Chapter 34

The next day, I passed my History portion of the test for Mr. Fenway. I successfully convinced a mongoose and a snake to quit fighting for Mr. Conine. I fed a butterwort for Mrs. Wildenberg.

When Ms. Pincette asked me to fish a silver key out of a tank full of maggots, however, my power struck through the cracks of that suppressant and sent the whole tank shattering into a million glinting pieces—pieces that melted into the floor of the Testing Center as if they had never been.

Ms. Pincette flicked a maggot off her shoulder and kicked another one off her shoe. The entire room squirmed with them, like fat, wriggling ashes.

"Did you study, Ms. Drey?" she asked, deadpan.

What an odd question. Of course I had studied. I nodded, picked up the silver key that had been flung unceremoniously onto the floor, and tossed it over to her. She caught it with one hand.

"Very well. I shall report this as a fail. You did not retrieve the key."

Although something in my chest shriveled up in shame, I nodded again.

"Yes. Thank you, Ms. Pincette."

She watched me go, the lines of her face creasing. I had a distinct feeling that I'd missed an important clue or sign or something, but I couldn't hurry out that back door fast enough, down the stairs and outside.

Where Coen waited for me between lampposts, holding up a sandwich.

I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, squishing the sandwich between us.

"Did you pass?" he asked.

"No."

I wanted to cry. Not because I'd failed again, necessarily, but because the image of Coen standing between lampposts, the sea raging behind him—it struck something nostalgic and familiar and intimate inside me. As if it were a picture I'd had painted on my heart long before tonight.

Coen's shoulders seemed to slump slightly. He pulled back and examined me.

"Are you hurt?"

"No. Just… disappointed in myself. Ms. Pincette asked if I'd studied, and I did, but maybe not hard enough."

If I could have talked to those damned maggots and successfully retrieved the key in the appropriate way, maybe my power wouldn't feel the need to explode.

Something indiscernible passed over Coen's face. Again, I had that feeling that I'd missed something, but then his face cracked into a lazy grin.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're beautiful even with a maggot in your hair?"

I laughed as he fished one out of my curls and sent it hurling over his shoulder.

"No, I can't say anyone ever has. This would be a first."

He pressed a kiss onto my forehead and the sandwich into my hands.

"Come on. What do you say we sneak over to the Element Wielder lake and take a little evening swim? Maybe we'll find that giant octopus Sasha and Sylvie would rather kiss than me."

I bit into the sandwich and grinned back.

"I'm not too fond of the idea of a giant octopus, but a swim in the lake sounds nice." Especially since I wouldn't have to hear everyone talking about that damned test.

As we started toward the Element Wielder sector together, however, I decided to ignore the creeping feeling that Coen was hiding something behind his too-cheery smile.

"Rayna! Hey, Rayna!"

The island had been edging toward the dry season for the past few weeks, evident in the slightly clearer skies and lack of constant drizzling. I turned from my solo walk back home to find Lander sprinting toward me, elongating his calves to catch up.

"Lander. Where have you been?"

For neither Melle nor I had seen any sign of him since that formal. The few times I'd seen a group of Shape Shifters playing pentaball on the field, Lander hadn't been among them, and the one time I'd tried knocking on the Shifter door I'd been told to go away by a very hungover man with snakes for dreadlocks.

"To be honest," Lander said, lurching to a halt before me, wobbling on absurdly tall legs. "I've been avoiding you because you're usually with… her. But that's not what I came to talk about. I need your help for a Shifting class. I was supposed to find someone outside the sector for today's lesson, but my buddy from the Summoner house got sick, so… will you come with me, Rayna? Like, right now?"

Alarmed, I stopped right between his sector's houses. No communication for a month, then this? I glanced over my shoulder, toward my own house. I'd been heading back to get ready for a date with Coen while Rodhi, Emelle, and Gileon had stayed behind, along with half of Mr. Conine's class, to discuss monkey humor in greater detail. The half of us who'd managed to make a monkey laugh already had been released early.

"I guess. But Coen has something planned tonight, so I have to be back by—"

"Don't worry. I'll get you back in time. May I?"

Lander was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his skin sparkling with impatient sweat. I supposed this would be as good a time as any to lecture him about his behavior recently, so I nodded with a glare.

He scooped me up. I squealed in shock, but he ignored me, sprinting on those elongated calves, back over the bridge and into the Shifter sector, where he set me down on a paved court in the back.

Here, his classmates were standing with partners in neat little rows while an instructor spoke to them from up front.

"—nice of you to finally join us, Mr. Spade! Ready to begin?"

"Yes, sir," Lander breathed beside me. I did a double take as he shook out his legs, and they shrunk back to their appropriate height.

"Jolly good," the instructor said up front. "Okay, first thing's first. Please give your generous partner…ahh, let's see, what should we do? Pink hair!"

In a great ripple of movement, the entire class turned toward their non-Shifter partners and began straining with effort. Some people placed their hand on their partner's head, while others began whispering through pursed lips.

Lander was looking at me as if he were constipated.

"There. Oh, no. It's more maroon, isn't it?"

I grabbed one of my curls and brought it up in front of my face. Indeed, it was now the color of some kind of ripe berry, glistening as if it had never been blonde.

"Shouldn't this be easier for you?" I asked unashamedly. "I mean, you can change your own appearance, and you can turn a kettle into flowers."

"I actually changed the flowers into a kettle and then back into flowers," Lander said, his face contorting again as he focused on my hair. "But that's beside the point, I guess. Changing another living human's appearance is harder than changing yourself or an inanimate object—or plants," he added quickly when I opened my mouth to argue that last point.

I closed it again. From the corner of my eye, I could see my hair was orange now. I planted my hands on my hips and surveyed him fully.

