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 point 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
