I felt an elbow in my side and glanced at its owner. My roommate, Selene, was looking at me with a worried expression, the same one that had been there ever since I told her about what happened while we were getting ready this morning.
“You don’t have to talk, you know,” she said. “When the stick gets to you, just pass it on.”
I smiled weakly back at her, appreciating the suggestion but doubting its chances of success.
Miss Norton lifted the talking stick into the air. “Who would like to go first?”
No one answered, and I held my breath, hoping Norton would see how reluctant we were and return the discussion to Macbeth and the prejudicial vilifying of witches during the seventeenth century.
Katarina Marcel raised her hand. “I’ll go.”
I braced for the worst as Katarina’s icy gaze flashed on me for a second. She had hated me ever since I turned her into that snake. The spell had lasted less than a minute before the teacher turned her back, but not in time to prevent Katarina from falling victim to snake instinct and swallowing a couple of the earthworms we’d been using for spell practice. Nobody believed me when I said it was an accident, especially not Katarina. Didn’t help when I suggested maybe she was part shape-shifter and had discovered her true form at last.
Yeah, not my smartest moment, given her popular status. Since then Katarina never passed on an opportunity to expose me to public humiliation. To make matters worse, she and Rosemary had been friends.
Miss Norton let go of the talking stick. It levitated in the air for a second then flew across the circle into Katarina’s outstretched hand. Most of my classmates believed that Miss Norton used her magic to make the stick fly around like that, but I always doubted it. The stick sometimes gave me the impression that it was alive, or at least that it could hear and react on its own.
Katarina took a shaky breath. “I just can’t imagine it. I mean, how can Rosemary be dead? Why would someone hurt her?” Katarina’s voice grew thick with emotion, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. I knew her well enough to be suspicious of such a theatrical display of grief, even if the feeling behind it was genuine. Katarina was a siren, which meant that the ability to manipulate people’s emotions came as easy to her as breathing. Across the room, Miss Norton was eating up Katarina’s words like they were M&M’s. She might start sobbing any second.
Katarina looked at me again. “And I just can’t imagine how anyone could have seen something like that and not be devastated. Only the most terrible, heartless person could be so uncaring.”
All of the other students looked at me, and my face went red. Everybody knew I’d been there. What they didn’t know was that I had cried. Into my pillow, in private. I fought the urge to defend myself, to not play into her game. I bit down on my tongue hard enough it hurt. I would stay quiet for once in my life.
A loud voice came over the PA system: “Destiny Everhart, please report to the main office at once.”
The red in my face drained away. A few students snickered, and a couple said, “Ohhhhhhh.”
I scowled at the worst of the noisemakers. “What, are we in second grade still?” I stood, feeling faint.
“Well,” said Katarina, her voice mocking. “You are less than a year old, magically speaking. So it’s only appropriate we treat you like a child.”
I rolled my eyes. “Aw, did you come up with that all by yourself? Aren’t you clever.”
Katarina’s expression turned smug. She brushed her long, velvety brown hair over her shoulder. All the boys present let out a collective sigh. That was the problem with sirens. They were so physically beautiful they could get away with anything. That beauty was a key part of their manipulative, seductive magic.
“Yes, I am,” Katarina said. “But you forgot to add beautiful, talented. Oh, and not magically deficient.”
Only a siren could say something that conceited and not be ridiculed. I searched for a scathing reply, but nothing good came to me. Trouble was, she hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true.
Selene snorted, coming to my rescue. “You forgot the part about how you’re a stuck-up twit, too. Wouldn’t want to forget that.”
Even more of our classmates ohhhhed this time, shifting their stares from me to Katarina. That was Selene’s doing. She was a siren as well and just as good at manipulation. She was as beautiful as Katarina, too, but spent most of her time trying to hide it. Her hair was silky black like wet ink and her eyes the color of amethysts, but she dressed like a tomboy in baseball caps, baggy T-shirts, and no makeup. The tomboy persona was a recent development, a form of social protest against the objectification of sirens.
Katarina’s eyes narrowed to pinpricks as she glared at Selene. She opened her mouth to say something back, but Miss Norton, who’d been busy rubbing her temples and pretending not to hear, finally decided to play teacher.
She smacked her desk with the palm of her hand, drawing everyone’s attention. “That’s enough, girls.” Miss Norton fixed her gaze on me. Her pointy ears made her look like a hissing cat. “Dusty, go to the office.”
I cast Selene a grateful glance as I shoved my battered copy of the Collected Works of William Shakespeare into my backpack. She winked back at me. Then I strode from the room, my heart pounding from the confrontation with Katarina. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.
Fear replaced anger as I reached the main office in Jefferson Tower. I had a sinking feeling I was finally going to get in trouble for last night. Or worse, find out what it all meant. The secretary gave me a friendly smile that I immediately found suspicious.