It's not a person.
Marco stabbed the weeding wand Mrs. Vernon had given him to use into the soil. Tried to focus on feeding flame into it in a fine thread and not a fireball. Scorching the weed down to its roots without damaging the surrounding plants.
Tried not to picture the faerie's face twisted in pain, the stinging smell of stomach acid--
It's not a person.
Flames flickered over his fingers instead of feeding into the wand, and he clenched his fist, trying to quench it. Stood up, knees aching. He'd been here since after Ms. Abercorn's class. He came here a lot when he got frustrated or bored or scared, because Mrs. Vernon always had something useful for him to do, something that let him work out whatever he was feeling using muscle and magic. It was her own favorite for that reason, she'd told him. Given how much time she spent in the garden, she had to have a lot to work out.
He was so grateful Ms. Abercorn had made sure Mrs. Vernon wasn't a faerie. Mrs. Vernon was his favorite teacher, and if it had turned out that behind her face lingered some thing...
God, it had looked so real, so human, even without its glamours. It had fooled Jenna completely, and she was the smartest girl in class. Even Marco had had the urge to help it, when the electric veil had sent it spasming--
Not. A. Person.
He yanked the wand out of the soil. Stabbed it next to the roots of another weed. Tried to drop everything he was thinking about. Just focus on the flame. Down and back, a single string, like a yo-yo. There.
His hands had just begun to cramp from the careful magical control when he heard voices from across the garden. The three figures talking cut a distinct profile--Mrs. Vernon's weighty, grounded frame; Principal Morley with her ever-present eldritch cane, which hoisted a picnic basket in one tentacle; and the faerie, the translucent red veil over its wings almost pink in the sunlight. Saving him from having to see the holes... there was something so fucking disturbing about the holes.
He didn't want to get any closer. But Ms. Abercorn had warned him, right? That he needed to keep an ear out. That he always needed to be on the lookout, just in case.
He found a prime patch of weeds just within earshot and stabbed the weeding wand down into the ground, pretending to work. Listening carefully.
"--having a hard time getting most of them to ripen fully," Mrs. Vernon was saying, "but that's probably the season. The big one in the back should be good to go, though. Are you sure about taking them there?"
"Yes." Madame Morley's voice flat, in a tone that brooked no argument.
"Alright. There's guide vin--oh, never mind, you won't need those, will you? You're like Ms. Abercorn."
"Indeed." Her voice chilly. Reminder by tone alone that she, too, had been kidnapped to Faerie once. With that, Principal Morley turned and left for the wisp-infested parts of the garden, pulling the faerie along behind her. Even as it stumbled, its face wrenched with so much pain. Marco couldn't stand to look at it anymore, lest he forget.
It's not a person.
Marco was worried, though. With what all Mrs. Vernon had said... was Principal Morley taking the faerie to the carriage pumpkins? Because that was a bad idea. Mrs. Vernon had told him that ripe carriage pumpkins could enhance fae magic. Had the thing tricked Principal Morley somehow?
Mrs. Vernon, much as Marco liked her, was really reckless about faerie stuff. She'd clearly decided to let Principal Morley go, and Mrs. Vernon wasn't necessarily going to reconsider just because Marco told her things she already knew about what carriage pumpkins could do. He could try to catch up with Principal Morley, maybe, and warn her?
Except Principal Morley had never once listened to a student, not that he could tell. She snapped, or did that superior-tone thing, or ignored them. Even Dr. Morley was more approachable, and he was pretty sure Dr. Morley had literally poisoned students before. Also, Dr. Morley was dead.
What to do, then? He had to do something, fast, before Principal Morley walked straight into this faerie's trap. Who would she listen to? And which of those people would listen to Marco?
Ms. Abercorn. He could talk to Ms. Abercorn.
He made his excuses to Mrs. Vernon about the rest of the weeding and headed back for the school as fast as he could.
Barely minutes until the next person came to Thairn's door. Her neck aching with tension, her head sore, her temper short. All of it stabbed through with guilt, regret, fear.
She had, perhaps, the excuse to sound weary when she said, "Come in," in response to the knock.
Marco. Of course, Marco. She schooled herself to patience. She would need his intel more than ever, the way the situation had deteriorated. He couldn't much help with finding Mickey or extracting Illa, but the paranoia she'd whipped up in him would be perfect for identifying and neutralizing Lucía's loyalists.
