McKenzie House was big and blue. It was obviously old but it was well maintained and cared for and was actually quite nice to look at, despite the nickname given to it and its neighbor, Boulder Hill. A wraparound porch spanned the house and a bench swing hung in the front. White-trimmed windows were positioned at equal intervals all around the house. The sheer size of the house was what really commanded attention; it dwarfed all the other houses surrounding it besides Boulder Hill, including Jared's, Dexter's, and Ginger's.

Shannon felt a little intimidated by it. She grew up in Clearwater; she'd seen the house many times, looming next to Boulder Hill on the west side of town. It was so big, it didn't fit in with the rest of the town. It seemed like a separate entity, part of a different world; Shannon had never dreamed she'd set foot in it.

She'd also never made the connection that this was where Ollie lived.

"That's your house?" Shannon asked, voice a shade of incredulous as they all approached the porch.

Ollie blushed. "Yeah."

Shannon slapped the heel of her hand to her forehead. "Of course. O'Brien. Your brother Alfred..."

She trailed off, realizing her mistake. Ollie smiled gently at her.

"He got hit by a car a few years ago."

Shannon nodded, not knowing what else to do. The seven of them entered the house in silence.

The first objective when they all got inside was to clean everyone up. Thankfully, the thick winter coats and clothes they all had on had protected them from a lot of bodily harm, but their faces were another story. Caleb and Allison were the worst. Caleb's split lip was an ugly shade of purple, and a thin line of blood trickled from a cruel looking cut on his cheek where the tree branch had gotten him. His left eye was puffy and swelling, the tell-tale signs that another shiner was in the works. There were three small scrapes on his forehead and a gash at the bottom of his chin. There was blood drying on his coat, but it was anyone's guess if it was his own. Allison had a cut on the bridge of her nose—her glasses had probably nicked her at some point—and all along her cheeks and forehead were nasty scratches where fingernails had scraped away flesh. The worst of them were still bleeding.

The others had gotten off with lighter injuries. Ginger had three claw marks running down the side of her face. Her bottom lip was swollen. Dexter's nose was bleeding, and there was a nick under his left eye. The knuckles of his right hand were crimson. Jared had a number of cuts on his face and one long but shallow one on his neck. Ollie had mere scratches on both cheeks. Shannon had only one bleeding cut on the side of her nose, but her right cheekbone throbbed, and she was sure she was going to have a bruise. That was going to raise hell with her parents.

Ollie and Shannon raided the rooms, gathering anything they thought could help them. Shannon stuck close to Ollie's side, shocked by how many different rooms there were. They found a pile of bandages in the bathroom and a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet. Ollie dragged a handful of old rags out of the drawers in the kitchen and pulled a bag of frozen peas out of the refrigerator. Shannon discovered a package of cotton balls in a cabinet in the living room, of all places. Ollie hunted through the bedrooms, finding dry clothes for everyone to change into. Most of it belonged to her siblings; Ollie was too small for her clothes to fit anybody but Ginger.

"Here," Ollie said, coming back into the living room and tossing Caleb the frozen peas. He groaned and slapped them on his sore eye dramatically, leaning his head back on the chair he occupied. Ollie moved on, giving one of the rags to Dexter for his nosebleed. She headed to claim a chair for herself. As soon as she sat down a small ginger cat trotted into the room as if called and curled up in her lap.

Shannon moved carefully from person to person, wetting cotton balls with rubbing alcohol and working on each one's scrapes and cuts as others went to change into dry clothing. She worked with precision, thoroughly disinfecting each injury as best she could. Caleb grinned weakly at her as she came to him, one eye obscured by the bag of peas.

"Training to be a nurse?" he asked, wincing as the disinfectant hit his skin.

Shannon shrugged and smiled lightly. "I've got two younger brothers. I learned to do stuff like this pretty fast."

