Chatoyant College Book 13: Chapter 49: Exploration

Dawn sat at the foot of Edie’s bed and closed her eyes. She didn’t really need to, but she’d never tried looking for air currents from indoors before, and she figured anything that could help her concentrate would be useful.

She quickly located and understood the air currents in the building itself—there weren’t many of them, considering Gilkey didn’t have air conditioning, so the only air movement was coming from people’s open windows. Today wasn’t hot, so not everyone had their windows open. Still, there was enough for her to get a good idea of the shape of the building and how many people were inside it just from the air currents.

She moved her consciousness outside and looked at the currents that surrounded the building, then the other buildings near it, keeping her focus to campus. She didn’t want to worry about trying to distinguish the shapes of people from the way the currents moved among trees.

It didn’t take very long for her to recognize the shapes of some students walking down the path between Gilkey and Hickory. At least, she assumed they were students. She couldn’t get specific enough to tell anything about how they were dressed or anything like that—she could just tell that there were four bodies of a generally human shape and size moving along the place where she knew the path to be.

That was all she’d expected to find, so she didn’t worry about it. She explored the rest of campus, looking for similar disturbances. The problem was, there were too many of them. Lots of students were still out and about—some of them were probably professors, guards, or members of the cleaning staff, as well. Nothing stood out to her, and if the faerie with the teeth was generally humanoid, probably nothing would.

She sighed and opened her eyes. “I couldn’t find anything interesting. Just plenty of students walking around campus.”

“Well, I tried getting a bird’s-eye view of campus with my distance sight,” Corrie said. “But I didn’t see anything interesting, either. It’s not likely to come out before dark.”

“Do you think it’s hiding somewhere?” Edie said. “It could be off campus.”

“That’s true.” Corrie frowned. “I guess it still counts as hiding, if it only comes onto campus to attack people. It would have to come back on campus before the gate closes, though. Unless it’s registered as a student.”

Dawn grimaced. “Let’s hope not.”

“I’m sure the professors would have a better idea of who it was if it was a student,” Edie said. “They’ve probably considered all the faerie students—and they know what their true forms look like, anyway.”

“I think you’re right,” Corrie said. “Let’s eat something and try again later.”

They had dinner in the dining hall, though Dawn was distracted, looking around at the scattered faerie students she saw and wondering whether any of them were secretly the attacker or were in danger of being the next target. There was a boy with hair like leaves she saw regularly—he reminded her of Tom. She thought he knew who she was, too, since he avoided her assiduously. What if he were attacked next? What if he was telling the attacker what to do?

It was getting dark by the time they headed back toward Gilkey, and Dawn could tell there were fewer students around on the paths. She couldn’t see the gates from where they walked between the buildings, but she turned her air current senses toward it, trying to see if anything would come through just before the gates were closed. But the only air currents she felt came from the guard and from the gates themselves closing.

They sat around and chatted for a while before Corrie said, “Okay, it’s been completely dark for half an hour or so. I think it’s time to look around campus again. What do you think, Dawn?”

“Yeah, everyone who isn’t supposed to be out there is probably inside by now,” Dawn said. “And if we do find any students out by themselves, we can keep an eye on them.”

“Will you be able to see with your distance sight in the dark, Corrie?” Edie asked.

Corrie laughed. “You know, I hadn’t even thought of that. I don’t think my distance sight has any better night vision than I do, but I guess we’ll find out.”

“If I find anything weird, I’ll let you know so you can look there,” Dawn said.

She extended her senses to quickly encompass the whole campus. Nothing seemed strange. There was one person walking along the paths, and she kept watching them for a little while, but they seemed to stay strictly on the paved areas, as far as she could tell, so it was probably a guard—or maybe one of the faerie professors keeping an eye on the campus. She was glad someone was out protecting them.

Other than that, she couldn’t find anyone out on campus. Everyone was inside the buildings. Though as she searched, she found the cold spot again, the one that she’d located the first time she learned to sense air currents.

Dawn frowned. The cold spot had moved. And it definitely hadn’t been there earlier this afternoon.