Beyond (Afterlife book 1) by Willow Rose

“You
heard what Mick said. It’s too dangerous.”
    Abhik looked at me.
    “ I have been doing nothing all
of my life. I need to do something. I need to go on an
adventure.”
    I looked him in his eyes.
    “ Please don’t do this,” I
said.
    “ I am going no matter if
you come with us or not.”
    I sighed deeply. I couldn’t let him go
alone.“Then I guess we will all go.”
     

Chapter 8
     
     
     
     
    “I can’t believe you are going with
them!”
    I was sitting on my bed alone with
Jackline, the only other girl in our dormitory. She looked at me
like I was the one who had come up with the whole idea.
    “ You are going to get in so much
trouble for this,” she said while shaking her head. That was when I
realized for the first time that she was wearing a camouflage
uniform. It was covered with bloodstains. I felt a stab in my
heart. She had been a child soldier when she died, I thought. It
was weird that I hadn’t noticed before, but we hadn’t been spending
much time together since Jackline kept mostly to
herself.
    She saw me staring at her.
    “ See anything you like?”
She asked with a harshness to her voice.
    I shook my head.
    “ No, I am sorry. It is
just this thing tonight …”
    “ So why are you going
there anyway?”
    “ I need to go to keep an
eye on Abhik and help him if he gets into some kind of
trouble.”
    “ He can take care of
himself.”
    “ I’m not so sure about that,” I
said.
    At that moment Portia stepped into the room
still flanked by her two friends Acacia and Mai.
    “ We leave as soon as the
lights are out and everybody has fallen asleep,” she said. “Abhik
will meet us in the common room.”
     
    Later I lay awake listening to Jackline
breathe deeply. I had been wanting to ask Mick for advice but
didn’t dare. What if he told some teacher or, even worse, Rahmiel
and Salathiel with whom he seemed pretty close? Now I regretted not
talking to him about it. After all, he had been to the human world
as a spirit before. None of us had. We had no idea what it was
like. I kept thinking about what we had learned in our self-defense
class. Hjalte Havskäg had told us the Se’irims wanted to come after
us and try to lure us on their side. Were we an easier target when
we were away from the school?
    I sighed deeply and stared out the window.
The full moon shone and made everything bright outside.
    “ It is time. They are all
asleep,” Portia whispered in the darkness of the room. “We’d better
go now.”
    We rose from our beds and began to float
through the room. Jackline kept sleeping heavily as we left the
room in the tower. We went downstairs into the common room where
Abhik sat waiting for us. He got up and looked at us with
anticipation.
    “ Are you ready for this?”
Portia asked with a harsh voice.
    Abhik nodded eagerly. Too eagerly if you ask
me.
    “ Okay, listen. There is a
mirror in the cellar, next to our Transitions classroom. Not many
in this school know this, but it is a two-way-mirror. That means we
can go through it and enter immediately into the world of the
humans.”
    “ But where do we end up?”
I asked.
    “ That is the beauty of it. We
don’t know. I heard about it from the second-year students. They
told me that you can go right through it and it will take you
different places.”
    “ That sounds a bit
dangerous. Not knowing where we will end up,” I said
anxiously.
    Portia rolled her eyes at me.
    “ No one is forcing you to go.
Stay here if you are scared,” she said, knowing that it would make
me want to go even more. Just to show her.
    “ Come on,” she
said.
     
    The cellar was scary enough without the
dripping sounds and the long shadows creeping along the walls. I
had only been there during the day for Transitions class, and even
then it was a creepy place. Maybe it was just Mrs. Ohayashi and her
narrow eyes that were always looking at me, but I really hated
being down here.
    We flitted along the rocky corridors of
the cellar and edged