Caleb chuckled through his next painful cringe. Shannon had gotten to the deep gash on his cheek. It had stopped bleeding, and she cleaned the remnants of the blood off of him, but the cut was ugly. Shannon realized with a start that if Caleb hadn't moved, the branch might have gotten his eye.

Dean broke the rules, all right.

One bad eye was enough.

Shannon moved on, coming to Jared next, but he waved her off. She regarded him with surprised eyes.

"Jared, we should really look at those cuts," she said, as coaxingly as she could manage. "They could get infected."

"Aw, I'll be okay." Jared's voice was not stubborn or petulant. It was self-assured, confident. Like he knew.

"Are you sure?" Shannon asked doubtfully. She couldn't force him to let her tend to his wounds, but a couple of the cuts looked pretty mean. She eyed them warily, like she was afraid they would move.

"Uh-huh," Jared said, smiling toothily. "No sweat."

Reluctantly, Shannon moved on, over to Ginger next. She wasn't too bad, though Stephanie Procter had certainly left her mark.

Eventually, Shannon worked her way through the whole group. She used the bandages she and Ollie had found to bandage Dexter's hand. Some of his cuts were pretty nasty, but Shannon couldn't be too surprised. She could tell someone like Vince Masterson could do a lot of damage just by looking at him.

"He really got you good," she said, dabbing one of his cuts. "He looks like a giant."

"It's because he failed third grade," Jared chimed in. "Twice.

Shannon finished with Allison, who took the longest because she had the most open cuts and scrapes. Afterwards, Allison took a look at the cut Shannon had on the side of her nose. Finally, Shannon disappeared to the bathroom, Ollie's older sister Emilia's clothes in her hands. When she returned the other six were all perched around the room on various chairs and the sofa, looking so grave Shannon thought she'd stepped into the reading of a will.

"Sit down, Shannon," Allison said, nodding at an empty seat. The whole thing seemed hopelessly overdramatic, but Shannon sat down obediently.

"Yes?" she asked expectantly.

"If you want to know what happened to that tree branch in the fight, we'll tell you," Allison said. "But you have to promise not to say a word to anyone else."

Shannon blinked. Hesitantly, she said, "Okay."

"I mean it," Allison continued. Her face was stern. "You can't tell anyone. You can't talk about it at all. Swear to it."

"Okay," Shannon repeated.

"Even if your mother dropped over dead because of it. Swear to it."

"I swear." Shannon threw her hands up, but if it was in defense or exasperation she could not say.

"Okay, Allison, I think you can calm down now," Caleb said. The bag of peas in his hand was beginning to sweat.

Allison watched her guardedly for a beat or two more before saying, "Okay. I trust you, I guess."

Not exactly complimentary, but Shannon would take it.

"All right, so, first of all—" Allison began.

"Wait, wait," Ollie said suddenly. She scampered out of the room without explanation, leaving the cat in the chair looking mildly annoyed at the disturbance, and began banging around in the kitchen. The remaining six looked that way in confusion, rather uncertain as to whether she would return. She did after a short delay, toting a small bowl with her. There was a pile of carrot sticks inside. She took one out and began nibbling on it nervously. "Go on."

Allison frowned at her.

"It makes her feel better, I think," Jared said as an explanation. He shrugged and smiled crookedly. "Go on."

Allison shook her head—as if shaking all the thoughts out of it and starting afresh—and looked back at Shannon, who waited somewhat impatiently. Her eyes kept drifting like she was too uncomfortable to meet Shannon's eyes for too long. Shannon fidgeted restlessly.

"Oh, God, where do I begin?" Allison sighed finally, smoothing a hand over her forehead, careful of the cuts. She looked around at the other five a bit helplessly, imploring them silently.

"Shannon, have you ever noticed anything...strange about Briargate?" Ollie asked. She didn't lift her eyes from her bowl of carrot sticks.

"Strange?" Shannon asked, nearly laughing. "That whole school is strange."

