Page 135 of By the Orchid and the Owl
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“Rayna Drey.”
My eyes fluttered against a haze of orange. It was like wrenching myself out of the deepest dream, but I managed to lift myself onto my elbows.
“What? I don’t—”
After blinking away the last of my blurred sleepiness, I found the piercing eyes.
“Jagaros! Oh, I haven’t seen you in forever!” I threw my arms around the massive, silky neck, and pulled back to inspect him. “What are you…?”
I gazed around. The sea lapped against the shore not far from me, and a storm seemed to be fermenting on the horizon. But otherwise, it looked like a perfectly normal morning on the island of Eshol.
So why had I fallen asleep on this patch of gritty sand? Had I really drunkthatmuch last night with Emelle and Rodhi, to have ended up here?
I groaned and pressed my fingers into my temples.
“Ugh. I thinkIcould use a few pets right now, Jagaros. I feel like shit.”
Jagaros was swishing his tail at me, his pupils skinny as wires.
“Youlooklike shit, Rayna Drey.”He paced around me. “And when the Good Council asks you why you look that way, you should tell them you were roughhousing with me a little too hard.”
I instinctively glanced at my arms, where I saw…patches of bruised skin.
What had happened?
“Oh, God. I am never drinking again.”
“Good.” Jagaros tilted his head up toward the cliff, his ears flattening against his skull. “They’re almost here, Rayna, and I don’t fancy being here when they are. But I must ask you before I take my leave.” His gaze refocused on me with predatory stillness. “Did you ever happen to find a map? I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long, but I had other things to attend to, so I couldn’t ask sooner.”
I bobbed my head back.
“A map? Of campus? Jagaros, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Andwho’salmost here? Has Wren come to kick my ass for wandering off after a night of drinking, because—”
Shouts wrenched my attention upward. High up on the cliff, a group of people were looking down at Jagaros and me.
Every hair on Jagaros’s white and black body sprang upward, and a high-pitched hiss escaped his mouth.
“Forget the map. I just thought it might have been the one thing you—” He shook his head and rubbed it quickly across my neck, nearly knocking me sideways. “Stay cautious. Stay curious. And stay clever. Okay? I’ll see you later.”
He leapt away, streaking alongside the cliff faster than I could respond.
More confused than I’d ever been in my life, I watched the group of people from above float toward me. And I recognized him, the one in the middle: mullet splitting into braided strings that dangled down his back, a wide jaw, pitted brown skin.
Nobody would be forgetting Kitterfol Lexington anytime soon. I remembered all too clearly the night he’d come investigating after Mr. Fenway’s death, how Emelle and I had cuddled close together on the bottom bunk while he and his crew had paced Bascite Boulevard, cleaving each and every mind for pieces of evidence.
Tingles swept around my neck like a noose when Kitterfol landed before me.
He surveyed me. I surveyed him, still on the ground.
I didn’t dare move.
“Interesting,” he murmured eventually.
The others around him gathered round. A headache pulsed at the base of my head, and I knew that for whatever reason, the greatest Mind Manipulator on the Good Council had just split my memories wide open in search of… something.
“Why are you down here?”
