Page 166 of Malcroix Bones Academy
But it was harder than hell to make myself turn away.
I didn’t look around his room a second time as I walked back to the door. Caelum was holding out a hand, and I didn’t hesitate but simply took it, not even stopping to shut the door behind me.
“How do we get out of here?” I asked him, quiet. “Do we find a mirror somewhere? Do you know how to magic one so it can take us back, if I find us one in a pub or something?”
He gave me an odd look. “No. Absolutely not. That’s suicide.”
“What choice do we have?” I asked, looking up.
He blinked, opened his mouth, then closed it as he stared towards the front of the house. His eyes fixed on the round window over the stairwell that looked out to the drive, and the street beyond.
“We have to go. Leda, I can feel?” he began.
“I feel it, too,” I told him.
I did. Something was coming. I could feel it like strange, sparking sensations all over my golden sun primal. Something like feathers was descending over the house and the grounds outside. Notactualfeathers, like what would come from magical wings?these felt like magical touches, possibly far-reaching probes, like someone or something trying to see what was happening inside these walls, possibly from a great distance.
“They’re scanning the environment,” he muttered. “It’s the Praecuri. It has to be. They won’t be far behind.”
His jaw hardened as he seemed to make up his mind.
He didn’t tell me what he’d decided.
He released my hand, and wrapped a lean arm tightly around my waist.
I sucked in a breath, startled, but he was already moving with me, gripping me tightly against his body and wrapping his other arm around my shoulders and upper chest.
“Don’t fight me,” he growled in my ear. “Press to me as tightly as you can.”
I didn’t question that, either.
I wrapped my own arms around his and gripped tightly.
Then, before I could protest, or make so much as a squeak?
He walked us right into the wall.
37
The Great Lawn
Both of us fell on the other side, landing in deep, thick grass.
I just stayed where I fell at first, on my hands and knees, gasping in cold, wet air. It was freezing in this new place, and it hit me that I’d been marginally protected from the elements before, even inside my aunt’s ridiculously cold house.
Now, an icy wind went right through me, cutting into my skin as if I wasn’t wearing anything at all. It made me gasp in breaths that seemed to need thawing inside my lungs.
I needed to get up.
I needed to get inside, anywhere inside, but somehow, I couldn’t make myself.
Caelum pulled himself back up to standing, and held out a hand.
“Come on,” he growled. “You’re going to freeze to death.”
“Where?” I asked numbly. “Where can we go?”
“Where? Where do you think? Inside the bloody school. You’ll literally die out here, Shadow. And I don’t think this is a night we want to be caught out of doors by the security patrol, covered in Magical blood.”