Ollie nodded as if in agreement. She took a bite out of a carrot, chewed, and swallowed. With measured emotion, she said, "I mean...specifically. Maybe—have you ever explored the halls and corridors?"

Shannon wished Ollie would look at her. She thought she understood, but she wanted to see Ollie's eyes. She thought perhaps she could gauge it better then. Ollie didn't indulge her. The carrot sticks had her full attention. She petted the cat in her lap gently.

"Yes," Shannon said slowly, feeling other eyes on her. She looked only at Ollie. "Sometimes...the space doesn't seem right. Like there are rooms that shouldn't be there. There isn't enough room for them."

Ollie nodded again. She nibbled on a carrot stick. When she finally looked up, her big green eyes seemed wet, like she might burst into tears. Then again, Shannon had noticed that was often how Ollie looked. Perhaps that was just her appearance. She looked remarkably young with her signature pigtails and the dry sweater and overalls she'd changed into.

"Seems like it's bigger on the inside in some places, right?" she asked, pulling idly on a pigtail.

"Yeah, just like that," Shannon confirmed.

Ollie smiled grimly. Her wet green eyes swished around the room. "That's because it is bigger on the inside."

Shannon blinked. Stupidly, she stared at Ollie for an unknown amount of time. She didn't know what to do, what to say. She recalled the disbelief she'd felt months earlier, when Allison had so certainly proclaimed to her that a monster was loose in Clearwater. But even that was different, because she'd seen something with her own eyes beforehand. A Follower in Dyer's Park. The ever-persistent rationality in her told her monsters couldn't exist, but her eyes told her otherwise. This was an entirely different ballgame. There had been times Briargate had disoriented her, appeared to be more than it could possibly be, but she'd never seen anything that could strictly classify as proof. All she had were feelings.

This was another situation that Adult Shannon Malone would not have been able to handle without prior experience. Shannon was born too logical. She was not like the Ollie O'Briens and the Jared Wilkinses, who are inclined to believe that anything may be possible no matter what age they are. She was wired more like the Allison Groveses and Dexter Bradburys, who only believed because that was how they'd been raised. This only became more pronounced as Shannon got older. Had this been sprung on her later in life, she might not have been able to take it. Child Shannon Malone had a chance.

As such, Shannon only said, "Oh?"

"Yeah," Ollie said. "It's called concealment."

Shannon frowned. "What is?"

"The thing that's done to the school," Allison cut in. Ollie seemed grateful to have a reprieve. Allison swept her hand across the air in a vague gesture. "What they do that makes it seem bigger on the inside is called concealment. Ollie understands it better than I do, but basically concealment is making something disappear while it's still exactly where it is."

Shannon made a very intellectually impressive comment, sounding a lot like "uh."

"It's magic," Allison said. "Briargate is a magic school. Sort of. It's a little bit complicated."

Shannon thought that might be the understatement of the century. She looked carefully from face to face, seeking any sign that they were playing a joke on her. She was met with only grim, sober faces. She tried to phrase an adequate response.

"That...no. You're joking, aren't you?" The denial stuck around stubbornly, like a burr caught in her clothes. Her mind was working in gasps, stopping and starting as she tried to collect all of her thoughts and feelings.

And she hadn't seen anything yet.

"No," Allison said, with firmness that relayed sincerity. "Have you ever read what it says on the front of the school, above the front doors?"

Shannon had read it nearly every day as she passed in the morning. Easily, she recited, "Briargate School for the Gifted, 1857."

Allison nodded. She repeated, "Briargate School for the Gifted." There was a strange look on her face. "It doesn't mean intelligence."

Shannon stared at her uncomprehendingly. In the back of her mind, she wondered if that was it. People were selected to go to Briargate if they were constantly saying things that didn't make sense. If she wasn't so confused and the atmosphere wasn't so serious, she would've laughed.

"Okay...?" she said, drawing out both syllables.

