Chapter One - I
I'm not like all those other girls. They think they have it hard fighting over which of their boyfriend's is more attractive than the other, fighting over who has the best haircut, best shade of lip gloss, the best car...the best cat. I don't fight like they do. I fight real battles. I'm only 17 and I've fought many people. I say people ... but I mean things. Werewolves, shape shifters, witches, faeries, demons, vampires...you name it, I've fought it. Except for Ghosts – they don't do anything. Except no I lie, I have fought a ghost. You wouldn't think that would be possible, but it is. As if that wasn't bad enough, I'm also in love with a guy who should have dies 500 years ago but didn't. No, instead he did something really clever – he got himself trapped. In a mirror.
Yeah he's that clever guy and he knows it – but he thinks I'm being serious when I tell him he's clever. He's one of those guys you just want to hate but can't because he's so God damn attractive! I just don't get. It's not fair!
I don't have time to worry about it though. I just have to accept it. I mean all the time I would have spent trying to change my own mine, I've spent patrolling. Yeah that's as boring as it sounds. You walk around an invisible wall all day every day trying to make sure 'the Prodigium' don't get in. But it's not that big of a deal. My cousin Sophie? She's head of the council, okay; she is in charge of the Prodigium. They wouldn't dream of attacking us anymore. Mum wonders why they've given up. I kind of want to hit her with a brick sometimes – it's pretty obvious.
I'm Izzy, by the way. Izzy Brannick. Yes, yes I'm a Brannick. Yes I am ginger. No, you don't need to mention it to my face because yes, I will hit you. Torin laughs about it all the time. It's stupid really – I let him mock me for it, not anyone else. I dunno – maybe it's because he's trapped in a mirror and I can't actually hit him? Maybe it's because of his hotness? I don't know, I don't know and I don't understand. I don't know if I want to understand, really. Another thing I don't know – or understand – is why I'm writing this down. I'm sitting here in the forest that surrounds the great big camp that we call home with my back to a tall pine tree breathing in the pungent odour, writing in this little grungy old notebook. It did once have a blue cover but now it's just a sort of washed-our, grey colour and the pages are all crumpled and bent but ... whatever! It's still paper, and I feel the need to write things down. Although God forbid if anyone outside of my family ever heard about this! Even Sophie doesn't know although I think she suspects. About Torin and me, I mean. She'd probably just use the information to manipulate me, like everyone else does. Although, they use it to manipulate Torin as well – to make sure he never tries to leave the mirror. If he does, he'd never see me again. They like to play him; he's their plaything. He's useful for them. But he hates it; he hates it in the mirror! I mean, he's lived in it for 500 years, after a spell gone wrong! I told you he was clever.
"Izzy!" At the sound of Finley's voice, Izzy shoved the notebook back into the hole in the tree where she had stashed it away years ago. She'd only found it this morning, half full of childish drawings. She had yet to discover why she'd decided to sit down and write about her life.
"What?" she called back, standing and brushing the dirt and bark off her bum.
"Oh, you are out here," Finley rounded a corner and stopped, observing her sister with narrowed eyes. "Mum said you went to patrol the forest. Why are you not patrolling?"
"I, uh..." frantically, Izzy tried to think up an excuse. "I was just looking at the ... sky. From the ground. Through the trees. It's very, urm, pretty..." she trailed of feebly as Finley's expression changed from confused to pissed off.
"Jesus, Izzy! Torin is having such a bad influence on you! Who cares about the sky?" She took a step closer and grabbed one of Izzy's arms, shaking it like the arm of a limp rag doll.
"I'm sorry!" Izzy snapped, pulling her arm out of her sister's grip and shoving at her. "God, calm down! I'll finish the fucking patrol, alright?" Looking down, she saw the fat blade of Demonglass tucked into her waistband. Finley was too slow to stop Izzy reaching over and snatching it.
"Run away home to Mummy and your precious swords. I can deal with his patrol!"
"You bi -" Finley didn't have time to finish her insult because by then Izzy had disappeared from the fuming, wielding the Demonglass like a dagger and fuming.
"Sometimes, I hate her!" Izzy announced to the boundary as she prowled, glancing left and right as was customary. "I mean we used to get on fine, but now it's like she's out for my blood!" Izzy supposed she knew why her sister had been in such a bitchy mood lately. Their mother Aislinn would soon be naming who would take over the Brannick trade when she passed away, and Finley had somehow got it into her head that Izzy was going to be chosen. That was stupid, of course. Izzy had become much more used to dealing with Prodigium since the battle at Hex Hall. After all, her own cousin was a demon, and she was on first name terms with Archer and Jenna who were a warlock and a vampire, respectively. None of those three had ever tried to harm her (not counting the Sophie/Elodie attack right at the beginning when Sophie had appeared on the ground, half-unconscious and in the process of being possessed by a crazy ghost. Izzy didn't want to fight Prodigium anymore and that irked Finley. She was still as anti-magic as ever. It was hard, sometimes, for her to refrain from killing Sophie! Or at least that was what Izzy suspected. She finished the patrol, tense, and then returned to the house. Finley and she both tried to get through the front door at the same time. Izzy ignored her sister and instead walked into the kitchen.
After fixing herself a bowl of microwave rice and checking Aislinn was nowhere to be found, she crept into the War Room.