I shook my head. Goddess of Evening Shadows, I had it bad for her. It was hard to know how to cope with such strong feelings, which I had never had before for any other female. Of course, I’d had what the humans called “crushes” before, but this was different—much more intense. When a male’s Drake gets involved, all emotions are compounded exponentially. And my Drake had claimed Kaitlyn as ours—she just didn’t know it yet.
I hung around a little while after the meal, hoping against hope that she might come to join her friends, but as the other students dispersed from the Dining Hall, I had to admit it wasn’t likely to happen. Still, I lingered in the shadows of one corner of the vast room, waiting just a little while longer, unwilling to go until everyone else was actually gone.
That was when I saw a very surprising sight.
After everyone else had left—and Kaitlyn’s friends had all gone down into the trap door that led to their dormitory in the corner of the Dining Hall, Nancy Rattcliff and the two girls who always followed her came out of the kitchens. They had handfuls of cleaning supplies and began to wash down the tables and sweep the floors.
This was normally the task of the janitorial staff—humans who had signed a magical non-disclosure agreement to be able to work at Nocturne Academy—so the fact that Nancy and her friends were doing it caught my attention.
I frowned. Come to think of it, hadn’t they also been helping to serve the food at the dinner line? What in the world were they doing? I knew Nancy Rattcliff well enough to understand that she wasn’t the type to offer to help anyone or do any domestic task out of the goodness of her heart. So then why was she doing this? Was it some kind of punishment?
As I watched, the three girls began talking—clearly oblivious of my presence since I was hidden in the shadows. Curiosity pricked me. Carefully, I drifted closer, making certain to stay at the edges of the room where the shadows were thickest.
“That old bitch! Headmistress Nightworthy’s full of shit and everyone knows it!” Nancy was saying angrily, as she swiped at a tabletop, sweeping crumbs onto the floor, heedless of the fact that her friend had only just swept in that exact spot.
“Nancy!” one of her friends gasped, her face turning pale. She had blonde hair and I thought her name might be Missy or Misty. “Stop it—what if she hears you somehow?” she exclaimed.
“So what if she does?” Nancy swiped viciously at some more crumbs, scattering them everywhere. “I don’t give a flying fuck! I’m not afraid of her and I don’t care if she kicks me out of this third-rate school either!”
“But if she did, where would you go?” her other friend protested. She had curly brown hair and might or might not have been called Jasmine. “You heard what the Headmistress said—you’re a scholarship student now. What other school would offer you a scholarship if you got kicked out of Nocturne Academy?”
“Shut up, Jazzy!” the blonde-haired girl exclaimed. “Don’t remind Nancy of all that!” She cut her eyes anxiously at Nancy—clearly both of them feared her wrath.
But Nancy appeared unconcerned.
“I don’t care what old Nightworthy does,” she said, still swiping crumbs from the tabletop and scattering them all over the flagstone floor. “She won’t kick me out—you heard her, she promised my mother she wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, but she’s got you and all of us doing menial labor!” the blond Missy moaned. “And we can’t even do any black magic to pay that little Latimer bitch back for getting us into trouble!”
“No—not since she neutered our magical abilities,” Jasmine agreed glumly.
Nancy smirked. “Oh, I think we proved you don’t have to do black magic in order to make a spell harmful.”
“Yes, and look where it landed us,” Missy said dolefully, sweeping her broom in vague, distracted strokes that didn’t do a thing to get up the crumbs Nancy was showering on the floor. “Cleaning the Dining Hall and eating that horrible Norm food for dinner!”
“It’s disgusting,” Jasmine agreed. “But I don’t see what we can do about it. Headmistress Nightworthy said she’s going to be keeping an eye on us and that awful Megan Latimer is too strong to mess with anymore.”
“Nobody is safe from being messed with—no matter how powerful they are,” Nancy snapped. Her black eyes narrowed. “You know what really bothers her? When her little friends are in trouble. She’s always so worried about that nasty little scarred freak that hangs around with her. She’s the one we ought to be targeting.”
“She is? But how?” Jasmine asked doubtfully. “She’s always with Latimer or one of her other friends. Emma Plunket is just a Norm but Avery Connor is a pretty powerful witch.”