Allison was no longer looking at her. She instead looked around at the others in the room, like she was hoping they would step in. None looked at her.

"Does anyone want to volunteer?" Allison said finally. That got Caleb's gaze to hers, but his face was half doubtful and half regretful. He seemed to be able to relay full sentences with just that look, because Allison nodded and said with a gentle kind of defeat, "Yeah, I thought so."

"Huh?" Shannon said.

"Shannon, just...try not to lose it, okay?" Allison said, looking sympathetic and a touch concerned. Before Shannon had a chance to ask what she meant, Allison closed her eyes.

Nothing happened for a moment. Allison breathed deeply, eyelids crushed together in a tight seal. There was a tiny frown pasted on her expression that looked involuntary. Shannon got as far as opening her mouth to ask what she was doing, and then Allison's face relaxed; she slumped against the chair she occupied like she'd suddenly fallen asleep.

"Allison?" Shannon asked.

"Yeah?"

The voice came not from the body in front of her, but from somewhere to the side of her. Shannon turned her head; impossibly, Allison stood on the other side of the room. Shannon looked back to the chair, and Allison remained there as well, slouched and unmoving.

There were two Allison Groveses in the McKenzie House living room.

For a second and a half, Shannon debated screaming. She did not realize it, of course, but her mind was rebelling against her eyes. Horror was the first outlet for everything she was taking in. At the tick of the second and a half, the horror morphed into amazement. That rationality—like a thorn in her side—tried to insist this was some kind of elaborate magic trick. Instead of screaming, perhaps she should clap. The amazement quickly melted away, too, lasting only slightly longer than the horror, and it made room for what had been beneath the surface all along. The resignation of belief.

What she saw before her was real, factual. No trick or illusion. No dream or hallucination. And it was not because she saw it that she knew. Belief and disbelief do not work that easily. There is no strict dichotomy of what a human mind will except as true and what it will not. As such, things that are seen are not always believed; Shannon would learn that lesson again and again. But this, this she believed. The evidence had been stacking up since August, since before August, since before Shannon had even been aware.

"How...how did you...?" Shannon tried to spit out. She looked between the two Allisons with almost dizzying rapidity. The Allison on the chair still did not move. If not for the gentle rise and fall of her chest, Shannon would've thought she was dead. An interesting idea with another Allison alive and well across the room.

"That's what the gifted means," the Allison on the far side of the room said.

"It means you can all make another one of yourself?" Shannon asked doubtfully, taking her eyes off the Allisons for the first time and looking at the others, warily wondering if more of them would come popping up around the room.

"No," the same Allison said. She even smiled, offering the muscle movement as a reassurance. Shannon barely noticed. Calmly, Allison continued, "This is just what I can do."

A memory flashed in Shannon's mind, not quite developed. It disappeared before she could grab hold.

"The students at Briargate each have a—a sort of power, I guess, like the superheroes in the comics," the second Allison explained. The first Allison was still out like a light. "The teachers call them gifts, but I guess you can call them whatever you want to. Some are more common than others—some are more useful than others—but everyone there has one. Or, I guess, almost everyone. There are some normal kids there, usually siblings of other students or children of parents who do have a gift. And then there's you."

The second Allison beheld Shannon with the shrewd eyes of evaluation. Shannon squirmed, mind reeling. Certain buzzwords of the conversation drilled holes in her skull: power...superheroes...gifts...

"You don't have a gift, do you, Shannon?" the second Allison said.

Shannon shook her head. "No. No, I-I don't think so."

"No, I didn't think so either," the second Allison mused. "You don't have a sibling or parent or anyone who does either."

She did not ask. She knew.

"Not that I know of," Shannon said anyway. She thought of her mother and father, Una and Liam, who hadn't even been to Briargate before Shannon started school there. Her siblings, Aiden and Connor too young still to attend, and Faye, completely normal as far as Shannon knew.

