“I’m going no matter what,” I said quickly, cutting her off. If she was about to tell me I couldn’t go looking for her because of what was written in that note, I was outta here. Rescuing my mom was non-negotiable for me.
“Absolutely,” Aurelia said. “What I was going to say is that now that I know Apollyon is afteryoursoul, I don’t think sending in a small group of hunters with you is going to be enough. I think we need to amass a Lumen army, and you’ll need to train every free second of every day to be ready.”
Amass an army?
That sounded serious, but she wasn’t wrong. What if I went down to the Netherworld and got my soul gobbled up by my psycho dad and freed him? That would be beyond bad. I was all for having extra help, but there was one problem…
“That sounds like it might take a while and I can’t bear to think of my mom there alone, hurt, and wondering what’s going on here,” I confessed. Just talking about my mom caused the lid of Pandora’s box to crack, allowing my emotions to leak out and overwhelm good sense. Now that I’d read the letter and knew that Apollyon had essentially tricked her into becoming a Shade, I wanted her back more than ever.
“What if we could send a quick word to her, tell her to hold on?” Aurelia offered. “I can contact the other academies and ask for volunteers to go to the Netherworld in a month’s time for a rescue mission.”
My heart hammered in my chest. “Send word to my mother in the Netherworld? That’s possible? Why haven’t we done this before?” A month wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t too bad if we could be sure we’d get her back here safely.
A flicker of fear passed over Aurelia’s face. “It’s not without its difficulties, but if it was possible, would you be willing to hold off going there until I can rally a proper attack?”
I nodded. I could wait a little longer if my mom received word that she hadn’t been abandoned and that I was coming.
Aurelia looked more relaxed now that I wasn’t going to go rushing into the Netherworld alone. “We’ll send word to her tonight. In the meantime, you need to practice your portal power control with me.”
I groaned. I was really hoping for a nap and a trip to a local shrink, but I guessed duty called.
“Stand over there.” She pointed to a spot across the room.
With a sigh, I tucked the note into my pocket and walked to the far wall. She pulled an apple out of a bag that lay on the floor and set it on her open palm. “Open a portal and take it.”
Okay, clearly she knew I was food motivated, but it would have to be a candy bar to really get me excited.
“A portal in the same world? What’s the point?”
She raised one eyebrow. “The point is that if you can collapse space and cross a distance in the same world, you can escape any danger. We will start with a distance of fifteen feet but imagine if you could portal from New York to Connecticut.”
My eyes widened. “Is that possible?”
Aurelia chuckled. “Of course. It will take a toll on your energy, and there are dangers involved, so it’s something you should only do in an emergency, but if you master this skill, there’s no telling what you would be capable of.”
Holy portal power!
“Can you portal to LA?” I asked. Now I just wanted to see the extent of her power.
A sly grin pulled at the corners of her mouth. “I once portaled to Paris for my twenty-first birthday. I slept for two days afterward because it sapped so much of my power. Do not recommend.”
I smiled at that and remembered how I had passed out after I’d made a portal from the Netherworld back to my apartment building in New York City. It definitely took a lot out of me. And made me super hungry.
“I thought the whole compound was warded against portals being opened within the boundaries,” I said, thinking not only about the relic in the subbasement that was supposed to strengthen the wards—which I wasn’t supposed to know about—but also how big of a deal it was the two times demons had opened portals from the Netherworld into Lumen Compound the month before. It wasn’t something they’d thought could be done.
Aurelia shook her head. “Our wards just keep demons and Shades from portaling into Lumen Compound. We can still use our light magic to portal in, out, and within our compound. So we won’t have any issues training.”
I nodded, thinking that sounded reasonable, and then tucked into my lesson.
An hour later, I’d cracked the concrete floor and nearly cut Aurelia’s hand off when trying to get the apple by closing the portal around her wrist too quickly. She didn’t seem too bothered though. In fact, I think she was a little impressed.
“Not bad, Tatum,” she told me when we were finally done.
I snorted. “I almost took your hand off!”
She shrugged. “On my first day of in-world portal practice, I burned my eyebrows off. It’s a long story not worth repeating,” she added when she saw the excitement in my face.
“Oh please, repeat!” I begged.
