Rebecca drew from her cigarette and exhaled, silent for a short time, a sheepish look on her face that she was glad Eerie couldn’t see. The changeling had always represented a particular challenge for her, in that everything to do with her was unprecedented. The Academy hadn’t had a changeling student in two decades before Eerie, and the longest previous stay was about four years. According to the notes she’d read, no serious effort had been made to understand or integrate the previous changelings with the other students. However, one of the things people never understood about empathy was that it was a two-way street — and Rebecca already had private reasons to sympathize with Eerie.
“Yeah,” she said, eventually. “That was bad. I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”
“You didn’t have permission,” Eerie scolded. “That isn’t like you.”
“Hey, who’s in trouble here?”
“Right, sorry,” Eerie mumbled, returning her attention to braiding.
Rebecca decided to finish her cigarette before moving on. Eerie was comfortable with silence, she knew from years of familiarity, and would let it continue as long as Rebecca allowed. It would help calm the girl down, as would the process of braiding her hair, and Rebecca wanted her calm before they moved on. Another incident like the last and Gaul would take on the task of punishing the girl himself, and Rebecca would be unable to intervene. Moreover, Rebecca had mixed feelings on how to handle the whole situation.
Eerie wanted, on a deep and fundamental level, to be useful to the people around her. Given how casually she was dismissed by almost everyone, even the infinitely patient Michael, that desire didn’t surprise Rebecca. That was probably the reason for Eerie taking up knitting when she was thirteen. Eerie had made gloves for everyone in her class and all of the staff members she interacted with, eventually, even the kids who picked on her received gifts. Rebecca thought you could tell a lot about a person in late November, when the wind picked up and got chilly, and gloves became a necessity. Many people moved from Rebecca’s ‘good’ list to her ‘bad’ list, and vice-versa, based on their choice of cold weather gear. In fact, she was still trying to honor a personal resolution to be nicer to Gaul, since he had quietly worn the scarf Eerie had made him every day through the whole of the winter. Eerie never would say what she thought about it, but then again, she seemed to like Margot more than anyone else at the Academy, and Margot looked like a hippie every winter, she was burdened with so many handmade wool accessories.
The first time Rebecca had met Eerie, it had been in this room, the office she’d occupied for the better part of twenty years. The changeling’s mother lived on disability and food stamps in a house her parents owned in a dreadful subdivision outside of Tracy. She hadn’t asked questions or needed persuading when the Academy’s recruiters came for Eerie, she was so eager to get the child off her hands. Rebecca didn’t blame her too much. She wasn’t sure how a Fey and a human went about producing a child, but she understood that a daily reminder might not be appreciated.
An attendant had brought the little blond girl in, probably old enough for kindergarten but barely able to walk and unable to talk. Rebecca had no idea what her age actually was, because her mother seemed uncertain. She thought her to be autistic initially, but when she’d interfaced telepathically with the girl, she’d found her perfectly aware and fully cognizant, but struggling with the concept of spoken language. Beyond that, Eerie’s perceptions were so badly addled that she struggled to keep her balance or see things clearly. Rebecca’s degree was actually in child psychology, as she was late bloomer — she hadn’t been activated until she was twenty, allowing her to complete courses at UCLA before coming to Central. Moreover, Rebecca had an incident in her past that she preferred not to remember, which had led to a doomed and entirely secret premature birth during high school, Kaddish and the limitless grief of the tiny casket, six weeks in the hospital, and her parents scorn.
Rebecca had given it a name, but she couldn’t bear to remember it. She probably wouldn’t have looked anything like Eerie, Rebecca had told herself that morning, more than a decade before, studying the little girl sprawled on her office floor. Nevertheless, the girl’s wet eyes caught her, evoked the memory that Rebecca refused to acknowledge except in her worst dreams. Maybe she’d looked after Eerie a little bit more than she was supposed to.
