"Is this going to be on the test?"

Coach Knorrig sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and fore. nger. "There are no written tests for this cla.s.s, Mortimer. You're graded on physical performance alone."

"Yes, ma'am," Bianca replied sheepishly.

"Okay, now that you lovely ladies have seen how easy it is to get yourself airborne, I want you lined up single .le and in alphabetical order, ready to make your jump."

There was a sudden scurry of bodies and a . urry of voices as the a.s.sembled students sorted themselves out by surname. As Cally reluctantly moved to take her place in line, Coach Knorrig caught her by the arm and pulled her aside.

"This doesn't include you, Monture."

"But you said line up. . . ."

"I know what I said. And I'm telling you to stand down. If you can't turn into a wolf yet, I'm certainly not going to allow you to make a hundred-foot jump in the hope you might grow wings on the way down. Look, kid, can you even wall-crawl yet?"

"Kinda, but not really," Cally admitted, dropping her gaze. Although she was secretly relieved that she wouldn't have to put her .ying ability to the test, she was equally embarra.s.sed to be singled out from the others. "But I'm pretty good at jumping. I can take a ten-foot wall."

"Well, that's a start," Coach Knorrig conceded. "But it's a far cry from being able to . y."

"What about my grades? You said this is a performance-based cla.s.s. What am I supposed to do if I'm not allowed to . y?"

"Run laps."

"But . . ."

"Don't argue with me, Monture," Coach Knorrig said. "If I tell you to run laps, the only thing I want to hear out of your mouth is, 'For how long?' Is that clear?"

"Yes, Coach. For how long?"

"Until I tell you to stop. Now excuse me, I need to get this cla.s.s going."

With that Coach Knorrig jumped off the ledge and, with a single beat of her wings, joined her remain-ing students, who were cl.u.s.tered together. With a heavy sigh, Cally headed down the spiral staircase built into the side of the cavern to the . oor below.

"Monture!" Coach Knorrig shouted, her voice echoing through the grotto.

Cally slowed her jog down to a walk before . nally stopping altogether. She had been running laps so long she'd lost track of time. She looked up and saw Knorrig, still in her winged form, perched atop a nearby stalagmite.

"Hi, Coach," Cally gasped as she bent over to catch her breath, resting her palms on her knees. Although the grotto was a perpetual sixty-three degrees, it was humid. Sweat trickled down her back. "Is cla.s.s over?"

"I'm sorry, kid. To be honest, I kind of forgot about you. I sent the rest of the girls to the showers a few minutes ago. If you hurry, you should still catch the midnight feeding before your next cla.s.s."

"Gee, thanks, Coach," she said, . ghting the urge to say something snide about how much she appreciated getting a whole ten minutes for mealtime once she .nished showering and changing her clothes. Things were c.r.a.ptastic enough already with Coach Knorrig- she didn't need to be running laps backward.

As she headed to the locker room, Cally realized that she still had Bette Maledetto's red hair ribbons in the pocket of her gym suit. She decided to hang on to them. No doubt Bette would eventually come looking for them. Maybe she could use the opportunity to talk to her without Lilith or one of her toadies trying to shut her down.

The locker room appeared to be completely deserted by the time Cally entered. Although she was hacked that she was going to barely have time to eat, at least she had the luxury of changing clothes without being watched. With every other girl in her cla.s.s wearing La Perla, the fact that she had to buy her panties three to a pack was uniquely humiliating.

As she opened the clean towel hamper, Cally thought she heard a noise coming from the toilet stalls on the other side of the room.

"h.e.l.lo? Is somebody there?"

She tilted her head to one side, but all she heard was a leaky showerhead dripping. She shrugged and turned back to the hamper; only this time she heard the distinctive sound of a sti. ed sob.

Cally closed the lid and walked over to the toilets, scanning the .oor under the closed stalls. She stopped in front of the last door, under which she could clearly see a pair of legs out.tted in brown penny loafers and white kneesocks.

"Are you okay in there?"

"Go away!" The voice on the other side of the door was so high-pitched it sounded like the owner had just inhaled an entire tank of helium.

"What's wrong with your voice? Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm okay-I mean, no, I'm not hurt. Just go away and leave me alone!" The girl inside the toilet stall began to snif.e and sob quietly to herself again.

"Look, this is silly. Obviously something must be wrong or you wouldn't be crying," Cally said, reaching for the stall door handle. "Come out where I can see you."

"No!" the student cried out, her voice climbing so high Cally had to cover her ears with her hands. "Don't look at me!"

"Okay! Okay!" Cally said, trying to calm down the other girl. "Is there something I can do to help?"

"I don't think so."

"How can you be so sure of that if you won't even tell me what the problem is?"

"Okay, I'll tell you," the girl on the other side of the stall said after a long pause, "but you have to promise you won't tell anyone."

"I promise."

"I'm stuck."

"Stuck?" Cally frowned, unsure of what she meant. "Like on the toilet?"

"No. Like this," the other girl said as she pushed open the toilet stall door.

Cally yelped in surprise before clapping a hand over her mouth. Standing before her, dressed in the uniform of a Bathory Academy student, was a small, slightly built girl with the ears and nose of a giant bat.

"Don't look at me! I'm hideous!" the bat-headed girl squeaked, raising her arms to shield her face.

Cally struggled to regain her composure. "How did this happen?" she asked.

"I'm not exactly sure," the bat-headed girl replied. "I had changed back and was getting dressed when I realized I didn't have my ribbons on me. I tried to remember the last time I saw them, and the next thing I know, I'm starting to change! I ran into the stall the moment I felt it starting to happen. I didn't want any of the other girls to see."

"You're Bette Maledetto?" Cally gasped in amazement.

"Afraid so," Bette squeaked as she nodded.

