Page 16 of The Witch & the Wolf

“To be fair,” Chloe said, “you’d probably need someone with your kind of powers to be able to sense anything there. Or for someone to go spelunking down the well for a lark and then accidentally find a corpse. Mostly, people in the village treat it as a sort of wishing well. And it’s too deep to be able to see anything there.”

Made sense. Holly found herself nodding, though a part of her wondered how a body might go undiscovered for so long. Surely, many had looked for the Archon boy. The case was one she wanted to look into in her spare time.

“I wish my powers were more reliable,” Chloe said with a sigh. “Sometimes I can glimpse the future, but often I don’t really know what I’m seeing. It’s not like I can be like, ‘Show me the lottery numbers for next week,’ and it’ll just do that.”

Holly had heard about oracle powers being unreliable. Sometimes, they’d capture something relevant – but the future was so vast and full of probability that peering into it with complete accuracy was probably one of the rarest powers on the planet. There were rumors of certain magical artifacts being able to aid accurate visions… but there were lots of rumors of such things. “I think your powers are really cool, though. Don’t you have some kind of intuition? That’s a bit like the psychic powers we have.”

“Yeah. Intuition. Again, unreliable. But it might save me a lot, so it’s nothing to sneeze at.” Chloe sighed, kicking her feet as she settled on a bench, glancing toward the dining hall. “You’ve already eaten?”

“No, actually.” She’d gotten food for Arlo but nothing for herself. With that, the two of them ventured into the grandiose hall, with its long tables and students lining up by the kitchens with trays to grab their choice of food. Chloe and Holly grabbed trays and filtered through the selection until they both had things they liked – Holly with a leek and potato bake, Chloe with a burger and fries. The two of them ate their food, talking about anything and everything that came to mind, whether it was odd questions like, “What’s the meaning of life?” to “Which teacher do you think is the hottest?”

The topics ranged from deep to shallow in the blink of an eye, but all of them were fascinating in their own right. “Well, I’ve not seen all the teachers, but that Professor Umber – the dragon guy — whew.”

“I need a better look at him. I only saw him from a distance, and he didn’t look that hot to me. I like Professor Thadius, the science professor. He looks like he understands the inner workings of your soul.”

“Oh, is that what you think? I always thought he looked at people like he wanted to vivisect them,” Holly said, which caused Chloe to swipe at her.

“No way! Don’t ruin my image here!”

“It’s true, though. He’s a science teacher. They like that sort of thing.”

“What about students, though,” Chloe said, changing track. “Anyone in your classes who you like? What about that werewolf boy you sit next to? You know, the one who freaking well showed up as an actual werewolf on his first day?”

“Eh, he’s alright,” Holly said, pointedly not meeting Chloe’s eyes, instead slurping on some orange juice. “I like him better when he’s not eight foot tall and furry.”

“Holly? Holly. Look at me.” Chloe gestured for Holly’s attention. When they finally locked eyes, Chloe grinned like an imp. “Is that a blush I see?”

“I’m not blushing!” Holly said, red as a tomato. “I just – tired, busy day…”

“Uh-huh. Sure. Very busy day. And didn’t you say you were hanging out with pretty-boy werewolf today? Just the two of you?”

“Friends hang out. We’re friends. Doesn’t have to be a big deal or anything.”

“Of course not. But, for real – do you like him?” Chloe’s teasing tone lessened, and her expression grew serious. “You, the medium, and he, the necromancer?”

At first, Holly wanted to reject the probing, wanted to say nothing, and let Chloe babble away, steering the topic to safer pastures. She also didn’t quite want to keep all of these feelings to herself. It was all a little confusing, new territory – and her stark lack of experience might come back to bite her on the ass if she said nothing.

“I… maybe like him. But I don’t know if anything will go anywhere, and it’s all pretty new for me. I don’t want to make things awkward between us, either, because, most likely, we’re going to be together on a lot of the assignments when they send us out to a case or bring anything into the academy.”

“Ah.” Chloe’s expression softened further. “Have you had boyfriends before?”

“Like, one. And we didn’t really progress past kissing.” That seemed oddly tough to explain. Chloe, bless her heart, didn’t show any disdain or pity for her.

“All the more reason to take it easy. You know what to do, of course, should it come to being a bit more than kissing?”

“Of course!” Holly flushed. It was not like she was completely innocent. There was enough media around: movies, books… and certain websites. She’d visited those a few times out of curiosity and once accidentally from a pop-up ad that dominated her screen, but it wasn’t really for her. There were plenty of other sources, however. Just the actual personal experience was lacking for her.

“If you have any questions, no matter how weird you think they are, you can talk to me about it. And if you have any doubts at all… sometimes it pays to listen to yourself.” Chloe leaned in to take one of Holly’s hands. “Seriously. He doesn’t seem like a bad guy, from what I know and from what Skyla and Lujan have said. They mentioned something about the Sixclaws generally being jerks, but they think he’s an alright one, and he seems to like your company. So… take it as slow as you want. Maybe nothing comes of it. Maybe you do the whole friends-with-benefits thing. Maybe you’re totally destined for one another. Or it doesn’t work out. All are possibilities – but you’ll never know if you never do anything.”

It sounded like she’d rehearsed this speech and had been waiting to unleash it on one of her poor, unsuspecting friends, most likely Harrow since she walked around with a chip on her shoulder. All the same, Holly appreciated it and squeezed Chloe’s hand in thanks.

“It’s nice to have the support. I just need to figure out what exactly to expect from him. Learn to mind read. Say, do we have anyone in this school who can mind read?”

“Let’s… not resort to that.” Chloe tapped Holly’s knuckles before polishing off the rest of her food. “Mind reading is seriously uncool.”

“It’s not illegal though, is it?”

“Drop it.”

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