“Considering . . . ,” I repeat like a ventriloquist dummy.
“How you suddenly seem to have control over your ‘stage fright.’ Unless maybe it’s the kitty giving you voice lessons,” Katarina adds, a wicked grin on her pouty mouth. “That would explain the gift you left him. Payment, right?” She fluffs up her honey tresses, tucking a red barrette into one side to bring out the color of the tie at her collar.
Everyone has noticed Diable’s recent devotion to me; he even sits at my feet during class, in the instances when the teachers are chill enough to accommodate him. So there’s nothing new there. No, Kat’s referring to something else entirely.
I turn on my heel and prop my hip against the counter to face her. The sudsy water I spilled earlier seeps into the ruffles stitched along the side seam of my uniform, chilling my skin. An ice-cold splash of fear rushes through my spine, as if following in the water’s wake. What if she and Roxie saw my note and gift for the Phantom in the orchestra pit before he found them?
Roxie rubs her hands under the faucet’s stream. “Then again, maybe it wasn’t his payment. Maybe Rune was saving it for dessert. Crow brulee is the perfect complement to chicken rolls.” I flinch as she flutters her wet hands in my face like wings, an obvious allusion to the dead bird on my chair in the cafeteria a month ago.
It’s a relief they didn’t stumble upon my secret, but why bring up the bird now, so many weeks after the fact? I swipe droplets of water from my forehead, wondering how they know about that event at all. Unless . . .
“Jackson confronted me the other day,” Roxie says before the suspicion fully forms in my mind. She pumps soap into her palm. “Asked if I was the one who put the crow in your chair. If I made coleslaw of your uniforms and gave you some fake invitation to the morgue club. Imagine that. My own twin, having so little faith in me. Because I guarantee, if I wanted to scare you, I’d come up with something way more creative. As you already know.” She rinses and dries her hands.
I scoff, tempted to tell her that the mannequin prank is nothing compared to what I’ve encountered since, or to what I’ve done myself before I came here. Instead, I dole out more sarcasm. “Yep. Definitely fraternal. There’s no way you and Jax are from the same egg.”
At the mirror, Kat coughs a laugh, nearly smearing the coating of gloss she’s brushing on her lips. She turns all her attention to Roxie, wearing a strange expression. “She’s got ya there, Rox. As much as you and your bro look alike, you could never be identical . . . not in the ways that really count. Too bad for us, huh?” The eight-minute warning bell rings and she leaves without a backward glance.
I consider her parting jab at her friend—how it seemed to drip with double meaning.
Roxie stares herself down in the mirror, raking a hand through her shimmery platinum crop. Her brown eyes flash inside their black liner and mascara . . . or maybe they’re tearing up.
Ever since I’ve been spending time with the Phantom, I’ve been letting myself notice the colored halos around my classmates’ heads and bodies. The ones I used to force myself not to see. And after researching auras on my phone during a couple of the Paris trips, I have a sense of what emotions the colors portray.
While I’m studying Roxie in the mirror, her halo shifts from a feminine, affectionate pink to a depressed and gloomy gray, and a hypothesis starts to form.
I stand there awkwardly, battling a bout of unexpected sympathy. “Does Kat know how you feel?”
“How I feel about what?” Roxie slides her harsh gaze to mine in the mirror.
“Never mind.” Obviously this girl and I aren’t tight enough to ever share any secrets. “Look, we don’t have to be enemies. I want to get along with both of you. But you’re making it personal.”
“You made it personal,” she seethes. “You had to go and help Audrey. If Kat ends up as the understudy, she’ll walk away from the entire opera and sign up for sets. She has too much pride to play second fiddle to anyone.”