Phoenix Academy - Lucy Auburn Page 0,40

was something in that direction." He points, and if I had a heart in this form, it would probably be leaping and jumping around right now. "It wasn't fresh or much, but maybe there's a charger that way."

"Well, worth a try. We should at least make sure Ari isn't back before we..." Reggie trails off, clears his throat, and fights past whatever he's struggling with. "Let's just not waste anymore time when it's clear she's not here."

"I am here, though," I mutter, not even bothering to shout or wave my hands in his face. I've tried all that—it hasn't worked. The only thing left is to go along for the ride.

The direction they're going is the same one my heart calls towards.

After all, the only civilization nearby is the cabin in the woods where I was stabbed to death.

Ever since becoming a phoenix, I've thought of my life as two sides to a coin: the Before and the After. The Ari who died wasn't the same as the Ari who was brought back to life. I threw myself into my new world, full of new people, classes, and a campus teeming with life. Even my feral magic going wild and making shifters mad distracted from what I never truly confronted: the fact that my own father, soulless and full of rage, killed me, my mother, and my sister.

My life as a phoenix has been one distraction after another. Even now, I have one: if I don't figure out how to get across the country to the hidden door that leads to Phoenix Academy, I have no idea how my spirit will return to my body.

Experimentally, I try leaping into the air and punching the sky with one fist. Nope—no flying here. Whatever kind of spirit I am, it's the walking-on-the-ground type. Not the hovering type.

I try summoning my blue phoenix fire a few times, just a little bit, but it also doesn't work in this form. Only my witch magic, the spiritual kind tied to my essence, works. Being a phoenix must be some indelible part of my body—and while it worked in Hell, where I had no body at all, now that my soul has returned the fire has gone back to my flesh. Until I've reunited with the meat-and-bones me, I won't be able to call its blue flames.

At least, that's what I reason, based on my knowledge of magic and limited understanding of being a phoenix. It makes sense. Something changed in me as we passed over—a part of me shifted. Whatever led my spirit to being a physical form in the Spirit Realm and Hell, it's just a murky invisible ghost here.

I wish I was like Dani's demons at least. She could see them, even when no one else could. Unfortunately I'm just a boring regular ghost.

As I follow the guys through the woods, retracing the path I walked—or more accurately, was forcibly dragged down—I try to see if they can at least sense that they're being haunted. Racing through the trees, I kick up leaves and make ghost-like sounds.

"Hooo-hoooo!"

"Gaaaah, oh no, boo!"

"I'm a little girl." I whisper this in Xavier's ear. "And I want my mommy, or I'm going to... kill you!"

I spin and jump. Run and scream. Try to concentrate very hard on pinching them. At one point David glances towards me and frowns, but his eyes don't quite connect. It's possibly the biggest disappointment of my life.

It does at least distract me from where we're going until it's too late to ignore it.

The cabin rises in the distance, in a clearing between trees.

Yellow police tape is strung around its boundary. Webs of it criss-cross the back porch and block off every entrance. There's dirt and torn bits of plastic mingled in with the leaf matter, making it very clear that this case, at least, isn't getting the local rural police department's full attention.

"Whoa." Reggie stops and stares ahead, then frowns, sniffing the air. "I smell blood."

"Old blood," Xavier clarifies, his eyes glowing yellow as he prowls near the tape. "Dried old blood. A lot of it—more than one person died here."

Thinking of the tourists who were staying in this house before the Heretic and his followers brought us here, I glance around to see if they're haunting the place. But however violently they died, they moved on.

Thankfully, it seems, so did the men I killed. Or at least, I think I killed them—I was too frightened to stick around and check. My wild