Page 128 of Echoes of the Banshee

Chatter follows me throughout the day again, but my date with Thea keeps me excited. When I get to soccer practice and hear someone make a joke about Thea and I, Zair storms away. I follow him into the locker room.

“Hey,” I look around and confirm we’re the only two in here. “You okay?”

He looks up at me and I see the pain in his eyes and I cringe. This one is my fault. I’d been on cloud nine all day I forgot he likes her. I’m a terrible friend. I don’t even have a shot with her, he does.

“I’ll tell everyone it’s a lie,” I offer.

“No. I get it. Thea needs this win over Anita.”

“Goblin’s needed it too,” I agree. He looks at me for a minute then pulls his keys from his bag and passes them to me.

“Take her somewhere nice.”

“Any idea what that means to Thea?” I smile at him and he laughs.

“Not a clue. She’s happy anywhere there’s food.” My smile falls as the realization dawns on me, Zair sees it and stops laughing as well. “What?”

“Do you think they starved her?”

His eyes blow out as he processes the information. The way that almost nothing gets between Thea and food, how she’s the only witch who eats anything and everything in sight. And then other times, where she just completely forgets to eat.

“I—I—you might be right.”

We’re subdued as we head back to the pitch.

Two hours later I’m dressed as nice as I can, standing in front of her door. I spin the enchanted ring around my finger. I hate the thing but if I’m taking her out to a formal restaurant, I can’t exactly have green hair.

The door opens and my jaw drops.

“Sorry,” she says, her cheeks heating. “Only dresses I had are Adora dresses and they look silly.” She tugs on her hem.

“You look great.”

“Where’s your aventurine hair?” she asks and I can’t hide the smile that overtakes my face.

“We’re going somewhere nice.”

I offer my arm and she loops through it, we walk down through the girl’s spiritborne dorm and the talking all cuts off and then starts again. Anita sneers in the corner.

As soon as we get in the car Thea demands the ring and then directs me to an arcade. We spend the next three hours battling for dominance and eating bad pizza.

“You do know I grew up in the eighties,” I tease as she tries to win at whack-a-mole.

“You’re going down old man!”

We stop at a Halloween store on the way home. Thea attempts to get me to buy a sandwich costume. When we get to the school, I walk her to her dorm, after having the best night in my nearly fifty years.

Zair

Thea’s Glowing, Benson’s Drooling, and I’m Just Here for the Chaos

Four days. Four days of hearing nothing but Benson and Thea.

I know it’s a lie. I know she doesn’t want this, but I can’t understand why they can’t let it go. It was funny, she stopped an all-out riot in the dining hall with a single joke. But that’s all it was. A joke. Yet the whispers, the rumors, won’t die. They crawl beneath my skin, scratching, gnawing, and making it harder to breathe.

She doesn’t want me. She has someone else. And yet she’s okay with the entire school thinking she’s sleeping with Benson? Every time someone makes the same stupid joke about goblin sex, the pressure in my chest rises. It’s like a damn ticking time bomb, and I’m just waiting for it to explode.

Benson offered to clear it up, to tell them the truth, to set the record straight. But would it even make a difference? He’s my best friend; he knows how much this is eating at me. Hell, Benson knows what Thea means to me even if I don’t have the words for it yet. But every time I get close to saying something, I see Anita watching us. Watching for cracks in Thea’s armor.