Mystic High ✓

MH │11

Previously: Oriane and Marian overheard some lecturers talk about students disappearing. When they got back to their dorms, they found Jessica missing. The girls then went looking for Jessica in the previous chapter and discovered her cornered by four female weres. Marian and Charlotte frightened them away but have yet to find out who was behind the attack. 

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

The dining hall was bustling with noise. Trays and other catering supplies were clattering. Utensils scurrying across plates in efforts to finish supper sooner. Weres and elementals, even the fae-kind, drivelled on amongst their own kind.

After that afternoon, Oriane had a hard time looking at any of the weres. She distinguished them by their carefree attitudes and roughness that the other races did not possess. 

But everyone else acted like nothing suspicious had ever happened; and that sat uncomfortably with her even though she knows there is no way for them to have realised what happened. None of the girls had ratted on them, and she supposed those werewolves wouldn't tell on their own.

As Oriane walked past tables, she overheard something about a party tonight near the boys dormitory. That made sense. No wonder, at six in the evening, students were already filing out the hall.

It was just Oriane, Marian, and Charlotte that evening. Jessica wasn't feeling well and decided to pass up on joining them. Fair enough that she likely traumatised herself and wanted to be left alone for a while. Oriane pursed her lips and nodded to herself sympathetically. Though she wasn't the one attacked, she had difficulty assuaging those goosebumps up and down her arm. Perhaps she should have stayed indoors as well however she was hungry.

Yet, Marian and Charlotte acted like nothing at all had happened. No signs that they were at all affected, not even a shiver. They walked straight on ahead to their usual table near the tall windows, cast with orange light from the setting sun reflecting on the trees outside. The entire row of tables by the window looked like it was lit with imaginary fires.

When they found their seats, Charlotte smiled serenely and offered to get the food, leaving the table. Her long red skirts swaying at her knees with every tap of her flats. Oriane found that Charlotte was the daintier one of the group. She wondered how she managed to be friends with Marian and Jessica who were both not quite as delicate.

Marian rapped on the table to draw her attention. "You're not freaking out about what happened earlier, right?"

Oriane was going for airy but her voice came out soft like timid mouse. "Not at all. I'm good," she replied, wrapping her arms around herself. "Thanks though. For asking."

The Spanish reached out and took her right hand gently into hers, smoothly over the skin reassuringly. "Listen, Anna. Did we or did we not kick a** this afternoon?"

That brought out a hint of a smile. "We did."

With a fearless laugh,Marian cocked her head to the side and proclaimed, "Of course we did! We are powerful elementals! Way cooler than all the other races.Even if worse things happen, we will still keep kicking a**." At Oriane's nervous laugh, she added, "And you too! Don't think you could be any less amazing than me!"

'Could be'... What if she never could? The answer to that would likely come around eventually. At the moment, she felt weak because if someone had cornered her like they had Jessica... 

Oriane shivered. She didn't want to think about it.

But she choked out a"thank you" to Marian and pretended that everything's going to be alright.