“Speaking of Nancy and her crew, don’t they look lovely in their hairnets,” Avery remarked, grinning.
Nancy Rattcliff and her two followers, Missy and Jasmine, were standing behind the serving line, slopping food onto the ubiquitous green plastic trays everyone in line was holding. They were indeed, wearing hairnets and white industrial serving aprons as well as plastic gloves as they served the food. Serving like this was part of their punishment for trying to get Kaitlyn and Megan both killed—though at different times and on separate occasions.
Don’t get me started on the details—it’s a long story. Let’s just say that Nancy and her crew were as nasty as Morganna Starchild, though not nearly as pretty.
Because nobody out-pretties the Fae.
They are literally the most gorgeous—and stuck-up—creatures in this world or the next, as my mom liked to say. But what Nancy and the Weird Sisters lacked for in looks, they more than made up for in evil.
Luckily, the Headmistress of Nocturne Academy—Ms. Nightworthy—wasn’t about to tolerate the kinds of nasty pranks and life-threatening plots Nancy and Co cooked up—literally, in one case. She had banned them from using any magic at all—good or bad—outside a classroom setting. And then they could only use it in magical classes, under a teacher’s direct supervision—not any of their other classes, where they’d been using magical means to cheat.
In order to be certain Nancy and the Weird Sisters were obeying her orders, Headmistress Nightworthy had asked one of the teachers to lay a spell on Nancy and her friends which sounds an alarm in her office if any of them breaks the rules. As a result, Nancy couldn’t do so much as a cheer charm without getting ratted out. Now her too-large mouth was turned permanently down like she’d been sucking lemons because it made her so angry not to be able to screw with people magically.
She couldn’t screw with their food either—which was another spell they had done not that long ago. I vividly recalled the paprika-looking magic dust they had sprinkled on a Sheppard’s pie. It had acted like a kind of magical MSG and made me want to eat more and more until that night in the Norm Dorm I had nearly exploded from overeating. It had been a miserable experience but now Headmistress Nightworthy had put some safeguards in place.
Safeguards my Coven-mate, Avery, was about to exploit. He never ate anything the cafeteria fixed, preferring to live on over-creamed and sugared coffee during the day and the delicious “second dinner” he cooked for us almost every night with ingredients he “borrowed” from the kitchen. But ever since Nancy and her Weird Sisters had been serving, Avery had been getting in line with the rest of us—mainly to get revenge for all the awful things Nancy had done. He called it his “daily dose of schadenfraud.”
“All right, girls—let’s see it,” he remarked, as he strolled up to the line, holding his green tray in his hands.
Nancy narrowed her dark eyes at him, her large lips pursed into a white line.
“What do you want, Avery?” she snapped.
“Hmm, well now…” Avery made a considering face, rubbing his chin as though it was a tough choice. “Technically I can eat from the Sisters’ food, though I’m also okay with the Norm food. Let’s start with the Sisters first.”
“This is it.” Nancy pointed to a platter of delicious looking lamb chops with roasted potatoes.
“Hmm, very appetizing,” Avery remarked. “I’m sure you and your little friends will enjoy having some of that. Oh, but wait…” He tapped his temple. “Now I remember, you and your Weird Sisters are only allowed to eat Norm food for the rest of your time here at Nocturne Academy. So let me see what the Norms have today.”
The fact that Nancy and her friends were only allowed to have Norm food was another part of their punishment—and believe me, it really was a punishment. Let’s just say the food served to non-magical people like myself at Nocturne Academy was not exactly gourmet fare.
“It’s this,” Nancy said sourly, pointing to a casserole looking dish that appeared to be just a flat expanse of melted orange cheese, since no one had asked for any yet. I was unhappily aware that, aside from Nancy and the Weird Sisters, I was probably going to be the only person in line who got a scoop of the stuff. And you never could tell what was beneath the ubiquitous layer of cheese.
“Well now, that does look interesting,” Avery remarked, grinning. “Why don’t you try some, Nancy—maybe I’ll have it.”
“You know you won’t—you never do,” Nancy snarled at him. I had heard a rumor she and her friends were doing their best to live off protein bars and things like that, they could get on the weekends and smuggle into school with them. Clearly she didn’t like the Norm food any more than I did—which was, of course, why Avery delighted in making her taste it.
“Go on,” he said, making a gesture with his tray. “Try it, Nancy. You know Headmistress Nightworthy instituted a rule that any student who wants to can ask you to try a bite of the food you’re serving—just to make sure you’re not screwing around with it.”
“This is tuna casserole with green beans, lima beans, kidney beans, green peppers, and freaking mango salsa in it,” Nancy snapped. “I’m not eating it!”
“Oh, yes you will.” Avery had a steely glint in his blue eyes. “Or there’s going to be trouble. Go ahead, Nancy, sweetheart—get yourself a nice big bite so I can make sure you haven’t put anything nasty in it.”
As if putting that weird assortment of veggies, beans, and fruits in with tuna fish wasn’t nasty enough, right? But sadly, this was not an uncommon occurrence at Nocturne Academy. The cafeteria Lunch Ladies didn’t seem to think Norms counted as people—probably because we don’t have any magical powers. So they took whatever was left over from the day before of the Drakes and Fae’s and Sisters’ food, mixed it all together, and covered it in a layer of disgusting orange cheese that looked and tasted like melted crayons. It was generally awful and I didn’t blame Nancy and her crew for preferring protein bars.
But there was no way she could get out of tasting it. This, too, was part of her punishment.
Glaring at Avery, she snatched up a clean teaspoon and dug a chunk out of the Norm casserole. The smell that came with it was not good—extremely fishy and fruity and confused—like a tuna fish had gotten into a fight with a mango and both of them had lost. Nancy got the bite close to her oversized mouth and then her nostrils flared. She pulled the spoon away, looking like she was going to be sick.
“I’m not doing it,” she snapped. “I can’t.”
“But you can, Nancy my love,” Avery said, smiling wickedly. “And if you don’t like Norm food, maybe you should have thought twice about it before you attempted to have Megan killed and then tried to feed Kaitlyn to the Guardian in the moat. Personally, I think the Council of Elders should have banished or imprisoned you for life. Taking a bite of stinky tuna casserole is getting off light. Now eat it.”
He glared at Nancy and we all knew how this was going to end.
Still glaring back the whole time, she shoved the bite of confused tuna-mango casserole into her mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed as fast as possible. I though for a minute that she might gag, but somehow she got it down.