A faint alarm bel began ringing in the back of my head.
"Real y?"
"Yeah. During the Blitz, they had to evacuate a bunch of kids from London, including whole schools. The Thornes figured girls make the least mess, so they opened the Abbey to nine 'ladies'col eges."
And just like that, it al clicked. I knew exactly where I'd heard the name before.
My stomach rol ed. "Oh my God."
"It's not that interesting,"Jenna said, but I shook my head.
"No, not that. Did the book have any pictures of those girls?"
"Yeah. I think I saw a few."
I could hear the blood rushing in my ears as I said, "Okay, I need to see that book. Now."
Jenna looped her arm through mine as we walked down one of the many hal ways branching off the main foyer. "I left it sitting on the window seat in the library,"she said. "I bet it's stil there."
We passed countless closed doors and turned down three different hal s before reaching the library. Like the rest of the house, it was gorgeous.
And gigantic.
I actual y froze in the doorway for a second. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen so many books in my life. Shelf after shelf stretched out before me, and twin spiral staircases curled up to the second level, where there were even more books. Low couches were scattered throughout the room, and Tiffany lamps cast soft pools of light on the hardwood floor. Large windows at the other end of the room looked out over the river and let in the last few rays of the setting sun.
The window seat was empty.
"Crap,"Jenna sighed. "I swear I left it there like twenty minutes ago."
"Do you remember where you found the book?"I asked. "Maybe someone came in and reshelved it."
Jenna bit her lip. "Yeah, I think so. It was upstairs by this real y weird cabinet."
I fol owed her as she headed to the second floor. "Weird how?"
"You'l see. Okay, I was near the back, by the painting of some dude on a horse...."
I could see where Jenna would have trouble remembering which shelf was which. Downstairs, the books had lined the wal s, leaving the floor open.
Up here, there were roughly thirty bookcases vying for space, some of them so close together I had to turn sideways just to pass between them.
"Aha!"I heard Jenna exalt from somewhere to my left.
I found her standing on tiptoes, scanning a shelf that was indeed next to a painting of a dude on a horse. I thought he looked awful y irritated for a guy in such a spiffy ermine cape.
Jenna was wearing an equal y annoyed expression. "It's not here,"she said. "Maybe we should look downstairs again."
I bit back disappointment. I wasn't sure why I wanted to see the book so badly. I already knew where I'd heard Thorne before, and why it was so important.
Thorne was the last name of the woman whose spel had made Alice a demon. Who had, inadvertently I guess, made me a demon. There was no doubt in my mind that Alice had been one of those girls sent here during the Blitz, and that Thorne Abbey was where everything had started.
Stil , I wanted to see a picture of Alice here. Before she'd been changed.
"Yeah,"I told Jenna. "We can look again later. It's not that big a deal."
Jenna wasn't an idiot. She'd known me long enough to know when I was lying. But she let it go and said, "Oh, check this out."
Shoved in the corner, just under Pissy Guy on a Horse, was a smal black bookcase that only came up to my chest. It was covered in dust, and I saw immediately why Jenna had said it was weird. There was only one book on the shelf, but it was under a thick glass cube. Scratched into the glass were symbols I'd never seen before.
"Try to open it,"Jenna said.
There wasn't any handle that I could see, so I curled my fingers around the edge of the glass, trying to see if it could be pried open.
I immediately jerked my hand back. "Whoa."
"I know, right? That thing is covered in some serious mojo."
Serious mojo was an understatement. My fingers were burning. The sensation was similar to what I'd felt when I'd touched Archer's chest and felt the mark of The Eye sear into my palm. "Whatever that book is, someone real y didn't want anyone to look at it."
"No, they didn't."
Jenna and I both jumped and whirled around.
My dad stood behind us, a smal smile on his lips. His hands were clasped behind his back. "That book is the Thorne family's grimoire. A spel book."
"I know what a grimoire is,"I said irritably, but he continued like I hadn't spoken.
"It contains some of the darkest magic ever known to Prodigium. The Council locked it up years ago."
"They were witches, then? The Thornes?"
Dad ran a hand over the top of the cabinet. I flinched for him, but he didn't even seem to feel the shock of magic. "They were,"he replied. "Dark witches, of course. Very powerful and very adept at concealing their true identity from humans."
"They're the ones who made Alice a demon, right?"
Jenna made a little surprised noise next to me, but Dad just studied me for a moment before saying, "Yes. And aren't you clever for putting that together so quickly?"
He sounded genuinely pleased, and a little surge of happiness went through me. Stil , I said, "Jenna actual y helped me figure it out. She read something about a bunch of girls being sent here during the Blitz, and I remembered Mrs. Casnoff saying that the lady who, uh, changed Alice was named Thorne. That's why we were in here, actual y. I was going to see if I could find Alice's picture in one of the books Jenna was reading."
"If you want a picture of your great-grandmother during her time at Thorne, I have one. Why didn't you just come ask me in the first place?"
