Surviving Year One (Grim Reaper Academy 1)

That seemed to shut Lorna up. Hm. She really loves him if she’s willing to risk her reputation to save his. That, or she was really stupid. Since the semester started, Lorna had done everything in her power to please Sariel. And she had a lot of power. Still, he treated her coldly, and I hadn’t once seen them kiss or hold hands. It was as if he was there, shining like the handsome, perfect archangel that he was, and Lorna was like a beaten-up puppy following him around, adoring him even when he kicked her in the butt. Now that I thought about it, I was glad I hadn’t taken my revenge on Lorna. She’d been a pawn all along. Sariel was the king. And it was time for the king to fucking pay.

I didn’t know what got into me. Seeing Lorna like that, scared and devastated, ready to jump to his rescue if necessary… I got mad. Really, really mad. My brows furrowed, I looked over my glass of wine and focused on the blade of my scythe. It belonged to me, it was attuned to me, and I knew it would listen to me even from a distance, even if I wasn’t the one holding it. I commanded it to struggle harder against Sariel’s grip. I commanded it to pull itself free, if possible, because there was nothing more mortifying to a Grim Reaper than having his scythe fly out of his hand. It could crush Sariel’s reputation and ego, and I wanted him crushed. Like the cockroaches he’d asked Lorna to put in my bed.

I was so focused that I didn’t hear Klaus step closer to me.

“What are you doing? Stop it. It’s getting out of control.”

Francis and Paz had stepped away from Sariel, and the beautiful, perfect choreography Mrs. Charon had spent so many days teaching the VDC turned into a cacophony of chaotic movements and blades scratching and clattering against each other as the students tried to put space between themselves and the archangel.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, just stop!” Sariel’s father raised his voice above the whispers and chatter. “This is a disgrace! Stop it right now.” He took a couple of steps toward the stage, and his wife followed him quickly, her tiny hand on his arm, trying to stop him from going up there.

“Mila, seriously,” Klaus whispered.

“Fine.” I let go mentally, but the effect on my scythe was quite the opposite. It flew to the left and hit Paz in the face, leaving a long, bleeding gash on his cheek. I covered my mouth with my hands. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I had never, for one second, willed my scythe to attack matter. It had done it on its own, in its desperate attempt to escape Sariel’s grip. It really didn’t like him, apparently, and now Paz was being dragged off the stage by his mother, who was also the only parent who’d bothered to show up at the ball and support him. He left a trail of blood as he was rushed to the infirmary.

“That’s enough.” Mr. Gracewing jumped on the stage, grabbed the scythe from Sariel, and threw it to the floor. The other students had dispersed, except for Francis, who was still by Sariel’s side. “You’re an embarrassment to this family. An embarrassment and a disgrace. Look what you’ve done! Your sister should have received that invitation, not you. You will never become a Grim Reaper.” With that, he left the stage and stormed out of the room, leaving both his son and his wife stunned. Mrs. Gracewing eventually motioned for Sariel to get down, and they both sat back at the table, even though it was obvious that was the last thing Sariel wanted to do.

“Now what?” Klaus asked me.

We both had our eyes fixed on the scythe on the floor, in front of the stage.

“I don’t know. I have to get it back.”

“I can make the switch, but not when everyone is looking.”

Mrs. Charon saved the day by grabbing the scythe off the floor and stuffing it in a dark corner, away from the RDC, MDC, and NDC scythes.

“Just pretend you’re going to the bathroom,” I told Klaus.

“Fuck. Okay.”

He walked toward the side of the room where Mrs. Charon had put my scythe, and my eyes followed him. That was when I saw Lorna staring right at me, hate in her eyes, and a scowl on her pretty pink lips. She stood up and pointed at me, and from that moment, it felt like everything happened in slow motion.

“It was her! Mila Lazarov, the filthy human! I saw her! She was laughing at him. She was laughing because she’d been behind it all along.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what to do. Shrug? Smile? Pretend like it was all a misunderstanding or a bad joke?

“Darling, that girl isn’t right in the head.” Andromeda took my hand and pulled me away. “Come on, a visit to the restroom is in order. To powder our noses. We don’t have to listen to this nonsense.”

I would’ve been eternally grateful to Mrs. Apis for what she’d tried to do then, how she’d tried to save me from Lorna’s wrath. Too bad it didn’t work.

We were halfway across the room when I heard Lorna’s booming voice fill every crevice of the building, as if she’d grown in size, and her voice had grown with her. I pulled my hand free from Andromeda’s grasp and turned to the mage. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t look away.

“She’s not who she says she is!” Lorna walked to the center of the room, where the dance ring was supposed to be. That was, if anyone would still feel like dancing after this disaster was over. “Do you know where she comes from? Do you know why her parents aren’t here? Because they are vermin. Filthy peasants who made her in the gutter and gave birth to her in the gutter. Let me show you who Mila Lazarov is, and then you’ll see it was all her doing.”

Lorna threw her head back. As she lifted her arms toward the ceiling, her eyes rolled in her head, and when they rolled back front, the clear blue irises we were all used to turned into sapphire blue energy that took over her pupils, overflowing like tears down her cheeks.

“Look at her… My little girl,” I heard Lorna’s mother say. There was pride and deep emotion in her voice. “She’s so powerful.”

Indeed, Lorna was powerful. I’d had no idea how powerful until this very moment, when she started creating, or more like materializing, a vortex between her open arms, a vortex that soon took the form of a huge ball of energy. When its surface cleared, images started moving inside the globe, popping in and out of coherence, until Lorna managed to catch them, control them, and put them in order.

I felt GC step behind me, his arms coming to wrap me in a protective embrace.

“Don’t worry. What is she going to show us? Your parents back in Kentucky? Your house and your old school?” He chuckled. “Nothing I don’t already know about. The entire Academy knows and, you know what? It’s not that bloody shameful.”

Well, I appreciated his effort, but Lorna’s strange vortex-turned-m

agic energy ball wasn’t showing my parents at all. It was showing a woman who wasn’t my mother. She was tall, sickly thin, dressed scantily, with long blond hair she wore in a thick braid on her back, and eyes as blue as the ocean. She was struggling to walk in a pair of cheap, ridiculously high sandals, down a dark alley. When she reached the main street, she stopped to light a cigarette. A man came from behind her, pulling his pants up and securing his belt. He threw a few bills at her, and she gave him an angry look, but then smiled forcefully and bent down to pick them up. He slapped her ass and went on his way.