Autumn Rose: A Dark Heroine Novel Read Free Page B

looking.
    Feeling self-conscious and a little sick, I wrapped my arms around my middle, knowing that the sword balanced on my hip and the barriers around my mind and the magic in my blood couldn’t protect me from the words that would come.
    Spotting the restroom, I dived into it, noticing that for once it did not smell like an ashtray. Neither did it smell of blood, although only a Sage would ever be able to detect that scent. Instead, it reeked of bleach, an aroma that was not much more pleasant.
    I gripped the sink tightly, staring into the mirror, endlessly analyzing my hair and makeup. If it wasn’t perfect, they would notice. They always noticed. They would not notice the pimples on Christy’s forehead, or the sunburn across Gwen’s collar, but they would notice my fallen eyelash, or the chipped nail polish on my right thumb, or the scent of the cheap perfume I was now using because I had spent the money I had saved up from work in London.
    I sighed. I had to get a grip, and fast. The new school year was beginning and it was my duty to protect all the humans in this school, even if the dislike was mutual.
    I needed to be vigilant: I had heard the whispered rumors while I was in London. We all had. The Extermino were getting larger and bolder, and their attack on my town had proved it . . . why else would they bother with a tiny rural outpost?
    And then what of the rumor about the dark beings of the second dimension: people were saying the vamperic kingdom had kidnapped a human girl. The second dimension was the only one where the existence of dark beings was kept secret from the humans . . . keeping a human hostage threatened to out us all, and then what? Even in the other eight dimensions, the dark beings lived uneasily. The Damned had lived through years of genocide by the humans just because they used blood magic and there were hardly any of them left; the elven fae suffered because of the climate change the humans were creating; and we, the Sage, were constantly having to negotiate other dark beings out of difficult situations because a diplomat had said something stupid.
    Yet at the moment, unrest gripped the dark beings in a way I had never known in my short life.
    I sighed once again, pressing my forehead to the mirror that on this rare occasion was not covered in lipstick graffiti. Things were changing; any dark being could feel that. We were losing ourselves, drowning in velveteen tradition and microchip technology, caught between one world and another—figuratively, of course, because each kind of being firmly belonged in their own dimension, whether the humans liked sharing or not.
    Change was brewing, and I feared this was just the calm before the storm. If things did get bad, no amount of treaties could protect us from our enemies . . . ourselves, the Extermino . . . the humans.
    Shaking my head, I realized what I was doing and pushed aside all depressing thoughts as my grandmother had taught me to do. Dwelling on what has and will come to pass is as good as kicking the stool from beneath the future, she always said.
    Assuming that the buses would not be far away, I made my way back out after sweeping one last coat of mascara over my lashes. I cursed myself as I left, wishing I had kept my phone with me rather than casting it to school within my bag—now locked in my homeroom. At least then I could have texted one of the others.
    Wandering around, parting the crowd, and doing my best to ignore the stares of the younger students, I did not notice when my feet came to rest at the foot of a dull bronze plaque. It stood beneath a large cherry tree, planted in the center of the concrete-and-plastic-clad courtyard we called the quad. The words on it were clear for all to see, and each and every letter reminded me of why there were no Sage in the area.
    THIS TREE IS PLANTED IN LOVING MEMORY OF KURT HOLDEN ,
    WHO DIED ON APRIL 23 , 1999 .
    STUDENT , FRIEND , AND BROTHER .
    TAKEN TOO EARLY BY MAGIC .
    I