Haunted Heroine

by Sarah Kuhn

  “So now you’re thinking . . . what, the hauntings have become real, somehow?” I asked.

  Julie said we had to “stop them all.” Did she mean all the ghosts? That were suddenly fucking Morgan up more than usual? But . . . no. She’d gotten upset when I’d mentioned “college authorities.” Who, as far as I knew, were still very real, very alive people.

  Provost Glennon studied me for a moment, sizing me up. I squirmed, feeling like I was a grad student on my first day all over again, desperately wanting to impress her and somehow hide the fact that I actually didn’t know what I was doing and even though I kept saying yes, I could absolutely commit my entire life to the program . . . that actually wasn’t true. I had rent to pay and a surly, grieving tween to take care of and feed, and then there were all those pesky emotions I was most definitely not dealing with . . .

  “We’re not sure what to think,” Provost Glennon finally said, blinking at me through her glasses. “You mentioned that there’s been recent demonic activity in the East Bay, Ms. Jupiter—perhaps it has something to do with that. But I’m afraid when it comes to anything supernatural . . .” She shook her head, her frown deepening. “Campus security obviously hasn’t been trained to deal with that. Whatever’s behind this, the incidents have been escalating. And while the abstract idea of ghosts is charming and entertaining, actual injured students and damaged property are not. At minimum, it’s disruptive. In the worst-case scenario, well . . .” Her expression turned grim. “We’ve been struggling to keep our heads above water the last few years.”

  “You mentioned the budget being tight,” I said. “Is that a recent development? Morgan seemed so well-funded when I went here.”

  “It was,” Provost Glennon said. “I fear we’ve had some growing pains. As you may know, Ms. Tanaka, when Morgan first opened in the 1870s, it was considered more of a finishing school for proper young ladies—and it was still tied to San Francisco College, sort of a little sister school. You may have even referred to it that way when you were here. It wasn’t until much later that we developed our own identity as an empowering bastion of feminism, a place where young women could find their voices. These days . . .” She gave an elegant shrug. “We’re perceived as being an uncomfortable mix of the two, and that means we’re not necessarily the first choice for progressives or the finishing school set. Enrollment’s down, and we’ve been kept alive by our most generous donors—who want to believe their money is going toward a reputable and secure institution of higher learning. They would naturally be put off if we start getting a reputation for being a place where dangerous things happen and students are always getting hurt. In fact, we had an issue with several of them when the library burned down—it took at least three years to recover from that and get our donations back to where they need to be.”

  I made my face as neutral as possible. No one outside of Team Tanaka/Jupiter had ever found out that I was, in fact, responsible for the library. And sweating underneath Provost Glennon’s piercing gaze made me want to keep that secret inside forever.

  “And if these incidents keep escalating,” Provost Glennon continued, “I can’t imagine that will be appealing to prospective students, either—or their parents. We’re really trying to grow enrollment, develop a modern brand, and become the thriving institution we are meant to be. And I don’t want anything to get in the way of that.” Her face hardened a bit.

  “Provost Glennon, I think I see where you’re going with this,” Aveda said, giving her the assured smile of a veteran superheroine. “This growing threat is obviously something that needs to be investigated—never fear, we can help. Evie and I would be happy to connect you with Sergeant Rose Rorick’s Demon Unit—it’s part of SFPD? You can make an official report to them and Rose will get started on the investigation. Er, her second in command will, I suppose, since Rose is currently on her honeymoon. But her department has all kinds of scanner tools that can help determine exactly what you’re dealing with here, if it’s a bona fide supernatural threat—”

  “Police?” Provost Glennon’s brow crinkled ever so slightly. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. I need someone with more of a personal touch, someone who can be discreet. A very public investigation will only disrupt life on campus and put us in the exact position I’m hoping to avoid.”

