“I’m glad he’s still alive but he must be trapped or hurt somewhere,” Jalli said, sniffing. “Otherwise he would have come back when I called him. He…he…always comes.”
And she broke into fresh sobs that were painful to hear.
We all did our best to console her but she could not be comforted. Spike, her favorite little pet, was gone and no matter how we hunted or how many spells Avery did, none of us could seem to locate him. It seemed he was gone forever…
Well, until I saw him the next day in my AP Biology class.
7
I wasn’t looking for the little flying seahorse when I walked into class. I had my mind on the quiz we were going to have that day—microbiology—and I was wondering if we’d be asked to identify all the different slides or only some of them.
I had tried to review the material but time with the microscopes—which only worked in Mr. Barron’s room due to magical interference elsewhere in the castle—was hard to come by. Also, I had been working a late shift at the I Scream the night before, so it wasn’t like I had much time for extra study. I still couldn’t tell smooth muscle from striated muscle or epithelial cells from blood cells. I was going to be in trouble, I thought grimly—which wasn’t good for my grade.
Which in turn, wasn’t good for my scholarship.
My thoughts were so firmly fixed on my neglected schoolwork that I almost didn’t see Spike at all. It was only a brief, rainbow flutter in the corner of my eye that brought him to my attention.
When I turned, to see what had caught my eye, I gasped in surprise and outrage.
There, fixed neatly to a comb in Morganna Starchild’s perfect blond hair, was Spike.
The poor little chimeling’s body was almost completely immobile—held in place, I guessed, by some kind of magic spell. But when he saw me his dark ink-drop eyes rolled anxiously and his rainbow wings fluttered in agitation. His tiny mouth opened and a squeaky chime came out, so thin and faint that if I hadn’t been so focused on him, I wouldn’t have heard it at all.
“Oh no!” I exclaimed. Without thinking, I ran over to where Morganna was sitting and flirting with Elian Darkwing, and tried to get Spike free from the comb in her hair.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing, you grubby little human?” Morganna spat, slapping my hands away before I could make any progress. “Get away from me before your human filth rubs off on me!”
“I’ll leave when you give me the chimeling,” I said, glaring at her. “He’s a living creature—not just something to wear in your hair! And he doesn’t even belong to you.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “Of course he belongs to me! I found him out in the common area by the Café. I trapped him fair and square with my own magic so yes, you nasty little Norm, he’s mine.”
She glared at me with her big, gorgeous china-blue eyes as though she thought if she insulted me enough, I would leave her alone and let her keep Spike.
Morganna thought wrong.
Despite the fact that every eye in the class was now on me and it was an excruciatingly embarrassing situation, I refused to back down.
“He belongs to Jalli—the little Drake girl who’s Ari Reyes’s sister,” I told her. “He’s her pet. You can’t just steal him and pin him in your hair to starve until he dies and you discard him like a piece of trash!”
The Blue Morpho butterfly I’d found dead in the Dining Hall was still fresh in my mind as I spoke. I don’t know if I would call myself an animal rights activist, but I had never been able to stand watching anyone hurt or mistreat any kind of wild creature.
Once, when I was a little girl, my mom found me fighting with a boy twice my size because I had caught him throwing stones at a bird. I had also gotten into trouble in elementary school for kicking a boy who I had seen kicking a dog that had wandered up to the school during recess. According to my teacher I had been shouting, “How do you like it? How does it feel?” as I went after the boy who had been kicking the stray mutt.
Apparently Avery wasn’t the only one in our Coven with a “vindictive” streak and mine was coming out now.
Seeing Spike trapped there in Morganna’s hair and knowing that she intended to keep him like that until he starved to death—just for her own amusement and vanity—made me see red.
“Let him go!” I demanded, reaching for the hair comb again.
“As if! Get off me!” she exclaimed. “How dare you lay your disgusting human paws on me, you little bitch? Touch me again and I’ll curse you!”
Well, the fact that fairies could lay curses was news to me—I’d been under the impression that doing magic was the Sisters’ wheelhouse, not the Faes’. But I wasn’t about to let Morganna’s threat stop me.
“Take Spike out of your hair and remove whatever spell you have on him that’s keeping him from moving right now!” I demanded, ignoring the way Elian Darkwing and the rest of the popular crowd were staring at me in equal parts amusement and disgust.
“Or what?” Morganna taunted. “What are you going to do? You’ve got no magic to speak of so you can’t hurt me. Or maybe you think you can go to the Headmistress?”
“I will if you don’t give Spike back,” I snapped.
“I guess you could—only, I’m not breaking any school rules. So there’s nothing you can say,” Morganna snapped.
Technically, I supposed she wasn’t breaking any rules but the blatant cruelty of her act was more than enough to make anyone with any kind of moral compass upset. I was pretty sure Headmistress Nightworthy fell into that category but I was afraid if I went to get her, Morganna might hurt or kill Spike just to spite me. I didn’t dare leave the room.
I was stuck and Morganna knew it.
“Oh, what a shame,” she said, simpering sweetly at me. “It looks like the poor little Norm can’t get what she wants. Now get away from me, you little freak!”
“I’m not leaving until you give up the chimeling,” I said. If nothing else, I could at least stand my ground.
“What’s wrong? What’s going on?” The new voice at my side belonged to Bran O’Connor.
“Nothing you need to be concerned about you ugly little Norm,” Morganna sneered at him. “God, your face makes me sick—go someplace else, please?”
“Morganna stole Jalli’s pet chimeling, Spike, and now she won’t give him back.” I pointed to the fluttering rainbow wings of the little flying seahorse. His eyes were still rolling anxiously and he was trying to chime with all his might, though only a soft, helpless sound was coming from his tiny mouth.
“He’s mine now,” Morganna snapped. “Finders keepers, as you humans like to say.”
“They also say Thou shalt not steal and Thou shalt not kill,” Bran remarked quietly, ignoring the pretty Fae’s nasty insults. “And it appears to me you’re doing both, Morganna. Why don’t you give back the little girl’s pet—I didn’t think a High Fae of the Summer Court would stoop to such petty crimes.”
Morganna shot him a narrow look.
“How do you know that, you ugly little Norm? How did you know about the Summer Court?”