“We’re just trying to help Britney,” I finished for Selene.
Melanie glared. “Britney’s already got all the help she needs.”
“What do you mean?” asked Selene. When Melanie refused to answer, Selene dropped the softness in her tone. “Come on, Mellie. Why are you treating us like pond scum? I thought we were friends.”
Melanie’s glare faltered then faded. But her manner remained cool. “We are, but … things aren’t so easy as they used to be.”
Melanie looked at me, her huge eyes suddenly watery, but I didn’t think it was from sadness. “We’re just getting tired of always being the victim.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Who’s we? And victim of what?”
“Naturekinds is who.” Melanie thrust out her chin. “First Rosemary was murdered and now Britney’s been attacked twice. She was in a hospital. Who does that?”
Selene and I exchanged a look. We had a pretty good idea who, but neither of us was about to mention that to her. Finding out another witchkind was behind the most recent attack on her kind wasn’t going to do us any favors in getting her to talk.
“But Britney survived,” I said. “My mom saved her.”
Melanie shrugged. “If Britney hadn’t been there in the first place, she wouldn’t have needed saving.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Selene said. It was a good thing she’d spoken first, because my response would’ve been more along the lines of Thanks a lot, you ingrate.
Melanie ran her hands over the bottom of her blouse, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. “There’s just a lot of talk among the naturekinds about”—she seemed to search for the right word—“independency from the other kinds.”
Selene’s brow furrowed. “Like setting up separate institutions just for naturekinds? Like schools?”
“And hospitals.” Melanie tapped her foot. “Britney’s mom hadn’t wanted her to go to Vejovis in the first place, but the government officials insisted on it. The idiots. But Britney’s safe now. She’s in a secure location surrounded by her own kind only and nothing bad has happened to her since.”
Nausea burned in my gut. The attitude behind these events was so wrong, so regressive. It was just as stupid as the witchkinds harassing Eli for being a Conductor. “But you’re acting as if the attack on Britney was because she’s a naturekind.”
“That’s because it was.”
“No, it wasn’t.” I bit my lip, hesitating. “We don’t know why she was attacked yet, but I doubt her kind had anything to do with it.”
Melanie stood up straighter, emphasizing how much taller she was than Selene and me. “She wasn’t attacked by a naturekind, that’s for sure. And that’s what matters.”
I was unable to keep my temper in check any longer. “All the bad stuff lately has nothing to do with kinds. Rosemary wasn’t the only one Marrow killed, remember? He murdered Mr. Ankil, too, a witchkind. And my great grandmother, a darkkind.”
A crimson stain spread over Melanie’s cheeks. “You’re just a halfkind. You wouldn’t understand. You don’t know the first thing about loyalty.”
I raised my hand, ready to curse her. Sweat broke out on my skin from the waves of anger rippling through me. I’d never been so insulted, so outraged in my whole life. I knew about loyalty. And it had nothing to do with someone’s kind.
“You’re nothing more than a mule,” Melanie said, taking an ominous step toward me.
I moved to defend myself. “Flig—”
An invisible pressure seemed to wrap around me, forcing my hand down to my side before I could cast the jinx. Across from me Melanie too was struggling against some unseen force holding her in place before she could fire her own spell at me. Selene was caught as well, but she wasn’t fighting. She seemed frozen in shock.
“That’s quite enough of that,” a rough, male voice said.
I craned my eyeballs as far to the right as I could and saw Captain Gargrave walking toward us, his staff held out before him, the ruby winking in the lights overhead. He came to a stop a few feet from us, setting the end of the staff down on the floor with a hard clack.
“Fighting is against the rules,” Gargrave said.
“No kidding, Captain Obvious,” I said.
All the color blanched from Gargrave’s face only to surge back into it, tomato red. I exhaled, wishing like hell that he’d used the gag spell on me. I had a feeling my sassy response didn’t bother him half as much as the unintentional captain pun. I mean, how often is the person you say something like that to an actual captain?
“Detention, Miss Everhart,” Gargrave said. It might’ve been my imagination, but it seemed as if the magic holding me tightened its grip. My breathing grew shallow, and I began to feel lightheaded. “Seven o’clock. In the kitchens.”
Great, I thought, remembering the Terra Tribe’s meeting tonight. The timing couldn’t have been worse.
I started to complain, but then stopped, keeping my big fat mouth shut for once.
As usual, too little too late.
26
The Terra Tribe
The only good thing about scoring a detention in the kitchens was … wait … nothing. There was nothing good about it. Predictably, the kitchen staff assigned me dish duty. I spent more than an hour loading dirty plates, goblets, and silverware into a giant metal machine that had developed a prankster personality from the animation effect. This meant that every time I turned my back on it, the dishwasher sprayed me with warm soapy water. When I shouted at it to stop, it sprayed me in the face. With the dirty water.