Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins Page A

said quietly.
    “I just wish it were a little bigger,” I said. “I need at least five hundred bedrooms to keep from feeling cramped, you know?”
    It was a lame attempt at a joke, but Dad chuckled anyway. “I hoped you would like it. It’s our birthplace, in a manner of speaking. Would you like to hear the story?”
    Even though my mouth was dry and my knees were shaky, I forced myself to sound nonchalant. “Might as well.”
    “Members of the Thorne family were dark witches and warlocks. For hundreds of years they managed to keep their true identities secret from humans, all the while using their powers to increase the family’s wealth and influence. They were ambitious and clever, but not particularly dangerous. At least not until the war.”
    “Which war?”
    Dad looked at me, surprised. “You didn’t learn about the war at Hecate?”
    I thought back over all my classes last year, but I had to admit I’d spent a lot of that time thinking about other things, like Archer, and Jenna, and how girls were getting mysteriously attacked. Who could blame me if I hadn’t paid that much attention in class? “We might have. I just don’t remember.”
    “In 1935, a war broke out between L’Occhio di Dio and Prodigium. It was a particularly grim time in our history. Thousands were killed on both sides.”
    He paused to clean his glasses with his handkerchief. “At that time, there were only two members of the Thorne family left, Virginia and her younger brother, Henry. Virginia was apparently the one who came up with the idea of raising a demon to fight The Eye. No one had ever been able to do that before in the history of Prodigium, but Virginia decided to try. It took her years, but she finally found the ritual she was looking for in an archaic grimoire.”
    “I’m guessing that’s the one in the locked cabinet?”
    “Yes. According to Council records, she wanted to perform the ritual on herself, but the head of the Council refused to allow that. He thought it would be safer to attempt it on a regular human. Luckily for Virginia, there were hundreds of girls staying at the Abbey.”
    I shivered. “And she picked Alice.”
    “She did.”
    “Why? I mean, you said there were hundreds of girls here. Did she draw Alice’s name out of a hat or something?”
    “I honestly don’t know, Sophie. I’ve always believed the fact that Alice was pregnant at the time had something to do with it. Perhaps she and Henry…Well, in any case, Virginia never told anyone, and after the ritual, Alice was in no position to say anything.”
    I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand and said, “In stories like this, there’s usually a magical diary hidden in a trunk that gives you all the answers. Any chance of that happening here?”
    “I’m afraid not. Anyway, I think you know the rest of the story. Virginia performed the ritual, but something went wrong. We’ll never really know what happened that night, but the end result was that Virginia and her brother were both dead, and Alice had become a demon.”
    “A monster,” I muttered, thinking of those silver claws sliding into Elodie’s neck. I plopped down on the lawn and drew my knees up to my chin. Dad sighed and, after a long moment, sat next to me.
    “You’ll get grass stains on your suit.”
    “I have other suits. You know, that’s not the first time I’ve heard you use that word to refer to us. May I ask why?”
    I raised both eyebrows. “Seriously? You have to ask why demon means monster to me?”
    “When you thought you were just a witch, did you use the word ‘monster’ to describe yourself?”
    “Of course not.”
    “And yet witches, faeries, shapeshifters, demons…we all have the same origins.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Dad plucked a piece of grass and began shredding it absentmindedly. “We all started out as angels.”
    “I know that regular Prodigium did,” I said. “They’re descended from the angels who didn’t pick a side in the war