I slowly stood up and walked down the hall.
I paused before rounding the corner, afraid she might be standing there, waiting for me.
What's she going to do, Sophie? I thought. Yell "Boo"? Walk through you? She's a ghost, for God's sake.
But I was still holding my breath as I hurried around the corner.
And ran into something very solid.
I tried to scream, but it came out more of a breathy "Urrrgh!"
Hands reached out to steady me. "Whoa," Jenna said with a little laugh.
"Oh. Hi," I said, out of breath from the collision, and overcome with relief.
"Are you okay?" She studied my face with a look of concern.
"It's been a long day."
She smiled a little. "I'm sure. I heard about what happened with the
Vandy."
I groaned. What with the family secrets and assassins and ghosts, I'd forgotten all about my more imminent danger.
"It's my own fault. I never should have listened to Elodie."
"No, you shouldn't have," Jenna said, twirling her pink streak. "Is it true you have cellar duty for the rest of the semester?"
"Yeah. What is that, by the way?"
"It's awful," she replied flatly. "The Council stores all its reject magical artifacts here, and they're all just jumbled up in the cellar. People who get cellar duty have to try to catalogue all that junk."
"Try?"
"Well, it's all crap, but it's magic crap, so it moves around.
Cataloguing it is pointless because it doesn't stay in the same place."
"Great," I muttered.
"Careful, Sophie. The Leech is looking kind of hungry."
I looked over Jenna's shoulder and saw Chaston standing at the end of the hall. I'd never seen her without Elodie and Anna, and the effect was a little jarring.
Chaston sneered at us, but it looked more like an impression of Elodie than a genuine expression.
"Shut up, Chaston," I said irritably.
"Witch: It's what's for dinner," she said with a nasty laugh before disappearing into her room.
Next to me, Jenna looked even paler than normal. It could have been a trick of the light, but for just a second I thought her eyes flashed red.
"The Leech," she murmured. "That's new."
"Hey," I said, giving her a little shake. "Don't let them get to you.
Especially not that one. She's not worth it."
Jenna nodded. "You're right," she said, but she was still looking at
Chaston's door. "So, you coming to Classifications of Shapeshifters?"
I shook my head. "Casnoff gave me the day off," I said.
Thankfully, Jenna didn't ask why. "Cool. See you at dinner, then."
After Jenna left, I thought about going to my room to read or lie down, but instead I went downstairs and into the library. Like the rest of the house, the room now looked a lot less shabby to me. The chairs looked less like fungi ready to swallow me, and much comfier.
I only had to scan the shelves for a little while before I found what I was looking for.
The book was black, with a cracked spine. There was no title, but a large golden eye was stamped on the front.
I sat down in one of the chairs and pulled my legs underneath me, opening to the middle of the book. There were several glossy pages of pictures, most of them reproductions of paintings, although there were a few grainy photographs of a crumbling castle in Italy that was supposed to be the headquarters of L'Occhio di Dio. I flipped through the pages, stopping when
I came to the same picture I'd seen in Mom's book. It was as horrible as I remembered: the witch on her back, her eyes wild with fright, and the dark-
haired man crouched over her holding a silver knife. The Eye tattooed over his heart.
I turned away from the pictures to skim the text.
Formed in 1129, the society began in France as an offshoot of the
Knights Templar. Originally a group of holy knights charged with ridding the world of demons,the group soon relocated to Italy, where they took on the official title, L'Occhio di Dio--The Eye of God. The group soon became well known for their brutal acts against all manner of Prodigium, but they were also known to attack any human who aided Prodigium. Over time they morphed from holy warriors into something more akin to a terrorist organization. Highly secretive, L'Occhio di Dio is an elite group of assassins with only one goal--the total destruction of all Prodigium.
"Well, that's nice," I murmured to myself.
I flipped through more pages. The rest of the book seemed to be a history of the group's leaders and their most notable Prodigium victims. I scanned the list of names, but I didn't see Alice Barrow on there. Maybe
Mrs. Casnoff had been wrong and she wasn't that big a deal after all.
I was about to put the book back on the shelf when a black-and-white illustration caught my eye and sent chills through me. It showed a witch lying on a bed, her head lolling to the side, her eyes blank. There were two somber men in black standing behind her, looking down at the body. Their shirts were opened just enough so that I could see the tattoos over their hearts. One was holding a long thin stick with a pointed end, almost like an ice pick. The other man held a jar of suspicious-looking black liquid. I glanced down at the caption under the picture.
Although the removal of the heart is the most common means of execution employed by The Eye, the group has been known to drain the blood of Prodigium. Whether this is done to implicate vampires or some other reason is not known.
I shivered as I stared at that blank-eyed witch. There weren't any holes in her neck, like they'd found on Holly, but the men had clearly drained her blood somehow.