“Okay, suit yourself.” Megan shrugged.
“But I definitely think we ought to shake out your covers and sheets before you go to bed,” Kaitlyn said. She made a face. “You know…just in case?”
“Good idea,” I said fervently.
The three of us went back into the bedroom and shook out the covers and sheets on my bed thoroughly. Megan and Kaitlyn even helped me lift the mattress so we could look underneath it. But it was all clear.
I breathed a sigh of relief and got changed into my long white nightgown, which Castle Nocturne provides for all the female students.
Jalli was back by that time with the empty shower curtain. She told us how she had unwrapped the curtain and the Palmetto Bugs had gone scurrying everywhere but the chimelings had pounced, burning them to a crisp and gulping the still-wriggling roaches down their tiny gullets.
“Ugh!” I put a hand to my stomach. “Please—no more, Jalli! I’m begging you.”
“Emma is right—we really don’t need to know the dirty details.” Megan looked pale, I thought and Kaitlyn didn’t look much better.
“Okay.” Jalli shrugged cheerfully and climbed into bed. Her three chimelings settled on her headboard and began a chorus of soft, squeaky snores.
I checked my bed one more time, just to be sure, and then climbed in. I didn’t want to risk anything else crawling on me in the night.
Tomorrow morning, I promised myself, I was going to ask Lachlan if there was magic involved somehow. But I didn’t want to wake him up. So for now, I would just try to sleep.
But I didn’t make it through the night before it happened again.
64
I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange, crawling sensation all over my legs and body.
At first, I thought it must be some kind of weird dream. I had been deep asleep and my waking was slow and gradual. I shifted under the covers and that was when something bit me.
I woke up in a hurry.
“Ouch!” I sat up and switched on the lamp on my nightstand. Throwing back the covers, I stared in horror at what was crawling up my body.
Spiders. So many spiders.
I started screaming then, I couldn’t help myself.
I’m not fond of insects, as I said before, and I absolutely loathe roaches—especially the big ones. But I am scared to death of spiders and the fact that I had woken up covered in them was more than I could stand.
Megan, Kaitlyn, and Jalli were up at once.
“What? What is it?” Kaitlyn gasped, instantly alert.
“What’s wrong?” Megan demanded, blinking sleepily.
“Oh no—what happened?” Jalli exclaimed.
Then the door flew open and the boys came running in.
Avery was there first, followed by Bran and Lachlan and then Saint, who took care to stay well away from the chimelings which were whizzing around sounding like a chorus of doorbells gone crazy.
Avery took one look at my legs and body and made a throwing motion at me while shouting a word I didn’t understand.
At once the spiders, which had been skittering up my body and towards my face, froze in place.
“Oh God! Oh God, oh God, oh God!” I gasped, trying to get out of bed and away from the eight-legged army. “Get them off me! Get them off!”
Yeah. You could say I was a little bit hysterical. But wouldn’t you be in the same situation?
“Come on—let’s get you out of there.” Lachlan and Bran were suddenly on either side of me. They took me by the arms and lifted me bodily out of the bed and onto the floor.
“Get rid of them!” I begged, still brushing at my arms and legs, feeling like the spiders were still on me, even though Avery had frozen them all in place. “Get rid of them!”
“No, wait!” Avery barked, when Bran would have gathered the bed sheets together to trap all the spiders. “We need to know what kind they are,” he explained, when everyone froze in place.
I was still shivering with disgust and fright. Lachlan put his arm around me and pulled me close. I buried my face in his chest as Bran came to stroke my hair gently.
“It’s all right, Emma,” he soothed. “Everything is going to be all right.”
“I don’t know about that.” Avery sounded grim. “Look.”
I looked up and saw that he was pointing to one of the frozen spiders. It had a plump black body with a red hourglass on its abdomen.
“That’s a black widow!” Kaitlyn’s voice sounded shaky. “No, Mr. Seahorse—don’t,” she added, when her little pet would have dived down to eat it. “That’s poison—I don’t think it would be good for you!”
“And this one is a brown recluse,” Megan said, staring down at the bed with an expression that was half disgust-half fascination. “Oh my God, they’re all poisonous!”
“All right, strip her,” Avery ordered, pointing at me.
“Hey!” I protested, crossing my arms over my chest protectively. “Avery!”
“Sorry, Emmers, but we have to know if you got bitten,” he said gently. Turning to the guys he said, “Okay, everyone with a Y chromosome, out of the girl’s dorm so Emma can have some privacy.”
Bran and Lachlan didn’t want to leave, but Avery promised they could come back in after Kaitlyn and Megan had inspected me. By that time, Ari and Griffin had arrived as well, brought from their respective dorms by the intense concern they felt coming from their Blood-Bonded mates. Avery herded everyone out into the Common room, including Jalli and all four of the upset chimelings—to make sure they didn’t eat any of the poisonous spiders.
Before he left, Lachlan said, “Count them.”
“Count what?” I asked, still feeling itchy all over and thoroughly freaked out.
“The spiders. Count how many there are,” he told me. “I have a theory.”
And then Avery pushed him out the door and closed it behind him.
As soon as it was just the three of us, I whipped off my nightgown and Megan and Kaitlyn turned on their lamps so we could have maximum light to see by.
“I don’t see anything on the front,” Kaitlyn said, her mismatched eyes scanning me anxiously.
“And I don’t see anything in the back,” Megan said. She moved my long black hair to see the back of my neck. “I don’t think—uh-oh.”
“What? What is it?” I twisted my head, but of course I couldn’t see my own neck.
“You’d better come in the bathroom so you can look in the mirror,” Megan told me.
I started to take a step and stumbled. Suddenly it seemed like my legs didn’t want to work right.
“Whoa!” Kaitlyn got an arm around me just in time. “What’s wrong, Emma?”
“I…I don’t know!” I shook my head and realized that the motion hurt—especially on the right side of my neck, where Megan had been looking. I reached up and felt a tender, swelled spot that was hot to touch. “Ouch!” I pulled my fingers away quickly—just barely brushing it was extremely painful.
“Is that what you were talking about?” Kaitlyn asked anxiously, looking at the spot I’d just touched.
“Yes—see the two little dots there? I think they’re fang marks.” Megan looked up at me. “I think we’d better get her to the Healer. Help me put back on her nightgown.”