in the exposure of witches. I’ll defer to your expertise on the true nature of what happened, and I suspect that the police might eventually bring in someone who would tell them much the same thing,” Gina said.
“The article mentions that the authorities are waiting for a certain expert to get back into the country,” Jael said, nodding.
“And he will know almost instantly that it was witchcraft, not demonic,” Gina said before whipping around to look at me. “Declan, would he contact you about something like this?”
Again, every eye in the room was on me. I shrugged, feeling my face flush. “Maybe, or maybe my aunt.”
“Why would he contact a little spark like you when he knows my mother just as well?” Erika asked, arms folded.
“Because Chris Gordon doesn’t trust witches, except for that one right there and his aunt,” Katrina said, sounding as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It seems some of them have attempted to put spells on him,” she added, eyes drilling into Erika.
Oddly, the snotty blonde dropped her eyes and looked embarrassed, which made me wonder just what she might know.
“Okay, we’ll have to see what happens. Justin, what did you find?” Gina asked the by far quietest person in our group.
“Ah, well, we found an story in the Burlington Free Press about missing children. Some of us,” he glanced at Ashley, “felt that it was potentially supernatural in nature.”
Gina looked completely alarmed at this. “Ashley, are you certain?” she asked.
“No ma’am, but there are three kids missing all at once and, well, they are here,” Ashley answered.
“Who’s they?” Ryanne asked, “and why would they be taking the little ones?”
“Ashley? Would you like to share?” Gina prompted.
After a long moment of thought, Ashley started to speak. The whole class leaned forward as she told a story of alien invasion in a New York town only hours from where we were sitting. How the aliens had poached our planet for thousands of years, ending up deep in our folklore as elves, goblins, and pixies. She explained about a sister planet, Fairie, separated by a thin layer or membrane of dimensional physics that was suddenly eroded by the Large Hadron Collider, much like Hell’s was. Speaking in quiet tones, she told of a world with two main kingdoms, known as Winter and Summer, and the role that each played in insuring the survival of their species. She explained being taken from her grandparents, who didn’t survive the experience, and being rescued by her father, who had to be the biggest non-supernatural badass I’d ever heard of. Of how her very rare form of telepathy worked only with another important species on the planet and how that had changed an entire world. And at the very end of her tale, she explained that those same aliens, who we might call elves, were here to oversee her safety and that some might be tempted to kidnap some children while they were here.
“Ashley, I’ll need to talk to Director Stewart about your suspicions,” Gina said into the silence that followed the pretty girl’s speech.
“Yes ma’am, but closer to home, I think some of the people in this room might be targets.”
“Aren’t they much too old?” Gina asked.
“I would have thought so, but I know they’ve been sniffing around some of the kids. They wouldn’t bother the were kids, as that wouldn’t help them and might get them dead, but they might try to target some of the kids with less dangerous powers or attempt to recruit the more powerful ones,” Ashley said.
So that was what was behind my accidental meeting with the creepy blonde Eirwen.
“Well, this changes things. Class, no one is to walk anywhere alone until we know more. I’ll have our security people accompany you to and from the campus. I want everyone to buddy up. Ashley, what about the witches?”
“I think they’re too dangerous for the Hunters to bother. I know of one instance where the leader of the Hunters encountered one of our witches and backed off. They may approach them, however, as they’re drawn to power and I suspect the witches give off a lot of it.”
“Please do not leave the building tonight. I promise to have procedures and protections in place by morning, by the end of your survival class. Please, please use the buddy system from now on. Class dismissed. Ashley, I need to see you.”
Just that fast, the class had gone from interested to fascinated to scared… at