But the first thing he said was, "Ms. Abercorn, I think the faerie's tricked Principal Morley somehow."
Magdalena must have passed him on her way to the gardens, then. "What did you observe?" Thairn asked. She expected--hoped--that it would be nothing beyond the walk-and-talk Magdalena had described, but Thairn knew better than to pass up the opportunity to verify.
"Principal Morley, um--" Marco clenched his fists, slowed his breathing. "--she looked like herself, and acted like herself, except her cane was carrying a picnic basket? That was weird. But, the reason I think the faerie tricked her is where she was going."
Odd. "What do you mean?"
"The--the pumpkins Mrs. Vernon's been growing. You know about them, right? What they can do?"
Back home, they enhanced faerie magic, especially glamour. Here, in this world, they formed a small bubble of Faerie within them. Isolated from the rest of that plane, but enough to make magic work very close to the way it did there.
The pit of Thairn's stomach hollowed out with dread.
"You said a picnic basket?" she asked Marco. Her voice so distant, she could barely hear herself.
If it's able to eat food, drink water, and take a walk in the gardens while I talk to it, that's all I need, Magdalena had said.
"Yeah," Marco confirmed. "Is that... is there something about that?"
Thairn stood, pulling the sheathed knife from her desk drawer and hooking it to her belt. Trying to recall if she had anything else in the office that might be useful. She'd let her teacher's assistant Susan take all the anti-fae devices back to whatever supply room Susan had dug them out of. Foolish. Thairn had known what Magdalena was, and Alanna had more than enough excuse to keep some around.
But, hurry. Hurry.
Thairn swept down the halls, Marco trailing behind. As fast as she could walk without bringing security's attention to her. She should be giving Marco explanations, something to persuade him into doing exactly what she needed and wanted, but all she could think of was Illa.
She'd let Magdalena take him.
The halls passed by in a meaningless blur as she made for the gardens. Marco hesitantly corrected her whenever she made a wrong turn. She thanked him each time. He spent more time in the gardens than she did, and that fact was the only thing that might stand between Illa and a fate worse than what Thairn had already done to him.
The bright sunlight caught her short for just long enough. She needed to tell Marco the right things. Otherwise he would turn on her the second she came back from the pumpkins with Magdalena dead and Illa alive.
"Marco, I haven't told anyone this, but I'm going to tell you. Because I think it's all about to become very clear."
"O-of course." He sounded star-struck. Foolish boy.
"I've begun to suspect Magdalena might be fae."
Marco stumbled, but he didn't seem quite as surprised as she'd expected. "So, she's in cahoots with that red-winged faerie?"
"No, I expect not. She wrote today's lesson plan. But, you see, there were two other people captured with the red-winged faerie, whom we didn't tell the students about. One of them is Mr. Morley's aunt, who can see through glamour. And the other is a man from a group called the Wingless."
"What's the Wingless?"
"They're a lot of things, but the important one is this: Their leader escaped enslavement in Faerie, and the prisoner--Eric--is his right-hand man. I can't imagine such a person helping a faerie, unless it was to take down another."
"Why?"
"I don't know. But, if she's the same changeling the Morleys caught out decades ago..."
"...then she's been hiding from us and from the faeries the whole time."
"And wreaking havoc while she's at it. We've tried to keep this quiet from you students, but, the Morleys under Magdalena..."
"I've heard. The rumors. It's... bad."
"Exactly."
Into the gardens, and Tricia Vernon came to greet her. Damn it. There wasn't time. But Tricia turning on her would be even more dangerous than Marco, if Thairn played this wrong. And Tricia wouldn't listen to Marco, not about fae matters. And there wasn't time.
"Tricia," Thairn said. "Magdalena is fae, she's going to breach your pumpkin, and I am going to stop her."
"She--she what?" Tricia, startled. "I'll come with you."
"Follow as you can," Thairn said. Tricia must have some way of getting to the pumpkin to tend it. "But I'm going." And then Thairn left them both, making for the largest pumpkin in the patch, her vision clear as day even as she ran through the wisps.
