most of my fellow students already had experience with designing and administering websites. I had built, rebuilt, upgraded, and improved my aunt’s restaurant and occult supply websites many times over the years, so I felt this would be an easy class. Ninety minutes later, I still held that attitude but was anticipating learning a whole bunch of updated skills, as we were each to build our own website over the course of the class.
My second class wasn’t till twelve-thirty, so I headed to the Student Center and grabbed lunch. My non-standard student ID caused a minor issue as the checkout lady didn’t recognize it and had to check with her boss before suspiciously scanning it into her register. The line behind me had built up and I was glad when she grouchily waved me through.
“ARC? Never heard of it?” a voice behind me questioned. The rest of UVM’s student body carried a CATcard, named for the school mascot, the Catamount or mountain lion. Behind me, a girl and guy were staring curiously at me.
“New program… experimental. Kind of a local collaboration among the colleges here,” I said, moving to an open table.
They followed me and sat down uninvited. It was a big table and I didn’t own it, so what the hell. Plus, the girl was friggin’ beautiful. Tanned and blonde with super bright green eyes and white teeth and a rocking figure displayed to excellent advantage by a clingy green sweater, charcoal tights, and fur-topped Sorel boots. The blonde guy with her matched her hair and eye color so close that he must have been related. He carried a tray of food in one hand and two heavy winter jackets in his other.
She plucked a bottle of fruit juice off the tray and turned to me with a brilliant smile.
I automatically smiled back before looking down at my beef barley soup, deliberately keeping my eyes off her. Warning bells were going off in my head and I tried to focus my thoughts.
“So an experimental program, huh? What kind of experiments?” she asked in a bright, clear voice.
I felt pressured to answer… to help her understand. It would be the right thing to do, to help her with anything she might need, kind of like the blond guy who was waiting on her with food and clothing.
And that was just wrong. She was hot, but UVM has thirteen thousand college kids, more than half of them female, and there were plenty of really hot girls on campus. It was something more than that, and now, with my attention focused on my bowl, the awful pressure had lessened.
“Oh, you know. New kinds of education methods, organically focused degree majors, unconventional curriculum methodologies,” I babbled, spewing whatever bullshit flowed into my swirling mind. Not looking at her helped. So did breathing deep and activating my mental shields, the ones drilled into me by my aunt and mother.
My thoughts slightly more organized and thoroughly alarmed, I finally looked back up to see her frowning at me. It was unbelievably cute and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. No one was this charismatic. I’ve met Tanya Demidova and Stacia Reynolds, two of the most beautiful women on the planet—an opinion held by most of the world’s media—and they were nowhere near as brain melting as this girl was.
It couldn’t be natural and therefore it had to be supernatural.
She smiled and the pressure ramped up a bit, but I could now manage my thoughts.
“So these new methods… anything odd about them or exotic, maybe?”
“Oh, they’re odd, all right. All kinds of writing seminars and public speaking bullshit,” I said with a shrug, popping the top on my diet soda a little too vigorously. Brown cola sprayed across the tabletop and spattered a few drops on her perfect face.
The blond guy stiffened like he’d been slapped, and the girl’s smile froze in place while her eyes shut for a second, but not before I’d seen a flare of rage.
“Oh my bad. Here, let me get that,” I said, wiping the blob of cola from her cheek with a clean napkin. Her hand shot up and snatched the napkin from mine, using it to finish cleaning up.
“Sorry about that. What’s your name?” I asked, going on the offensive.
Oddly, it caught her off guard: the simple request for a name. She hesitated, then I felt the pressure again, but now it just flowed off my shields.
“You can call me Erin,” she said, smiling again.
“Okay,