Eerie couldn’t seem to learn to talk, but teaching her to sing was easy, and they worked backwards from there. The first few years, when she could only sing and therefore remained silent in public were particularly difficult in terms of bullying, but Eerie hung tough and got better with time. She grew more comfortable with her altered state, to the point where she could rebalance her own neural chemistry without Rebecca or Alistair’s help. While she remained a bit clumsy and near-sighted, she’d overcome most of her physical difficulties with the help of physical therapy, contact lenses and custom soles for her shoes. Rebecca had paired her with Margot, and despite the vampire’s frigid personality, a relationship had developed between them, some kind of caring. They looked out for each other if they weren’t exactly friends. Rebecca maneuvered Eerie into Gerald Windsor’s class, knowing that he was determined and compassionate enough to draw Eerie out, and that had worked too. She wasn’t a great student, but she learned enough to get by, and she was remarkable with computers. Gerald showered the girl with unreserved attention and praise, which Eerie returned in her own way: a new scarf, every winter, always an unpredictable array of colors, which made Windsor easy to pick out against the snow in December. Privately, Rebecca felt Eerie was her greatest success, as she couldn’t do much for the girl with telepathy or empathy, because the changeling’s mind remained alien and impenetrable. Rebecca had to use conventional methods.
This wasn’t to say they hadn’t had problems in the past. Eerie had gotten difficult in her early teenage years; in particular, Rebecca hadn’t caught on to the girl’s liberal attitude toward the other sex until she’d already developed a reputation. Rebecca put a stop to it quickly, and largely blamed herself — she knew, after all, that the Fey had a very different relationship with sexuality than humans did, and it should have occurred to her that Eerie might have some strange ideas. However, the rest of her classmates didn’t, and in a closed, tight community like the Academy, once a label was attached, it was very difficult to shrug off. Eerie was mortified when she understood what had happened, and they had a few challenging years. However, things had cooled off eventually. Eerie had taken up knitting, grew interested in clothes, and started dance lessons. Rebecca encouraged her self-expression to the point of letting her break the dress code. Eerie hadn’t shown much interest in boys since her early teens. Not until Alex arrived.
Figuring out how to punish Eerie was a difficult thing. Rebecca would have preferred to punish Alex, but he hadn’t really done anything other than go along with Eerie in his own dopey way. He was a teenage boy, so what else could she expect? Besides, he was Michael’s responsibility.
That easy-going jerk, Rebecca thought, with a sudden flash of intuitive jealousy, he’s probably just going to make him run extra laps. She imagined making Eerie run and had to suppress a giggle.
“I can’t let this slide, Eerie. This isn’t like when you ran off before. You took Alex, and you know that’s dangerous for him, dangerous for everybody. And Edward was killed.”
“I’m not sure that should count,” Eerie offered tentatively. “He came back.”
“That wasn’t Edward, whatever it was,” Rebecca said uncertainly. “Anyway, it definitely counts.”
“But, I like him!” Eerie protested. “You said I was supposed to make friends. Alex is my friend.”
“Is that what it is?”
“He said that he likes me. And he stayed behind to stop Edward! He put himself between us and then he was all like, ‘run and get help before I die’, so I went and found you, but he didn’t even need your help and it was pretty cool…”
Rebecca found herself wanting to poi
nt out that Alex had very much needed Katya’s help, but she bit her tongue, and wondered if she was becoming bitter about her own single status. Certainly, Eerie’s schoolgirl crush was annoying her all out of proportion to its significance.
“That doesn’t sound like ‘friends’, Eerie.”
“Friends look out for you,” Eerie insisted stubbornly. “That’s what you said. Friends don’t pick on you. He got angry with Steve and hit him because he was being mean to me, and I didn’t even know him yet. In the hotel, when those Weir were hurting him, he didn’t say anything about me. He is looking out for me, and I,” Eerie added proudly, “made him a hat.”
“I saw that,” Rebecca observed sourly.
“He likes it.”
“I’m sure.”