How would she kill Magdalena? The others would follow, whether she'd told them to or no, so she couldn't do it with fae magic. If she pretended concern and got in close, she could use the knife. It was too bad her position and Illa's weren't reversed--Illa was the better physical fighter, and, if she were playing the role of caught-out fae, Thairn could use magic without suspicion. That she might be even less able to move than Illa were she subject to so much pain, however... the thought quailed her.
The way to the pumpkins was a familiar path. She'd walked it with Mickey so many times. It made the whole journey jarring. Pleasantry turned to horror. Every drag of Illa's footprints in the dirt twisted another knot into her guts. He was stumbling, he was in pain, she was both relieved it slowed him and agonized to see it.
Hurry.
Illa watched Thairn let Magdalena take him. Watched her let Magdalena pick up the collar. No. She couldn't. He couldn't. Please.
Magdalena forced him to stand, jostling his wings, and the agony drowned out any further thought for countless minutes.
A garden. He was in a garden. A strange garden, for the human world. There were wisps. Familiar in good ways and bad. So many memories of the border forest in Faerie. Making for the hospital runes. Reporting back after a mission. Returning home, when home didn't feel quite right anymore, though at least his parents' place was...
A flash, brief, of Perrine, his parents' "servant".
Of Gabriel asking, Would you care?
It jarred him to presence. The consuming, flaring agony of his wings. His own stumbling footsteps. The collar. Magdalena had put it on him, but it was still Thairn's collar. Still sang of Thairn to him. Mine.
Magdalena. Magdalena was going to do something to him. Why was he in a garden? Why were there wisps?
Pumpkins. Growing greater in size the further they got into the garden. Until finally they stood before one as big as a car.
Carriage pumpkins. The kind that held Faerie's magic.
Magdalena set her cane aside, where it stood holding the picnic basket. She opened the basket to draw forth a large knife, letting him glimpse the contents inside.
Bread and milk. His end would be bread and milk.
Mercilessly ironic.
Illa had to escape, had to do something, but he was bound and in pain as if splinters of iron were still wedged in the holes, inflamed and so tender that the gentle brush of the cloth veil was agony, and the breeze of air through it was worse, and he had to, had to. Focus. The collar.
They will not take you away from me, in mind or body.
But Thairn had let Magdalena take him. And now Magdalena was going to--
No matter what they do to you, or do through me, they will not take you away.
He had to trust it. He had to believe he was going to make it through this. And then he would ask for a collar that was not tainted with anyone else's touch or torments.
Think past the pain--heavens, somehow. Think of it as--as one of those check-ins he was supposed to do during scenes. Though he'd be calling "Red" now. Or "Mayday".
His wings--pain to the point where he couldn't bear to move them, and the veil was tight enough to prevent spreading them, anyway. Breathe. Breathe. Focus on other things. The leather cuffs still had his wrists secure. Nothing numb or hurting there, at least, but, he wouldn't be able to use his hands for much. Feet unbound, though he felt unsteady, off-balance. The toll on his body wracking him. He'd vomited up any food and water in the classroom, nothing left to sustain him now. His throat raw from crying and screaming and bile.
But. But, he could speak, couldn't he? That was something Magdalena didn't know. Was there a spell he could cast, something quick enough that she wouldn't be able to react? Was her sawing of the pumpkin loud enough to cover the sound of his voice?
He stumbled over to the cane that held the picnic basket. The raven's skull peering at him sideways with one gaping eyehole. He leaned over to where its ear should be. And then, as quiet as possible while still holding the right pitch and rhythm:
"Away, birds, away!
Take a little and leave a little
And do not come again.
For if you do,
I will shoot you through,
And there will be an end of you."
The tentacles of the cane spread open as if they were wings, taking the cane improbably into the sky. The milk bottle spilled from the picnic basket, shattering on the ground. Magdalena's knife cut sharply sideways, and she whirled on him.
"Think you're clever, do you?" she demanded. No rasp in her voice now. As full and clarion and youthful as a faerie would ever be. "You think I can't summon it back when I will?" She advanced on him, and he could take only unbalanced steps backwards, falling to the dirt.
"It--" His throat clenched. "It will be destroyed if you bring it here."
"But I can retrieve it later. Unless you think I needed that to feed you?" Her hand snapped out and around his wrist, her grip like iron, strong and sickening. "I have an entire pumpkin here, you fool. And even if I had nothing, I could feed you my blood. You won't escape this. I will own you."
