Chatoyant College Book 9: Sundered

Chapter 46: Waiting

"Crap," said Corrie without thinking. She sat down quickly and started shoveling food toward her mouth. "Will you tell us about it? Or I guess we should wait until we find Professor Lal, so you don't have to tell it more than once." She spoke around her breakfast, wanting to get finished as quickly as possible. Based on Roe's expression, whatever the vision was, it was not a happy one.

Roe nodded. "I'm pretty exhausted, but I couldn't skip class after that, even though I'm sure Professor Lal would understand."

"Yeah, she told me and Edie we had a free pass last night." Corrie swallowed her food and grimaced at how poorly chewed it was. "But we weren't going to miss class."

Dawn nodded, apparently agreeing, but she was eating quickly too, and she was polite enough not to talk with her mouth full.

They hurried to the magic building, but they were only a few minutes early for class. They checked the classroom first and weren't surprised to find no one there. Professor Lal was in her office, writing something at her desk. She looked up at them with a slight frown. "You're all awake and even early for class? Has something happened?"

"I had a vision last night," said Roe. "I think it might be important."

"I have some work to finish before class. Is it urgent?"

Corrie looked at Roe as she hesitated. It was strange that Professor Lal was putting her off... but then, they were all tired. Finally, Roe shook her head. "I didn't see any specific markers of time, but it was night. So we have until tonight, at least."

"All right, then let's wait until after class—or during class, if it's relevant?"

"No. I was just going to tell you three, and maybe Edie later."

Professor Lal sighed. "I'm sorry, girls. Some things are just taking up more time than I anticipated. Class will start in a few minutes. Why don't you wait for me in the hallway and you can help me bring out the tarot cards?"

Corrie looked at the others and shrugged. "I guess that's okay."

"Sure," said Dawn. She yawned as they walked down the hallway a little to give Professor Lal space to do whatever work she had. "Maybe we can go to the food cart and get some coffee. I think I drank my breakfast coffee too fast for the caffeine to kick in."

"That's not how caffeine works," Corrie said with a grin, but they all went down to the cart and got cups of coffee. It was better than the stuff the dining hall dispensed—probably on purpose—and the cardboard cup was much more pleasantly warming to Corrie's hands than the small ceramic mug in the dining hall. She wasn't normally a big fan of coffee, and rarely had even a single cup, but today was a special day.

"How's your arm doing?" Roe asked Dawn as they went back to the hall to wait.

"It's fine," said Dawn, rolling it experimentally. "It only hurts a little. And the loss of Sight there isn't really noticeable, now that there aren't a bunch of faeries touching me... I mean, normally they wouldn't be touching my arm anyway, so it doesn't make a difference in my everyday life."

"But you still want it back, don't you?" Corrie asked.

Dawn sighed. "Yeah, I do, if only because it kind of freaks me out that it's possible. And supposedly the poison or whatever it is has been cut off, but what if it spreads now? When I first discovered it I would have been just as happy to get rid of it, but now I don't know how I could live without it, at least on this campus."

"I didn't even realize before that you had Sight in your skin," said Roe.

"I didn't either. I hadn't really thought about it." Dawn slurped at her coffee. "I knew it was in multiple senses, though, so if I'd wondered I would have figured it was in the sense of touch, too."

"So if a faerie looked human naturally but had a weird smell or something, would you notice?" Corrie asked.

"I hope I would. But I might attribute it to something else. And most faeries don't really look human anyway. If they did, they wouldn't need to use glamours."

They stopped talking when Professor Lal put her head out of her office and beckoned to them. When they reached her, she started stacking decks of tarot cards in their free hands—old, new, big, small, all different colors, all different styles of art. "Let's get these to the class and start passing them out," said Professor Lal, holding her own stack. "This should be a fairly relaxing class, at least—I won't be expecting much detailed knowledge of tarot on the exam."

"That's a relief," said Corrie with a laugh as they turned to carry them to the classroom.