Page 57 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“Cool, cool. I have. See, after that little incident, I decided I wanted to make sure that would never happen again, so I’ve been hanging out with some older guys in my house who’re teaching me how toactuallyuse this Whispering shit.”
He withdrew his arm from around Jenia and leaned forward. Eager.
“Do you want to see, Drey?”
No, no I didn’t, but I kept my limbs crossed and my teeth clamped. If only Mr. Conine would reappear and call my name, get me out of here…
“Show her, babe,” Jenia said, sticking her nails into Fergus’s arm.
At first, nothing happened, and I couldn’t understand the way both their lips curled in obvious excitement.
But then—then—
I jerked my head down, where something black and fuzzy was blooming at my feet, as if rising from the carpeted floor.
Mold.
Mold that boiled up toward me, licking my ankles, spreading in every direction.
Yelping, I withdrew my legs from the floor, hugging them to my chest, but even that position wasn’t going to save me. The mold was festering at such an alarming rate that I jumped up and scrambled over the arm of the chair to the next seat over. And the next seat, and the next, and still that mold bubbled into being everywhere I turned, save for where Fergus and Jenia sat.
Where they watched with nothing but hate and cold amusement.
I leaped over the arm of the last chair and shot for the stairwell. To hell with the Testing Center, if staying here would bury me alive in this toxic, black revenge.
Yet my mind raced at the idea that Fergus could wield this much power. Had he evensaidanything to the mold, or was he and the mold internally connected at such a deep level that he didn’t need to? Mrs. Wildenberg hadn’t even approached the topic of fungus yet, and I wasn’t sure she ever would.
Just as I hurtled down the first step of the staircase, the testing door flew open.
And just as quickly, Fergus’s mold shrunk back to nothing, like a worm retracting back into the soil.
“Fergus Bilderas.” Mr. Conine rubbed his eyes with heavy fists, as if he thought he’d seen something a moment before. Then he turned to me, where I stood stock-still at the top of the staircase. “Rayna… what are you doing? You weren’t going to bail on me, were you?” He chuckled.
My very bones rattled within me, but I shook my head, refusing to look at Fergus and Jenia in their little corner.
“No. No, I was just…”
I didn’t know what kept me from telling him about Fergus’s little prank, except for the thought that maybe this was it. Maybe now that he’d taken his revenge and scared the piss out of me, we were even, and this would be the end of it.
Slowly, I wafted back into the room and sat back down, trying not to stare at the ground where I swore a ghost of mold had stained the carpet.
“Fergus,” Mr. Conine repeated. “Come with me, please.”
Wary. He’d been wary of Fergus since Fergus’s first temper-tantrum in that swamp. Even now I could see the stress lines digging into his forehead as Fergus kissed Jenia’s brow and bounced onto his feet to follow.
A moment later, the door closed, and Jenia and I sat staring at each other.
Jenia dropped her gaze from mine to inspect her cuticles. My heart couldn’t quit pounding against the inside of my skin like a drum straining to erupt.
“Kimber had a plan to get him back, you know,” Jenia said.
My vow to stay silent melted through my teeth. “What?”
“Coen Steeler, of course.” Jenia looked up. “My sister, Kimber—our house princess, in case you forgot—she was really torn up about their breakup last dry season and was trying to make him see reason. But then you came along and had to weasel your way between them before she could.”
So many different responses rattled around in my brain, but the one that came out, soft as a whisper of leaves in the arboretum, was “Why do you hate me?”
Jenia tilted her head.