Eerie finished one plait and then started patiently on another. Rebecca knew from experience that she could do this cheerfully, all day, until there was nothing else to braid. Something about knots and patterns fascinated Eerie, and they had since she was a child.
“What do you think I should do about all of this, Eerie?”
“I don’t know; that’s your job. I would let me go with a warning.”
“Very funny.” Rebecca shook her head gently, so as not to pull her hair out of Eerie’s hands. “I can’t. You got in too much trouble this time. Maybe you wouldn’t have if I hadn’t gone so easy on you up until now. Maybe you don’t take this seriously.”
“Not fair,” Eerie objected, in her soft, singsong voice. “You know I do. I try very hard.”
“I do know,” Rebecca acknowledged, frustrated. “Of course you do! Why didn't you come to me before you did all this stuff, Eerie? Why put me in this position?”
“I told you already,” Eerie said guilelessly. “I wanted to go dancing with him.”
“Couldn’t you have waited for Winter Dance?” Rebecca grumbled.
“I guess so,” Eerie admitted. “But I was worried that at Winter Dance that he would have to dance with Emily Muir, because she is bossy, and she has better dresses than me, and pretty hair, and because she always wants Alex to pay attention to her.”
“Is that so different from what you want?”
Eerie paused in mid-braid and thought about it. Rebecca was patient. She knew that sometimes it took Eerie a long time to work out what she wanted to say, and then how to say it. She was quicker than usual this time.
“It is different, because I don’t want Alex to feel sorry for me. Emily doesn’t care why, as long as he pays attention to her.”
Rebecca should have been used to Eerie’s sudden bursts of insight, but this one took her by surprise the way they often did. Rebecca had always wished that they could communicate telepathically as they had when she was a child, to bypass Eerie’s language difficulties. That was probably part of why she tried it earlier, in their meeting with Gaul. However, the girl had insisted on her privacy since she’d become a teenager.
“True, not kind, but true,” Rebecca allowed, coming finally to a decision. “So, here’s what we are going to do, kiddo…”
“Come on, man. Even people on the combat track have to be able to do the basics.”
“Fine,” Alex said, rolling his eyes and setting his book down on the bed in front of him. “Well, there are the Witches, of course. In addition, the Weir, who they have enslaved. Not because they want to, necessarily, but they are like, stupid or something…”
“Not actually the case. They are bestial, easy to control. That’s not the same as stupid.”
“Whatever. They are hairy guys who can turn into wolves who work for the Witches, most of the time.”
“Good so far,” Vivik encouraged.
“Then there are the vampires, but they don’t really count, because we have that treaty thing with them. Same with the Fey. Whatever they are.”
Alex paused in thought, almost long enough that Vivik cut in, before he came up with more.
“And then the Anathema — we don’t talk about them much in class. They are rogue Operators from way back. They got thrown out of Central for some kind of banned research thing, and nobody has seen them since.”
Vivik nodded.
“Then there are the Wights, who are like, bad ghosts or something. And the Ghouls — don't they eat dead stuff? Oh, and those Horror things, like the one on the roof. They are sort of like wild animals, right? Dangerous, but only if you bump into them and piss them off. Otherwise, it isn’t like with the Witches or the Weir. They aren’t organized. How’s that?”
“Not bad for someone who can barely speak English,” Vivik admitted. “I think Windsor will pass you if you make an effort.”
Alex hesitated for a moment, and Vivik waited indulgently for the question he could see coming. He gave the simplest answer that he could.
“Field study?”
Alex asked as if the words themselves were unfamiliar.
“Grigori, Chandi, and Hope just came back from theirs. The Academy sends you off to work in the field underneath someone who currently has the position you’re aspiring towards. Margot’s doing field study right now with the Audits department. They bumped Eerie’s up by a couple months so it would coincide with break.”
“Okay, but what is it that Eerie is studying, anyway? I can’t exactly see her fighting or doing science or anything…”
“If the Administration had its way, she’d be a doctor. Sort of.”
