Page 5

I groaned when I woke up. I was sitting up, and I wasn’t one of those magical people who could fall asleep in any situation. Every family holiday growing up, the women were expected to cook and clean up after while the men ate and then fell asleep on the couch watching sports. I wasn’t just bitter that I was expected to wait on them like a servant. I couldn’t sleep unless I was in bed, the temperature was just right, and I had the proper amount of pillows and blankets.

That was when I remembered someone snuck a dick in my bedroom and got me arrested by the men in black. I still didn’t know how that happened because I was a light sleeper even when I wasn’t sleeping in a hostel.

I cracked my eyes open. My back was killing me from being deposited in this chair after they knocked me out. I wasn’t back in America. I appeared to be in the grand hall of a castle and there were several people my age who had also been knocked out and were passed out in chairs.

Maybe this wasn’t about the severed dick?

There was a gorgeous older woman standing on the stage up at the front of the hall, staring at us. I had no idea who she was, but she just oozed power.

“I know you’re all awake and faking it. The sedative is short acting and was needed to get you here,” she said.

Based on the accents that all started talking at once, they’d collected people from all over the world. What was this? I thought the men in my room were police, but looking back, they never identified themselves and they knocked me out when I had every intention of cooperating.

“Quiet!” the woman yelled.

Yeah, I had questions, and I was betting everyone else did, too. She wasn’t a large woman, but she was slightly scary. Everyone sitting in the audience probably had the same story I did, just minus the severed dick, and we had every right to know why we were taken here. There was just something about this woman that said not to piss her off and I wasn’t the only one feeling that. Everyone shut up when she told us to be quiet.

“Thank you. First of all, you were taken for your safety. You are at Ouroboros Academy in Ravenhelm, England. It’s a small, supernatural county near Northumberland.”

“You brought me to the culchie arsehole of England? Lame.”

I whirled around. I recognized that voice. It was this absolutely gorgeous guy who had been staying at the hostel with me. He mostly kept to himself, but I could feel him watching me sometimes. I didn’t even know his name, but I watched him, too.

“Ravenhelm is rich in history, but it’s also not as densely populated, which is vital for what we’re doing here. It’s also a haven for people like you.”

People like me? I was just an American backpacking through Europe until the IRS back home went after my father for illegally claiming me on his taxes after kicking me out of the house as soon as I turned eighteen. I couldn’t get student loans to go to college while he was doing that, so I took a gap year to travel.

I hadn’t decided on which colleges to apply to yet because my money situation was kind of fucked right now. I wasn’t exactly expecting to get kidnapped in Amsterdam and brought to a college in England. I wasn’t even sure if I could pay for it.

“Okay, so first things first. The supernatural world is real. Witches, vampires, shifters, and dragons, they all exist. Part of Ouroboros is teaching those students how to use that magic and blend into the human world.”

That was crazy, and I wasn’t sure if I believed it, but I was definitely human. My father was the preacher in a giant mega church. My mother was the typical submissive pastor’s wife. My father wasn’t any type of supernatural. If he met one, he’d want to burn it as a demon. My mom definitely wasn’t, or she wouldn’t be within fifty feet of my father.

I always felt like an alien in my family and wished I was adopted many times, but I knew I wasn’t. My mother had a particular shade of green-glass eyes that I inherited. I also had her nose. I didn’t get a damned thing from my father and I was fine with that because I’d hate to see that when I looked in the mirror.

“Everyone in this room is different. It’s why you were taken the way you were. You’re all reincarnations. In your first life, you were either a god or a human that did something unholy and became the first of a new supernatural race. If you were the origin of a species in your first life, then you are basically a god to them.”

That was crazy. I was raised by the pastor of a mega church and he tried to fit me in all these little boxes I didn’t want to go in. I wanted to go to college and have a career. He wanted me to marry straight out of high school to a boy who planned on going to seminary school and be a pastor’s wife like my mom.

Needless to say, I was a raging atheist by fourteen and the only reason he didn’t kick me out then was because he was worried about how it would look to his congregation. It was perfectly fine when I was eighteen. I didn’t believe in one god, much less all of them.

“I realize this is all hard to believe, so here you go,” she said.

Well, fuck. We all had bowls of some kind of ice cream in our laps. They just appeared out of nowhere, like magic.

“I’m the headmaster of Ouroboros. You can call me Headmaster Mykene. In my first life, you would know me as Athena.”

That was wild, but it was a little farfetched, even with the magically appearing ice cream.

“You are all descendants of your original. There’s a tell-tale sign you’re a reincarnation. You all have a birthmark on the back of your neck that’s shaped like a pentacle.”

I raised my hand.

“I don’t. I really think there’s some kind of mistake.”

“Name?”

“Sage Matthews.”

“Ah, yes. You were born with it, but your parents had it removed when you were a baby. You nearly slipped through our fingers, but we are very thorough.”

“I still think it’s a mistake. I come from a long line of pastors. They are fanatics. If they thought their DNA had any god in it except the one they worship, they’d stop breeding out of spite.”

“I’ll talk to you in private after the trials.”

Excuse me, trials? Wasn’t getting kidnapped enough?