We ate and carried on with more casual small talk until we finshed the soup, which was replaced with steak. Mark’s and Mr. Walker’s steaks were much rarer than the rest of ours. It was a good steak, to be sure, but I could’ve done without feeling like my every move was under a microscope. 

Most of the time, Mark’s family looked away when I caught them staring, but after a while, Mrs. Walker didn’t. 

“If your transportation needs were taken care of, would you attend OOU?” she asked. 

Why did she care about where I went to school? And what was she planning to do, have Mark drive four hours a day to pick me up and drop me off before returning to his dorms on campus? “I’m not sure.” 

“What hesitation could you possibly have?”

Mark sat up straighter. “She doesn’t need to have a reason.” 

“I’ll not have my son marrying a woman with no ambitions.”

It was a good thing there was nothing in my mouth at the moment, or I would’ve choked on my steak. Why on Earth had Mark told her we were getting married?

He threw his hands up. “We’re not getting married. We’ve been dating for a month.”

“I find that hard to believe.” She swirled her glass around. “You’ve never introduced us to one of your girlfriends before, so you must be serious about Leah.”

“I’m not-” Shaking his head, he gave me an apologetic look. “If I’d known you were going to react like this, I wouldn’t have brought Elva tonight.” 

That would’ve saved us a lot of anxiety. Speaking of which, my heart had jumped into high gear, like it was prepping to go for a run.

Mrs. Walker shook her head. “You can’t fault me for assuming-”

“Yes, I can.” 

Mr. Walker clinked his fork against the plate. “Don’t interrupt your mother. It’s rude.”

Mark’s head feathers stuck straight up. “Fine, I won’t interrupt. Mom, please explain why it’s not rude to repeatedly bring up subjects that make a guest uncomfortable. Oh, and why is it not rude to argue about how long I’ve known someone you’ve just met?” 

Mrs. Walker inhaled sharply. “Leah never mentioned being uncomfortable.” 

“Because she’s trying to make a good impression.” He turned to me. “How do you feel right now? Be honest.”

“I’m a bit-”

My steak was blurry. Nothing else, just the steak. It was like the meat was stretching past the edge of the plate. 

“That’s really weird.” I poked the part of the steak that was stretching where it shouldn’t be. It felt like a normal table cloth. “What’s going on?” I tried to whisper, but my voice sounded too loud in my ears. 

“What do you mean?” Mark’s voice was oddly quiet.

My stomach ached--not my human stomach, my real one. I barely had a real stomach; my food was almost entirely pre-digested. Still, it hurt a lot. 

“I don’t feel good.” That was an understatement, as the chandelier had stretched to touch the table, and there were now two Mr. Walkers. 

“Let’s go.” Mark stood and started toward the door. 

I stood and found myself on the floor. Why did my face hurt so much? My ankle, too--it felt like someone had driven needles through it. The floor was blood red. No, it was a puddle of a red ooze inching toward me. 

“N-no!” Jolting up, I slammed my fist down on the ooze. It splattered like a squashed bug. I lunged to my feet, but my ankle gave out and tried to dump me on the floor again. 

Mark grabbed me around my waist. Hauling me to my feet, he dragged me toward the door. 

“What happened to her?” Ethan asked. 

“Is she drunk?” Mrs. Walker asked. 

Mr. Walker scoffed. “She must’ve taken something stronger than that.”

Mark muttered something that sounded like a curse. “She didn’t take anything. She has brain damage. Stress isn’t good for brain damage.”

My limbs were floating away. I couldn’t walk because they were escaping. “Come back.” There was blood in my mouth. Where was it coming from? 

Mark scooped me up into his arms with some difficulty, and Ethan opened the door for us. As Mark took me toward the front door, Ethan rushed to open it. 

“Is she going to be okay?”

“No clue.” Mark took me down the front steps. “Grab me some towels?”

“Sure.”

I coughed blood. “My arms. Bring my legs. And my tail, my wings, please--don’t leave them.”

“They’re right here, El.” Mark jostled my legs. 

They’d come back. My legs came back. Thank goodness. “Thank you so much. I missed them.” I slapped my knees. “My hands, I like them too.” My fingers were getting blurry. They wanted to escape too. “Don’t let them go. Please-” I choked on blood and twisted in his arms to spew on the ground instead of myself. 

Mark set me down with my back against his car. He held me in a sitting position with one hand while typing on his phone with the other. “Do you have any idea what’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know.” My back--no, my true body--hurt like hell. Maybe if I left my host, I wouldn’t hurt so much. “Goodbye.” I let go of my host, and everything went dark. Something heavy was pinning me to Mark’s car. What- right, my host. I had to get free. I wiggled, but fabric held me tight.

