Apparently Avery wasn’t the only one in our Coven with a “vindictive” streak and mine was coming out now.
Seeing Spike trapped there in Morganna’s hair and knowing that she intended to keep him like that until he starved to death—just for her own amusement and vanity—made me see red.
“Let him go!” I demanded, reaching for the hair comb again.
“As if! Get off me!” she exclaimed. “How dare you lay your disgusting human paws on me, you little bitch? Touch me again and I’ll curse you!”
Well, the fact that fairies could lay curses was news to me—I’d been under the impression that doing magic was the Sisters’ wheelhouse, not the Faes’. But I wasn’t about to let Morganna’s threat stop me.
“Take Spike out of your hair and remove whatever spell you have on him that’s keeping him from moving right now!” I demanded, ignoring the way Elian Darkwing and the rest of the popular crowd were staring at me in equal parts amusement and disgust.
“Or what?” Morganna taunted. “What are you going to do? You’ve got no magic to speak of so you can’t hurt me. Or maybe you think you can go to the Headmistress?”
“I will if you don’t give Spike back,” I snapped.
“I guess you could—only, I’m not breaking any school rules. So there’s nothing you can say,” Morganna snapped.
Technically, I supposed she wasn’t breaking any rules but the blatant cruelty of her act was more than enough to make anyone with any kind of moral compass upset. I was pretty sure Headmistress Nightworthy fell into that category but I was afraid if I went to get her, Morganna might hurt or kill Spike just to spite me. I didn’t dare leave the room.
I was stuck and Morganna knew it.
“Oh, what a shame,” she said, simpering sweetly at me. “It looks like the poor little Norm can’t get what she wants. Now get away from me, you little freak!”
“I’m not leaving until you give up the chimeling,” I said. If nothing else, I could at least stand my ground.
“What’s wrong? What’s going on?” The new voice at my side belonged to Bran O’Connor.
“Nothing you need to be concerned about you ugly little Norm,” Morganna sneered at him. “God, your face makes me sick—go someplace else, please?”
“Morganna stole Jalli’s pet chimeling, Spike, and now she won’t give him back.” I pointed to the fluttering rainbow wings of the little flying seahorse. His eyes were still rolling anxiously and he was trying to chime with all his might, though only a soft, helpless sound was coming from his tiny mouth.
“He’s mine now,” Morganna snapped. “Finders keepers, as you humans like to say.”
“They also say Thou shalt not steal and Thou shalt not kill,” Bran remarked quietly, ignoring the pretty Fae’s nasty insults. “And it appears to me you’re doing both, Morganna. Why don’t you give back the little girl’s pet—I didn’t think a High Fae of the Summer Court would stoop to such petty crimes.”
Morganna shot him a narrow look.
“How do you know that, you ugly little Norm? How did you know about the Summer Court?”
Bran shrugged.
“I know a lot of things. I know your mother, Lady Starchild, might not like it if she found out how you were perverting your Nature-given magic to kill an innocent creature to feed your own vanity.”
For some reason, this seemed to upset Morganna more than anything else. Her eyes opened wide and she sat bolt upright in her seat.
“How dare you!” she practically screeched at Bran. “How dare you invoke my mother’s name to me as though I was a naughty imp caught souring the cream?”
Which I supposed must be some kind of a fairy thing? But it still sounded weird.
“What’s this? Hey—what’s going on here?”
It was Mr. Barron, still carrying his morning mug of coffee and a folded-up newspaper under one arm. “You know I don’t allow shouting in my classroom,” he added, glaring at all of us.
“Do you allow animal sacrifice?” I demanded—which might have sounded kind of dramatic but it did get his attention.
“Do I what? Miss Plunkett, please explain yourself,” he said, frowning at me.
“Look.” I pointed at poor little Spike, still caught in the nasty web of Morganna’s magic and pinned helplessly to her hair. “That is a living creature which Morganna has trapped to use as a hair ornament,” I told him. “If she doesn’t let it go, it’s going to starve to death and then she’ll throw it away like a used tissue because that’s just the kind of nasty person she is!”
“How dare you call me nasty you ugly little Norm?” Morganna snarled at me, her blue eyes narrowing. “I’ll turn all your toenails growing inward! I’ll make every surface you sit on feel like a red-hot stove. I’ll—”
“Enough threats, Miss Starchild,” Mr. Barron said loudly, cutting her off before she could say what other awful things she would do to me. “Now tell me,” he went on, when she clamped her full lips closed at last. “Is that a real creature?” He leaned forward to stare at it with interest. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”