Page 77 of By the Orchid and the Owl
I was scrabbling at nothing in this darkness, and a sudden, angry taste of bitterness filled my mouth.
Why? Why couldn’t Fabian have just told me about my motherbeforeI had left for the Institute? I knew why he couldn’t write such sensitive information in a letter, but he’d had plenty of years to tell me before this. And yet the best he’d been able to do was put a mysterious knife in my bag mere hours before my departure.
Emelle must have sensed my despair, because she found my hand and squeezed.
“Why,” Lord Arad spit, fumbling to adjust his upside-down grip on the beam, “should I entertain the feeble questions of a human pup such as yourselves?”
I froze at the tone. We’d never talked to bats in Mr. Conine’s class, but I vaguely remembered Mr. Fenway mentioning something about them in History. How most of them were as eagerly friendly as domesticated kittens, but one colony…
Emelle remembered seconds before I did. She straightened to her full height, pinned Lord Arad with an exceptional glare, and said, “You should entertain hercompellingquestion because she’s friends with Jagaros.”
Tomb bats, Mr. Fenway had said, were the last descendants of the ancient vampires and were therefore extremely proud of their lineage. They would only deign to talk to other esteemed members of Esholian society—never a nobody.
The tomb bats halted their rustling at Emelle’s declaration.
“Jagaros… Jagaros the king?” Lord Arad asked, a hint of fear in his screech.
I cleared my throat. “The faerie king of old, yes.”
I wasn’t exactly sure this was accurate, but if you put two and two together…
“How do we know you’re not lying through your ugly square teeth?” Lord Arad shifted his grip on the beams. “My ancestors would have sucked you dry and spit their venom on your bones just for claiming such a ludicrous thing.”
I gaped upward, but a rougher, colder voice answered in my stead.
“She’s not lying, and I ate your wretched ancestors for breakfast.”
The tomb bats broke into a frenzy, flapping away to cower in further corners of the room. Emelle pressed closer to me, but I—I beamed as the white tiger padded to a halt beside me, his tail flicking.
“Now,” Jagaros growled up at the lead bat, who had scrambled higher up a beam, “answer the girl’s question.I would like to hear the answer myself.”
With that, he slumped down at my feet, folded his paws, and whipped his tail.
“Of c-course, Your Majesty,”Lord Arad screeched, then angled his head back toward me. “You’d like to know what again, dear? If anyone else has been in here to disturb us recently?”
“Not necessarily recently,” I said, resisting the urge to reach out and pet Jagaros with my Emelle-free hand; I had a feeling he’d be livid if I treated him like a housecat in front of these assholes. “But anytime in the last, oh, I don’t know, twenty-three years?”
For it had been twenty-three years ago when Fabian had first set foot on the Esholian Institute campus, so if anything significant had happened in this putrid space—if his letter had truly meant to lead mehere, of all places—it must have occurred during that time frame.
Again, my eyes flicked toward the floor beneath those fallen scraps of paper. Maybe I should just be done with this Lord Arad and check for loose boards…
But another tomb bat, even higher-pitched than Lord Arad, suddenly cheeped, “There was the lady from the sea, Father, remember?She slunk in from the shore and set up camp in here for nearly a year, spying on anyone who walked past.”
“Ahh, that does sound familiar,thank you, Velika.”
From the forced tone of Lord Arad’s screech, I could tell he’d been withholding this information on purpose and would reprimand the younger bat later.
“Yes, there was the lady from the sea, who had hair dark as shadows but skin that glowed like honey.”
My blood dropped. It was probably just my imagination running rampant, but that description… it was exactly how I would have painted Dyonisia Reeve.
I shook my head, though. Ridiculous. I was being ridiculous. Dyonisia Reeve had been on this island, watching over Esholian affairs, for hundreds of years. She wouldn’t have come from the sea or stationed herselfhere, of all places. The similarity in appearance had to be a coincidence.
“Uhh…” I glanced at Emelle, who squeezed my hand again and nodded her encouragement. “What was this lady from the sea doing here? Spying, you said?”
Lord Arad rustled his wings. “Spying. Taking notes. Meeting with that boy.”
“What boy?” My heart seemed to skip way too many beats.
