The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3) (26 page)

I approached him. “How would he tell you?” I asked.

Adahy closed one of his eyes and stared at me. “I know my animals. If any of you had done it, Yofi would have reacted when he saw you. Pegasuses are very sensitive animals. If you hurt one, they will never forget it.” He paused and glanced at us all.

“Now, we have a lot of work to do today. It has been months since your last class, and you have probably forgotten everything and most of you will need a refresher course. So let’s get to it!”

As he said the words, the rest of the Pegasuses came out from the stables. Carefully we climbed them and soon we were airborne again. Yofi appeared not to be completely well, though. He seemed to be only the shadow of his own happy self. As I rode him he lacked the spark I had enjoyed so much before. He seemed more anxious and jumpy. Any sound or any strange movement made him react. And in his eyes I saw something I hadn’t seen before.

I saw fear.

That same night Mick came to me while I was doing my homework for Thursday’s Transitions class. We were moving on to more solid doors and walls now and I had to get the theory right before I ended up making a fool of myself again, as I had done a lot on the first year, much to Mrs. Ohayashi’s enjoyment. It was as if she liked to see me mess up and get stuck trying to go through something. But not this time. I wanted to be prepared when we were going through solid brick walls. I was going to ace it.

“So do you want to do something tonight? Something fun?” asked Mick.

“Mmm … ” I said preoccupied by reading.

Suddenly the book disappeared from between my hands. Mick put his head where the book had been. I laughed. Then I sighed and looked into his blue eyes while running my fingers through his blond hair. I grabbed his face with my hands and pulled it close to mine. Then I kissed him.

“Please … ” Mai said from her corner of the dormitory. “Can’t you wait until you are alone?”

I sighed and let go of Mick.

“We are never alone,” I said.

“Let’s do something fun tonight, just the two of us,” Mick repeated his request from earlier.

I sighed again and looked at the book that had ended on the floor.

“I could use a break,” I said.

“Great. Let’s go swimming. The ocean is calm again.”

“But I can’t.”

“Why not? Don’t worry about your class tomorrow. I can teach you all you need to know.”

“But what about the guards? They have been following me around everywhere and it’s driving me insane. I don’t want to bring them on our night out. They are everywhere I go and keep reminding me that I am in danger. I feel more like a prisoner. You would think Angels would know how to be a little more discreet.”

“They probably think they can scare the bad guys away just by showing themselves.” Mick scoffed.

“I guess they could,” I said.

Mick leaned over and placed his lips close to my ear. “If we go through the windows they would never know,” he whispered. “We could meet outside.”

“But I am not supposed to leave the castle after sunset,” I whispered back as if the walls could hear me. “What if it is too dangerous?”

Mick lifted an eyebrow. “I am with you. Do you honestly think I would put you in danger?”

I had to admit I always felt completely protected when I was with him. He was always so sensible and he played by the book, so this suggestion to go out after dark took me by surprise.

“See you later, then,” he whispered just before he streamed out of the room through the wall with a confident smile on his face.

The air felt great as it went through my body. It was windy at the cliff where I waited for Mick after the sun had set. I had come first and had floated down on a ledge to hide behind the cliff so no one could see me from the castle. It was the same plateau that we had jumped from last summer when we went swimming in the great ocean.

The waves were still big and the ocean deep and dark in front of me. The moon was almost full and shone on the surface. Above me stars twinkled brighter and bigger than I had ever seen before. It was like we were closer to them here than back on earth. And there seemed to be so many more of them. Like hundreds of thousands more. They were all over the sky, sparkling like the glitter I remembered playing with as a child. It was truly magnificent to observe. As I waited, I saw several shooting stars dart across the sky as well. Even if Mick never came, it was already a night to remember.

 He was late and I started wondering if he wasn’t going to come at all. Just as I gave up waiting and turned to fly back, he arrived. He took me by surprise with his sudden appearance. I hadn’t heard him come, but as I turned I stared directly into his face. He was standing right behind me. I jumped.

“You scared me.”

He looked at me mischievously. Then he tilted his head while he grabbed me around my waist and lifted me up. He was breathing heavily as he turned and pressed my body against the cliff. His face was only a few inches from mine and his blue eyes glowed in the darkness. He grabbed my arms and held them against the cliff, pressing his body against mine.

“I want you so much,” he moaned with a low voice. “You have no idea what you do to me. You bring emotions in me that I had no idea I had. I didn’t know I was capable of feeling this way,” he whispered heavily.

I felt his lips pressed roughly against mine as he kissed me desperately. My heart beat so fast it almost hurt, while an intense heat spread through me. I never wanted him to stop. I pulled him closer to me and kissed him back.

Then much to my surprise he pulled away from me. I looked at him with disappointment. I hated when he did that. It was as though he wanted me to stay hungry for him, like he was toying with me. He knew how much I longed for his touch.

He smiled even more mischievously just before he jumped off the ledge and into the dark waves.

 I followed him into the deep water and tried to plunge right through the waves. It felt incredible. The feeling of water going through my body was indescribable. Now being nearly weightless, or weighing exactly twenty-one grams as we were told we do, makes swimming very different. Because our bodies are so light, we have to make an effort to push ourselves under the surface, because if we don’t we will just float on top. So it is actually hard work to go swimming, especially if you try to go under the surface.

