Chapter 39

Whether Kitterfol Lexington and his henchmen had caught on to Fergus or not, nothing seemed to change after their departure. Fergus still showed up to Predators Prey the next day, a greasy half-smile barely concealed behind his twitching jaw when Mr. Conine announced that the Wild Whispering sector would get to skip our third quarterly test in honor of Mr. Fenway's death.

While I felt horrible for Mr. Fenway himself, I had to admit this was a relief to hear. My progress with insect communication was going dismally compared to everyone else—Emelle had started to request specific songs from the crickets outside our window at night—so this would give me extra time to practice.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that even extra practice wasn't going to help me at this point.

"I just don't understand why I was able to talk to those fire ants during the first week of school but no other insect since," I told Emelle and Lander as we squeezed into the stadium during the first game of the official pentaball tournaments: Shape Shifters versus Element Wielders.

Coen, as his house's prince, sat in the front row with the other class royals. I kept half an eye on his back as the referee lined everyone up.

"Well, let's think." Emelle blushed as Lander's hand rested on her knee, but she stuck to the conversation resolutely. "What was different about that time? You were saving our asses, for one. And you were… what—scared?"

"Scared. Angry. Desperate."

I mulled it over, chewing on my bottom lip. It didn't seem to fit. I had also been scared and angry and desperate with the cockroaches and maggots, and they hadn't done anything more than laugh at me.

Lander cleared his throat with a fist to his mouth. "I know I don't know anything about Wild Whispering, but have you tried talking to the ants again? Maybe that'd give you a clue as to why they listened to you."

Emelle turned shining doe eyes upon him. "That's actually a good idea!"

Someone gagged. Wren and Gileon had just sidled in, each carrying a bucket overflowing with snacking peanuts. I would have asked where Rodhi was, but I knew by now that it'd be pointless—no one could keep track of that kid.

"I'd offer you some," Wren told Emelle and Lander, "but I wouldn't want you drooling all over the buckets. You two are worse than Rayna and Steeler."

"Hey!" I exclaimed, nudging her. But my attention had snapped to the field, where Mr. Gleekle was trudging out to face the crowd, right between the two opposing lines of the chosen Element Wielders and Shape Shifters.

"Ladies and gentlemen!"

Once again, a thousand different branches of wind seemed to carry his voice directly to our ears.

"It's time for the first pentaball game of the season! I ask that you remain seated for the entirety of the game, no matter how long it takes, and don't interfere with the happenings on this field. Players." He half-turned to the ten crouching men and women behind him—all fifth-years, by the looks of them. "If you touch anyone in the crowd with your magic, your team will be dismissed immediately and the title will be granted to your opponents. Do you understand?"

I couldn't make out if they nodded from this distance, but Mr. Gleekle turned back toward the stadiums a moment later, apparently satisfied.

"Now, a moment of silence, if you will, for one of our dear instructors in the Wild Whispering sector, Frank Fenway, who tragically passed away last week due to a fungal infection."

From this far away, Mr. Gleekle's glasses made his eyes look like glinting gray orbs. The sky, the stadium, the very spinning of the world seemed to pause its breathing, waiting for someone else to break first. Gileon fidgeted.

I couldn't have moved if I'd wanted to. Fungal infection? Really? It was one thing to keep such sensitive information from the entire campus, but to blatantly lie about it? Although I supposed, as the corpse-quiet seconds ticked on, perhaps a fungal infection was the best way to describe what Fergus had done.

"Thank you," Mr. Gleekle said mournfully… although his face stretched tight with a smile. "Now, I'll hand this off to our referee, and may the best magic win!"

He pumped a fat fist into the air.

The referee held up a neon green flag. Again, the entire stadium seemed to pause. All ten players were crouched like Jagaros had been in the abandoned classroom, poised to mutilate their opponents. Each of them held a ball, too, although I made note of the differences in their grips. One Shape Shifter clutched the orange spiked one between two vise-like hands. The Element Wielder across from him, however, simply pinned her warty green ball in the crook of her arm.

A downward swish of neon green and the players burst into motion.

Everything happened so fast, I could barely keep track of it.

The Shape Shifters shot upward, inflating themselves into giant beings that cast cold, dark shadows across the entire field, each of them with their balls pinioned between two meaty fingers—one step, and they'd make it to the half-disc on the other end of the field.

But before they could, the Element Wielders lit their heads on fire.

Emelle screamed. Lander groaned. Wren laughed, while Gileon whimpered and stuffed a fistful of peanuts into his mouth.

The Element Wielders were already racing between the giants' legs toward the disc on the other end, but the next second, the giants grew steel helmets that stifled the fire and shot out elongated arms to stop them.

I watched the Shifter with the spiked orange ball grab a Wielder with a hand as big as a carriage and throw her into the air.

