The weekend was boring. I did go back to school to see if Alice had waited for me. She hadn’t and as I had no idea where she lived and because this podunk town didn’t get cell reception I had no way of finding her till next Monday.

  Next Monday rolled around and I took my usual position at the back of the cssroom. Alice arrived in full girlmode a few minutes before css started and I waved her over. “Thank the stars you’re okay!” she excimed as soon as she sat down. “I’m sorry, I held out as long as I could but those two are really scary”. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. “Its alright. I’ve never tried to fight an 8 foot tall werewolf girl before but now that I know its coming I think I know how to deal with it next time.” I said bnkly. She gasped. “You saw!” she asked. I noded. “What are you going to do?” she said after a brief pause. “Well I’m going to kill her for a start. But after that I think we’ll have a good long heart to heart about terrorizing people with the end goal of hurting their friends and after that’s done with hopefully they won’t bother you again” I said darkly.

  “What! That’s! WHAT!” yelped Alice. I sighed. “Nevermind for now. I’ve lost enough of my school time to those nasty cows and I’ll be a monkey’s aunt if I’m going to lose any more. Come on, they’re calling the roll.”

  The morning was uneventful. I scared the crap out of the teacher by answering a question and accidentally reminding him I was there, but I guess he was just used to my apparent non-apparentness by now.

  Leah and Rose approached our table at lunch. They looked pretty good for two people who had been attacked with a knife st Friday. Leah didn’t have a scratch on her and Rose barely had a scar. Werewolf magic I supposed. They both sat on opposite sides of me. Not that I’d never imagined myself sandwiched between 2 people who’d independently tried to kill me but I kind of imagined that would have followed several years of hard-forged friendship and possibly facing down a Demon Lord first.

  “Been looking for you” said Rose with an evil sneer. “You been hiding from us” asked Leah. She was in a foul mood. “Why do you hate me?” I asked calmly. Both girls gave me twinned expressions of disgusted confusion. “You people hunt us. Hate us. Burn us. Just because you’re jealous of the things that we can do. Why the fuck wouldn’t we hate you” Rose said acidly.

  I let out a sigh. “Okay, back up a minute. First of all, what group to which you are referring to as ‘you people’ do you think I belong to” I asked. “Outsiders” snapped Leah, as if this were obvious. “Okay, and what intrinsic quality do you believe is held by everyone in town that is not held by outsiders?” I said, doing my best to retain my cool. “Wait… you don’t know?” said Rose. “I saw Leah here turn into an 8 foot tall wolf person, but whether that’s something that everyone in town does, or just her specifically I think it would be unwise to guess” Said I. “So please tell me what’s actually going on here so I don’t have to do something as dangerous as guess”.

  Leah scoffed. “You’re not going to be alive long enough to do anything with that information anyway. Telling you would be a waste of time” she chuckled darkly. I let out a sigh. “Well if you insist” I said. I grabbed her wrist. “DIE!”. I screamed it in my innermost voice and I said it aloud as well for dramatic effect. Her arm went limp in my hand and she facepnted into her food.

  “Leah?” Rose asked, a note of concern in her tone. Leah of course did not respond. I took a note of the time from my wristwatch. 13:14:07. “What did you do” asked Rose. “What, from your abilities of observation, does it appear I did?” I asked, effecting a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes. They made this look so easy on TV.

  Rose got up and quickly relocated her ass to Leah’s other side. She lifted her head and put a hand in front of her mouth to check if she was breathing. She wasn’t. “NURSE!” screamed Rose. “SOMEONE GET THE NURSE! HELLO!” she called out. Nobody paid us any mind. We weren’t interesting afterall. Rose turned to me, a look of horror dawning on her face. “What did you do?” she asked again. “A perfectly justifiable act of self defence I should think. Weren’t you ughing and joking about killing me? What was it you said? ‘lets find and bury that vile creep and then pretend this whole awful week never happened.’” I chuckled.

  I wasn’t feeling the ugh to be honest. I was starting to realise that self defence or not killing people did not make my stomach happy. “You heard that?” said Rose. She was turning pale. “I have some questions if you wouldn’t mind. Of course if you do mind I could bury you and miss Raine in the woods, erase your families memories of ever having daughters and then ask someone else” I chuckled. It felt bitter. Why did it feel bitter. I checked my watch. 13:15:24. I still had time.

  Rose defted. The nature of the trap finally dawned on her. “What do you want to know” she whispered.

  “What is special about the people of this town as compared to outsiders. Are you wolf people like Leah here” I said and poked her corpse. “Don’t you touch her!” screamed Rose. She raised her hand a little, then apparently forgot what the gesture meant and lowered it again. “Wait, what’s my? I could have sworn I had a…” she gasped. “Had a what Miss Bck. Quickly now, I really don’t have all day.” I tutted. “A power! Okay? We’re a town of witches, everyone here has a power. Leah can… could turn into a wolf. My Dad messes with people’s memories. Your friend Adrian” (“Alice” I snapped) “can morph his body. The town was founded to hide out from non-witches, who were jealous of our powers and wanted to burn us alive for having them”

  I gave a nod and sighed. “Yeah, that tracks with what I know of history. Is that why you hate me? You think I’m here to burn you all alive?” I asked. She hesitated. I checked my watch. 13:16:58. “Its not just that. When a rumour got out that an outsider had somehow secretly moved into town, the elders said nobody could use their powers in the streets until we sorted the whole mess out. Do you know what its like to have to hide a part of who you are because some nebulous threat might be watching. Its suffocating.” she said.

  I let out a long, exasperated sigh. I checked my watch. 13:18:02. Times up. “Get up” I snapped. “What?” - “NOW!” I yelled. She did as she was told. I put a hand on Leah’s back. “WAKE UP” I snapped, inside and out. It didn’t take. I took a deep breath and focused my energy, like I did when I was calling for aid in the gymnasium. “WAKE! UP!”. I internally screamed. This time she sat up and gasped dramatically. I took some precautionary steps back. While theoretically I was pretty sure nobody’s ready for a fight after being dead for four and a half minutes, I doubt anyone writing schorly articles on the matter had ever met a (witch with the power to turn into a wolf?).

  Leah groaned. “Everything hurts” she snapped. “Little known side effect of being dead” I chuckled. She wasn’t dead anymore. That made it okay to joke about, right? Her head snapped around to me and I took an involuntary step back. But then she winced in pain from the action and I let out a sigh of relief. I turned to Rose, who was staring in a mixture of delight and horror. “If you don’t want me to kill you both permanently I’d suggest you leave me and Alice the hell alone” I said. Rose nodded. “Okay that’s fair” she said. “Also, you can let your cssmates know that the ‘outsider’ is a witch herself with a weakish mind control power and one of her parents is an abusive piece of shit she hasn’t seen in months and the other one is in a funny farm in upstate Deware. So you should be fine to use your powers.”

  Rose nodded with a cautious sort of gratitude. Then she helped Leah stand up and the two of them started making their way toward the nurse’s office.

  “You know” said Alice, who had seen the whole thing, enveloped in a cocoon of mundanity. “I think you might have scared them less if you just told them you were a witch hunter”