  Aveda gave me a sidelong look, but my brain was already whirling. Something wasn’t right here. Why hadn’t anyone beyond campus security been notified after the very first possibly supernatural incident where a student had gotten hurt? And why did Provost Glennon’s main concern seem to be avoiding a scandal rather than protecting her students?

  “I’m hoping to employ the very best,” Provost Glennon said, looking at us meaningfully.

  “We are . . . that,” Aveda responded hesitantly.

  Julie’s voice floated through my head again: Don’t trust them.

  “Before we agree to anything, I’d really like to get the information about Julie Vũ’s hospital,” I said. “When do you think we can talk to her?”

  “I can’t say for certain,” Provost Glennon said, shuffling through the reports on the campus security desk. “But to be honest, it is unlikely she’ll able to provide you with much more useful information, since you were there this time, Ms. Tanaka. You saw it all.”

  “Mmm,” I said, my tone noncommittal. “What can you tell me about her? Our interaction was brief.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” Provost Glennon said, scanning one of the reports—and avoiding meeting my eyes. “She doesn’t live on campus, so I’m afraid I haven’t spoken with her much. I don’t think that’s relevant to your investigation, anyway.”

  I frowned. Yeah, something really wasn’t right here. Provost Glennon was being way too cagey, trying to steer me away from what should have been fairly innocuous information. And I couldn’t get Julie’s terrified eyes out of my head. That exhausted, desperate face reminded me so much of my own when I’d been a student here.

  I can’t die. My sister . . . she needs me.

  That could have been me saying those words back then. I’d also been trying to stay alive, to survive . . . and my sister had needed me, too.

  And let’s not forget that Julie had said my name, that she’d looked at me so strangely . . .

  “I’m not sure if we’re what you want, Provost Glennon,” Aveda said. “We’re two of the most famous people in the city. Not exactly discreet. If anyone finds out Evie and I are investigating a possibly haunted women’s college, well . . . it’s only a matter of time before our fans and the usual paparazzi show up. And we’re under extra scrutiny now, thanks to Evie’s pregnancy. The story will be sensationalized beyond measure, and then your donors will be really unhappy. But if you start with the police—”

  “No,” I interrupted.

  “Um, what?” Aveda said, turning to me.

  I met her eyes. I couldn’t explain it. I just knew I had to help Julie Vũ. I had to find out what the hell was going on here, and I had to fix it.

  If Provost Glennon wasn’t going to protect her students, I would.

  “This is too important,” I continued, my voice getting stronger with every word. “We can’t just pass it off to the police to handle.”

  “Okay,” Aveda said slowly. She looked uneasy, trepidatious. I couldn’t help but think maybe I had a version of her Idea Face on—and she was finally seeing why it made me so nervous.

  I’d have to fill her in later. I couldn’t reveal everything in front of Provost Glennon—and I was going to have to be extra careful about anything I said to people who worked for the college.

  Don’t trust them, that was what Julie Vũ had asked me to do.

  “I’m thinking that there are only two people in the world who can handle this particular . . . thing that’s going on,” I said, injecting as much bravado as I could muster into my voice. “And I think I have an idea for how we can be dis
creet about it. We have to help these kids, Aveda.”

  “Oh, no,” Aveda said. “I feel both proud of you and scared of you, because are you about to say—”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding firmly. “Team Tanaka/Jupiter is gonna go undercover and catch ourselves some ghosts.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I NEVER THOUGHT I’d have the chance to live in a real, honest-to-goodness dorm.

  I’d spent a few weeks in one before ultimately moving home for my undergrad, and Bea and I’d had our own teeny apartment while I was in grad school. Dorm life, with its parties and late-night gossip sessions and impulsive study runs to Taco Bell, seemed like some kind of gauzy fantasy world that only existed on TV.

  One could say that Tanaka/Jupiter HQ, with its sprawling, messy found family of inhabitants, was like a dorm, but there were still some key differences. My room at home was sprawling and warm and sunlit and I shared it with the man I loved. My brand-new dorm room, located in the creaky structure known as Mara Dash Hall, on the other hand, was small and cramped, barely large enough for the two twin beds shoved against opposite walls and the minuscule sink stuffed in the corner.

