Prison of Hope Read Free Page A

of beginning the removal of the marks. An increase in my power and manifestation of necromancy were the first steps on my path to discovering what the marks were hiding. Four marks still remained, waiting until some arbitrary point when they’d vanish too. In the meantime, I practiced my necromancy, which comes in a lot of different varieties; mine allows me to absorb the spirits of those who have died fighting.
    “Why would you blow up a toaster?” Tommy asked.
    “Well I didn’t mean to. I just sort of lost control. Earlier in the day, someone came and asked me to go with him and his teenage daughter to Germany. Shockingly enough, he mentioned nothing about the entire bloody school year accompanying them.”
    Tommy’s face was a picture of innocence. “Don’t know w hat yo u’re talking about. I remember very clearly whispering about the school trip part. Besides, we’re going to see Hades—it’s not like that’s the worst trip ever. I thought having you around might make the whole trip more bearable. Olivia had to stay in England , and dating an LOA director doesn’t really make the other parents want to be too friendly with me.”
    Olivia was Kasey’s mum and head of the southern-England branch of the LOA, or Law of Avalon, which is best described as Avalon’s police force. They’re a sort of mix of the FBI and Interpol . They’re not always the most popular people, even to other Avalon members, and despite Kasey’s school being Avalon funded, a lot of the parents would have loyalties to people who might have very different interests to Avalon’s power and influence in the world.
    Tommy had found making friends with some of the other parents to be hard work. Avalon politics is full of long memories and longer feuds, and Tommy’s association with some powerful members of Avalon made people wary of him.
    “It’s nice to see you both for more than a few minutes at a time,” I admitted. I’d been away from England on and off for just over two years, ever since my necromancy reared its head. I’d missed spending time with Tommy, Olivia, and Kasey.
    “Will Sky be there?” Tommy asked.
    “Probably—she does like to enjoy my misery.”
    Sky was one of several people whom Hades and Persephone had adopted over the years. She had been born in America a few hundred years ago to a female European missionary and male Native American chief, the latter of whom worked for Hades. When she was very young, rivals within the tribe had murdered her parents, who were both necromancers; their power had been inherited by Sky. After that, Hades and Persephone had tak en her into their home. Hades had also erased those responsible from the face of the earth. It isn’t wise to piss him off.
    “You know, I never understood something about grimoires,” Tommy said, taking the conversation back a few minutes.
    “And that would be?” I asked after a few moments of waiting for my friend to continue.
    “What was the point of putting in all the runes about how to access magic? The original grimoires were written by sorcerers, so surely they shouldn’t have needed the knowledge.”
    “I don’t really know the full answer, but basically a lot of sorcerers reach a point when they’ve mastered so much magic that they try to look into new ways of increasing their strength. Runes are a popular choice. And then, once Zeus’s grimoires were given to the humans, they started practicing and making their own versions of the books.”
    “Hence, witches,” Kasey said as she stepped out from beside me.
    I turned to the young teen. “You need to start wearing a bell.”
    “Sorry, Nate,” she said with a sly grin. Kasey was every inch her father’s daughter in personality, although in looks, thankfully, she took after her mother, with long red hair, green eyes, and an elegant face. No teenage girl wants to be short and stocky with a permanent five o’clock shadow.
    A few years ago, a then twelve-year-old Kasey had put herself