Spell Bound Read Online Free Page B

possesses me, yup.”
    I thought that would make them happy; after all, didn’t they hate Prodigium? But Aislinn gripped the edge of the table with both hands and dropped her head with a long sigh. Finley laid a hand on her shoulder, and murmured, “It’s okay, Mom. We’ll figure it out.”
    My own mom rubbed my back, and said quietly, “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”
    I felt that urge to fall on the floor and start sobbing rise up, so I shrugged and said, “Hey, I went to London to get my powers taken away. It just didn’t turn out the way I thought. But no tattoos, so score.”
    Aislinn pounded one of her fists on the table, and when she lifted her head, she suddenly looked every inch the Scary Prodigium Hunter.
    “We are at war. Your kind is in the process of unleashing hell on the world, and you’re making jokes?”
    I didn’t know what had brought on the sudden shift from Smiley Aislinn to Seriously Pissed-off Aislinn. I met her gaze and said, “In the past few hours, I’ve been possessed, nearly had my head caved in, and found out my mom is secretly a Prodigium hunter. And before that, I lost just about everyone else I care about, and discovered that people I trusted are secretly demon-raising creeps. My life sucks pretty hard right now. So, yeah. I’m making jokes.”
    “You’re useless to us now,” Finley said.
    “I’m sorry, how exactly was I use ful to you before?” I asked, even though I had a feeling I already knew.
    Sure enough, Finley met my gaze and said, “You heard Mom. We’re at war. And you were supposed to be our weapon.”

CHAPTER 5

     
    I stared at her. “And you guys thought I would do that, why, exactly?”
    “Torin said you’d fight for—” Izzy interjected, but Aislinn held up her hand.
    “Enough, Isolde,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”
    “It matters to me,” I said. “Who the heck is Torin? And what were you gonna do, use me like your very own magic bomb?” Mom’s arm tightened around my shoulders. I shrugged her off and walked to the table to face Aislinn.
    “That’s what they wanted to do, you know,” I told her. “The Casnoffs.” My voice wavered a little as I thought about Nick and Daisy, the two demon kids I’d…well, befriended was a strong word—I’d gotten to know at Thorne Abbey. The last time I’d seen Daisy, she’d demoned out and tried to kill me, all thanks to Lara Casnoff. Same with Nick, who attacked Archer and nearly killed him. Because Lara had turned them into demons, Nick and Daisy were under her control.
    There was a part of me that missed them, weird and homicidal as they’d been, which was probably why my voice got louder when I added, “The Casnoffs and the other members of the Council want to use demons to fight you and The Eye.”
    Aislinn didn’t seem angry anymore. Just defeated. She ran a hand through her hair. “Is that really what you think, Sophie? That they’re raising demons to keep mon—your kind safe?”
    “I…yeah, I guess so. I mean, they were always saying you were going to kill us all.”
    A weird look crossed Aislinn’s face, almost like she felt sorry for me. Finley gave a disgusted sound. “Right. The only reason those Casnoff chicks want to make demons is so that they’ll have their own secret service. Having their very own demon army wouldn’t be convenient or anything.”
    Thankfully one of those folding chairs was pretty close by, so I was able to sink into it.
    “I don’t get it,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Mom.
    Her mouth was set in a grim line. “Let’s just say the Brannicks have never believed that Lara and Anastasia’s father, Alexei, was so interested in creating demons to protect other Prodigium. That much power? He basically had the equivalent of a magical nuclear weapon under his control.”
    Alexei, with the help of another witch, had turned my great-grandmother, Alice, into a demon. She’d been just a regular girl, but once Alexei Casnoff was done with