But I had to walk past the Fae table in order to get out of the cafeteria door and back to the Norm table—where absolutely nobody was a Norm anymore—at the back of the Dining Hall.
As I walked, I saw Morganna looking at me and muttering something under her breath. When I got to our table and looked down at my tray, I saw that my delicious lunch was all covered in black mold!
“What in the world?” I demanded, staring angrily down at my tray.
“What did she do now?” Lachlan asked, sitting down beside me.
“What’s wrong, Emma?” Bran asked.
“Just look!” I pointed at my tray. “My lunch looks like it’s about a thousand years old! It’s all rotting and moldy and it was not like that before I passed by Morganna’s table.”
“Oh, is she being a bitch again?” Avery asked, frowning. “I swear it’s never-ending in this place. The minute you take care of one bully like Nasty Nancy, another one pops up in her place. They’re like toadstools!”
“Looks like she used a rapid aging spell on your food,” Lachlan said, frowning thoughtfully. “That’s fairly advanced magic. Do you want to remove it or should I?”
“I will,” I said, lifting my chin. “But this time I want to turn it back around on Morganna. Would that be considered defensive magic?”
“More like revenge magic, unfortunately—you’ll still have to pay for it,” Lachlan warned.
“I don’t care,” I said, angrily. “She has to know she can’t keep messing with me like this!”
“Do it then,” Bran said. “Maybe it’s time she realized she can’t hurt other people without it coming back to bite her.”
“Oh, but wait, though!” Avery had gotten a sly gleam in his blue eyes—it was the same look he got when he forced Nancy to eat the Norm food, I thought.
“Wait for what?” I asked.
“Until she’s just about to take a bite of her own food, of course!” he exclaimed. “Let her actually have a taste of her own medicine.”
I tried to repress a giggle and couldn’t.
“Avery, you are so bad!”
“But so good at revenge,” he returned, grinning. “Wait for it now, Emmers—get ready and I’ll tell you when to do it.”
Closing my eyes, I reached for the golden ribbon and threaded it through my focus charm. Doing magic was becoming second nature to me now—Lachlan had said I was learning with remarkable speed and I thought he was right. After years of watching everyone around me do magic, I was suddenly coming into my own.
I peeled the spell off my food—it looked like a big nasty slab of black, furry mold—and got ready to send it over to Morganna.
“Wait for it,” Avery said again. “She’s getting a bite…she’s about to put it in her mouth—now, Emma!”
I sent the nasty charm whizzing across the room to land with an invisible splat on Morganna’s food. Then I opened my eyes, to see the effect.
She was just bringing a bite of what might have been smashed potatoes to her mouth. Only now it looked like a fuzzy chunk of black mold. Morganna didn’t notice—she was too busy talking at someone else at her table. She put the moldy bite in her mouth and began to chew.
Suddenly, a horrified expression came over her face. She spat the bite out into her hand and grimaced when she saw the chunk of half-chewed black fuzz in her palm. Looking down at her plate, she saw that the rest of her food had been magically aged as well and gave a little scream of fury.
Swiveling around in her seat so she could face me fully, she shot me a look of pure, unalloyed rage. In the past, such a look from a powerful, popular girl might have made me shrink in my seat—but not anymore.
I’m as powerful as she is, I thought, lifting my chin. She can’t hurt me anymore!
Innocently, I lifted a bite of lamb chop—which was fresh and delicious again, after removing the aging spell—and put it in my mouth. I chewed and swallowed and then shot her a smile.
“Mmm—delicious!” I mouthed at Morganna, who continued to glare at me. Then I went back to my lunch as though nothing had happened.
“Look at the way she’s still staring,” Megan, who had been watching silently, said.
“She looks really angry,” Kaitlyn put in.
“Wow, Emmers, if looks could kill you’d be toast,” Avery murmured. He sounded a little uneasy, but I wasn’t scared. Why should I be? My power was as great as Morganna’s—I wasn’t afraid of the nasty Fae girl anymore.
“Let her stare,” I said, cutting another bite of lamb chop. “I’m a Fae and I have my own magic now. She doesn’t get to push me around anymore.”
“Good for you, Emma!” Megan said fiercely. “Don’t let her bully you!”
“I won’t,” I said.
But it was only Monday—the week was just getting started…and so was Morganna.
63
Tuesday morning I found a fly in my oatmeal at breakfast.
It was big one—a horsefly, I thought, as I stared down at it in dismay. The worst thing was, I hadn’t found it until I was almost done with the bowl.
Feeling sick, I wondered if there had been anything else in the oatmeal and if so, had I eaten it?
I looked over at Morganna automatically, but she was eating and talking, paying me no attention at all. I shrugged to myself. Well, maybe a fly just happened to get in there by accident. Things do happen—especially in a huge industrial kitchen where you’re cooking for hundreds of people at a time.
Still, I had lost my appetite. I took my tray to the slot in the wall and pushed it through before coming back to the table to join the rest of my coven.
“What’s wrong, Emmers—not hungry this morning?” Avery asked, sipping his over-sugared and creamed coffee. Since none of us had to eat Norm food now, he didn’t make Second Supper quite as often but he still preferred to live on coffee during the day.
“No, not so much. I—” Suddenly, I felt an itchy, crawling sensation on my leg.
Jumping up, I lifted my uniform skirt above my knee and saw that two huge ants were crawling up my thigh.
“Ugh!” I swiped at them quickly but missed. It was Bran who leaned down and flicked both of them off me with quick, economical moves.
“Thanks!” I exclaimed, sitting down again. “I don’t know where those came from!”
“Just ants.” He shrugged. “They probability came looking for food.”
“Well, I am not on the menu!” I said and shivered again. I really hate insects and creepy crawly things. I know it’s girly of me but that’s too bad—I am just never going to be an entomologist.
Again I looked at Morganna, wondering if she had anything to do with this, but she was still talking and laughing with the cool kids at the Fae table. I decided I was being paranoid and began gathering my books. It was almost time for first period.
Sure enough, the bell rang. But as we all got to our feet, I heard a buzzing near my ear. No, actually, I realized—the buzzing was all around my head.
“Oh my goodness, how did they get in here?” I heard Jalli exclaim.