As the student conspirators went their separate ways, Katrina wondered if this feeling of bubbling anxiety was what she’d missed when they were plotting her rescue from the hands of Bishop Wotan and Godhand. Clutching Kit tight and swaying from side to side, she tried to recall those hazy, dream-like memories of her time in the Godhand manor, when the Bishop had told her all about faeries and their magical origins. There was no denying – unless you were John or Theseus – that the Academy’s newest students were indeed these strange magical creatures from another plane of reality: Katrina had all the proof she needed in her collection of auragraphs. All she wanted now was an image of Faye’s aura, to see how similar it was to the angelic butterfly wings that surrounded Phantasia.

But presently Katrina had more pressing matters than collecting pictures of ethereal artistic beauty: she was waiting outside the meeting room for the faeries – for Phantasia – to appear. Questions needed to be asked, riddles solved, waning hopes revitalised. When the white-haired faerie emerged from the classroom, she pulled her aside and pleaded for a private talk – she wasn’t sure she wanted to open her heart around Faye’s telepathic powers, no matter how much Phantasia vouched for her.

“I wanna ask you about Dante,” she said once they were alone, “He’s been really off lately. Like really off. He hardly talks to me any more and locks himself in his room whenever he’s not here!”

Not that it was unusual for Dante to shut himself away from the world. Ever since he’d been living at the Orphanage, after his mother was committed, he went through phases of deep introversion and hyperactive craziness, as if someone had taken the contrasting ideologies of Byron d’Arcadie and Angelo Foley and trapped them in the same body. Even during his darkest periods, though, he would always be open to Katrina. There had been many a night when she’d sat with him curled up in her lap like a pet cat as he mumbled about his feelings of isolation and confusion, his fear of abandonment and the dark shadows that haunted his dreams. Ever since he’d spent the weekend with Phantasia, however, Dante had preferred to face the darkness alone.

“You better not have done anything to him,” she added, “I don’t know what kind of magic powers you have, but I won’t forgive you if you’ve hurt him!”

“I just…told him the truth,” said Phantasia. Katrina found it hard to read her body language – she wasn’t human, after all – but instinct told her Phantasia was as unhappy with the situation as she was.

“Dante hates the truth,” she said, “I mean the stuff that’s been going on that keeps getting covered up. He used to act like that was all some crazy hallucination of his. Phoenie called him schizophrenic and I kinda thought he might be for a bit too, because his mum…”

“Yeah, he told me about that…”

Dante must have really trusted Phantasia if he’d been willing to go that far, and if he trusted her, so could Katrina.

Chapter 46
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