The task was both painful and time consuming and I felt every burr I removed like a painful pricking in my fingertips. Plus, it didn’t help that the dogs kept running around, moving when I was trying to get to them. It was like trying to play that game Operation—where you remove the different organs on the little patient guy without touching the sides and making the buzzer go off—if the patient guy was running all around. I kept grabbing for burrs and feeling them slip through my magical fingers, as the dog I was trying to help jumped or ran or slipped away as I was helping it.
“This is ridiculous!” Megan exclaimed, after we had been tree’d for almost an hour. “We’re going to be here all night!”
“I’m really sorry, I’m going as fast as I can,” I muttered. “If only they would stop moving…”
“Megan? Are you all right? I felt your fear through our bond.”
We both turned and saw Griffin coming towards us. Bran and Lachlan were with him and all three of them looked concerned.
“Oh, Griffin!” Megan looked immensely relieved. “Thank goodness you’re here! Morganna’s latest spell is awful!”
“I can see that.” The tall Nocturne’s face was like a thundercloud. “I will send all these beasts away so you can come down, sweetheart.”
“No, wait!” I said. I explained to him how all the dogs were infested with the “anger burrs” and how I didn’t want to send them home so angry. “But it would help if you could make them hold still,” I said.
“And Bran and I can help you pick out the burrs, as well,” Lachlan added.
It wasn’t difficult magic—just time consuming. But it went a lot faster with the guys helping. Thanks to Griffin’s gift of being able to control animals, Megan and I were able to come down from the tree where Lachlan, Bran, and I were able to de-burr them.
It took another hour, but finally all the little red magical anger burrs were untangled and removed from the dogs’ coats and Griffin was able to send them all home.
“Whew!” I swiped at my forehead, feeling utterly spent. The magic had taken a lot out of me and it had hurt a lot too. Not like the awful agony of having the geas removed or the severe pain of breaking my mom’s addiction, but you try getting your fingers pricked over and over and over again for hours and see how you feel afterwards.
It also wasn’t lost on me that the spell probably hadn’t cost Morganna anything. She had pushed the pain away from herself, no doubt, while casting the spell and I had to bear the painful cost of removing it.
“This is beyond the pale,” Griffin said angrily, as he sent the last dog on its way. It stopped to lick my hands before it went—it wasn’t a bad dog, it had just been driven crazy by Morganna’s magic. “What if this tree hadn’t been close enough for the two of you to climb?” he went on. “You could have been seriously injured or even killed!”
“I doubt Morganna cares about that,” I said wearily. I was getting really tired of this magical war I was locked into with the Fae girl, just because she didn’t like me.
“No, I think she does care—she meant for harm to come to you,” Lachlan said, frowning. “This is like the spiders—it is not just a retaliatory spell—there was actual intent to cause harm here. This is more Black Magic.”
“What will happen to her if she keeps it up?” I asked, as we started back towards the Academy. “I mean, will her soul get corrupted and she’ll turn ugly or something?”
“Eventually,” Lachlan said, shaking his head. “Though it will take some time.”
“I just don’t understand why she hates you so much!” Megan said, shaking her head. “She’s awful.”
“She hates Emma because now that her geas is lifted, Morganna is no longer the most beautiful girl in school,” Bran said simply. “Just like Mab, the queen of the Winter Court, she wants to be the fairest of them all and she no longer is, since Emma went through her transformation.”
I sighed deeply. I still wished I could go back to the way I used to look. I had even had Lachlan try to make me less conspicuous. But, as he had warned earlier, the spell just wouldn’t stick to me. It slid right off, like I had some kind of magical Teflon coating.
I was stuck being prettier than Morganna, which she could never forgive me for, which meant I was stuck in this stupid magical war with her.
And it didn’t look like she intended to back down anytime soon.
68
We might have gone on like that forever—casting spells on each other and escalating every day. But Friday things came to a head when Morganna raised her hand in Biology class and said,
“Mr. Barron—I think Emma has something on her shoe.”
“I don’t—” I began.
And then I smelled it.
Looking down, I saw that my right foot, clad in the school-issued Mary Jane shoe—was directly in the middle of the biggest dog turd I had ever seen. Seriously, it must have been made by a dog as big as a horse or something—it was that big.
And the smell was every bit as bad as you might imagine.
“It smells really bad back here,” Morganna went on, pinching her perfect nose delicately between her fingers and thumb. “It’s so nasty I think I might puke!”
Her dramatic words brought giggles as the class all turned to look at me and I could feel an embarrassed blush creeping into my cheeks—just as though the whole thing was my fault, when clearly Morganna had magicked the puddle of dog crap onto my shoe just to be malicious. Now I would have to get up and go try to scrape the nasty stuff off and get some paper towels to clean up the mess…
Wait a minute—no! Why should I clean up Morganna’s mess? I’d been cleaning up her messes all week!
I thought of the hours I’d spent picking the magical rage burrs out of the dogs’ coats and how much it had hurt, pricking myself over and over again as I paid to remove her spell from the innocent animals. And I thought about the mice infestation in the Norm Dorm and the disgusting Palmetto Bugs crawling on my shower curtain and let’s not forget the freaking poisonous spiders she sent to bite me!
Suddenly, I saw red! I was so angry, I could barely think.
“Er, Miss Plunkett, maybe you’d better go to the restroom and take care of that,” Mr. Barron said, frowning at me.
“Oh, I’ll take care of it, all right,” I snarled. Closing my eyes, I held my focus charm between my fingers and reached for the golden ribbon of power, which was becoming easier and easier for me to use and draw from. Using all my rage, I picked up the dog crap with my magic and threw it—every last bit of it—right in Morganna’s pretty face and hair.
69
I have to admit, it was extremely satisfying. Especially when I saw that a good amount of the stinking brown ooze had gotten into Morganna’s mouth when she opened it to scream. It was also smeared all over her face and stuck in her perfect honey-blonde hair like brown glue.
Like I said—extremely satisfying.
But the next minute, Mr. Barron was glaring at me like a thundercloud.
“Miss Plunkett!” he roared. “This is unacceptable behavior! What has gotten into you?”