Now I screamed, but the girl conjured a sudden, house-sized cube of water beneath her, its edges framed by ice, and dropped into it with a colossal splash.

She'd also dropped her ball. It floated in the water, and a nearby Shifter who'd tracked her movement dove after it. Moments before he hit the water, he shrunk into a piranha that grabbed the ball in its sharp, pointed teeth.

When the piranha leaped out, an Element Wielder was waiting.

Before the Shifter could revert to his human form, the Wielder blew a cloud of thick black smoke his way, dousing the fish in its ashy poison.

It went on and on and on.

The brutal mesh of magic never extended beyond the field, but I could still smell the sting of charred flesh, still hear the screams and taste the smoke in the air.

After ten minutes, Gileon dropped his bag of peanuts and rammed his face into his hands to block it all out. Wren merely patted his back, grinning.

I was having trouble taking it all in, too. In those ten minutes of fire and ice and monsters merging in and out of existence, only two balls had been rolled into the discs on either end of the field: eight more to go. Eventually, I let my attention drift to the back of Coen's head up in the front, watching him watch the chaos.

He never moved. Never flinched. Never looked back at me. Even when his neighbors jumped or cringed or clapped, it was as if he was immune to it all.

I didn't want to think it, that there was a lot to Coen I still wasn't familiar with, that part of him remained a mystery. The thought left me scratching my arm, suddenly feeling uncomfortable in my own seat. For some reason, I just wanted him to look back at me. To make a half-second of eye contact.

To show me the viciousness of all this bothered him, too.

Coen didn't, and I had to remind myself that I was dating the same man who had ruthlessly tortured and threatened Fergus all those months ago. Maybe he enjoyed this as much as Wren did, who was whistling and cackling in delight every time someone slipped or collided or caught on fire.

Rethinking our relationship, little hurricane?

There he was. I'd been wondering when that sly voice would slink in.

Maybe, I shot back. You're awfully calm about—my eyes snagged on the nearest calamity—a sinkhole swallowing up the person right in front of you.

I'm strategizing. Any one of these teams could be playing against us soon, so I need to figure out everyone's strengths and weaknesses beforehand.

Right. Coen would be playing in the final pentaball game of the season with four other Mind Manipulators in his year, including Garvis. I hadn't thought much of it until now.

Now that I knew I'd have to watch him endure all this, though…

The Shape Shifters ended up winning, but barely. By the time the referee swished his flag again to call it, several pairs of medics were carrying away various players on stretchers.

My gaze landed on the closest one, who groaned as he passed underneath the stadium, his skin peppered with burn marks from head to toe.

"I think you're right, Lander," I said quietly, trying to look away but finding it hard to. His blisters looked a hell of a lot like Fergus's and Jenia's welts that day they'd tried to mess with Gileon. "I think it's time to talk to the fire ants again."

Six hours later, after everyone else had wafted to bed, I found myself back in the study room, this time with a jar of three ants I'd nicked from the bark of a tree outside. They scurried round and round the glass container, occasionally trying to scramble up the sides and falling back down again.

"It's okay," I whispered to them, trying to keep each exhale rough and raw so that they'd understand me better. "I'm not going to keep you forever. I just wanted to ask you a few questions."

Nothing. No hint of comprehension. I only heard their desperate gasps, as if they were suffocating despite the holes I'd punctured through the jar's tin lid.

I tried again.

"Do any of you know why my magic isn't letting me access the insect world?"

Again, they seemed to shriek with frantic breaths. I glanced at the stripes of shadows and moonlight against the desk and sighed. One minute.

I'd lasted one minute with these creatures, and they were already choosing to panic themselves to death rather than talk to me.

I carried the jar back outside, dumped the ants gently onto the snarl of roots at the base of their home tree, and trooped back to the study room, slumping into my usual chair and massaging my temples.

"Maybe the tome would help you figure it out?"

Willa had scrambled up the leg of my chair and onto my lap. I jumped, but not because of her sudden presence—at this point, I was used to her skittering up my body during random times.

No, I jumped because of what she'd said.

"What tome?"

Willa blinked at me. Her tail curled around her body.

"You know, the one you hid behind the clock a few months ago? The one that says the you-know-what."

I felt myself shrink inward. The room seemed to zoom out and out and out until I was nothing but a grain of sand lost in the roaring tide of a deep ocean.

Was this why Coen had been acting like he'd swallowed a fistful of rocks lately? When he'd erased Emelle's memory about Lord Arad, had he also erased mine about…whatever this was?

I straightened myself to my fullest height, until I was no longer a grain of lost sand. Until I could kid myself into thinking I was the flagpole of one of those pirate ships in the distance, tall and domineering and a spike of force against the wind.

"Tell me everything," I said to Willa.