Supernatural Academy: Year One (Supernatural Academy #1)(32)

I laughed and shook my head. “It’s totally fine. I don’t need to be babysat. You do your thing and I know we’ll find each other at some point.”

I’d been independent my entire life; it was enough to know they were there. That they had my back.

The girls dropped me off at my next class, which was back in the classroom section. I had no idea what to expect from Demon Mythology 101, because all I knew about demons was that they were soul-sucking entities from hell. I was interested to find out what was real and fake in the human lore on them.

Dropping my fancy bag beside my table, I waited for the class to begin. It was filling with a lot of students that I’d seen in my last classes, and a few I hadn’t. Curious expressions met mine, and two hostile ones from pretty, dark-haired chicks. They looked so similar that I guessed they were twins.

I had no idea how they could have hated me already, since I hadn’t ever seen either of them before. I must have stared a little too long, because one of them sneered at me. “Whore,” she muttered. “Think you can stroll in and take the Atlantean-five?”

Ah, right. This was about me sitting with Jesse and Axl. No wonder everyone was staring at me. I’d definitely broken some kind of unspoken rule at lunch. I returned her glare with one of my own. “I didn’t take anything,” I said, not showing an ounce of weakness. “If they wanted you, then they would be with you. Don’t blame me for your lack of—”

The teacher breezed into the room then and I cut myself off. Both brunette bitches shot me one last glare before they swung in unison to face the front of the room. Twins that spent a little too much time together.

No one sat at the desks on either side of me; I tried not to take offence to that. I was pretty used to making social fuckups. This was par for the course. Simon wasn’t in this class with me, which was a disappointment. I’d have to ask him for his schedule next time I saw him.

Focusing on the teacher, I was surprised to see that she was barely five feet tall. Her hair was short and curled, strands of red and orange intertwining. Her skin was dark brown, with hints of red, and when she smiled a bright white smile, her teeth were slightly pointed. Overall, she was the most interesting-looking supe I’d seen so far.

Outside of Mossie, because there was nothing topping a goblin.

“Good afternoon,” the teacher began. “Welcome to Demon Mythology. I’m Coco, and I’m half demi-fey, half magic user. Sorcerer level, of course.”

Of course.

I wondered what sort of demi-fey she was. I hoped we’d get to explore their school as well at some point, because that’s where the truly unusual supernaturals would be. I wanted to meet them all. Especially the mermaids.

“This class has two parts to it,” Coco said. “First is history of demons and the world they now inhabit, and part two is warning and reason. Because I don’t like to give you rules without making you understand why.”

Whatever noise had been in the classroom faded away, and the focus was completely on Coco now. “Demons were once fey that lost their souls to the darkness. They became so tainted with the evil energy that upon death they could not move on to the world after. They became stuck in purgatory … in the land with no energy and no life.”

No one in the room moved, all of us entranced by the dark tale Coco was weaving.

“Demons are nothing to mess around with,” she continued, “and as magic users you will be tempted through your journey to sorcerers. You’ll be tempted with your own darkness. Tempted with the power of the demons. It’s my job to prepare you to deal with that temptation.”

The rest of the class was a history lesson on demons—bodyless entities that existed in a parallel world between ours and Faerie.

I added another planet to my mental image of Faerie and Earth, and I was pretty impressed that I’d nailed the parallel world thing. Even though it also made my head spin at all of the weird in my life now.

“Step-throughs are the fastest way for sorcerers and sorceresses to travel,” Coco continued. “We use them to move between the worlds and within our world. This is a fast, complex, and dangerous way to travel. You’ll not do any classes on them until at minimum your fourth year. Do not ever attempt to open one yourself. You most likely will die.”

Alrighty then. As warnings went, that one was pretty solid.

Someone raised their hand and the teacher nodded at them. “What do the demons want?”

Her expression turned fierce. “Mostly they want power. They wanted it when they were alive and they want it even more after death. They’ve drained their own world. There are no ley lines there.”

No one else looked confused, and I quickly flicked through the textbook in front of me to find the section on ley lines.

Ley lines are beams of energy that run in multiple axes around the world. Deep under the ground, invisible to the naked eye, they power the earth, magic users, fey, shifters, and a multitude of other supernatural creatures. Ley lines are used for particularly strong spells that an individual does not have enough power for.

There was more under this, going into deeper details, but I stopped reading when another student asked, “Why don’t they just come here? The demons. What’s stopping them?”

Coco’s smile was tormented. “The specters that are left are almost parasitic in nature. They can’t come here without a host. Their essences cannot survive on Earth. Which is why this class exists. Demons are seductive … they’ll make you crave the power. But you must never give in to it. My entire family was killed by a demon-touched sorcerer in one of the last battles. It’s why I’ve dedicated my life to teaching other supernaturals of this danger.”