“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.”
They dressed me again, just in time to hear a knock on the door.
“Girls?” Avery called. “Is everybody decent?”
“Come in,” Kaitlyn called back. “Or we’re about to come out—Emma has a bite and we need to get her to the Healer.”
The door opened and Avery, Bran, and Lachlan came in.
“A Healer of the Sisters won’t help if there’s Fae magic involved,” Lachlan said, frowning.
“And I don’t think we have time to get her to the Healer, anyway.” Avery was giving me an extremely anxious look. “You okay, Emmers?” he asked gently, though I clearly wasn’t.
By that time, everything was starting to get blurry and I couldn’t stand on my own.
“Quickly, bring her out into the Common Room,” Lachlan said.
He and Bran took me from Kaitlyn and Megan and carried me over to one of the long, overstuffed couches.
“Did anyone count the spiders?” Lachlan asked, as they got settled with my head in his lap and my legs over Bran’s.
“Let me see!” Kaitlyn ran back into the room, though I knew she didn’t like spiders either, and began counting. After a moment, she ran out and said, “Sixteen! Exactly sixteen.”
“Damn.” Lachlan frowned. “I thought I knew what was going on but the count is off. “First there was one fly in Emma’s oatmeal, then two ants on her leg. After that four wasps—but now we’ve skipped up to sixteen.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“There were eight roaches in the bathroom,” Megan volunteered. “When Emma was taking a shower earlier,” she explained. “Eight of those big Palmetto Bugs came crawling up on the shower curtain—you guys were already in bed and she didn’t want to wake you up,” she added.
“Damn.” Lachlan’s face looked grim—grim and blurry, I thought. “I was hoping I was wrong.”
“What? What are you thinking?” Avery demanded.
“A doubling spell,” Bran murmured and Lachlan nodded.
“Someone—and I think we know who—has placed doubling magic on Emma. Every time the threat doubles, and every threat has double the danger.”
“But she had the wasps first and then the roaches. Wasps are more threatening than roaches, surely,” Griffin protested, frowning. He had been standing by with an arm around Megan, who was giving me a worried look.
“Not to us girls, they’re not!” Megan shivered. “I know they’re technically more dangerous, but wasps don’t freak me out nearly as much as roaches—especially those huge, awful, hairy ones that fly!”
I had to agree with her but I still didn’t understand quite what was going on or what we were going to do about it.