"You said you've been avoiding me because I've been with Emelle. Why?" I felt the frustration bubble up in my chest. "Why don't you want to talk to Emelle, Lander? Are you with Quinn again?"

"What? No!" The instructor up front called out another color, and Lander went to work trying to get each of my strands to morph into purple. "Quinn basically wanted to explain why I'd never been a good boyfriend. I think she was looking for some grand apology where I'd be groveling on my knees begging for her forgiveness, but I told her to screw right off. Then I went to find Emelle afterward, but she had some other guy's tongue in her mouth. And then I found the orchids I gave her just smashed on the ground, so I figured—"

"Oh, no." I clapped a hand to my mouth. "Land, that was me. Melle was so upset about how you just disappeared with Quinn that she handed me the orchids, and I threw them overboard because you were both gone and they were dead."

Lander's face became pinched.

"What? Of course the orchids were dead. I picked them." Understanding dawned on his face right after he said that, though. "Oh… oh, like you heard them take their dying breath… in your hands?"

"Yes." Although, come to think of it, maybe I should have buried them.

"By the feather and the fang, that's morbid," Lander muttered. "Next time I'll get her a potted plant."

"There won't be a next time if you refuse to talk things through, Land. She was only kissing that guy because she thought you were breaking her heart."

Not that Emelle had said as much. I was only guessing that part, because apparently neither of my best friends could fathom the concept of communication.

Mean, I chided myself. That was mean. I sighed as I picked up a lock of puke-green hair and let it fall back over my shoulder.

"We've just missed you, Lander."

"Well, I've missed you, too." His face had fallen into serious contemplation. "And I'm sorry. I guess I just… oh, I don't know."

No. I decided I'd hold him to higher standards than that.

"You don't know what, Lander?"

"I don't know."

"Lander. That. Is. Not. An. Answer."

He recoiled and frowned at me. "Since when did you get so assertive?"

Since I started exploding with power that could get me killed. Since I found out my mother came from outside this wretched dome and my father stole me from her. Since the moment I felt like something was out there, something bigger, lurking and waiting for me to find it again. As if I'd held something in my hand and let it slip through my fingers like water.

But I didn't say any of that, of course. I just shrugged.

"Maybe you should try it. Tell me. Tell me what you claim you don't know."

As everyone else around us shifted colors, their hair and skin and clothes morphing into magentas and pastels and neon colors so bright, it hurt my eyes, Lander stopped to stare at me, his mouth partway open.

"I don't know that I've got a big crush on Emelle. I don't know that it scares me because I'm afraid she'll hurt me like Quinn did. I don't know that when I saw her kissing another guy, I felt like she was already hurting me before we even began."

"Now give ‘em an extra finger!" the instructor called from up front, clapping his hands. Lander jolted from his reverie and screwed up his face again.

The next second, a nub sprouted between my index finger and thumb.

I shrieked and tried to shake it off me, but it just flapped in place.

"At least make it a full finger!" I cried.

"I'm trying!"

Lander was concentrating so hard now, he had trails of sweat leading from his forehead down to his chin. A slight tingling shot up my wrist as he lengthened my nub into a full digit. "There. Happy?"

"I can't say I'm overjoyed, but this is better." I wiggled the extra finger, awe-struck. "Wow. I never knew it would be so hard to shift something other than yourself. But then again, I didn't realize it'd be so hard to talk to maggots, either."

A bitter taste still loitered in my mouth from that last test.

Lander wiped his sweat on a sleeve and pressed his mouth together.

"All of this is so much harder than I ever thought it would be. Changing myself comes naturally, but changing others…" He looked away.

I rested a hand on his shoulder, trying to ignore the six fingers. "Maybe you're not supposed to try to change others." I softened my voice. "You couldn't control how Quinn treated you, Lander. But you can control how you treat Emelle. And the fact is, she only started kissing some other guy when you walked away from her with your ex. That's how you treated her, so that's how she treated you back."

"Alright," the instructor called from up front, "now freestyle it!"

Lander didn't move. He was still staring off toward the nearest tangle of mountainside.

"Do you think Emelle would be willing to talk to me again?" he asked quietly.

"Yes." Finally, he was catching on—Emelle hadn't said so, but I knew she'd be ecstatic if Lander chose to hang out with us again. With her again.

He seemed to shake himself from some kind of trance and refocused on my appearance. With another tingle, that extra finger shrunk back into my skin.

"Okay, Rayna, it's your choice now. What do you want me to change about you? Momentarily, of course. Bangs? A tattoo? I could try to give you a beauty mark."

I laughed—actually threw my head back and laughed—at the thought of meeting Coen for our date tonight with a sudden mole above my upper lip.

"How about… straight hair." I'd always secretly wondered what I might look like, how long my hair might be, if the wild curls flattened into a glossy cascade.

"I can try." Lander chewed on his lip, closed one eye, and squinted at me as if his life depended on it. A moment later, his eyes flew open. "Holy shit, I did it!"

Indeed, when I strung my fingers through my hair, it didn't feel like my hair at all. Each strand was silky-smooth, flowing down to my waist like fluid sunlight.

I reined in a gasp. "How long will it last?"

"Just a few hours." Lander gave his work an appraising smile. "I'm not strong enough to hold it for long, but some of the fifth-years can maintain someone else's shifted appearance for days, so maybe someday I'll get there."

Days. I'd always assumed Dyonisia Reeve was a Shape Shifter—that that's how she preserved her eternally youthful body—but what if she wasn't? What if someone else on the Good Council, a hyper-advanced Shape Shifter, did it for her?

Lander didn't seem to notice the way my fingers had stopped their seamless trek through my new hair, suddenly cold.

He only smiled at me and said, "Go get your prince, Rayna. I think I'm going to go after my queen."