Dawn

“Of course I would have,” said Edie. She smiled weakly. “I almost felt left out. You’re half werewolf, Dawn has the Sight, Roe has her visions. I felt sort of left out having nothing special about me.”

“You’d be special even if you weren’t part faerie,” Dawn said firmly, feeling guilty that Edie had ever felt left out of anything. “But it is interesting that the four of us came together, when we all have something supernaturally different about us.”

“Not all of our friends do,” said Roe. “At least, I don’t think Annie or Naomi are anything other than straightforward humans.”

Edie shook her head, but it seemed to continue into the rest of her body, in a shudder. “I’m not sure.”

Professor Lal looked up at her, frowning. “I am not entirely sure this is natural.”

“What?” Corrie gasped, looking at the professor. “You mean someone is doing this to her?”

“Perhaps.” Professor Lal stood up. “Edie, do you mind if I touch your head?”

“Will it hurt?” Edie asked in a voice so small Dawn felt a pang of fear.

Once Edie had closed the door, they all moved closer. Dawn thought it felt like a secret meeting—which of course, in a sense, it was. Professor Lal’s dim office lighting didn’t help with the mysterious feeling, either.

Thursday, December 4

Dawn showered and dressed the next morning as usual, then checked her email, as she generally did before breakfast—it hadn’t snowed after all, so classes probably weren’t canceled, but there were sometimes useful announcements before classes started. This time there was: an email from Professor Lal. It simply read “Come see me during my office hours” and had the hours for that day listed.

When she met up with her friends for breakfast, she asked them if they’d also gotten emails from Professor Lal. Corrie nodded. “She must have heard from Ever.”

Corrie shook her head, making the pom-pom on top of her hat bounce. “No, I haven’t told her about that. I let her say ‘I told you so’ about Paul so I wouldn’t have to.” She smiled weakly. “I didn’t want her to know. You understand.”

“Of course,” Dawn said, nodding. They hadn’t told most of their friends about the faeries because they were confident that knowing about them put people in more danger. Dawn hadn’t been able to keep the knowledge from her aunt, but they hadn’t told her parents.

“What did you tell her about Paul attacking you?” Edie asked.

Dawn got cold enough on the walk to West Ashburn that she was almost starting to reconsider the ice cream idea. However, when they finally made it into Moove Food, they had so many tasty-looking flavors that she changed her mind again. As long as they didn’t try to cross the highway while carrying ice cream (it was warm inside the small restaurant), she was okay with it.

Naomi was actually around when Dawn went looking for her (she wasn’t always), and she agreed enthusiastically to ice cream. They made quite a crowd in the hallway. “So where are we going?” Corrie asked.

“Well, I don’t really know,” said Deborah, looking around at them. “I don’t want to take you all away from your homework for long enough to go back to the city, and I think we’d better take two cars, anyway. Is there anywhere around here you go for ice cream?”

After they’d finished eating dinner, they all headed back to Gilkey. Dawn was thinking about all the homework she had to do—there were worksheets for both psychology and sociology—when she saw that there was someone waiting outside the front door of their dorm building.

When Dawn had finished photocopying all of the pages, Lisa directed her where to set out the study tips; the sheet on sexual health would be sent over to the administration building later. Dawn wasn’t sure why the administration building was any more of an appropriate place than the library, but she did as she was told. She supposed there was a nurse’s station there, though of course none of her friends had ever had any reason to go there—they either came out fine or went to the hospital, it seemed.

This shift at the library was more fun than usual, Dawn had to admit. It wasn’t that her friends never came to the library while she was working—actually, considering she only worked three days a week, it seemed to happen a lot—but usually they had to ignore each other, since Dawn was working and her friend (whoever it might be) was doing homework. Now, though, every time she walked past Corrie, Corrie would look up from her history reading and make a silly face. Dawn would make a face back, stifling her giggles because it was a library, and walk on with whatever book she was shelving next.