“Then why hasn’t Headmistress Nightworthy made her take it off?” Elian asked, frowning. “You know she doesn’t allow one kind of Other to mimic another kind. It’s against the Academy rules.”
I don’t know if Morganna would have had an answer for that or not, but at that moment Mr. Barron came in with his coffee and a paper. He also had a stack of fresh copies under his arm, which caused all of us to groan. We all knew what they meant.
“Pop quiz, people,” he announced, holding them up in one hand. “I know how excited you all must be, so if someone will volunteer to hand these out for me—”
“I will!” Morganna’s hand shot up in the air. “I’ll hand them out, Mr. Barron!”
Mr. Barron blinked in surprise but then he shrugged. Maybe he thought Morganna was trying to make up for her reprehensible behavior in the past. I, however, didn’t believe that for a moment.
“Here you go then, Miss Starchild,” he said, handing her the stack of sheets, which she had already pranced up to his desk to get. He looked at the class. “All right, people—don’t start until everyone gets one and you have thirty minutes to complete them.”
Then he settled at his desk with his coffee and immersed himself in his paper.
Morganna sashayed down the rows of lab tables, handing out tests to everyone, as though she was the teacher’s pet instead of a spoiled brat who could hardly be bothered to do her class work.
When she got to me, she put the test face down in front of me and gave me an insincere smile.
“Good luck, Emma,” she whispered, tapping the paper twice. Then she continued down the row, handing out the pop quiz to everyone else in the classroom.
I waited for her to finish, apprehension filling me to the brim. I had a very bad feeling about this.
Finally, everyone had gotten a quiz and Morganna had returned to her seat. Mr. Barron looked up from his paper briefly, took a slurp of his coffee and said, “Begin,” and went back to his paper again.
Feeling certain that Morganna had meddled with my test somehow, I turned the paper over and found out that—sure enough—I was right.
Somehow she had changed the language from English to…well, I don’t know if what was on my pop quiz was an actual language or not. It was laid out like a quiz with numbered questions, but the letters had all been turned into weird symbols. Question number one looked like this:
1. ♒♏♓⬥ ⬧⧫◆♏■ ♐♓■♌ ⬥●♍❖ ⬥♓♏♒ ?
Question number two was just as impenetrable.
2. ♓⍓ ■♐● ♍&⬥◆♑♋ ⬥❑♌♌◆⍓ ❑♑♑♑⬥⌨?
Scanning down the paper, I saw that the entire test was like that. For a moment, I got really mad. My first impulse was to raise my hand and speak to Mr. Barron.
But then I thought about it. Mr. Barron was notoriously grumpy before he’d finished his coffee. Also, why should I bother him when I could probably fix this myself?
Putting my hand up to my neck, I stroked the Moon and Star focus charm Lachlan had made for me. Closing my eyes, I imagined myself drawing power from the thin golden ribbon that came from the natural world.
At first I thought about taking the charm off my paper and putting it onto Morganna’s instead. But there were problems with that idea. One, since she had worked the charm in the first place, she would presumably know how to remove it. And two, she could raise her hand and point the finger at me, claiming I was trying to mess with her test and cheat somehow.
Though I itched for revenge, I decided—reluctantly—that it was probably better to just take the charm off my own paper and get on with taking the quiz.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I envisioned the charm like a thin sheet of plastic over my test. It was sitting on top of the paper, obscuring the true meaning of the words—I had to peel it off.
I imagined myself separating the thin plastic film from a corner of my paper and then just peeling it off and tossing it aside. The pain that came with the magic was very slight—barely more than a poke.
I didn’t even jump when I felt it and when I opened my eyes, I saw that my test was back to normal. Also, it wasn’t even that hard. I filled in the answers and then spent a few more minutes on the essay question at the end. After double checking my work, I walked up and put the paper face-down on Mr. Barron’s desk.
As I came back to my lab table, I saw Morganna shooting me a puzzled and angry look. Clearly she was wondering how I had managed to circumvent her malicious magic. I permitted myself to give her a small, triumphant smile—which she returned with a glare—and then went back to my place and read a book until time was up.
“All right, all right—let’s see how we did,” Mr. Barron said, putting down his paper as the last student brought his test forward. He pulled out his answer key and started going through the tests rapidly, nodding and frowning in turn. Finally, he finished and got up to hand out the results.
“A-plus, Miss Plunkett,” he said, smiling approvingly as he handed me my quiz. “It’s clear you’ve been paying attention.”
When he got to Morganna, he shook his head as he handed back her quiz.
“Not so good, I’m afraid, Miss Starchild. You’ll have to do better than this if you want to pass my class.”
Morganna stared at her test and then turned to shoot me a hateful look, as if I was somehow to blame for her bad grade on the pop quiz. I looked innocently back, as though I had no idea what was going on. When she turned back around, I couldn’t help breaking into a smile, though. I was really glad I hadn’t turned the magic back on her. This way she had no clue what had happened and it was clear not knowing was driving her crazy.
“Well, you look like the cat that got the cream,” Bran said to me after the bell rang and we were gathering our books to get to our next class.
“Yes, what happened, little one?” Lachlan asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “Was it something to do with the popping quiz the instructor gave?”
“The pop quiz,” I corrected him, smiling. I explained to them what had happened—how my quiz had been written in some kind of weird symbols—and how I had used my power to turn it back to normal so I could take it.
Bran laughed when I finished and Lachlan gave me a proud smile.
“Look at you—fending for yourself magically!” He put an arm around my shoulders and Bran encircled my waist with his.
“We’re so proud of you, Emma!” he murmured.
I basked in the glow of their praise.
“Thanks guys but it wasn’t hard at all. She must have been throwing softball magic at me because she thinks I don’t have much power.”
“Actually, language alteration is a fairly advanced spell,” Lachlan said thoughtfully. “Morganna comes from an ancient and powerful High Sidhe bloodline—she’s probably wondering how in the world you managed to remove her spell.”
“Let her wonder,” I said, lifting my chin. Morganna Starchild was never going to bully me again! At least not magically.
That was what I thought, anyway. But that was when my trouble really began.
62
I couldn’t wait for lunch that day—now that I got to eat from the Fae selections instead of the awful Norm food, I found that I had a much better appetite. Today’s entrée was lamb chops with smashed baby potatoes and green peas and it smelled divine.