After grabbing a couple of lunches, the lunch ladies hadn’t even batted an eye for some reason, they were now seated near the back of one of the long tables that dominated the school’s lunch room.

Ed pointed to one of them as he took a bite of his burrito. Kim’d nicked two salads and was digging into them rather voraciously now. “How’d you do that?”

Kim slipped back the side of her jacket like she was a drug dealer or something. “Obfuscation thingies.” She pulled a much more crumpled version of what Ed was pretty sure was one of those talismans Serah’d dumped out of her safe out. “They like, pull their attention or whatever. Christ, you wouldn’t believe the sorts of things they get up to.”

Yeah, no. Ed was pretty sure he could. “Like shooting up giant styrofoam teddy bears?”

“What! No! There was a pair of tweedle dee and tweedle dummer dudes who’d use them to peek on the baths.” She pointed her fork between mouthfuls. “You know the old newlife church down by the cross? Has like an entire hot spring built into the side. Always thought it was weird that place had half a grove sticking out of it.”

Baths, training, the lack of piercings. “So… you live there.”

“Eh.” She wiggled a hand. “Sort of? Pastor Harris somehow got my dad transferred. Didn’t even know that was a thing last month. We’re still kinda breaking into the condo. Mr. Sleeps in the band closet. What’s up with that anyway? Don’t you like, live with your aunt or something?”

“I…” Ed tried to push it out of his mind. He’d been doing so well up until now too. “Don’t think I want to talk about it right now.”

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Mr. Garry might? have accidentally killed her? Or he could have stumbled on her body? Or she’d been some sort of meat puppet the whole time? Ed wasn’t sure what to believe. She was gone though, that was for sure. Once he’d sketched out a ward for it he’d snuck up to their old house and even interrogated the neighbors. It had returned a depressing amount of nothing.

Well, no, that wasn’t quite right, he’d found a disturbing number of small animals just dead in a somewhat scraggly half mile radius around his house. Mr. Garry had called it sloppy, what he assumed was some sort of mass soul flay and instant death was a surefire way to ensure the absence of familiars or the likes. An extremely effective way to destroy evidence but as it had the glaring flaw of leaving a bunch of corpses laying around it was usually used in conjunction with something else. He’d left it there to maybe draw out the original culprit but as it’d sat there for a couple days he’d had the feeling it would be futile.

“Ed?” He felt a hand on his shoulder, jostling him a bit. “You good?”

“Oh yeah, stellar.” He started unwrapping his second burrito. His first one had disappeared. “I mean, once I set up my own formations I’ll probably move out to the forest or something. Or, I don’t know, maybe go to london.”

“Right. Well I guess I’ll just say it but the pastor sent me here to be like a whole olive branch of peace or whatever.” She poked at his chest. “Apparently supernaturals with a natural connection to mortals are like hella rare or something. It was a whole plan in the works too but I guess you, and I guess me too, made it all like super easy for them. They plan to send a bunch of acolytes to Mr. Garry’s other schools too once I got that message through, then do like a funky exchange student program? Felt like hella sus but I left things hanging with the team and I wanted to apologize face to face.” She slumped onto the table, arms stretched like a cat. “Ugh, I still can’t believe Kelly hasn’t forgiven me. Like, what am I even supposed to say to her?”

Kim picked up his third burrito and walked it across the table to her salad. “Dur duh dur. Hey guys! I fought the men in black, a magical unicorn, and my friend’s a wizard.” She clapped her hands into a mock bow. “Sorry! Our pastor abducted my whole family and now we live in a secret underground church base so we’re still moving in! S’that cool guys? No?”

Ed couldn’t help himself. “What did you actually say to them?”