“No one actually invited me—I just took my chances and came down, hoping you would tolerate me for Megan’s sake,” Griffin said quietly.
“Griffin, how can you say that?” I asked him. “We do more than tolerate you!”
“We love you, too!” Emma exclaimed, and then went pink. “In a purely platonic way, of course,” she added quickly.
“Speak for yourself,” Megan said, grinning. “There’s nothing platonic about how I feel for my Tall, Dark, and Fangy guy.” She grew serious. “But it’s true that you all took Griffin into our Coven just like you took me and for that I’m really grateful.”
“There’s nothing to be grateful for—Griffin belonged and so he came to us,” Avery said simply. “There’s something that binds us together—something stronger than the binding on any Coven I ever heard of.”
“It’s like…we were meant to be together,” Megan whispered. “Like we just belong.”
“Exactly.” Avery nodded. “But don’t you see? The same binding could work for Ari Reyes too. If we invited him in the way we did with Griffin and with Megan, he might become one of us too.”
I bit my lip at the thought of coming down to the Norm Dorm every day and seeing Ari sitting there on one of our tattered but comfortable blue couches waiting for me.
“I don’t know, Avery,” I said slowly. “I feel like I want—I need—someplace to be away from him. This is all so new—so strange for me. And being around Ari is so intense. I mean, I feel really confused when he’s near me.”
“She needs someplace to just be safe and to herself, for a while,” Megan said firmly. “I have to say that I like Ari and I think he has honorable intentions towards Kaitlyn, but I don’t think we should invite him down to the Norm Dorm on a regular basis just yet.”
“Thank you.” I looked at her gratefully. “Maybe someday I’ll feel differently but for now, everything is already so strange. I think I just need time to adjust.”
“Of course you do, Katydid,” Avery said tenderly, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. “And you’ll get as much time as you want, we promise.”
But in that, he was wrong.
45
Kaitlyn
I was really nervous about meeting Ari again later that day. In fact, I was so distracted thinking about it that Megan and I had to rip out two whole seams I had sewn in the dress we were making in Home Ec. Mrs. Hornsby came to check our work and smirked triumphantly when she saw what a mess I was making of the skirt part of the dress.
“You’ll never pass this unit if you can’t do better than that, Miss Latimer,” she said to Megan. “But I wouldn’t count on passing it anyway, all things considered.”
As she walked away, I could feel Megan seething beside me.
“I’m really sorry,” I whispered to her as I adjusted our sewing machine and prepared to try again. “I don’t mean to be making such a mess of things—I’m just kind of…distracted right now.”
Megan took a deep breath and made a visible effort to calm her emotions.
“It’s not you I’m mad at,” she told me. “It just drives me crazy that Hornsby is determined to fail us because she thinks Nancy’s nasty stunt with the cake is our fault!”
“Well, you’re going to have to get over that,” I advised her. “With the feel good charm Nancy and the Weird Sisters put on her, Mrs. Hornsby is never going to blame them—even if the evidence was staring her right in the face.”
“You’re right.” She sighed and looked over at the trio in question.
Nancy and her two friends were holding up a blouse with an obviously crooked seam to display for our Home Ec teacher. And, as she had during the baking portion of our class, Mrs. Hornsby was falling all over herself to compliment their good work.
“Such needlework!” she was exclaiming as she beamed at the three of them. “I’ve never seen anything like it, girls! Keep up the excellent work.”
“Ugh—it makes me sick,” Megan groaned. “Watching how they play her—and it’s almost like she wants to be manipulated.”
As we watched, Nancy shot her a glance of triumph. But when her eyes turned to me, her expression grew darker. She was looking at me almost with an expression of hate, I thought. I met her eyes for a moment, then looked away. What had I done to make her despise me so? Even with her magic supposedly neutered, it was now clear that Nancy Rattcliff was not without resources.
She was a bad enemy to have.
“Don’t look at her—don’t give her the satisfaction,” Megan whispered, giving me a nudge with one elbow.
Clearly she had seen the silent exchange between me and Nancy. She shot a last glare at the other girl and then pointedly turned back to our dress.
“Show me again how to do a seam?” she asked me. “Maybe I should try the next one.”
“Maybe you should,” I said, relinquishing the sewing machine. “My head just isn’t in the game right now.”
“You’ve got other things on your mind, I know,” Megan said sympathetically. She lowered her voice. “Is it hard, getting used to having Nocturne senses now? I know from talking to Griffin that they can see and smell and hear and just about everything else better than humans.”
“Actually, aside from the smell of human food making me feel like I’m going to hurl, I haven’t noticed much improvement,” I admitted, also keeping my voice down. “But that’s really not surprising since I’m a second-rate Nocturne, you know.”
“You are not!” Megan said indignantly. “You’re not a second rate anything, Kaitlyn!”
I smiled at her, grateful for her kindness and loyalty.
“Thanks, but that’s not how I feel.” I lowered my voice even more, glad that we were at the back of the room and our conversation couldn’t be overheard over the hum of the many sewing machines. “I mean, I can’t even drink bagged blood. I