There was a hissing voice speaking nonsense, then a louder voice. Back and forth the voices went as I vainly attempted to escape from the dress. The weight of my host pulled away, but before I could try to escape, a new force pinned me in. I was moving. Then I wasn’t. 

Rip. Fresh air hit my back. I wormed out of the rip in the dress and flapped my wings. The air was too thin. I couldn’t lift myself. Something grabbed me by the wings. It wanted to eat me. I didn’t want to die. 

I flapped wildly, thrashing my tail. Something strong pinned me in place while something else grasped near the end of my tail. I would’ve fought more, but the something that’d pinned me had made a horrible mistake. I was pressed against something warm with a racing heartbeat. Relaxing my wings and tail, I bit the warm thing. Fabric covered it. I reared back, ripping the fabric. 

More voices, louder now. I bit the warm thing’s exposed skin--no, scales. I latched on. Delicious, magic-rich blood calmed my frayed nerves. It had a hint of bitter poison in it, but the magic was strong enough to combat its effects. 

Fingers tugged on my head, but I was firmly attached. To Mark. I was attached to Mark. Oh crap. What was I doing? What the hell was I doing? 

I let go and flopped in Mark’s lap. Where was my host? Was Ethan watching? Worse, had their parents come out to watch? I was dead. So, so dead. I uncurled my antennae and probed the air for any hint of Leah’s body. 

Mark gingerly lifted me by my wings and set me on a warm body with a slow heartbeat. There was a long series of incisions in it where I’d been residing until recently. Why on Earth had I let go? It didn’t make sense. It was like I went completely crazy, and somehow Mark’s blood had cured me. There was something in it that tasted out of place. When I moved to reattach myself, I tasted the same bitter substance there, too. Something in the dinner had poisoned us. Only, Mark had seemed completely unbothered, so it must’ve just been poisonous for arytas. If I reconnected with Leah’s body, I would likely be poisoned again. 

It was a risk I had to take when the alternative was being captured by Mark’s parents. I reconnected. I was face down on a towel in what felt like a moving car. Propping myself up on my hands and knees sent a burning pain through my true stomach. I tried to filter the poison out of Leah’s system, but it was a struggle just to move, much less to control such complex bodily functions. 

How was the car moving if Mark wasn’t driving? Had I been arrested? I struggled to raise my head. A bump in the road made me collapse in Mark’s lap. 

“I’m sorry.” I tried to get up, but a hand on my back kept me down. 

“The soup had nutmeg in it. Concentrated nutmeg is one of the main ingredients of Antifest.” His voice was tense, no doubt because of the bleeding hole in his chest, but he still ran a gentle hand between my wings. “You couldn’t have eaten enough to kill you. I don’t know anything besides that.” 

My nose dripped blood, less than before. It was a good thing Mark had covered his lap with a towel--not that I hadn’t ruined his suit already after tearing through his jacket and shirt. 

“Would my venom help or hurt?” he murmured. 

“It couldn’t hurt. It might help.”

“Okay.” He raised my hand over my head and bit it while remaining in his humanoid form. Unlike before, he took a good twenty seconds before ceasing to bite me. 

Icy cold magic raced up my arm. It eased much of the pain in my host and my true body. My nose stopped bleeding after an age. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. Even putting aside the venom he’d given me, I’d attacked him. That wasn’t nothing. He wouldn’t be able to forget what I’d done. He wouldn’t feel safe around me again. 

“What’s up back there?” Ethan’s voice made me jump. 

I dragged my head up to peer around the driver’s seat. “Where are you taking me?”

“Your house.”

“Why?”

“Mark asked me to.”

Mark nudged me to lie down again. “You need to rest. Don’t worry about Ethan. I promise he won’t tell anyone about you.” He twirled my antenna around his finger. 

“But why not?”

Ethan chuckled. “I’m not going to get my bro’s first official girlfriend killed without a very good reason.”

“Uh huh.” I would’ve argued that attacking Mark was a plenty good enough reason, but I didn’t particularly want to egg him on if he’d decided not to hurt me. Besides, we were only pretending to be dating--yet another thing I didn’t plan to tell him right this moment. 

Mark stroked my wing. “You’re silky, like a bird.” He paused. “Tell me if this bothers you.”

“No, not at all. It’s nice.” It brought me back to when I was a hatchling and El groomed my feathers. I didn’t want him to stop, but I didn’t want to beg him like a frightened hatchling, either, so I could only hope he would keep going.