The thought of someone sticking a pair of those long, skinny forceps into my ear canal and pulling out hairy legs one at a time made me feel almost crazy with disgust and horror.
Not knowing what else to do, I jammed my finger in my ear, desperate to see if I could get the intruder out on my own.
Something bit me.
“Ow!” I gasped, yanking my now-bloody finger out of my ear. And was then compelled to add, “Holy cow!” because rhyming, of course.
“Oh my God, look—she’s bleeding! That skink thing bit her!” Jalli exclaimed, looking almost as horrified as I felt.
“Don’t do that!” Bran exclaimed, reaching to grab my hand when I would have tried again. “You can’t get a skink out that way!”
“Well how can you get it out, then?” Megan demanded. “Oh Emma, I’m so sorry!” she added, giving me a very worried look.
“You can’t force a skink out,” Bran said quickly. “You have to sweet-talk it—make it a better offer than the one who bargained with it in the first place.”
“You mean Morganna made some kind of deal with this…this thing in Emma’s ear?” Kaitlyn demanded.
“Exactly.” Bran nodded. “Fae magic is very…transactional, is probably the best word. “So if you talk to it nicely and find out what Morganna offered it, then offer it something better, the skink should come out.”
“Sweet-talk it, huh?” Avery looked extremely skeptical. “Emmers, I think you’d better go see the Healer. Maybe she can come up with a spell to make it vacate the premises.”
“Witch magic isn’t usually much good against Fae magic,” Bran told him. “In fact, sometimes it has the opposite effect and reinforces the magical bonds.”
“Reinforces them?” Megan looked crestfallen and I knew she had been going to offer to do some of her Blood Magic for me, even though Headmistress Nightworthy had specifically forbidden it.
Bran nodded. “Fairy magic isn’t straight-forward like witchcraft. It’s slippery and unpredictable. If you send Emma to the Healer and she tries a spell to force the skink out, it might make the animal go further in.”
“As in, past her eardrum and into her brain? Dios!” Ari looked almost as horrified as I felt.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Jalli whispered, turning pale. She got to her feet, swaying, her three chimelings twittering around her head anxiously.
Saint got up quickly and took her by the arm. When Ari would have helped too, he waved the other Drake off.
“It’s all right, Cousin—I’ve got her.” And he helped Jalli leave the table as quickly as she could with her uneven, lurching walk, presumably to go be sick in a nearby bathroom.
All this time, I was clutching my head with my hands, trying not to think how full my right ear was feeling. Up until that minute, I had just assumed I was getting a head cold—now I knew differently. There was a living creature in my ear!
In…My…EAR.
I thought I might be as sick as Jalli in a minute.
“Okay, it looks like we’re on our own.” Avery sounded grim. He looked at Bran. “Since you know so much about this, tell us—is the skink dangerous to Emma in any way? Well, I mean, other than harming her if she tries to get it out,” he added, looking at my bloody fingertip.
Bran shook his head.
“It should be content to stay where it is and continue doing Morganna’s bidding to contort Emma’s speech forever, as long as it’s not bothered or lured out with the promise of something better.”
“Well, then…” Avery looked at me reluctantly. “I hate to say it, Emmers, but I don’t know if we can do anything until after classes are over for the day. I’ll skip my last period class and go to the Spell Library to read up on skinks and see if there are any notes on how to get them out, but I can’t blow off all my afternoon classes.”
“I can’t either,” Megan said, looking really upset. “Kaitlyn and I have to present our sewing project in Home Ec today. We don’t have much chance of passing but we’ll have none at all if we don’t show up.”
“What if we ask the Headmistress for a special pass or something?” Kaitlyn asked.
“You know Mrs. Hornsby won’t accept any excuse—not even from the Headmistress,” Megan pointed out, talking about the vindictive Home Ec teacher. “We’d have to be dead to get excused from her class, and even then she’d probably fail us posthumously.”
“Well, I don’t care about that.” Kaitlyn lifted her chin defiantly. “Emma needs us. She’s got a, uh, skink in her ear. We have to stay with her.”
“You’re right,” Megan said reluctantly. “Of course we can’t leave her alone until we get that thing out. She’s our Coven-mate.”
I could see how bad all my friends felt about leaving me alone and how they were willing to risk their grades just for me. But I knew I couldn’t let that happen. Actually, I couldn’t afford to miss class myself, either. Still, for my own sanity, there were things I had to know if I was going to get through the rest of the school day.