Tag: Character: Corrie

Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 15: The Best Way to Defend Yourself

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Lal waved her hand, and a projector screen lowered. The lights dimmed, an image appearing on the screen. Corrie smiled, remembering how impressive it had seemed when she went to her first magic class and Professor Lal had made things happen without touching them.

“Faeries can look like almost anything, though we generally have a humanoid base,” Lal said, moving to stand beside the screen. It showed a picture of a young woman and, beside her, a creature with gills and huge, blue, shining eyes. The picture changed, showing a young man, then the same man with his head turned to the side, showing a delicately lacy ear.

“Do not think I am giving you the full range of faerie appearance,” Professor Lal said. “These are merely examples. The point is, we can look like many things, and we can all hide our true appearances with glamour, so that we look like ordinary humans if we choose.”

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Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 14: How to Protect Yourself

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Saturday, August 26

Corrie, Edie, and Dawn arrived early to the magic building that morning, wanting to make sure they could get to their assigned rooms easily. After all, if everyone on campus was required to attend one of these classes, it would be a huge crowd.

To Corrie’s disappointment, the class list pointed them each to a different classroom. She and Edie were each in one of the big amphitheater-style classrooms, and Dawn was in the same one where they’d had trance class last semester. Corrie was on the top floor, so she waved goodbye first to Dawn and then to Edie as she trudged up to the classroom.

It was only about a quarter full when she got there, so she was able to find a seat in the front row, near the far side of the room. Professor Lal was standing at the front of the class, talking quietly to a couple of students Corrie didn’t recognize. No one seemed to be intimidated by Professor Lal, but she was in her usual glamour, and maybe they didn’t remember that she was a faerie.

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Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 13: Questions

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Mardalan went through the rest of the class; Dawn learned that the pink-haired girl’s name was Celeste and the guy who had been arguing with her was Rick. After everyone except Dawn, Mardalan paused to write something down on the list. Dawn hoped it was something inoffensive about each person’s appearance so that she could remember their names—and also that it wouldn’t change later in the semester and confuse Mardalan.

“That’s everything we need for today,” Mardalan finally said. “For Monday’s class, I will supply basic cords, but if you have any string you think you might like to use for your spells, please do bring it. We cannot waste any time.” She stared at them for a moment, the class staring back, before she said, “Class dismissed.”

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Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 9: Crushing

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“This is a good start,” Ginny said at last. “As your homework, I want you to continue with this exercise through the tarot. Tonight, find the Magician card and write down a few impressions of it from your chosen deck. Then choose another random card, put it next to the Magician, and write down the impressions you get from that. Continue tomorrow with the High Priestess, and so on until we have class again on Tuesday. Any questions?”

The class was quiet until Derwen suddenly lifted her head. “Uh, how do we know what the order of the cards is?”

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Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 8: Freedom

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After everyone was seated again, Ginny picked up a deck of her own from the packs scattered on her desk. “All right, now I’d like each of you to locate the Fool in your deck. That’s the first trump, or Major Arcana card, numbered zero—in case you’ve forgotten the list from your Intro to Magic class. If your deck has never been opened before, it will be the first card, or the first after one or two explanation cards.”

Corrie looked down at her deck. She didn’t know whether her grandmother had put the cards in any order. She carefully slid them out of the box and looked at the first card. It was a familiar woman dressed in stars she’d seen so many times in her life—the Empress. She smiled and started flipping through until she found the Fool, a man staring at the sky with a stick over his shoulder. This card was relatively crisp and new.

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Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 7: Tarot Decks

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Corrie gave a farewell wave to Edie and Troy as she headed for her second class of the day, Divination, which was right after Literary Analysis. She was excited to learn divination; she was sure Professor Lal had barely scratched the surface in their Intro to Magic class last year. This class was supposed to focus on tarot, pendulum, and astrology, which seemed like they could take a lot more than a single semester.

She was also curious to see who would be teaching the class. When she’d signed up, Professor Strega had been listed, but she’d left the school—or she could have changed her mind at the last minute, of course. So Corrie was expecting either Professor Strega or a brand-new teacher. There had been a teacher she didn’t recognize, Professor Cantrell, at the assembly at the end of last semester; maybe she was the new magic teacher.

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Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 6: Which Yet Survive

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Thursday, August 24

Edie silently cursed her alarm as she flung her arm out of bed to turn it off. Then she cursed her past self, which had decided to sign up for a nine AM class. It was just too early to be awake.

Of course, when she sat up, blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she saw that Corrie was already up, dressed, and vigorously toweling off her short blonde hair. “Morning,” Corrie said brightly. “It’s nice to be back on campus for my morning run.”

“Must be better than the city,” Edie said. Or tried to say. It mostly came out as a grumble.

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Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 5: Mandatory

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Dawn led the way back to the three-person dorm room she was now sharing with Edie and Corrie. She couldn’t help grinning a little as she and her friends climbed the stairs and then she unlocked the door to the corner room. Sure, it would have been nice to have a single room that she could have Rico in at any time, but she could always find ways to spend time with Rico. The fact that she was sharing space with her two closest friends was more important.

Besides, she knew she could count on them to both be cleaner and communicate better than her roommate last year, Naomi.

She went to her desk and turned on her computer while the others followed her in. Rico sat down on her bed. Corrie dug out her computer while Edie turned hers on as well. Annie and Roe hovered over Edie.

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Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 4: Reassurances

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“Hey, Corrie,” Belinda said, waving and laughing. “You brought a whole escort just for me?”

Corrie laughed and waved back. “These are my closest friends. You know Edie.” She gestured at each of her friends as she said their names. “These are Dawn, Roe, Annie, and Rico.”

“Hi,” Belinda said, waving again at them all. “Do they all know about, uh… how we know each other?”

Corrie nodded. “Yeah, they know about my dad.”

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Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 3: Return to Gilkey

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They passed a number of other people moving in as they headed down the stairs and out the door. Corrie, Edie, and Dawn waved and said hi to Shannon, the girl who had shown them her dorm last year in a bid to get them to move into Sayer. Roe greeted an Asian girl Corrie vaguely recognized as Lin, who’d been in Intro to Magic with them. And they walked past Chris, who had been one of the friends of Leila, Edie’s faerie ex-girlfriend. They didn’t speak to her. Corrie wasn’t sure how she and Edie felt about each other now, but it probably wasn’t good, considering their complicated history.

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