Thairn was close enough to hear them talking now.
At the sound of Magdalena's threat, a chill shot from Thairn's breastbone down her arms. Her hands clenched, the texture strange and sharp. She looked down to see frost, riming her gloves.
Mickey's heart beat steady in her chest alongside the furious pound of her own.
She aimed at Magdalena. Rethought it, unsure of her accuracy--what if she hit Illa? Aimed again, and willed. Her gloves shredded as ice crystals flew from her hands, tearing through the carriage pumpkin. Damaged, but not enough.
Magdalena whirled, eyes scanning the gardens and landing on Thairn. "Hickery dickery, 6 and 7," Magdalena began.
Illa, singing quick. "Thirty white--"
Magdalena threw him to the ground.
Illa screamed, voice piercing straight through Thairn. He'd landed on his wings.
Magdalena kept up her rhyme. "Alabone, Crackabone, 10 and 11."
Thairn ran for Magdalena, ice in one hand and knife in the other.
"Spin, spun, muskidun," Magdalena kept up, even as she scrambled backwards towards the pumpkin.
But Illa had resumed his chant again. "Thirty white horses--"
"Twiddle 'em, twaddle 'em, 21."
The bones of Thairn's knife arm and hand snapped.
Illa pushed on. "--upon a red hill.
Now they tramp--"
Magdalena's teeth began chattering, just barely too late.
"--now they champ,
Now they stand still."
Magdalena's teeth locked shut.
Thairn collapsed now in agony, but she could do this, she had to do this, if Illa--she had to--
She reached out her unbroken arm, willing the shards of ice through it, out her fingers. Until a shower of fragments, sharp as broken glass, lanced through Magdalena and the pumpkin behind her.
Magdalena was dead, and Thairn succumbed to the pain.
Getting to Ms. Abercorn was tough and slow. Mrs. Vernon talked some magic into the guide vines to help Marco and her along, at least. When they finally got close, what hit them first was the stench, sharp and grotesque, like a fresh shit in a nail salon.
Images came in fragments, refracted by the wisps. Principal Morley, clothes soaked with blood and clear liquid, body riddled with puncture wounds as if she'd been struck by a thousand needles. Ms. Abercorn, unconscious and pale. The faerie, on its knees, face drenched with sweat and twisted with pain. Between its hands was one of the garden stakes, lined up against a bronze arm covered in shreds of fabric. Ms. Abercorn's arm. The skin around it shaped wrong, pieces of bone pushing taut against it from the inside.
That skin was also smooth, free of the scarring that went down Ms. Abercorn's whole forearm.
The same was true, Marco saw, in a fragment of wisp-light, of Ms. Abercorn's unbroken arm. Gloves shredded, but still clinging to smooth, scarless skin.
Ms. Abercorn, the person who had warned him that the faeries could be anyone...
...had been wearing a glamour.
Michelle and Jenna had barely reached Ms. Abercorn's office when Dr. Morley emerged into the hall.
"Don't bother," Dr. Morley said. "Jenna, with me."
"Of course," Jenna said brightly.
What the hell was going on? Dr. Morley was already walking off, Jenna close behind her, Michelle forgotten in their wake. For Dr. Morley, because Michelle wasn't one of her extra-credit students, and so didn't count as worth paying attention to. And for Jenna, because Dr. Morley was here, and therefore Dr. Morley was the only thing that mattered.
Michelle was really, really beginning to hate Dr. Morley.
What to do? Michelle couldn't just freeze up again. And something was wrong, and she needed to know why. Should she follow them? Would they notice? If they did notice, what would happen?
You're thinking too straightforward. The memory of Mr. Morley's voice, as he gave her lying lessons. Start at the conclusion and work backwards.
Fine. She wanted to know what was going on. Scry spells? No, she hadn't learned enough about those yet, not to mention that the mobile ones were way too advanced for her. So, following them, then, or getting someone else to. Well, there was no one else here. Follow them, then. Okay. And if they noticed her, um...
What is it you want them to think?
She wanted them to think, uh... that she wanted to help. There. That was it. She was following them to help them with whatever they were doing, because she and Jenna were friends, and Jenna had said such good things about Dr. Morley.
Michelle ran to catch up.
