Cover

Also by Adriana Mather

Killing November

Haunting the Deep

How to Hang a Witch

Dedication

In loving memory of my cat Charles, who had a small head and a long tail, flexible shoulders like a flying squirrel, and two different-colored eyes. He slept on my pillow every night and bit my head every morning when he wanted food. I carried him in my sweatshirt as a kitten, and he folded his head into the crook of my neck as an adult. He was my perfect cat, and I was his person; I will forever miss his snuggles.

Chapter One

WHEN I WAS a little kid and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I gave them all sorts of wild answers. I told a teacher I wanted to be a couch potato so I could spend my days snuggled up under blankets in the living room. I told my best friend Emily’s mom I wanted to be a cookie taste-tester because that’s what Emily wanted to be. And I told my dad I wanted to be a knife so I could cut my grilled cheese sandwiches in two perfect triangles instead of the four dinky squares he always prepared. Of course this answer earned me raised eyebrows and an explanation about how a girl is a living, breathing thing that can be cut; and a knife is a sharp piece of steel that does the cutting. But now that I’ve discovered most of my childhood was a lie, I’m starting to think my younger self was onto something with the knife answer. Because in the past few weeks at Academy Absconditi, I’ve come as close to being a knife, or being stabbed by one, as anyone can get.

I shut the door to the infirmary behind me and head down an empty hall that’s lit by torches. I roll my sleeve down over the bandage on my forearm, where the nurse slathered my wound with some kind of strong poultice that smells of pine needles and clay. She kept telling me how lucky I was to have survived the fall from the tree in the courtyard, and with no broken bones. She tsked a lot and said, “You young people take everything for granted.” I doubt she would have used the word lucky, though, if she knew I was thrown from the tree because the Lion Family wanted me dead.

As I turn the corner into another silent hallway, I notice the torches have burned down, leaving the corridor ahead of me almost completely black. I slow to a stop, eyeing the dying embers on one torch suspiciously. Shouldn’t someone have replaced them? And where are the Academy guards? There’s usually one posted in every hallway. I frown, wondering if I should head back to the infirmary, when I hear a faint gurgling noise.