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And then I gasp. My body physically recoiling from him. Without thinking, I leap to my feet, searching for a weapon as adrenaline floods my body.
33
“Summer!” Mack yells, her eyes wide. “What’s wrong?” She and Evelyn crowd around me, only adding to my discomfort.
I’m breathing hard as I look from them to our mentor, Callum. Or, as he’s called on the other side, Cal.
“I know him,” I growl, jerking my chin at Cal.
To his credit, he’s putting on a good show of being surprised. He’s pressed against the door, hands held high, a shocked look on his face.
“You know . . . Callum?” Mack asks, looking from me to him.
“Yeah, and I refuse to be anywhere near him.” I cross my arms over my chest to drive home the point.
Cal actually has the audacity to look hurt, his bushy eyebrows mashing together above a frown. If I didn’t know what sort of a-hole he was, I would have been convinced I truly hurt his feelings.
Mack’s eyes narrow, and I can see her brain whirring behind her dark hair. “How would you know . . .” Suddenly the wrinkle trenched across her forehead smooths out. “Oh.”
She marches over to where Cal presses into the wall and lifts his big hand up, exposing his wrist. The Winter Court mark, similar to the one inside my tattoo, flares against his flesh just below his palm. “Cal is a changeling,” Mack says as if I know what the hell she’s talking about.
“A change-what?” I say.
“Oh, right. We haven’t covered that yet.” She drops his wrist and then pats his arm. “It’s okay, she’ll calm down once I explain. Here”—she grabs the flute brimming with pink potion and offers it to me—“let’s down these, since you obviously need to chill, and then I’ll explain.”
Normally, I wouldn’t chug a mysterious, magical liquid, even if Mack promises I’ll adore it, but after the shock of seeing Cal in Everwilde, I desperately need something.
The liquid fizzes all the way down my throat and into my stomach. When every ounce of liquid has been drained from the flute, a pink wisp of smoke trickles from the rim and dances around my head in the shape of a dragon.
Mack’s becomes a smoky teal sprite that giggles before evanescing. Callum’s is a centaur that gallops around the room shooting arrows of smoke. Evelyn’s becomes a mermaid that circles her head, splashing smoke-water at her.
“Wow,” I say, clutching my belly. “That was . . . intense.”
For a moment, it feels as if a swarm of feathery butterflies have been let loose in my stomach. Then a wave of complete joy washes over me.
This is nice. So nice. Cal is nice. Everyone is nice.
“I love everyone,” I purr.
I sit on my butt beside Mack and Evelyn, both girls matching my silly grin with smiles of their own. I have no idea why we’re on the floor instead of the couch.
“See,” Mack says, petting my face. “Now, ready for more truth about Callum?”
I nod happily.
“So Callum is a changeling,” Mack begins. Callum plops his giant form beside us as he watches Mack explain. “He was taken as a baby and replaced by an other—a lookalike Fae child.” Despite my relaxed state, I shudder. “Do his parents know?”
I’ve never met his mom, or even seen her for that matter. But his dad and this other, this changeling, are together all the time.
“No,” Callum answers for Mack. His big head rests in his hand, and his face looks crestfallen as he discusses his parents. “My dad made a deal with the Winter Court when I was seven, and then he couldn’t pay. So they took me, put a changeling in my place, and glamoured my dad to forget he ever owed the Evermore. Since then, I’ve been a servant for the Winterspell family.”
Winterspell . . . that’s Inara’s surname.
My head spins. “So . . . the Cal I went to high school with, the all-American boy who could be the poster child for rednecks everywhere, is a secret Fae? Why?”
“We don’t know,” Mack says. “There are changelings all over the mortal world, but who knows why they do it?”
“Are there other changeling humans at Evermore Academy?” I ask, trying not to sound too hopeful. If there are others here who haven’t been groomed from practically birth for the academy, then maybe I won’t stick out so much.
