Luke dropped his spoon, scattering soggy Oatees across the carpet, and I wasn’t even sorry.

“Morgan? Oh jeez. This is a really bad time sorry, we’re in the middle of a thing...”

I was ready to stridently cut him off when my brain registered the ‘we’. Luke didn’t have a roommate, he had one of the big solo rooms for when rich kids wanted to live on campus. And he didn’t have a partner that I’d ever heard of. This was bad. I wasn’t sure if I actually had a plan, but if I did, it didn’t involve other people being in the room during this conversation.

“Are you coming back to bed or what?” The voice came from further inside the room, low and sultry. Charity. I stopped staring at Luke for a second so I could switch to a different, more incredulous stare.

There was genuine panic in Luke’s eyes. “What - no! We’re not - no! We were just talking, and… And you’re the worst!”

“I try my best.” Charity - full clothed and smirking - stepped into view. “Now what did I so rudely interrupt? It must have been important, for you to have come out of hiding.”

“Ah. Well. Um. I just. I wanted to tell Luke that the night he saved me, I didn’t take it lightly.” I finally stepped in from the corridor, closing the door behind me so that only one person would be overhearing.

He blinked. “Thanks. What are friends for?”

“No, I mean it. It was a really bad night, and you brightened things up.”

“Really, it’s fine, I’m just a little distracted but -”

Charity interrupted. “Good effort with the innuendo, kid, but it’s wasted on this one. Luke, she knows. Welcome to the club, you’re just in time for your first meeting.”

Luke looked almost as shocked as I probably did. “You know?”, I said. “About Luke having superpowers?”

It made sense, in a not-really-making-sense kind of way. Luke’s room was pretty big all things considered, but he’d still managed to cover more than half the wall space with posters of his favourite superheroes, Primus and Dragonman. You might kinda expect that sort of thing from a messy, rebellious teenager type person, but Luke kept the place just as tidy as he kept everything else, so it looked like this lovingly maintained shrine to comic books. If he had superpowers he was trying to hide, it was either a really good cover or a really bad one.

“I’m not a superhero. It’s magic.” Luke sounded almost embarrassed as he said it.

“And the last members of our little troupe are here!,” Charity said. “Morgan, meet the rest of the group, rest of the group, this is Morgan. We were just about to have the ‘yes, magic is real’ discussion.”

I hadn’t heard the door move, but standing in the open doorway behind me were Alex and Grace. They didn’t look all that similar for sisters, but right now the looks on their faces were exactly the same.

“Please tell me you didn’t,” Grace demanded, brushing right past me.

“Of course we didn’t,” Charity said. “She broke through all by herself, we’re so proud.”

I stomped my foot down, cutting off further comments from all four of them. It would have been a better dramatic gesture if I hadn’t stomped right on top of Luke’s dropped Oatees, but maybe nobody but me noticed that. “Can someone please explain, right now, what the hell.”

Grace rounded on me, and I immediately realised what a dumb idea this was. She was tall with beautiful straight hair flowing down her back, and she was athletic too, with muscle definition you saw from across the room even if you weren’t trying to look, and she was maybe the smartest person I knew. Just being near her could make you feel small and nervous and out of place, and my tiny brain was just now putting together that she probably had crazy magic powers too. She crossed the distance between us in a single step, then grabbed at me, holding me in place.

Oh. Wait. This was a hug.

“Sorry. I should have asked first,” she said, as she pulled away.

I think I mumbled something.

“I can’t imagine what you must be going through right now, but this is unfortunately a very poor time for it. First: are you hurt or in danger?”

I shook my head.

“Good. Second: I know I’m asking a lot, but can you stay here for a few hours? I promise we’ll return and explain everything.”

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“I guess?”

Charity held a finger up. “One second. It’s moved again. Closer.”

I knew I’d just agreed to stay put and not ask questions, but I had to know. “What’s moved?”

“Your best friend. I’ve been trying to track it ever since our great big hero Luke let it escape, but it doesn’t like to move very much. Just picked it up this morning, that’s why we got the band together.”

My stomach did a flip, and then messed up the landing and kept going down until it reached my knees. That thing. Mouths and teeth and tongues everywhere, I remembered them much too well now. I could almost feel them slithering across my arms.

“Hang on,” Alex said. She’d stayed in the corner through all this, which was pretty normal for her. She probably could have looked a lot more like her sister, except that she was always slouching, and had her hair cut short, and stayed indoors all the time. “Dunno why it’s my turn to be the smart one today, but doesn’t this seem a little coincidental? Morgan breaks through, and the monster that attacked her starts moving again on the same day?”