Lucía had done everything possible to make sure she had people she could trust, and still she'd been betrayed. Alanna a secret faerie, lying to Lucía the whole time. It at least explained how everything else had fallen out. Greta found gallivanting with fae, Mickey fucking Alanna--clearly the whole Holloway branch was in with the fae. Lucía should have known. Mom's last research project had been a glamour-ripper, before the "mysterious" fire.
Alanna had at least done Lucía one last favor--with Magdalena dead, Lucía wouldn't even have to wait to inherit. She was head now, and finally able to do everything she wanted.
First, to clean up this mess.
Lucía snagged Jenna before the girl could waste time and magic pointlessly warding Alanna's office. Should Lucía have the girl update the other loyal students? No, that wasn't as important now that Lucía could freely walk about. None of that bullshit about hiding her scars. Scars were a warning to her enemies. I've outlived everyone who tried to best me, and I'll outlive you, too. At worst for her, they were a lesson learned about how to construct her next lab.
She went straight for the gardens. First things first was securing Alanna and the other faerie. Probably good for optics, but, more importantly, she needed these faeries secured right. They would be useless as hostages and test subjects if this were mishandled, and they could easily make this volatile situation explode further.
By the time Lucía got there, Vernon and one of Vernon's students had fully dragged the two fae and Magdalena's corpse free from the wisp-infested parts of the garden. Vernon never had taken care of that infestation appropriately. Lucía had made suitable pesticides, but, of course, that offer had been rejected and then turned into an argument about what constituted "suitable".
Vernon's student was doing a good job securing the faerie with red wings, who was conscious. Good. Lucía looked down at Alanna's unconscious body, mind turning to plans of how best to search and secure her--it--them.
Lucía couldn't think of them as an "it", for some reason.
Anyway. The conversation she'd overheard scrying, when they'd first pulled the red-winged faerie out, seemed accurate. Alanna's gloves were shredded, and the skin beneath them unscarred. Lucía crouched down and pulled at the edge of one glove. On one side of the glove-cuff, clear skin. On the other, scars.
Glamour.
One of Lucía's fists clenched, and she bit the inside of her cheek until the tears threatening at the corners of her eyes stopped. No weakness.
She remembered the steps Alanna had taken to search the red-winged faerie clearly, and none of them had seemed incorrect. Strip search. Cavity search. Find and disable glamour keys.
Lucía could feel everyone's eyes on her, on Alanna's limp body, and she couldn't stand it any further. "Help me carry this one to the doctor's office," she ordered a guard. "It'll be easier to do a search and remove glamour keys there."
Lucía glanced at the student securing the red-winged faerie. Thanks to Alanna, ironically, the students knew how to secure fae better than anyone. But Lucía wasn't going to bring a male student back to the doctor's office with her, not to strip Alanna down.
"Jenna. Come with me. I'll need your help securing Abercorn."
"Of course," Jenna agreed, with no trace of the upset she'd had earlier. "I learned a lot from her class on it." Good. Still loyal to Lucía, then, not somehow suborned by Alanna.
"I'll--" the voice of Jenna's little shadow, Michelle, breaking into the conversation. "M-Marco, I-I'll help you with the other one."
"Sure," the male student agreed.
Before they left, Lucía called a servant over. Gave orders about how to handle Magdalena's corpse, how to turn the heirship announcement into an outright takeover. Still on the same schedule. Lucía was going to make sure this all went through.
Everything under control.
Dr. Morley projected so much decisive confidence, it took Jenna a while to realize how distressed the teacher was. Dr. Morley's tells were subtle, but Jenna had been fixated on Dr. Morley for a while now. Learning what it meant when Dr. Morley's diction got particularly sharp, when the muscle along her jaw went taut. When she looked at something too intensely.
When she didn't look at something she was supposed to be concentrating on.
It got worse, the more glamours they took off of Ms. Abercorn. So, Jenna took up the burden of securing Ms. Abercorn as best she could, in the face of that distress. She felt like she understood it. Dr. Morley had trusted Ms. Abercorn, and now... either Ms. Abercorn had betrayed Dr. Morley by secretly being a faerie this whole time, or Ms. Abercorn had been loyal and then been replaced. Either had to feel awful.