A sarcastic comment sprang to mind, but I immediately bit it back. He was right. Asking him would've been the logical thing to do instead of playing cloak-and-dagger in the library.
Thank God for Jenna, who looked up at my dad and said, "Mr. Atherton, Sophie's spent the last sixteen years of her life having people lie to her about one thing or another. At Hecate, she got pretty good at finding things out on her own. Hard habit to break."
Jenna may have been a tiny blonde with a nearly pathological love for pink, but she was stil a vampire, and that meant she could be pretty intimidating when she wanted to be. Right now, I kind of wanted to pick her up and hug her.
Dad looked back and forth between us. "Mrs. Casnoff said the two of you were a formidable team. I see now what she meant. Wel , if there's nothing else you ladies need in the library, Sophie, would you care to accompany me on a walk about the grounds?"
I wondered if there were ever times when Dad didn't sound like he'd just escaped from a Jane Austen novel. It was weird to think of my superpractical mom fal ing for a guy like him. She'd never struck me as the type to go for a smooth talker. Of course, I never thought I'd fal for a pretty boy who was secretly a Prodigium-kil er, so what the heck did I know?
"It's getting dark,"I said to Dad.
Chapter 5
"Oh, I think we stil have plenty of light left. And the view of the house at this time of day is quite spectacular."
In the few weeks since I'd met Dad, I'd learned to read his eyes and not his tone of voice. And right now, his eyes said I was going on a walk with him whether I wanted to or not.
"Okay,"I said. "Why not?"
"Excel ent! You'l be fine on your own for a little while, won't you?"he asked Jenna.
She glanced at me. "Sure, Mr. Atherton,"she said. "I'l , uh, just go see what Cal is doing."
"Wonderful idea,"Dad replied. He held his elbow out to me. "Shal we?"
We made our way to the front door, passing one of the servants. She was dusting a marble-top table in the hal way, but instead of using a feather duster or Pledge, she just held her hands above the surface. The dust swirled up in a tiny cloud, vanishing as it rose. Watching it was every bit as jarring as the computer and cel phone had been. At Hecate, no one was that...wel , casual with magic. Mrs. Casnoff certainly wouldn't have let us use our powers to dust.
Dad and I didn't speak until we were outside. "Look,"I said, "I'm real y sorry I touched your magical bookcase or whatever that was. I didn't know."
Dad just took a deep breath as we walked down the gravel drive. "Lovely. Can you smel that, Sophie?"
"Um...smel what?"
"Lavender. Thorne Abbey has it planted in every garden on the premises. It's especial y fine on evenings like this."
I took an experimental sniff. It was nice, and the evening was beautiful; the air wasn't too warm or too cool, and there were shadows creeping across the green lawn. I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn't been at the Home for Wayward Demons.
We kept walking in silence. My hand rested lightly in the crook of Dad's elbow, which was equal parts nice and weird. As we walked, al I could think was, This is my dad. I'm hanging out with my dad, and we're acting like he hasn't been the World's Most Absentee Father for nearly seventeen years.
Dad led us over the stone bridge and up a smal hil . We stopped at the top and turned to look down at the house.
Dad was right. The view was amazing. Nestled in its val ey, Thorne Abbey was bathed in soft, golden light. In the distance, the forest seemed to curl around the building, protecting and sheltering it. I wanted to think it was beautiful, but looking at it, al I could think about was how different my life would have been if Alice had never come here.
"I've loved this house from the moment I set eyes on it,"Dad said quietly.
"I just wish it were a little bigger,"I said. "I need at least five hundred bedrooms to keep from feeling cramped, you know?"
It was a lame attempt at a joke, but Dad chuckled anyway. "I hoped you would like it. It's our birthplace, in a manner of speaking. Would you like to hear the story?"
Even though my mouth was dry and my knees were shaky, I forced myself to sound nonchalant. "Might as wel ."
"Members of the Thorne family were dark witches and warlocks. For hundreds of years they managed to keep their true identities secret from humans, al the while using their powers to increase the family's wealth and influence. They were ambitious and clever, but not particularly dangerous. At least not until the war."
"Which war?"
Dad looked at me, surprised. "You didn't learn about the war at Hecate?"
I thought back over al my classes last year, but I had to admit I'd spent a lot of that time thinking about other things, like Archer, and Jenna, and how girls were getting mysteriously attacked. Who could blame me if I hadn't paid that much attention in class? "We might have. I just don't remember."
"In 1935, a war broke out between L'Occhio di Dio and Prodigium. It was a particularly grim time in our history. Thousands were kil ed on both sides."
He paused to clean his glasses with his handkerchief. "At that time, there were only two members of the Thorne family left, Virginia and her younger brother, Henry. Virginia was apparently the one who came up with the idea of raising a demon to fight The Eye. No one had ever been able to do that before in the history of Prodigium, but Virginia decided to try. It took her years, but she final y found the ritual she was looking for in an archaic grimoire."