Supernatural Boarding School #3 - A Brush of Death ✅

Chapter 1 - Simon

"So, what do you say?" Paulie asked, nudging my arm and causing me to spill milk all over the table. "You up for it, fairy-boy?"

"Why not," I said with a shrug. "Guitar Hero it is."

"That's the spirit!" she praised, doing a little dance that reminded me so much of Demona it hurt. "Bring your roommates – we need all the help we can get. When Dem wakes up, I'm gonna kick her but so hard she'll be able to tell me what the moon looks like by the end of our battle."

I swallowed hard when I watched her skip to the cereal buffet to get some coffee. Somehow, that crazy werewolf kept saying and doing things that Demona would have if she'd been here.

"She'll be back," Eve told me, her voice warm and sure. "Trust me, there's no way Demona Hollow will stay dormant forever."

I desperately hoped she was right. As much as I forced myself to live like she might wake up any minute, I wasn't sure I believed it anymore.

***

Guitar Hero was the worst idea ever. I couldn't play that game without her, I just couldn't. When I held a plastic guitar in my hands for the first time in a month, I felt like I might just throw up. The fact that I was in Demona's dorm didn't help either. It was like she could walk in from her bedroom any minute, jump on my back and demand me to carry her around. Like if I walked into her room, I might catch her and Eros making out in bed. Or see Demona sitting on the floor, playing with her bunny Rupert. Part of me kept thinking that it had all been a cruel joke and that she was still here, hiding, waiting for the perfect time to jump out from behind the couch and scare me senseless.

Instead of trying to act like I was alright, I threw down the guitar and excuses myself. There were the looks of sympathy again. Everyone stared after me like they were afraid I'd crumble in front of their eyes any minute now.

I headed to the library, where the librarian, Mr. Sage, gave me a nod of recognition when I sat down in my normal seat on a windowsill in the back. The books from the night before were still there. The librarian didn't even bother shelving them anymore, knowing I'd be back for them soon enough. I'd spent pretty much every day here since I came back to school.

Research kept me busy and calm, but it didn't give me any answers. In her letter to me, Demona had mate it perfectly clear that she counted on me to wake her back up again. "Remember back in they day when Sheila and Eros were still dating?" she'd written. "He compelled her by accident, making her wish she was me. That was when he first worked as a team, the three of us, saving her. You did most of the work and I remember that there was a book I got for you. You told me about the curse of Sleeping Beauty and how the fairies had helped her by reversing her wish."

I remember that night well. It had been the first time I used magic, something that only very few fairies could manage. On my lap was the book Demona had gotten from my room that night. I opened the page Demona had been referring to and traced the picture of the girl with the blonde hair, laying on a bed covered with rose petals. She had reminded of Demona back then, but I had been in love with her, so everything reminded me of her back then.

The book stated that Sleeping Beauty wasn't just a fairytale. There was some truth to the story. Sleeping Beauty was a human who was compelled too often of too people by a vampire, trying to get her to turn against her parents, the king and queen of a land log forgotten. She had ended up in a compulsion-induced coma, much like Demona had. The way to wake up the comatose girl, the fairies – in the fairytale, they serves as the fairy godmother, of course – had channeled their powers into her to wake her up.

That wouldn't work on Demona. We had already tried everything we could think of, but her energy stream seemed unable to connect with anyone or anything. Not even Eros and I managed to get anything off her. Sometimes, I feared that it was just a fluke that she was still breathing, that she was slowly slipping into a gentle death.

The book didn't help much. It was just a dusty old storybook, explaining the supernatural truths behind some of the stories humans had written down over the years. What I needed was an instruction manual, telling me exactly what to do, or at least give me a clue.

Back when Eros had compelled Sheila, she hadn't been as far gone as Demona was now. She'd just gotten stuck in her wish to be Demona, simply because Eros had been thinking about her while kissing Sheila. I had managed to reverse Sheila's wish and wake her up. The trouble was that Demona barely seemed to alive. She wasn't wishing anything, so there was nothing to reverse.

All of this meant that there were two options.

One: Demona had made a mistake and Sleeping Beauty wasn't the answer to all of our problems. She'd tried to convince herself that there was a way I could wake her up, but had failed to do the proper research, as always.

Two: Demona had been right and I was the problem. She had discovered something that she'd failed to mention in the letter and I was letting her down by not discovering the solution.

To be honest, it pas probably the first option, but I knew I had to keep up my research anyway. I couldn't live with myself if I just gave up.

I wanted – no, I needed to get my bondmate back.