Page 92

“How just like a Metamorph to think you can punch your way through any problem,” another Knight simpered. She had long blonde hair, tied back into a waist-length braid, and purple eyes that perfectly matched her armor.

Jareth rolled his eyes at her. “And how like an Elf to think she can bat her eyelashes at any problem to make it just go away.”

She puckered up her coral-red lips and blew him a kiss. There must have been magic in that air kiss because Jareth’s face took on a very dopey look. She’d mesmerized him.

“Stop it, Ainsley.” He slapped himself in the face. “I really hate when you do that,” he growled, then slapped his face again.

Eris—my mentor and the only one of the six Knights that I knew at all—laughed. “And Ilovewhen you do that,” she told Jareth. “It’s so cute!”

His face flushed a very bright shade of red, even redder than Ainsley’s lipstick. “You think everything is cute,” he muttered.

Eris tossed her wild, strawberry-blonde locks over her shoulders. “I like to see the best in people.” Her turquoise eyes twinkled. “Evenyou, Jareth.”

Still blushing, he leaned back against the wall.

“So please tell me it wasn’t you who was rummaging through my things. Again.” Eris leveled her gaze on him, and suddenly she didn’t look so cute and harmless anymore.

Jareth folded his arms over his chest. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“When I went to my dressing room earlier, the furniture was flipped over and all my things were scattered across the floor.” Eris wrinkled her nose at him. “And my WAND was missing.”

“WAND?” I asked.

Eris’s eyes snapped to me. “W.A.N.D. Well Augmented Neo-magical Device,” she explained. “An enchanted object which Knights use to focus and boost our magic. Portable and versatile, it changes shape to suit our needs. It can be a sword, a staff, a pen, an orb…anything we need.” Her gaze slid back to Jareth.

“I don’t know anything about your WAND,” he told her.

“My WAND is missing too,” Orion chimed in.

Jareth folded his arms over his chest, and a ripple of tenpops!told me he’d managed to crack his knuckles in all ten fingers; Dante would have been impressed. “I didn’t take your WAND either, Orion.”

“I don’t believe you,” replied the blue Knight. “And I don’t like it when people borrow my things without asking permission first.”

“You’re lucky you stole from them and not me,” Ainsley told Jareth with a sugar-sweet smile. “I don’t like it when people steal from me—period.”

“I didn’t steal anything!”

Nodding, smiling, Ainsley gave him a big, exaggerated wink, and her uncommonly long eyelashes kissed her blush-brushed cheekbones.

Jareth glowered at her in response.

“Well, I believe you,” I declared.

Every Knight in the room turned to look at me.

Trying not to shrink under their combined gazes, I lifted my shoulders in what I hoped was a casual shrug. “He has a trustworthy face.”

The third female Knight, dressed in red armor, moved toward me. She caught me in her gold gaze. When I’d seen her at the Castle two days ago, her long hair had been silver. Today it was crimson, the exact shade of her armor.

“You aren’t like the other Apprentices,” she commented. “You aren’t afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of speaking your mind,” she replied. “Even in the presence of Knights and Generals.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s why I’m so popular with the General.”

Eris snorted.