Free Prophecy Girl (Angel Academy) by Cecily White Page B

know and disregard in the service of his ego. He’ll see you tomorrow morning for your field test, then I’m afraid the rest is up to fate.”
    I listened as if her words made sense, but they didn’t. I had tried to help . I was the only one who tried to help. Everyone else had just sat back, content to watch Jack get shredded. How was that fair?
    “This sucks,” I said.
    “Indeed. Just remember, dear, life is suffering.” She patted my shoulder. “Love, even more so.”
    And that was how she left me—with guts in my hair, goo on my shoes, and that infernal yellow note in my hand. Jack’s cramped lines swam together like worms in a rain puddle as I reread them, again and again. Love, huh? This wasn’t love. It was betrayal, pure and simple. Why would he do this to me? We were on the same side…weren’t we?
    Lisa’s voice startled me when it sounded a few feet away. “There you are! Everything okay?”
    I quickly refolded the yellow slip and stuffed it into my shirt pocket. “Yeah, everything’s fine,” I said. But it wasn’t fine. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be fine for a while.

Chapter Six:
    Good Intentions
    We made it to Demonology class in plenty of time. Not that it mattered. I couldn’t concentrate on a single word Gunderman uttered. Anatomical vulnerabilities of demons, the boiling point of fiend’s blood, a hundred and one ways to shield your Watcher against demonic energies… It went in one ear and out the other.
    All I could think about was Jack. The silk of his hair, the lingering scent of him, like soft rain and warm sugar. About midway through class, I looked down to discover that the margins of my notebook were littered with vines and flower doodles.
    So, so lame.
    I closed the notebook and shoved it away. A thousand questions still pressed their way into my brain, the same questions that had been lurking since Lisa first mentioned the Graymason. Who could orchestrate something like this? Who would want to? Did it have something to do with the war? If so, why kill instructors ? They were nobodies—a few class lecturers and a glorified hall monitor. Lutz was the only one with any real influence, and that was tenuous at best. If someone truly meant to disable the Academy, the ideal person to kill would be Headmistress Smalley. It’s not like she was a hard target—a middle-aged Channeler who lived alone with a bunch of cats and a semi-retired half-bondmate next door. No, it had to be something else.
    The demon attack must have been orchestrated by someone inside St. Michael’s walls. Someone with power. Someone nearby when the rift opened. I’d watched enough C.S.I. with Katie to know that every serial killer chooses his victims according to a pattern. The Graymason had to have a pattern, too, and I was willing to bet today’s attack was part of it. So if I wanted to figure out who was doing this, I needed to access the victim files. That meant breaking into…
    “The Archives,” I muttered under my breath, pen tapping against my lip.
    “Excuse me?” Lisa paused her obsessive note-taking. “Did you say something?”
    “Hard drives,” I said, louder this time. “Dad needs a new hard drive. For his laptop.”
    “Okay, whatever.” She gave me a funny look then returned to her notes.
    Gunderman had lapsed into some tangent about the Crossworld aristocracy and how if made-vamps didn’t watch their step they’d end up serving tea and bloody crumpets to the new Immortal Sovereign for the next six billion years. Personally, I thought the Borgias were more interesting.
    I returned to my plotting.
    The wards on the Archive room would be comparatively light. Henry stayed in there most of the time, which could make things complicated, but even he had to take lunch, right?
    I glanced at my watch. 11:05.
    If Henry kept to the patterns we’d noted on last year’s stakeout, he would go to lunch early with Smalley. Which meant I had about thirty minutes to get to the Archives, find what I