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Avery shot me a lecherous grin as he rose from the table and actually grabbed his crotch!Then he headed over to the Fae table and began talking to one of the girls.I couldn’t hear what he said, but whatever it was, it must have been offensive because sheslappedhim.

I stared at him in confusion and when I focused on my remaining coven mates, I saw the same look on their faces.

“What in the world has gotten into him?”Kaitlyn asked, sounding bewildered.

“Yeah—why is he acting like such a Neanderthal all of a sudden?”Emma chimed in.

“What worries me the most is that he removed Saint’s Mark,” I said grimly.“That’s not like Avery.He was head-over-heels for Saint—and now he’s saying Saint is only his roommate!”

Ari shook his head.

“Do you think the curse-breaking spell he worked for Saint did something to him?”

“Maybe it did!”Emma exclaimed.“Remember he was worried that if he took the curse off Saint’s Drake, it would turn him straight.What if it turned Avery straight instead?”

“No—impossible.”Lachlan, who had been brooding silently on her other side, shook his head.“I know of no magic—either in the Realm or in the Witch world or in the Sky Lands—that can truly change a person’s sexual orientation.Only spells which may mask it in some way.”

“And besides, Avery wasextremelyworried about Saint when he was in the Healer’s rooms,” Kaitlyn reminded us.“We had to force him to stay in bed because he wanted to go back to the Sky Lands and get him right away!”

“But what changed between now and then?”I asked, shaking my head.

“I don’t know—I never got a chance to talk to him again until this morning,” Kaitlyn said.

“Me either—every time I went to see him, he was sleeping and the Healer didn’t want me to wake him up,” Emma said.

I nodded.

“Same.”

“For me too,” Kaitlyn said.

I frowned—after comparing notes, it seemed we had all tried to see Avery but after that first visit when the three of us had been together, he’d been sleeping every time.Now, here he was in the Dining Hall, apparently fully healed physically but acting extremely strange and out of character.As we watched, our coven mate went over to the Nocturne table and said something to one of the girls there—and got slappedagain.

“What’swrongwith him?”Kaitlyn and Emma and I all spoke at once.

“Why is he acting like that?”Kaitlyn added.

“And why is he thinking of transferring to a new school his father recommended.They don’t get alongat all!”Emma exclaimed.

Her words seemed to spark something in my head.

“Wait—Avery seemed normal when we first went to see him,” I said slowly, working it out.“And then his father came to see him—remember?”

“I remember—I didn’t like leaving them alone together, even though they’re related.”Kaitlyn nodded.

“I didn’t like it either,” I said grimly.

“Neither did I,” Emma said.

“Well, maybe we were right to feel that way,” I said.“Do you remember what Avery told us about how his dad tried to get his mom to send him to one of those awful magical conversion-therapy camps where they ‘spell the gay-away?’”

“Oh my God!”Emma put a hand over her mouth.“You don’t think Avery’s father did some kind of awful conversion therapy magic on him, do you?”

“If he did, it was an extremely crude and clumsy spell,” Griffon remarked, watching as Avery struck out again, this time with a girl from the Sisters’ table.

“Yes, he has ‘no game’ as they say here in the human world,” Ari remarked.

“He definitely doesn’t know how to treat a lady—he seems to think women are just sexual objects,” Bran said, frowning.“At least, if the way he was staring atyouis any indication,” he added, speaking to Emma.