Cally reached inside her gym suit pocket. "I have your ribbons, if that helps."

"Thanks," Bette said, rubbing the red satin against her furry cheek as if it was a beloved pet. Then she wailed, "What am I gonna do? I keep trying and trying to change all the way back, but nothing works!"

"You stay put. I'll get Coach Knorrig."

"No! Don't do that!" Bette pleaded as she grabbed her arm. "She'll report this to the headmistress, I know she will! Everyone here at school already looks down their noses at me and my sister because we're half-bloods! This is the kind of thing they'd love to use as an excuse to prove we don't belong here!"

"That's funny-I thought I was the only student here with that problem," Cally said with a bemused smile.

"No, we're legacy students too," Bette squeaked. "Our mama is a Lamia, one of the Old Blood, but our papa is New Blood. Most of the other girls won't have anything to do with us at all, although they don't openly bully us like they do you, for fear of what might happen. The only one who is nice to us is Melinda. The others like to make fun of her because her totem is a panther, not a wolf, like the rest of them. I guess that makes her feel kind of sorry for me and my sister." Something that was probably a look of despair crossed Bette's transformed face. "What's the use? Even if this doesn't end up on my permanent record, I will never be able to live it down. Lilith will make sure of it! Her father and our father are old enemies, and she sees to it every chance she gets that we're miserable! I can already hear the others laughing and calling me 'Batty' behind my back." She dropped down onto the toilet seat and began to cry again, daubing at her upturned, leaf-shaped nose with a length of toilet paper still attached to the roll. "I might as well .ush my social life down the tubes while I'm in here!"

"Don't get yourself all worked up," Cally said, pat-ting Bette on the shoulder. "That's not going to help anything. Look, you need to decide what's more impor-tant: getting a bad grade or being able to walk around without a potato sack over your head. Besides, you can't stay in the girls' locker room for the rest of your life. You've got to come out sometime. I'll go . nd Coach Knorrig and explain the situation to her. I'm sure she'll know what to do."

"You're right: there's no other way out of this," Bette said with a sigh, her shoulders dropping in resigna-tion. "It's really nice of you to help me, though. Up until now the only person I've ever been able to count on is my sister."

"Well, the way I see it, we half-bloods need to stick together, right?"

Chapter 14.

C.

ally exited the locker room and hurried to Coach Knorrig's of.ce, only to .nd the door locked. She went back out into the grotto and looked around the stony landscape, hoping to catch sight of the coach. From where she stood, the .oor of the grotto resembled a forest full of petri. ed trees.

"h.e.l.lo? Coach?"

Cally c.o.c.ked her head, hoping to catch a response, but all she heard was her own voice echoing through the cavern. As she turned toward Ruthven's side of the grotto, she saw somebody moving between the rock formations.

"Coach! Wait up!" she shouted. Cally hurried toward the .gure threading its way through the ground-level labyrinth.

Suddenly a dark .gure stepped out from behind a large rock directly into her path. Cally gave a tiny cry of surprise and fell backward, landing on her b.u.t.t.

"Owww!"

"I'm dreadfully sorry! Please, allow me to help you up," the shadowy .gure said with a slight, masculine lisp. He extended a hand with .ngers nearly twice as long as normal. Cally looked up past the stranger's hand and saw a very tall, gaunt young man dressed in the charcoal slacks, burgundy blazer, and red-and-black tie of a Ruthven's student. The youth's dirty-blond hair was combed back away from his high broad forehead in a p.r.o.nounced widow's peak, which not only accented his arched eyebrows and pointed ears, but his aquiline nose, large deep-set eyes, and wide, sensual mouth as well. Despite his outre appearance, he exuded a gentility Cally was unaccustomed to in boys her own age.

"I'm sorry if I scared you. I tend to do that." Smiling apologetically, he helped her off the ground.

"I wouldn't say that you scared me-startled is more like it." Cally chuckled as she brushed herself off.

"Yeah, I kinda do that too." He sighed.

"I'm trying to .nd Coach Knorrig," Cally explained.

"Oh! When I heard someone calling for Coach, I thought they might be trying to .nd Coach Munn. I'm his student a.s.sistant."

"No, I'm looking for Coach Knorrig. Do you know where she is?" Cally asked hopefully.

"She left to run an errand. Last I saw her, she was headed down the emergency exit," he said, motioning toward the eastern end of the grotto.

"Emergency exit?" Cally frowned.

"The schools came up with the idea for it after the Great Fire. It's a secret tunnel that goes under the East River and comes up at Mill Rock Island, out in the East River's h.e.l.l Gate."

"What about this Coach Munn you mentioned- is he still around?" Cally asked hopefully.

"Afraid not," he replied.

"Great!" Cally muttered, rolling her eyes in consternation.

"Perhaps I can be of some help? I am a teaching a.s.sistant, after all."

"Well, there's this girl in my cla.s.s . . . turns out she's, uh, kind of stuck."

"Stuck?" he echoed, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

"Yeah-between shapes."

"I see."

"That's the thing, though. She doesn't want any-one to see. I was barely able to talk her into letting me go fetch Coach Knorrig."

"Still, I think I can help her out."

"Could you? That would be great!"

"Where is she?"

"She's hiding in the locker room. Come on, I'll show you!"

The smile on his face suddenly disappeared. "The locker room? You mean the girls' locker room?"

"Yeah, where else?"

"It's just that I could get-you know-if anyone saw me go in there . . ." he stammered.

"She's the only one in the locker room. No one else is there. And you said both Coach Knorrig and Coach Munn are gone, so who's left to see you go in?"

"Okay, you've persuaded me," he said with a grin.

"Thanks. My name's Cally, by the way."

"My name's Xander," he replied. "It's my pleasure. And my friends call me Exo."