"Right." The second Allison nodded. "Well, this is my gift. It's called astral projection. I'm really over there" –she pointed to the motionless first Allison— "but I've projected myself over here. Or something like that; I've always been able to do it but I've never really understood the explanation behind it. But I'm not really here. See?"

She put her hand to the wall; it passed right through like a ghost. Shannon's eyes nearly fell out of their sockets.

"This is what I can do," the second Allison said. The memory bloomed in Shannon's mind: a conversation she'd had with Allison at the beginning of the school year.

"That's why you asked what I can do," Shannon said. "At the beginning of the year, you asked me that."

"I remember. I thought you were just playing stupid because we're not supposed to talk about it."

"Why aren't you supposed to talk about it?" Inexplicably, this was what Shannon was the most fixated on. Perhaps because it was the most accessible, the most easily understood. Everything else was, for the time being, beyond her, but this she could grasp. Whatever the reason, she continued, "Who says you aren't supposed to talk about it?"

"The—" The second Allison stopped, shaking her head. "I can't do this anymore, my head's starting to go fuzzy."

Without fanfare or any kind of warning, the second Allison disappeared and the first Allison jolted upright in her seat. She looked around in confusion, then rubbed at her eyes. She gave every illusion of having just woken up from a nap.

"See, that's the problem," she said, and her voice was rough too, adding to the overall effect. "I can't do it for too long. Makes me feel sick."

She sat quietly for another moment, just rubbing her eyes, and then she looked at Shannon as if she were very far away.

"What did you ask?"

"Why are you not supposed to talk about this?" Shannon looked at the others too, trying to see their thoughts.

"The adults say so," Allison said, with the finality only a child could employ. The adults were ultimate power; they had the final say.

"Like the teachers?" Shannon asked.

"Sort of," Allison said noncommittally. Shannon furrowed her brow, inquiring her question without saying a word.

"Look, Shannon," Caleb said heavily, "there's an—organization, I guess. It's called the Administration. They're in charge of all the supernatural stuff in the state. The schools and businesses, stuff like that."

"Schools?" Shannon repeated, drawing out the final 's.' "You mean there are more magic schools?"

"Yeah," Caleb said. "There are schools all over the country—all over the world, even. There's a couple in Wisconsin. Brackenfield in Milwaukee is the big one."

The name struck a chord somewhere in Shannon's mind. Allison had asked if she'd gone to school there before Briargate.

"The Administration is in charge of all of them," Caleb said.

The Administration—located in Madison, Wisconsin and of which Howard Nesbitt was President—ran as a sort of supernatural government. There was one in each state, usually located in the capital or the biggest city. Indeed, the Administration was in charge of supernatural schools and businesses, as well as prisons and correctional facilities. The biggest job the Administration had, however—and, ironically, the least talked about of them all—was often damage control. The Administration stood first and foremost as a failsafe, a staff of people who made sure gifted persons stayed undiscovered and, in times past, monsters—for lack of a better term—were not allowed to bring harm to anyone.

In 1923, the year Ollie O'Brien's father graduated from school, the Administration ordered Briargate's doors closed. Two students had been found murdered within the school's walls. The ghastly act stood as the Administration's shining achievement; not a single member of Clearwater's normal population—or any other town's population, for that matter—ever found out. The only people who knew were the staff members of the Administration, the students and staff of Briargate, and family members of the deceased. Of course, the stories were passed on to the next generation of students, the next batch of teachers, the next slew of workers at the Administration, but the normal police never found out. The story did not make the front page of the normal newspapers. The Administration handled the matter itself, kept it quiet. There was only problem: the killer was never found.

