“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 since.”
Vivik nodded.
“Then there are the Wights, who are like, bad ghosts or something. And the Ghouls — don't they eat dead stuff? Oh, and those Horror things, like the one on the roof. They are sort of like wild animals, right? Dangerous, but only if you bump into them and piss them off. Otherwise, it isn’t like with the Witches or the Weir. They aren’t organized. How’s that?”
“Not bad for someone who can barely speak English,” Vivik admitted. “I think Windsor will pass you if you make an effort.”
Alex hesitated for a moment, and Vivik waited indulgently for the question he could see coming. He gave the simplest answer that he could.
“Field study?”
Alex asked as if the words themselves were unfamiliar.
“Grigori, Chandi, and Hope just came back from theirs. The Academy sends you off to work in the field underneath someone who currently has the position you’re aspiring towards. Margot’s doing field study right now with the Audits department. They bumped Eerie’s up by a couple months so it would coincide with break.”
“Okay, but what is it that Eerie is studying, anyway? I can’t exactly see her fighting or doing science or anything…”
“If the Administration had its way, she’d be a doctor. Sort of.”
“What does ‘sort of’ mean?”
“Well, they would like her to be a doctor. That biochemical thing she does, you see. She won’t let them study her, but everybody has ideas about what it could do, over in Life Sciences.”
Alex sat up, rubbing his head and grimacing.
“That sounds a lot more like guinea pig than doctor.”
“Don’t get pissed off, it’s not what you are thinking. She has a gift for it. She’s not dumb, you know. Actually, she’s quite smart. You probably haven’t even noticed,” he said crossly. “Anyway, Li says that a couple years ago, a kid in her fitness class broke his leg, playing soccer. She did something that fixed it — no one really agrees what, and since then, everybody keeps thinking that she’d be a natural.”
“I’m having trouble with this idea…”
“You’re not the only one,” Vivik agreed, frowning. “Eerie hasn’t ever shown the slightest inclination to go along with it. And she doesn’t have to, since technically, she’s on loan to us, from the Fey.”
“What’s up with that, anyway? The Fey? Fairies, right?”
“I don’t really know,” Vivik admitted, sounding exasperated. “That’s actually bothered me for a long time. There’s almost no documentation. If you believe the unclassified section of the archive, then no one knows what they look like, where they come from, what they do, or why they left. However, that must be a lie. The Academy records say they’ve had four changeling students over the years. Therefore, they have to know. After all, they signed a treaty with someone, or something. But everything about the Fey seems to be a secret.”
“I’m getting used to that.”
“I’m not surprised. Anyway, Eerie doesn’t want to be a doctor, or anything like it. For a while she wanted to be a veterinarian, but though the Academy staff is large and multifaceted, nobody had a need for a half-sane veterinarian.”
“Makes you wonder why they saw the need for a half-sane doctor,” Alex pointed out.
“Since then she’s moved toward information technology,” Vivik continued on, pretending not to hear Alex. “Eerie is one of the best coders at the Academy right now. So my guess is that her ‘field study’ will actually be down in Central at Processing, where the servers are, probably sitting in some cubical writing code for the Etheric Network.”