Page 93 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“No.”
I wanted to cry. Not because I’d failed again, necessarily, but because the image of Coen standing between lampposts, the sea raging behind him—it struck something nostalgic and familiar and intimate inside me. As if it were a picture I’d had painted on my heart long before tonight.
Coen’s shoulders seemed to slump slightly. He pulled back and examined me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Just… disappointed in myself. Ms. Pincette asked if I’d studied, and I did, but maybe not hard enough.”
If I could have talked to those damned maggots and successfully retrieved the key in the appropriate way, maybe my power wouldn’t feel the need to explode.
Something indiscernible passed over Coen’s face. Again, I had that feeling that I’d missed something, but then his face cracked into a lazy grin.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful even with a maggot in your hair?”
I laughed as he fished one out of my curls and sent it hurling over his shoulder.
“No, I can’t say anyone ever has. This would be a first.”
He pressed a kiss onto my forehead and the sandwich into my hands.
“Come on. What do you say we sneak over to the Element Wielder lake and take a little evening swim? Maybe we’ll find that giant octopus Sasha and Sylvie would rather kiss than me.”
I bit into the sandwich and grinned back.
“I’m not too fond of the idea of a giant octopus, but a swim in the lake sounds nice.” Especially since I wouldn’t have to hear everyone talking about that damned test.
As we started toward the Element Wielder sector together, however, I decided to ignore the creeping feeling that Coen was hiding something behind his too-cheery smile.
“Rayna! Hey, Rayna!”
The island had been edging toward the dry season for the past few weeks, evident in the slightly clearer skies and lack of constant drizzling. I turned from my solo walk back home to find Lander sprinting toward me, elongating his calves to catch up.
“Lander. Where have youbeen?”
For neither Melle nor I had seen any sign of him since that formal. The few times I’d seen a group of Shape Shifters playing pentaball on the field, Lander hadn’t been among them, and the one time I’d tried knocking on the Shifter door I’d been told to go away by a very hungover man with snakes for dreadlocks.
“To be honest,” Lander said, lurching to a halt before me, wobbling on absurdly tall legs. “I’ve been avoiding you because you’re usually with… her. But that’s not what I came to talk about. I need your help for a Shifting class. I was supposed to find someone outside the sector for today’s lesson, but my buddy from the Summoner house got sick, so… will you come with me, Rayna? Like, right now?”
Alarmed, I stopped right between his sector’s houses. No communication for a month, then this? I glanced over my shoulder, toward my own house. I’d been heading back to get ready for a date with Coen while Rodhi, Emelle, and Gileon had stayed behind, along with half of Mr. Conine’s class, to discuss monkey humor in greater detail. The half of us who’d managed to make a monkey laugh already had been released early.
“I guess. But Coen has something planned tonight, so I have to be back by—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you back in time. May I?”
Lander was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his skin sparkling with impatient sweat. I supposed this would be as good a time as any to lecture him about his behavior recently, so I nodded with a glare.
He scooped me up. I squealed in shock, but he ignored me, sprinting on those elongated calves, back over the bridge and into the Shifter sector, where he set me down on a paved court in the back.
Here, his classmates were standing with partners in neat little rows while an instructor spoke to them from up front.
“—nice of you to finally join us, Mr. Spade! Ready to begin?”
“Yes, sir,” Lander breathed beside me. I did a double take as he shook out his legs, and they shrunk back to their appropriate height.
“Jolly good,” the instructor said up front. “Okay, first thing’s first. Please give your generous partner…ahh, let’s see, what should we do? Pink hair!”
In a great ripple of movement, the entire class turned toward their non-Shifter partners and began straining with effort. Some people placed their hand on their partner’s head, while others began whispering through pursed lips.