“What does ‘sort of’ mean?”
“Well, they would like her to be a doctor. That biochemical thing she does, you see. She won’t let them study her, but everybody has ideas about what it could do, over in Life Sciences.”
Alex sat up, rubbing his head and grimacing.
“That sounds a lot more like guinea pig than doctor.”
“Don’t get pissed off, it’s not what you are thinking. She has a gift for it. She’s not dumb, you know. Actually, she’s quite smart. You probably haven’t even noticed,” he said crossly. “Anyway, Li says that a couple years ago, a kid in her fitness class broke his leg, playing soccer. She did something that fixed it — no one really agrees what, and since then, everybody keeps thinking that she’d be a natural.”
“I’m having trouble with this idea…”
“You’re not the only one,” Vivik agreed, frowning. “Eerie hasn’t ever shown the slightest inclination to go along with it. And she doesn’t have to, since technically, she’s on loan to us, from the Fey.”
“What’s up with that, anyway? The Fey? Fairies, right?”
“I don’t really know,” Vivik admitted, sounding exasperated. “That’s actually bothered me for a long time. There’s almost no documentation. If you believe the unclassified section of the archive, then no one knows what they look like, where they come from, what they do, or why they left. However, that must be a lie. The Academy records say they’ve had four changeling students over the years. Therefore, they have to know. After all, they signed a treaty with someone, or something. But everything about the Fey seems to be a secret.”
“I’m getting used to that.”
“I’m not surprised. Anyway, Eerie doesn’t want to be a doctor, or anything like it. For a while she wanted to be a veterinarian, but though the Academy staff is large and multifaceted, nobody had a need for a half-sane veterinarian.”
“Makes you wonder why they saw the need for a half-sane doctor,” Alex pointed out.
“Since then she’s moved toward information technology,” Vivik continued on, pretending not to hear Alex. “Eerie is one of the best coders at the Academy right now. So my guess is that her ‘field study’ will actually be down in Central at Processing, where the servers are, probably sitting in some cubical writing code for the Etheric Network.”
“That is… very difficult to picture,” Alex said, after trying and failing to imagine it. “She must be miserable doing that.”
“Actually, according to my friend Adel, who did a summer internship down at Processing with her last year, they practically had to turn the li
ghts out to get her to leave the building,” Vivik said, shrugging as if to show that he would have doubted it himself. “She eats candy and codes away, apparently.”
“That’s… well, actually, that’s believable.”
Vivik was a little worried about Alex. He couldn’t help but be concerned. After all, it wasn’t like him to be so down about things. However, he was also more than a little bit grateful that his thoughts seemed to have turned back toward Eerie, even if it was galling that Alex could simply ignore the girl of Vivik’s dreams throwing herself at him. Still, he felt a sense of obligation to his friend.
“Do you want to come back to my room and watch anime? I downloaded new episodes of Toradora and Full Metal Alchemist and stuff…”
“Alright,” Alex said, finally sitting up from where he’d been lying on the bed. “But I’m not watching the one with the girls in the cartoon band again. Nothing ever happens, and the music is annoying.”
“Okay,” Vivik said, smiling as he held open the door for Alex.
“And not one where they talk forever about how powerful they are and hidden techniques and all that shit but never actually get around to fighting. I’m sick of giant swords, and I’m not staying up all night to find out who wins.”
“Okay,” Vivik said as they walked down the hallway, humoring him.
“Oh yeah! No more shows where all the girls throw themselves at some lame guy who spends his time running away and having nosebleeds, because he’s some kind of porn-obsessed moron who’s afraid of girls. That shit drives me crazy. It’s totally unrealistic.”
“Sure,” Vivik said, fumbling with his card key. “So, what do you want to watch?”
“I dunno. Something with zombies. And boobs.”
11
“You don’t want to?”
“No, I do, really.”
“You don’t seem like you do.”
Alex hesitated for a moment, and then he broke down and told her the truth. It seemed like the simplest thing to do.
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