  And I shared it with my awesome but occasionally overbearing best friend who’d made it her current life’s mission to decorate the shit out of our temporary cohabitation space.

  “What do you think?” Aveda said, gesturing expansively to the wall above her bed. “Too much Heroic Trio? Or just enough?”

  She’d tacked up a giant poster of our favorite Hong Kong action movie—The Heroic Trio, starring Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui, and Maggie Cheung as superheroines—above her bed. I was pretty sure it was the exact same poster that used to adorn her childhood room. There wasn’t much room for anything else on the limited wall space, but somehow she’d managed to surround the Trio with Morgan College pennants and other memorabilia, so it looked like our girls were all ready to cheer on the school basketball team or something. There were even a couple of Halloween-specific bits, tiny pumpkin decals emblazoned with the Morgan logo.

  “It looks great,” I said. “Very collegiate. But let me ask you something: did you and your mom buy out the entire school bookstore or . . . ?” I grinned and nodded at her brand-new Morgan-branded sweatshirt, ponytail holder, and plastic shower slippers, which she was wearing over her socks like some kind of badass Asian Auntie.

  “Evelyn, don’t drag me for this, my mom is so excited I’m finally going to college,” Aveda said, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder. “And yes, I told her this was an official undercover mission and I won’t actually have a degree when it’s all over, but you know my mom—she only hears what she wants to.”

  “I think it’s sweet that she came out here to take you shopping,” I said, sitting down on my own bed and contemplating Aveda’s wall collage, haphazardly lit by the streaks of afternoon sun filtering through the rusty casement window and its half-hearted, paper-thin attempt at a pull-down blind. “You and your mom getting along is kind of adorable.”

  “Yes, well.” Aveda shrugged and waved a hand. “Don’t expect it to last, she’s on the baby train now that you’re all knocked up. I might need to throw your baby at her a few times so her thirst for tiny people that are sort of related to her is momentarily quenched.”

  “Please don’t throw my baby,” I said, holding up a warning finger. “I haven’t read up on all the baby things I need to, but I’m pretty sure that’s on the ‘no’ list.”

  She opened her mouth to retort, but my phone buzzed, cutting off any further argument we might have had about the ethics of baby throwing.

  I hit accept on the call and my sister’s face filled the screen.

  “Evie!” she shrieked. “Aveda! I can’t believe you guys are going to college!?”

  “We’re not actually going to college,” I said with a grin. “We’re going undercover as graduate students so we can get to the bottom of this destructive ghostly business.”

  “The two of you undercover?” Bea snorted. “Sounds like a classic Aveda Jupiter scheme—the chance of shenanigans is off the charts.”

  “Don’t look at me, this one was all Evie,” Aveda said, waving a hand at me.

  “It just came to me when Provost Glennon was going on and on about discretion,” I explained. “She wants us to blend in, and the best way to do that is for us to be part of the student body—we’ll be able to get close to these kids, find out what’s really happening on campus. And I thought being graduate students—and TAs—was the best of both worlds. We’re not scary authority figures, like campus administrators, but we can still give the students kind of a big sister vibe, so hopefully they’ll confide in us more easily.”

  “And grad students at Morgan live in the same dorms as undergrads,” Aveda said, gesturing to our closet-like space. “So that allows us to embed ourselves even more.”

  “Are you guys actually going to be, um, teaching?” Bea said skeptically. “Are either of you qualified to do that?”

  “A little respect, please,” Aveda said, looking down her nose at Bea. “We’re superheroines. We’re qualified to do everything.”