As I landed on the water I couldn’t see Mick anywhere. I looked all around but he was nowhere to be seen. The waves pushed me around and I had a hard time orienting myself. I came awfully close to the cliffs and started swimming away from them when I felt something grabbing me under water and pulling me down. I barely managed to hold my breath as I was pulled under. When I opened my eyes under the water I saw Mick. He was smiling while pulling my leg. I signaled that he should let go and, as he did, I swam toward the surface and he came up close to me. I coughed trying to catch my breath again.

“What?” he asked. “Are you afraid of dying?”

“Very funny,” I said between two coughs.

“I thought it was.”

“I really didn’t.”

He grabbed my waist and pulled me close. “I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I coughed one last time. “I’m okay,” I said.

“You are just looking for pity,” he said.

I stared at him. Where did this come from? What was with him today?

“What? Why are you staring at me like that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But there is something. Something is going on with you.”

His eyes turned ice cold. “You were the one looking strangely at me.”

“ ‘Cause you’re acting weird.”

Mick scoffed and pulled himself away from me. He stretched out and floated on his back with his hands behind his neck.

“I am the normal one here,” he murmured.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah. But what do you mean?”

“Come on, like you don’t know.”

I shook my head. I had no idea what was going on in his head. “Why are you acting like this?” I asked. I felt like leaving immediately.

“I am not acting like anything. You are,” he said with an indifferent voice. “You are the one who is strange and abnormal.”

I shook my head in anger and started swimming toward the cliffs. I held back the tears welling up in my eyes. Why was he so mean all of a sudden? I didn’t understand anything anymore. Earlier he had been so nice and loving and now all of a sudden he was acting like this! What had changed? Why was he being like this?

“Yeah that’s right just leave me. Going back to mourn over
him
?”

I turned in the water and stared at him. “Is that what this is all about? Is this about Jason?”

“Who else should it be about?” he yelled. “It is certainly not about me. It is always about him, is it not? Everything is about him. I never stand a chance, do I? That is why you wanted to keep us a secret, right? That way you didn’t have to admit to yourself that you had given up on him. That way if he ever showed up at the school or if he felt better and started seeing you again he wouldn’t get to know about us. Am I wrong?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Well am I?” he asked again.

“I am done with you,” I said and ascended from the water.

“Fine,” he yelled.

I flew as fast as I could back to the castle where I threw myself on my bed, letting all the piled up tears run down my cheeks.

C
HAPTER 12

S
O JUST LIKE THAT
Mick and I were over. In the following days and weeks I did my best to avoid everything that had to do with him. The only time I was forced to see him was when I went to eat at Hornam Hall. As usual, he came out of the kitchen when the food was on the table and was sociable among the students, chatting with them, but he no longer came to my table and sat down to eat. So the whole school immediately knew something was wrong between us. No one said anything, but I knew if Abhik had been there he would have asked about it. I really missed my friend now. I could surely use one.

A month passed without any attacks on students and the security became less tight around the school, and especially around me. The two guards who had been following me closely were still at the school, but they were mostly hanging out in the corridors chatting and talking to each other and to the spirits that passed them.

I was happy to get them off my back and tried to stay focused on my schoolwork. I was doing well in a lot of my classes.

I was so mad at Mick that I had no time to mourn over the loss of our relationship. I missed it and parts of me missed him, but he had made me so angry that I didn’t allow myself to even think about him. I stayed busy all day, especially after school, and in the evenings when Mick and I used to be together.

Instead I hung out with the girls from my dormitory and it felt kind of nice doing girl stuff again. If I wasn’t with them I would go and talk to Yofi in the stables or stick my nose in a book on my bed.

I could tell by the way Mick always strolled past my table at each meal that he wanted me to miss him. But I was not going to give him that.

One evening just as the sun had set, I sat at my window reading a book about ancient Angel healing techniques.

I had tried a couple of times to get Raphael to answer questions about the screamers and especially about Abhik, but he seemed to be avoiding having to answer them. He was really good at that, I had come to realize, and eventually I had given up on getting to know more about the strange illness that seemed to have struck three of the students at the school. I looked through all of our textbooks but found nothing. Then I decided to go to the school’s library to look up the symptoms of the illness I had seen and felt in Abhik. I checked out a book and took it to my room.

As I sat and read, I came upon something interesting. Apparently there had been similar cases before. But it was a long time ago. Back in ancient times, it only said. In one of the cases, a female spirit woke up with the same symptoms—screaming and as cold as ice. Her body froze into the same position. It had been an attack, the book said. A demonic attack on the woman was believed to be somehow linked to the demon Azazel. The Angels had been certain that he was behind it.

“Azazel,” I murmured out loud while I closed the book and stared out at the forest that slowly got darker. Soon it would only be lit by the lights shining from the castle.
Azazel was the demon whom Raphael had fought and tied to a rock under the desert of Egypt
, I thought to myself.

I jumped down and found my
History of the Angels
book, where I remembered reading about Azazel. I found the name in the index and flipped through the pages. I started reading. It was written in an old-fashioned language and I didn’t understand it all. But I did understand that Azazel had been one of the Angels at the time. I read on: