Chatoyant College, Book 1: New Student Orientation

Chapter 45: Sight

Dawn took an involuntary step back, which made her stumble, because she was still holding onto Corrie and Edie. Thankfully, she didn't lose her grip. Her mouth went dry. She licked her lips, trying to get some moisture back. Whatever her friends were seeing, she realized, it was what they were supposed to see; she was seeing the wrong thing. But that might have been a good thing. This was obviously somehow connected to the fact that she remembered Annie. Did she have some kind of ability to know what was real? Better powers of observation? Could she control it?

She decided not to answer the woman's question. Better to keep as much information from them as possible. Instead, she spoke in a low voice. "Edie. Corrie. What do you see?"

Corrie laughed. "I see the room we're all in, of course."

Room? Her alarm grew. That was a bigger difference than she had expected. She tried to keep her voice calm. "What about the people?"

"What, don't you see them yourself?" asked Edie.

"I... might not see the same thing as you do. You have to describe to me what you see, so I can understand what's really going on."

Edie frowned, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. "Well, it's a big sort of dance hall. There's the woman who's talking to us, of course, and a bunch of other people dancing."

Dawn noted the fact that they seemed to see only humans. "What about the musicians?"

"There are five of them," replied Corrie, "all with different instruments."

"What do they look like?" asked Dawn. "Do you recognize any of them?"

They both shook their heads. She remembered that no one else had remembered anything about Annie and cursed silently. Of course they wouldn't recognize her. She glanced over at Annie, who was staring at her fixedly now. She, at least, seemed to know what was going on.

"They just look like normal musicians," Corrie was saying. "Dressed up in tuxes and black dresses."

Well, that cinched it; any uncertainty she had felt about Lorelei's insistence that they were faeries fell away. Whatever Corrie and Edie were seeing, it seemed to be what she saw, but covered over and made pretty. In short, it was glamour. Was she impervious to glamour somehow? She couldn't say that for sure without knowing what was real and what wasn't. But she knew at least one rule, and that was to avoid eating faerie food. She didn't want her friends eating what she saw anyway. She shifted her grips on Corrie's and Edie's arms, settling her hands more firmly, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Could she make them see what she was seeing? It didn't seem likely, without any knowledge of magic. Had it really been a good idea for Lorelei to send them here?

She opened her eyes again, thinking she could at least appeal to their logic. "You two remember walking through the woods just now, don't you?"

"Sure," said Corrie. Edie nodded agreement.

"Well," said Dawn, taking another deep breath, "don't you think it's odd that this dance hall is out in the middle of the woods like this?"

Edie's frown deepened. "You know... it is strange..."

The black-garbed woman spoke again, startling Dawn. She'd almost forgotten that they were being observed. "You're not in the middle of the woods," the woman said with a tinkling laugh. "Now that would be silly! Our lovely clothes would get all dirty!" Dawn noticed with irony that the clothes she could see were, in fact, torn and dirty in spots. The hem of the black dress even seemed to be moth-eaten. Did the woman not realize what Dawn could see? She was almost starting to doubt that the things she could see were real, but she knew without a doubt that they had just come from the woods, and if the woman said that, she must be the one lying.

"See?" Corrie said. "Let's go dance." She smiled dreamily in the direction of the fox-man. He smiled back, showing sharp teeth. Dawn shuddered.

"There's nowhere to dance, Corrie," she said urgently. "We have to--" She stopped, looking at the woman again. Was it a good idea to say out loud what they were doing here? She didn't trust that smile at all. But would it be possible to get Annie away without them realizing? She could try to distract them somehow, but if she let go of Corrie and Edie she might never get them back, and they wouldn't get Annie out of there on their own. And Lorelei had said they were supposed to make a bargain.

She noticed something in Corrie's back pocket. Her keys. What was it about her keys? Could she use them as a weapon somehow? All she could think of was holding keys between her fingers in self-defense class in high school. Corrie was trying to pull away again.

Then the black-garbed woman stood up and stalked toward her. Dawn stared at her in shock. She was even taller than she had looked sitting down--impossibly tall, supernaturally tall. Dawn barely had time to register that while Corrie was looking elsewhere, Edie seemed to be looking at the same height as she was before the woman grabbed Dawn's face. Her hands were clawlike and strong as iron. (Iron? That meant something.) She forced Dawn's eyes to meet hers, then asked in a cold, terrible voice, "Which eye do you see me with?"