Premonition isn’t one of my powers, so I was just being paranoid.

Still, the feeling stayed with me long after Graymalkin Island had faded in the distance.

* * *

“Being a demon should make you immune to jet lag,” I mumbled hours and hours later as a sleek black car carried us through the English countryside.

The long flight from Georgia to England had been pretty uneventful. Except that Cal had sat next to me.

Which was fine. Really.

It wasn’t like I’d been hyperaware of his presence and jumped the three times his knee bumped mine. And after that third time, he definitely hadn’t shot me a kind of disgusted look and said, “Chill out, will you?”

And when Jenna gave us both a quizzical look, we hadn’t snapped, in unison, “Nothing!” Because all of that would have been weird, and Cal and I weren’t weird. We were cool.

“You’ll feel better soon,” Dad said. For the first time since I’d met him, his eyes were bright and he actually looked relaxed. I guess being back in the motherland will do that to a guy.

Jenna was practically bouncing with excitement, but Cal looked as tired as I felt. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep on the plane, and I was paying for it now. My eyes felt gritty and hot, and all I could think about was collapsing into a bed. After all, my poor body thought it was six a.m., but in England it was nearly lunchtime. Plus, we’d been driving for what felt like hours.

When the plane had landed in London, I’d assumed the car would take us to a house in the city, or maybe to Council Headquarters so Dad could do business stuff. But the car had driven out of the crowded streets and past small houses all clustered together that reminded me of a Dickens story. Gradually, the brick buildings had given way to trees and rolling green hills. I saw more sheep than I thought existed.

“So we came all the way to England just to hang out in the middle of nowhere?” I asked, leaning my aching head on Jenna’s shoulder.

“We did,” Dad replied.

Cal smiled. Well, of course he’d be thrilled to be stuck on some British farm all summer long, I thought grumpily, my visions of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge crumbling. Probably all sorts of English plants to heal—

Then I caught sight of a house.

Although, calling it a house was like calling theMona Lisa a painting, or Hecate Hall a school. The term was technically correct, but it didn’t even begin to sum up the reality of the object.

This house was one of the biggest buildings I’d ever seen, and made of a light, golden-colored stone that looked warm to the touch. It sat nestled in a lush valley, an emerald green lawn stretching in front of it, while a forested hill rose in the back. A thin, shining ribbon of water curved gracefully along one side of the property. Literally hundreds of windows glittered in the sunlight.

“Wow,” Cal said, leaning over to look out the window.

“This is where we’re staying?” I asked.

Dad just smiled, looking way too satisfied with himself. “I told you there would be room for all of us,” he said, and I caught myself smiling back. We held each other’s eyes for a second, but I broke away first, nodding toward the house. “Don’t houses like that always have a name?”

“More often than not,” he answered. “This is Thorne Abbey.”

Something about that name was familiar, but I couldn’t think why. “It used to be a church?”

“Not that actual house. It wasn’t built until the late sixteenth century. But there was an abbey on the land.”

He went into lecture mode, talking about how the abbey had been razed under Henry VIII, and the land given to the Thorne family.

But to be honest, I wasn’t really listening. I was watching several people walk out the front door of the house. Then I spotted a pair of wings and wondered who exactly Dad’s friends were.

The car rumbled over a stone bridge and pulled into a circular drive. Dad got out of the car first, and as he opened my door, I suddenly wished I’d worn something nicer than a faded pair of jeans and a plain green T-shirt.

Impossibly wide steps led up to a terrace made of the same golden-colored stone as the rest of the house. There were six people standing there, two dark-haired kids who looked about my age, and four adults. I guessed they were all Prodigium. Well, the faerie was obvious, but I could sense magic hovering around the rest of them, too.

The day was warmer than I’d expected, and I felt a few beads of sweat pop out on my brow. The gravel crunched under my feet, and in the distance I heard birds singing. Jenna appeared at my elbow, her earlier excitement gone, her fingers moving over her bloodstone.

Dad placed a hand on the small of my back and steered me up the steps. “Everyone, this is Sophie. My daughter.”

Suddenly I felt something surge in my blood. Something like magic, but darker, more powerful. It was coming from the two teenagers near the back of the crowd. They were the only ones not smiling, and the boy—who looked weirdly familiar—was glaring at me.

Realization slammed into my chest, and it was all I could do not to gasp.

They were demons.

I stared at the demon kids, numbness seeping through me. Dad and I were supposed to be the only demons in the world, so how—

A sudden, horrifying thought came to me: holy hell weasel, were these kids my half-siblings? Had Dad dragged me all the way to England to play out some twisted version of the Brady Bunch?

“What is this?” I choked out, meaning the other demons.

But Dad smiled proudly. “This is Council Headquarters.”

Behind me, I heard Cal let out a long breath, like he’d been holding it, as a woman with dark blond hair stepped out from the group and offered her hand. “Sophia, we’re so thrilled you’ll be with us this summer. I’m Lara.”

I shook her hand, even as I shot a glance at the demon kids. They were whispering to each other.

“Lara is a Council member, and my second-in-command, you might say,” Dad said.

Lara didn’t let go of my hand right away. “I’ve heard so much about you, both from your father and from Anastasia.”

“Mrs. Casnoff?” Oh, God, if that’s where this woman had gotten her Sophie Mercer gossip, I was surprised she’d greeted me with a handshake instead of an exorcism.

“Lara and Anastasia are sisters,” Dad said.

“Okay,” I replied, trying to process that. Then something else occurred to me. “I thought Council Headquarters was in London.”

A deep vertical line appeared between Lara’s brows. “It is. Due to some unforeseen events we’ve decided to relocate for the summer.” Now that I knew she was Mrs. Casnoff’s sister, I could see—and hear—the resemblance. I wondered if the demon teenagers were the “unforeseen events,” or if there wasmore messed up stuff happening. Wouldn’t have surprised me.