“Oh, Griffin!” I exclaimed, my eyes filling with tears—normal clear ones, not the blood ones anymore. “Oh, thank you! You really are the best Coven-mate a girl could ask for.” I leaned across the table and gave him a quick hug before swiping at my eyes.
Griffin smiled at me as we both sat back down in our chairs again. Megan grinned and hooked her arm through Griffin’s. Clearly she had been in on the secret and was just as happy to see my reaction as he was.
“I have the best friends!” I said, smiling a rather watery smile at everyone at the table.
Everyone smiled back but I thought Emma’s smile looked a little forced.
Avery noticed it too.
“Hey, Emmers,” he said, reaching over to tap her on the arm. “Why so blue? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing.” Emma sighed in a way that made it clear something absolutely was wrong.
“Is it that Morganna Starchild being a bitch again?” Megan asked sympathetically.
Morganna was the head of a clique of Fae girls who seemed to live to make other people miserable. Because she was so ordinary and nondescript, Emma usually flew under the radar of “mean girls” like her, but lately the Fae bully had decided to make it her mission to “get” Emma and our Coven-mate had been miserable ever since.
Emma made a face at the mention of Morganna’s name but didn’t say anything.
“Uh-oh—I think that’s a definite yes,” Avery remarked. “What did she do this time?”
“Ugh…” Emma sighed and put a hand to her head. “So she was wearing one of those living butterfly hair barrettes—you know the kind all the Fae girls have this semester?”
We all nodded. The Fae girls had their own sense of fashion which tended to include a lot of living accessories—either animal or flower—depending on what kind of Fae they were. The butterflies they wore in their perfectly coiffed hair were be-spelled by fairy magic to perch perfectly still and just waved their wings occasionally like pretty living statues.
I had sometimes wondered if the poor things ever got loose to go look for flowers in the hedges around the castle—I mean, how did they get enough to eat when they were sitting on some Fae girl’s head all day? But the welfare of their living ornaments didn’t seem to concern the Faes at all.
“Right,” Emma said. “So she was wearing this Monarch Butterfly—a really big one—in her hair at breakfast and then in our third period trig class, I noticed it wasn’t there anymore.”
“So where was it?” Megan asked, frowning.
Emma sighed again.
“That was what Morganna asked the teacher. She said someone had stolen it and made a fuss until Mrs. Foozle made everybody empty their book bags so Morganna could see it wasn’t there.”
“Only I’m guessing it was there,” Avery said dryly.
“It sure was—when I turned out my book bag, it fell right out.” Emma shook her head, looking miserable “I have no idea how it got there but it was crushed like somebody had stomped it flat, the poor thing! And of course Morganna pointed at me dramatically and said, ‘She stole it! She took my valuable living barrette! I demand that Emma Plunkett be sent to the Headmistress at once!”
She made her voice snooty and bitchy, doing an excellent rendition of Morganna, which would have been funny if the circumstances were different.
“Crap,” Avery muttered. “What a bitch!”
“What did Foozle do?” Megan asked, referring to the Trigonometry teacher, who was almost as old as our ancient English teacher, Mrs. Wainright.
“She listened to Morganna, of course—what else?” Emma said, her tone full of frustration. “She always listens to the Faes—I think she’s in awe of all their sparkly prettiness. So I got sent out of class—which was embarrassing enough— and wasted time going to the Headmistress’s office where I had to explain that I didn’t steal Morganna’s expensive live butterfly barrette and while all that was going on, I missed the trig test, which Foozle says I’ll have to make up ‘on my own time.’ Only I don’t have any spare time—I’m working every night this week. But if I don’t make up that test, I’ll fail trig and lose my scholarship,” she finished in a rush and put her head in her hands.
“Oh man, Emmers—I’m sorry,” Avery said, reaching out to put an arm around her. He gave her a gentle squeeze before letting go. “Seriously, it sounds like Morganna Starchild is trying to give Nasty Nancy and her band of Merry Witches a run for their money.”
“She’s a mean girl, all right,” Megan said grimly. “As for Nancy, she and her crew are on kitchen duty for the rest of the year and she’s been forbidden to do any magic at all outside of class. So at least that takes care of her.”
I wasn’t so sure about that—Nancy Rattcliff had a way of being nasty no matter how you tried to stop her. But Morganna Starchild wasn’t far behind her in the mean girls department.