Charity gave an exaggerated shrug. “I figured if she’d bumped into it, she’d either be telling us or breakfast by now.”

“Exactly. Breakfast. Which way did you say it was headed?”

There was a moment of silence, which was interrupted by Grace saying something a word I never thought I’d hear come out of her mouth.

“Well here’s the good news,” Charity said to me, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to stay behind while we slay the monster any more.”

“Okay, for the third time: what the hell?”

“Tee ell dee arr, monsters are attracted to magic. It’s the main thing they eat. About a thousand years ago, someone has the bright idea of casting a really big spell called the Veil which cuts everybody off from magic to the point that they can’t even acknowledge it exists, so monsters won’t eat them any more. This one decides to snack on you anyway, which is terribly unfair of it, but our favourite genius Luke chases it off without hurting it.”

Luke tried to say something, but Charity kept going over the top of him. “Monster is hungry, but now it’s scared, so it hides out for a while and waits for another opportunity. Then, tada! Someone breaks through the Veil. Someone is now a beacon of magic that she has absolutely no way to control, making her both delicious and helpless, and the monster already has that someone’s scent. Which means that you have just been upgraded from helpless damsel to irresistible bait. Enjoy!”

I had so many questions. They all jumbled together, fighting for a place in line and arguing over who was most important, and I could feel some of them getting knocked out of my head during the confusion and totally forgotten. Finally I managed to pick one.

“That’s why I couldn’t remember what actually happened?”

Grace nodded. “I’m afraid so. The Veil twists and obscures where it can, making people doubt or giving them alternative explanations for things that are easiest to explain with magic, but in a case like yours, subtlety doesn’t work. It has to wipe away memories and create new ones in their place. And normally that would work, I’m surprised you were able to break through so easily.”

“And all of you are, what, wizards?”

“I wouldn’t use that exact term, but we’ve all broken through the Veil and awakened our control over magic. You’ll have to go through your own awakening before you can actually use magic, but that’s something we can sort out later.”

“Hey, uh, back to the most important point. I mean, not that that’s not important, but the other important part.” Luke waggled his finger in front of Charity’s nose like he was reprimanding a puppy. “There is no bait! We can still leave her here and go out to fight it, just like we planned. She is not going anywhere near that thing.”

Charity replied, “And what happens when it runs away from you again, while we’re all out there being heroic? Who do you think it runs towards?”

“I’ll stay here, then! You go out and search for it, and I’ll stay here with Morgan to protect her if it gets away from you.”

“Ah, so instead of all four of us jumping in to protect her from it, it’ll just be you?”

“Look at her! She’s already gone through enough, we can’t send her out there to face it again. If it gets past all three of you, then I’ll -”

“It’s fine,” I said. I was surprised to find that I meant it. “Charity’s right. Splitting up never works out in the movies, right? Besides, I… I want to be there. When you kill it. I want to see it happen.”

“Are you certain?” Grace’s voice was very quiet.

“No. I’m so confused. I’m still pretty sure I’m dreaming, or on drugs or something? Maybe I’m in a coma, and you’re all different parts of my subconscious. But if this is really happening, then I need to see it, and I need to be a part of it. I’m not going to be helpless again.”

“Okay. I want you to know that protecting you is our top priority. No matter what happens out there, I will not let it lay a finger on you.” I felt a chill at the memory of those fingers. “But if you’re going to do this, we need a plan. From what we know it doesn’t move especially fast, so we have time to prepare, but we need to find a place as far away from people as possible, and one that’s easy to secure. Ideas?”

“Football field?”, Alex asked. “Shouldn’t be anyone there at this hour, and there are places to hide with good sightlines.”

“We might be able to take your car to somewhere further away, if we’re sure it’ll follow,” Luke said, still sounding reluctant.

Alex spoke again. “Carpark at the Plaza? Keeps things contained, and the shops don’t open for a while still.”

Charity’s head jerked to the side. “Ah. We have good news and bad news.”

“What is it?”, Grace asked.

“Well the good news is: I get to make a good news/bad news joke. The bad news is that it hasn’t been staying still for a week, it’s been sneaky and clever enough to bypass my tripwires until now. Which is very impressive, honestly, not many people can pull one over on me. I’ll have to get some sort of small but tasteful trophy made.”

“Please get to the point.”

“I just felt it again. It’s skipped three threads and reached the middle ring. Our toothy friend is somewhere on campus grounds already, and I have no idea where.” She flashed me a smile. “Still feeling good about Operation Bait, kiddo?”