Jenna was pretty sure she felt awful, but the feeling was dissonant. It wouldn't fit together with everything else jumbled inside her head. She felt like that all the time lately. Like her thoughts and emotions were pieces from different puzzles, mismatched edges and gaps and things squeezed together where they shouldn't be.
Focus. She had to focus. Ms. Abercorn had said steel wasn't as good because it made faeries sick. Though, maybe she'd said that because she was a secret faerie? Madame Morley had said steel was good. And the faeries had killed Madame Morley, so she'd probably been right.
Jenna reached for the rods, to make it more secure. But she couldn't. Um. Make her hand move.
Ms. Abercorn is an enemy, Jenna tried to remind herself. It's not like it's permanent.
Though if she nicked a vein with this steel, it would be.
Marco didn't like Dr. Morley much, hadn't been sure how to feel when her lab had blown up. Glad she wasn't dead, but it was distant, impersonal. Glad about a person not dying, in the abstract, nothing specific to Dr. Morley herself.
What was personal was the relief when she showed up and took the job of securing Ms. Abercorn out of his hands. He couldn't... when had she been replaced? What was happening to the real one? Or, had she ever been real? Was this the same Ms. Abercorn who had taught today's class?
He wanted to ask all this of the faerie he was in charge of securing, but he didn't... if he let it speak, it would cast its magic. Hypnotize him or hurt him or something. Maybe that was how the faeries had gotten Ms. Abercorn. She'd probably been tasked with interrogating it. Maybe that was when the faeries had replaced her.
Was this a faerie? Maybe there was only one faerie, and it had switched glamours with Ms. Abercorn...
Marco reached to touch this one's wings. They'd feel real if it were glamour, but the reaction--
Wide, terrified eyes. Marco couldn't bring himself to grab at them the way he'd originally meant to. Touched as gently as he could, instead. Just enough to brush against a hole. To feel it flinch, hear it suck in its breath.
They were real wings. This was a real faerie. In real, horrible pain.
Not a person.
But he wouldn't treat an animal like this, either.
He probably couldn't trust the bindings done by the fake Ms. Abercorn. But it was clear that putting new ones on would make this thing hurt. So he checked the chains that held the veil in place, made sure they were sturdy. Readjusted them where it seemed insecure, all while the creature whimpered. He could feel his stomach clench, but from far away, as if he weren't really in his body.
Michelle came over to help. Marco knew Michelle a little bit. She'd been standoffish at the start of school, not to mention the rumors, but, it had turned out eventually that she was a really good listener, even if she didn't like sharing much about herself. And also that she was good at helping set up shade for plants.
Michelle redid the faerie's wrist binds, quietly, carefully. Her shadow was curled up tight around her, as if even her magic was tense. He couldn't blame her. This was a lot.
Mrs. Vernon had to talk to security about what had happened, so she had one of the security guards go with them to lock the faerie away. The roots in the garden kept reaching towards the guard who volunteered, and, Marco didn't know what to make of that. He wasn't sure he'd even have noticed, if he hadn't been threading fire magic up and down the root systems for so long.
The hallway they'd converted into a prison for the fae seemed so bizarrely ordinary. Just a hall. Except there were guards at two of four visibly-warded doors.
Michelle was staring at the doors, a frown on her face.
"What's up?" Marco asked in a whisper.
She shook her head and didn't answer.
The guard didn't take them as seriously as Dr. Morley and Mrs. Vernon had. He didn't ask for their help making sure the faerie was secure in the room--he didn't even let them into the room. Instead, he shooed them off the second they got to it. "We're done here."
The dismissal felt... off. Marco had to make sure, had to check. What if the guard screwed this up? But, at the same time, the guard taking care of it meant Marco didn't have to see the thing's pain anymore, didn't have to keep fighting the part of him that was--that pitied it.
An open jaw of teeth flickered out of Michelle's shadow just to vent her frustration. But she turned and left, under the gaze of the other guards in the hall, and Marco followed.
They'd barely gotten into the next hall when Michelle pulled him aside, leading him into a bathroom. The hell?
"What's up?" Marco asked.
Michelle looked tense, her shadow all the moreso. "Have you seen Jenna?"
Jenna had been with them in the gardens just a minute ago. Was that--"I thought we just saw Jenna. Are you saying...?"
"No," Michelle said, then hesitated. "Maybe? I don't know. She's been weird. It's been going on for a while, but it's getting worse."
