Chapter 8

SELENA

“Mean Girls or Ghost World? We said no romances, right?” Billie asks me. I point at Mean Girls.

It's Classic Movie Slumber Party Night in Billie’s dorm room. She's sent Tristan back to his room for the night, which he seemed reluctant to go to, if resigned. It's me, Abby–who is Dominic's sister–Rachel, Sophie, and two witches named Enid and Agnes. Once the room started filling up with girls in lingerie and kimono wraps, Tristan took off, probably overwhelmed.

I know I am.

Billie insisted I choose the movie for the night between those two, which have very different atmospheres. I appreciate her thoughtfulness in letting me set the tone for the night. Silly SNL-adjacent teen comedy felt more like my speed.

I'm also busy trying to figure out how to approach the witches privately. This has been my first chance at accessing one, and the Brocklemaine sisters are famously powerful.

They could help me with my problem.

So, as soon as Abby, Sophie, and Rachel are engaged in gossiping about Abby's roommates, I corner Enid.

“Can I ask you–”

“You want help removing the scent blockers. Of course you do. You want to smell like yourself. It can be done, it just takes a little preparation. I can't do this for you tonight. But we can do this for you. We can get started tomorrow night when we arrive home. I promise, we can fix this for you. It just takes a little research and time.”

Wait, research? “How much time do you mean?”

“Oh, not long. A week at most. I just need some of your hair and your birthdate.”

I give her each of those things, grabbing my brush from my room.

“Thanks, Enid, you don’t know how long I've wanted to talk to a witch.”

She gives me a significant look. “I can imagine. Are you safe?”

Define “safe”. “I'll be okay,” I tell her.

“Tell Billie if you're ever in trouble. The Omega Project can help you.”

After the movie, which makes me laugh out loud, something that doesn't happen often, we turn off all the lights except the fairy lights hanging from the ceiling. Billie turns on a cool ambient playlist, and we all pile into the huge bed covered in several blankets, some weighted, some fluffy, all soft and warm. We talk late into the night about what we want to do after college–Billie is a dance major, Rachel and Sophie are music majors who have formed an electronic violin and cello duo, Abby is a hairdresser and the witches are witches. We also talk about boys–I mostly listen. There's some questions about what it was like in foster care that I answer carefully, but nothing too close to the truth.

All in all, my first real party is a success.

The next day, it starts small. Billie comes up to my room with a box.

“Hey, I redid my vanity table and realized you could use some organizers for the makeup we bought.” She takes out a palette organizer with a cup for makeup brushes. “Then I thought you liked this weighted blanket so much last night, I wanted to let you have it. I have so many.” She pulls out a perfectly sized, fuzzy weighted blanket in a dark rose color.

“Thank you, you didn't have to do any of this,” I tell her.

“No, you're doing me a favor. I don't have anywhere to keep this organizer now.”

“Okay, I'll take it.”

She folds the blanket up at the foot of my bed on top of the quilt, making a pretty contrast.

“That looks better. This room is so blank. Have you thought about getting something to put on the walls? Oh! I know just the thing.”

She disappears and comes back with Raven, my long-haired rescuer. “What do you think, could you make a couple pieces to hang in here?”

“What artistic subjects do you like, pretty girl?” he asks me. “Nature, fantasy, abstract shapes?”

“I like just about anything girly,” I tell him honestly.

“That gives me a very good idea about flowers. Oh, I know just the thing to fit you in the meantime, and it's already finished. Give me a second.”

He leaves and comes back with two large paintings. One depicts Snow White in her glass coffin, the other, a black-haired Rapunzel in a tower. “They’re from my fairy tale series. The brunettes remind me of you.”

“They’re beautiful,” I tell him. They're intricate, painted in a post-modern Pre-Raphaelite revival style. He hangs one up between my desk and vanity, the other over the reading chair in the corner.

“Thank you, Raven,” I tell him. “They look lovely.”

“I'll work on that other piece for you, something large for across from your bed,” he says.

After they leave, I get a visit from Rachel and Sophie. “We heard you were living in the attic, so we brought you this spare space heater that Sophie won't let me use because she's hot-blooded,” Rachel says.

“And we had this extra set of fairy lights we thought you could string up above your bed,” Sophie says.

“You guys didn't have to do that,” I tell them.

“We’re just welcoming you to the Rock House,” Sophie says.

“Well…thank you. Especially for the heater.”

They leave after we hang my new fairy lights.

With my makeup neatly displayed, a small vase I found in the kitchens filled with roses from the courtyard, pretty pictures on the wall and fairy lights over my bed, and groceries in my mini fridge, I feel warm and happy. I walk out onto my balcony, which has two small plastic chairs.

The Rock House, the Underground’s on-campus headquarters and where I'll be living until January, is built with four connected towers, with rooms in between and a rose bush-filled courtyard in the middle. Like all campus housing, it's surrounded by enough woods for Underground members to run through in wolf form. Since shapeshifting in public in daylight hours is against the campus rules, the University provides spaces for the different societies to exercise their wolves in private. My balcony overlooks these woods; the spire of Wellstone Church, the abandoned church used by the Underground for pagan ceremonies and initiations, is in view as well as the castellations and gargoyles of the Student Union.

There's someone out there right now, snuffling and crashing through the leaves, occasionally yipping. They burst through into a meadow, and I see a very large black wolf playing with a gray wolf about the same size. They run through the meadow, nipping and yipping at each other like siblings, then disappear back into the trees.

Then the gray wolf comes back, looking directly up at me on my balcony with his yellow eyes. He howls once and yips, an invitation.

“Sorry, whoever you are. I'm a hybrid. No wolf except inside my head,” I call out.

He sits down at that and tilts his head, then howls again.

“Yeah, it sucks. I want to let her out to run through the trees. But that's life. We don't always get what we want.”

He howls one more time, looks at me for a minute, snuffles.

“Hey, it's okay, you wouldn't believe how well things are going for me right now. I'm making friends who care about my well-being, which is pretty cool. And some guy–you maybe?--is painting something to hang up in my room, just for me. How cool is that?”

He whines and makes a noise like a strangled growl, tilts his head again, then runs off.

I guess that wasn't Raven.

I wonder if I knew him. It was a him, I could sense it. I could smell patchouli incense on the breeze when he was here.

It reminded me of Dominic.