Demonglass Read Online Free PDF Page A

back at Hecate by August. Premonition isn’t one of my powers, so I was just being paranoid.
    Still, the feeling stayed with me long after Graymalkin Island had faded in the distance.
    * * *
    “Being a demon should make you immune to jet lag,” I mumbled hours and hours later as a sleek black car carried us through the English countryside.
    The long flight from Georgia to England had been pretty uneventful. Except that Cal had sat next to me.
    Which was fine. Really.
    It wasn’t like I’d been hyperaware of his presence and jumped the three times his knee bumped mine. And after that third time, he definitely hadn’t shot me a kind of disgusted look and said, “Chill out, will you?”
    And when Jenna gave us both a quizzical look, we hadn’t snapped, in unison, “Nothing!” Because all of that would have been weird, and Cal and I weren’t weird. We were cool.
    “You’ll feel better soon,” Dad said. For the first time since I’d met him, his eyes were bright and he actually looked relaxed. I guess being back in the motherland will do that to a guy.
    Jenna was practically bouncing with excitement, but Cal looked as tired as I felt. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep on the plane, and I was paying for it now. My eyes felt gritty and hot, and all I could think about was collapsing into a bed. After all, my poor body thought it was six a.m., but in England it was nearly lunchtime. Plus, we’d been driving for what felt like hours.
    When the plane had landed in London, I’d assumed the car would take us to a house in the city, or maybe to Council Headquarters so Dad could do business stuff. But the car had driven out of the crowded streets and past small houses all clustered together that reminded me of a Dickens story. Gradually, the brick buildings had given way to trees and rolling green hills. I saw more sheep than I thought existed.
    “So we came all the way to England just to hang out in the middle of nowhere?” I asked, leaning my aching head on Jenna’s shoulder.
    “We did,” Dad replied.
    Cal smiled. Well, of course he’d be thrilled to be stuck on some British farm all summer long, I thought grumpily, my visions of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge crumbling. Probably all sorts of English plants to heal—
    Then I caught sight of a house.
    Although, calling it a house was like calling the Mona Lisa a painting, or Hecate Hall a school. The term was technically correct, but it didn’t even begin to sum up the reality of the object.
    This house was one of the biggest buildings I’d ever seen, and made of a light, golden-colored stone that looked warm to the touch. It sat nestled in a lush valley, an emerald green lawn stretching in front of it, while a forested hill rose in the back. A thin, shining ribbon of water curved gracefully along one side of the property. Literally hundreds of windows glittered in the sunlight.
    “Wow,” Cal said, leaning over to look out the window.
    “This is where we’re staying?” I asked.
    Dad just smiled, looking way too satisfied with himself. “I told you there would be room for all of us,” he said, and I caught myself smiling back. We held each other’s eyes for a second, but I broke away first, nodding toward the house. “Don’t houses like that always have a name?”
    “More often than not,” he answered. “This is Thorne Abbey.”
    Something about that name was familiar, but I couldn’t think why. “It used to be a church?”
    “Not that actual house. It wasn’t built until the late sixteenth century. But there was an abbey on the land.”
    He went into lecture mode, talking about how the abbey had been razed under Henry VIII, and the land given to the Thorne family.
    But to be honest, I wasn’t really listening. I was watching several people walk out the front door of the house. Then I spotted a pair of wings and wondered who exactly Dad’s friends were.
    The car rumbled over a stone bridge and pulled into a circular drive. Dad