Seizing Year Four (Grim Reaper Academy 4)

The mage was in the Library, buried in books. She was studying griffins for her field trip with the Righteous Death Cabal. I sat next to her. I should have been reading about scarabs myself, but I’d been distracted in the past few weeks.

“I heard Mrs. Maat almost didn’t let you go to the Carnelian City,” she snickered.

“Headmaster Colin sorted it out.”

“Wouldn’t you be much happier if everyone knew the truth? No more hiding. Less stress.”

“My father left me with no money. The only thing keeping our dear classmates from shunning me is that everyone still believes I’m the human prophesized to retire him. Imagine finding out I’m a revenant, supernatural like all of them, and I have no chance of standing up to Morningstar.”

“Yeah. You used to be special. Not anymore.” She closed the book she’d been reading, and looked up at me, amusement mixed with wickedness in her deep blue eyes. “I honestly thought the only reason the guys wanted to get into your pants was because you were a normie, and they’d never had normie pussy before.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “And I honestly thought we were past this. I didn’t hook up with Sariel and Francis until after I became a non-normie.”

“You kissed Sariel way before that.”

“It was just a kiss.”

“So it doesn’t count?”

“Count how? You’re losing me, Lorna.”

She sighed, annoyed that I wasn’t in the mood for her games.

“What do you want? You always sit with me when you want something, so spit it out. I don’t have all day.”

I slid a post-it over to her. This one had only one name on it. Yolanda Aleksiev. Lorna cocked an eyebrow.

“Who is she?”

“My cousin. She’s also the dream jumper who can help us find my mom and then find Morningstar.”

“Why are you telling me this? Why aren’t we all in the cavern, talking about it?”

“I want to keep this between us. For now. Corri went to see her. She’s just a kid. Eleven. Her father disappeared and her mother died in an accident a year ago. She lives at an orphanage.”

Lorna smirked. “Convenient.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. No one to take care of her, no one to protect her and tell her a distant relative who suddenly remembered her could be a bad guy in disguise…”

“I’m not a bad guy! The fuck is wrong with you? What do you think I want to do to her?”

“Turn her…”

I shook my head. “You’re not making any sense.”

“Turn her into you. Abandoned by her father, her mother dead… You see yourself in her and you’re thinking… ‘I have another chance! I can make this right through her!’ Tell me I’m way off, and I’ll shut up.”

I stood up and started pacing the floor. Two students sitting at a table across the room looked up, then saw it was me and went back to their stuff. They’d gotten used to my drama.

“You’re not… way off. But I’m not trying to hurt her. I just need her to help us, that’s all. If she’s a dream jumper, then she can finish what I started. And I will protect her with my life.”

“And you believe that. What you just said…”

“It’s true!” I yelled, pissed off at her. She was starting to get on my nerves.

“Then why aren’t you telling the others? Your boyfriends, Klaus, Patricia…”