Tatyana shot her a look. “Saskia!”
“What? I’m just saying.” She pretended to pout, while fluttering her eyelashes at me.
Not in a million years, jailbait. I really hated teenagers, with the exception of Jacob, for the most part. Tatyana wasn’t too happy about this teenager, either. Saskia had been sent here on the student exchange program, and Tatyana was trying to be sisterly about it. But Saskia was proving to be a heck of a nuisance. She’d already spent part of the morning poking Garrett, who had buried his head in a newspaper to avoid her.
I jumped as something brushed against my leg, and I slammed my knee into the underside of the table. I hissed through my teeth and ducked down to see what it had been. I half expected to see Saskia’s leg trying to play footsie with me. Instead, I came eyeball-to-eyeball with that friggin’ Purge beast of Santana’s, Slinky.
“Do you have to bring your feather boa to breakfast, Santana? It’s trying to cop a feel.” I tucked my legs right under the bench so it couldn’t have another lick of me with its hissy little tongue.
“I imagine he smelled you and wanted to figure out what had died,” she shot back.
I smirked. “Well, can you call it back? I’m trying to eat, and having a reptile wrap itself around my legs isn’t good for my digestion.”
I’d seen that slithery pet way too much for my liking of late. Wherever Santana went, it went. Apparently, she was trying to train it to be a Familiar of sorts, although I got the feeling she liked bringing it everywhere just to freak me out. That thing had gotten big since Elysium. It was about the size of a mature boa, with a bright ruff of feathers around its neck. Not the same color as Quetzi, and not quite as massive, but he’d get there one day.
“You afraid he might bite?” Santana grinned.
“Actually, yes.” As if to prove my point, Slinky lunged upward, nearly making me fall back off my seat.
“Aww, he just wants to say hello.”
Santana knew that wasn’t what he was doing, but the creepy creature decided to stroke its head against my cheek anyway. A snaky joke. I shuddered. I wasn’t a big fan of snakes in general, but Slinky and I had a mutual dislike of each other.
“Yeah, well, if it could slink away from my face, that’d be great.” I shoved the Purge beast in the side of the head to get it to move and received a loud hiss for my pains.
“Hey, don’t touch him!” Santana snapped.
“Then stop letting it sneak around under the tables, or I’ll have to report it for inappropriate behavior,” I replied.
Saskia batted her eyelashes. “I think Slinky has the right idea.”
Save me, someone. Right now, I was fodder between Saskia, who delighted in making innocent folks like me as uncomfortable as possible, and Santana’s beastie.
“Saskia! I’m not going to tell you again,” Tatyana chided.
“Tell me what?” she replied sweetly.
“I mean it.”
“Mean what?”
A muscle twitched in Tatyana’s jaw. “Just… behave yourself.”
“Killjoy,” Saskia murmured under her breath.
“So, how did you end up toe-to-toe with a poltergeist?” Dylan asked, evidently eager to draw the attention away from his nightmarish potential sister-in-law.
I shrugged. “How does anyone end up dealing with a poltergeist?”
“No, seriously, what were you doing when it happened?” Raffe pressed.
“Oh, this and that,” I replied. The King of Nonchalance.
“What does that mean?” Garrett finally spoke. “What have you been up to?”
“You know, just keeping busy.” They weren’t going to get anything out of me.
Garrett pulled a disgruntled face. “Clearly you were up to something. People don’t just bump into poltergeists by accident.”
“Maybe I’m the first.” I smiled stiffly.
“If you’re having some kind of trouble, I’d be happy to answer a few questions,” Tatyana said. “I know a lot about poltergeists, after all. We studied them in depth while training to become a Kolduny.”
That got my attention. “You did?”
“Yeah, a whole month on them,” Saskia interjected. “I nearly broke my jaw in half, yawning through the lectures. It wasn’t like they were teaching me anything new. I’d read all about poltergeists by the time I was five.”
Tatyana gripped her mug until her knuckles whitened.
“Careful, you might smash it,” I teased.
Her expression relaxed slightly. “What my sister is trying to say is, we’re well-versed in poltergeist lore. We know a thing or two that other people don’t. So, if you do—”
“If you need some help, I’d love to volunteer.” Saskia cut her off again.
Tatyana stared at her sister, and even I was a bit frightened. These Kolduny women were scary, but for very different reasons. “You’re not getting involved in anything that is tied to Erebus! Nothing. I mean it. If I hear so much as a whisper that you’ve disobeyed, I’ll have words with O’Halloran.”
Saskia glared back. “Ooh, you’ll go running to the teacher?”
“I. Mean. It.” Tatyana held her sister’s gaze until Saskia sank back in her seat, admitting defeat with a petulant scowl on her face.
Just then, Ryann rushed over with a croissant and a coffee. How had I missed her coming in? That wasn’t like me. My Ryann radar was usually primed and precise. All this poltergeist business must have been knocking me off my very poor game.
“Morning, all,” she chirped, sliding onto the bench beside Harley. “I don’t have much time, but thought I’d say hi before I dart off again.”
“Ryann? What are you doing here?”
The words came out colder than I’d intended. She’d surprised me, that was all. Last time I was here, she wasn’t. Her internship with Astrid in the shiny new department of human relations had finished, and she hadn’t said anything about applying for another position. So I’d presumed that was the last of that.
She didn’t seem to notice my brusqueness. “I’ve just started a summer internship with Miss Miranda Bontemps.”
I nodded. “I bet you’ll have a Bontemps with that.”
She gave a pity laugh that made my insides curl up. “Hah. Good one.”
“Yeah, good one, Finch.” Wade smirked at me.
Does he know? No, he couldn’t. I’d been so suave and discreet in my nonexistent displays of admiration.
“I’m focusing on human rights in the magical world,” she continued.
Her face positively radiated with pride and enthusiasm. Come on, Finch, say something cool and encouraging. “So, how will you explain this to Ted Bundy?”
The Muppet Babies stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
“He means my boyfriend, Adam.” Ryann chuckled, and the entire group relaxed. “Such a joker, isn’t he?”
“He sure is.” Garrett snorted.
“And Adam is wonderful,” Harley added pointedly. “Definitely not a serial killer.”
“That we know of,” I said in an undertone. “Anyway, what are you going to tell him? I’m guessing he doesn’t know about your toe-dip into the magical world. Or the magical world at all, for that matter.”