"Weird how?"
"She's been... she's been going along with everything Dr. Morley says. Not in a normal way. Take today, for example. After that fucking class."
A vivid sense-impression just at those words, the hard edges of the glass slide between his fingers as fae blood spilled onto it, body-warm and quickly cooling. The strange way the blood had smelled, metallic, but alien.
Hold it together. "What happened after class?"
"You saw how she was. I know you thought what we did to the faerie was okay, but--"
"No." The word snapping out before he could stop it, something screaming in his head. Not a person blending in with but we hurt it, everything feeling wrong.
His breath too fast, the room too distant.
"Yeah." Michelle's voice cutting through the torrent. Blunt.
"How can you be so calm?"
"Because I never thought it was okay. I just didn't do anything about it." A pause and, then, the edges of her tone turned hard, "I wish I had."
It wouldn't fit in his head. "But it--there was--what could you--"
"I don't fucking know, Marco, all I know is I don't want to watch someone be tortured again."
Not a person, part of his mind responded, automatic. But the rest of his mind was caught on that word. "Torture." Was that what they'd done?
Maybe not what he and Michelle had done directly. But what they'd watched, yeah. What Ms. Abercorn had done.
Marco had taken notes. Sometimes wishing the lecture would slow down--wishing the torture would last longer--so his writing hand could keep up without cramping.
God.
"When Jenna stayed in her seat," Michelle said. "That was me holding her there. I used my shadows. We had a fight about it after class, and--and then she went to go see Ms. Abercorn."
"And that's when she started acting weird?" Someone's voice asked. Was that his? He felt so disconnected. Like he wasn't even really here. Like he was just imagining all of this.
"Sort of. This wasn't the first time. But, yeah. She came back and said Dr. Morley had explained everything. And that Ms. Abercorn was being 'nice' to the faerie just because it wasn't permanent. And so, before that, before today, obviously that kind of thing hadn't happened, but, during tutoring... like, it doesn't matter what Jenna thinks, if Jenna goes and talks to Dr. Morley about anything, and Dr. Morley has an opinion on it, then that just becomes what Jenna's opinion is." Michelle's breath caught short. "Something's wrong."
It snagged on a memory. "The rumors."
"About Jenna?"
He shook his head. "No, about the students who take the extra-credit lab. They... people have been saying for a while that they act kind of weird? But they're also the students who wanted to take Dr. Morley's extra-credit lab."
"I did hear those rumors. Jenna told me they were bullshit. And, given the bullshit rumors I've had to put up with... they sounded like bullshit. But, now I don't know anymore."
"Which ones about you weren't true?"
"All of them? Are you kidding me right now?"
Marco raised his hands, defensively. "You don't exactly tell me a lot. About anything. Especially about you."
"Yeah, guess the fuck why."
He couldn't look at her straight-on. Remembering all the rumors he'd passed onto Ms. Abercorn... who had been a faerie infiltrator for who-knew-how-long ... maybe he should just walk straight back out into the gardens and find a hole to bury himself in. Being fertilizer sounded less fraught.
Ms. Abercorn, though. Just thinking of her, and all the ways she was tangled up with this...
"Do you think Dr. Morley's working together with Ms. Abercorn?" Marco asked. "The faerie version. Faebercorn."
"Why do you think that?"
"You said Jenna saw both Ms. Abercorn and Dr. Morley before Jenna came back hypnotized, right?"
"Yeah."
"And Dr. Morley came swooping in the second we caught Faebercorn. And the only person Dr. Morley took with her to search Faebercorn was Jenna."
"You might be onto something." Michelle clenched her fist. "I think we should break into the prison room and talk to the red-eyed faerie."
"What the hell?"
"Think about it. Ms. Abercorn wanted to hurt Red-Eyes. If that was Faebercorn, that means the two faeries can't be on the same side. And then Dr. Morley wanted to handle Faebercorn personally where nobody but Jenna could see, but she left Red-Eyes to us. Who knows if she's even locking Faebercorn up? We need to talk to Red-Eyes."
That... made a hell of a lot more sense than Marco wanted it to. "How? There's three guards in that hall, plus the ward on the door."
"I looked at the ward. I think I can handle it. Distracting the guards, though, I don't know. You have any ideas?"
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