  “Not actually true,” I said, giving her a look. “We’ll be assisting and doing our best to stay out of the way of the actual teaching. I’ll be in Pop Culture Studies, Annie will be in Bio. The two students who reported their recent haunting experiences are in those departments, and we figure that will give us an easy way to talk to both of them in more depth than campus security. We’re also hoping being embedded will help us find the students who didn’t report their ghostly encounters—because apparently there have been a lot of these incidents recently, but they’re hard to track without official reports.”

  I’d filled Aveda in on what Julie Vũ had said to me after we’d finished our meeting with Provost Glennon—and why I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something extra weird going on at Morgan. I mean, in addition to all the ghost stuff. She’d agreed with me, and we’d decided to do our best to pursue all lines of inquiry. I kept trying to get Julie’s hospital information out of Provost Glennon, but she claimed she couldn’t find Julie’s student intake form and didn’t know what hospital she’d been taken to.

  I was determined to track Julie down and talk to her again. Beyond needing information from her, I also just needed to know that she was okay.

  Provost Glennon would not block me from that.

  “Wait a minute.” Bea shook her head, her wavy purple-blue hair bouncing with disbelief. “Does Aveda actually know anything about Bio?”

  “I’m sure I can fake it,” Aveda sniffed, plopping herself next to me with an indignant whump. “I’ve taken out demons of every kind, I can handle a little science-ing.”

  “A little science-ing?” Bea hooted, shaking her head even more vehemently. “Are you kidding? Aren’t you supposed to be helping these kids expand their minds or whatever?”

  “Oh, their minds will be super freaking expanded,” Aveda said, a determined gleam lighting her eyes. “Once they’ve had Aveda Jupiter as their TA, they’ll never be the same.”

  “Oof.” I flopped back against my pillow. “Don’t make that your opening statement, please. Also, remember that undercover means undercover.”

  “And what about you, Evie?” Bea demanded, her eyes widening. “You’ll be in Pop Culture Studies—”

  “A natural fit, since that was what I studied here,” I said. “So I do have the expertise.”

  “Yeah, but won’t that put you in close contact with Richard the Terrible?” Bea said. “Wasn’t he, like, a big muckety-muck in that department?”

  “He still is,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. “Actually, I’ll be TA-ing one of his classes.”

  “What?!” Bea exploded. “Okay, this is gonna lead to more than shenanigans, it’s gonna be, like . . .” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t even know. Can you handle being around him, Big Sis?�
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  “Thank you!” Aveda exclaimed, sweeping a hand toward me. “I tried to tell her that I should be the one in Pop Culture Studies, so she doesn’t have to deal with him. Just seeing him again at the reunion brought up a lot of feelings, Evie. I don’t know why you’re insisting on exposing yourself to more of that, during what’s already a very taxing mission. And especially while you’re—”

  “Don’t say ‘pregnant,’” I groaned. “I’m very aware. And I’m fine. This is what’s best for the mission. Because I already know I can deal with Richard and all of his blowharding. Whereas Aveda—”

  “Would lose her temper the minute he starts going on and on with his gross, sexist lectures and probably kick his ass or at the very least yell at him,” Bea finished, nodding slowly. “I guess I can see the rationale there.”

  “Whatever,” Aveda grumbled. “I am extremely professional in all things, including ass-kicking.”

  “But please, Evie,” Bea continued, “protect yourself however you can. Don’t get sucked into his disgusting web again.”

  “There is a less than zero chance of that,” I said, shuddering.

  “And how are y’all hiding the fact that you’re two of the most famous people in the city?” Bea said, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Scott gave us glamours,” I said. “Specially-calibrated ones that alter our appearances subtly—just enough so that we’re not recognizable. Like, my hair will be straight, my features will be just a bit different, I won’t have freckles. That kind of thing. He says they should last longer than usual since the magic doesn’t have to work as hard to mask our appearances, so we won’t have to worry about suddenly looking like ourselves again in the middle of class. And we have cover names that start with the same letters as our actual names—so hopefully we’ll remember to answer to them. Meet Eliza Takahashi and Angelica Chin.”