The murder of two Briargate students changed the way the Wisconsin Administration did things. It changed the way other state's Administration's did things. It changed the way entire countries' Administrations did things. When Briargate reopened fourteen years later, after much hard-bargaining done by one Patience Lea and as the light at the end of the tunnel of the Depression was finally coming into view, the rules had changed drastically. The most popular theory at the Administration—in Wisconsin and Administrations everywhere—as to what had happened to the two students was this: they had gotten loose with who they told what to, had let slip to the wrong normal person that they were gifted, and that person had killed them for fear of them. It was not a theory without holes, but it was the one that stuck the best. The only other idea that held near as much traction was publicly rejected but privately kindled: the students had been killed by a monster. Said to be impossible. Monsters didn't exist anymore. They'd been killed in the War of 1886, the world war no one knew about.

And yet, some still wondered.

Whichever theory a person believed, it was agreed that things had to change to protect the students. Students were no longer allowed to talk about their gifts, not even to each other. They were not allowed to use them without supervision. Supernatural classes were no longer taught, supernatural history no longer discussed. Supernatural schools all over the world became almost glorified private schools. At Briargate, only one semblance of the past remained. For one hour every Tuesday and Thursday, gifted students met with an assigned professor to learn to better control their gift. For kids school age, that was all there was.

Over three decades after all this happened, the students at Briargate only knew the bare minimum of the story. They knew what they could do, they knew what they could not. Some knew more than others, depending on their background, but none knew very much. There were a few teachers who gave quiet rebellions—Miss Terwilliger, for instance, with her secret backroom of books, or Professor Diefenbaker, who had his own peculiar way of doing things—but everyone knew the rules. The rules that had been broken twice that day in January, 1956, first by Dean Procter and then by Allison Groves. And the day wasn't over yet.

This bare minimum of the story was provided in uneven spurts to Shannon Malone by all six of the others with her. Shannon listened with rapt attention, that stubborn streak of rationality in her still screaming that this was some elaborate joke being played on her. It wasn't as loud as it normally was, and she was able to ignore it. She couldn't see any reasonable way it could be a joke anyway.

"That's why I never told you anything," Allison said at last. "When I figured out you were normal, I mean. If anyone at the school found out we were talking about this, we'd be in big trouble."

"But you all have a gift?" Shannon asked, looking curiously at each of them in turn.

"All except Ollie here," Jared said, pointing a thumb in the redhead's direction. "Her siblings and her parents do, but she's normal."

Ollie nodded solemnly, scratching the ginger cat behind the ears.

"But the rest of you...?" Shannon didn't have to finish; they were all already nodding their heads. She glanced around nervously before asking, "What can you do?"

"You're not supposed to ask that," Allison said.

"You asked me," Shannon countered. "Besides, you just cloned yourself in front of everybody. It's a bit late for that."

"She has a point," Jared said. Allison wrinkled her nose.

"So...can I ask?" Shannon said, more serious now. The other six—or really five, without Allison—all looked at each other, trying to gauge each other's thoughts on the matter. Ollie bit into another carrot stick. Finally, Caleb nodded.

"Yeah, I guess so," Caleb said. "We'd all be in trouble already if anyone found out what we were talking about."

Their gazes were passed from face to face again, obviously hoping someone would take the plunge. After a moment, Dexter sighed and, without saying a word, closed his eyes in concentration, just as Allison had done moments before. Shannon watched him with bated breath, and then out of nowhere he was gone. She looked around and found him on the far side of the room, standing just about where the second Allison—the "projection"—had been. He waved at her, smiling slightly, and then disappeared again, reappearing right back in his original spot.

"Teleportation," he said. "That's what I can do. Can't go very far yet, though. Maybe I'll get better at it."

"You know you'll get better at it," Jared said. They sat next to each other on the sofa and Jared lightly nudged Dexter in the ribs with his elbow. "That's what's supposed to happen as you get older. You get more powerful."

Dexter nodded but he didn't look particularly enthused. He looked at Caleb then and said, "You're up, Frosty."

Caleb grimaced. Shannon half-expected him to close his eyes—and probably pop up somewhere across the room, as seemed to be the going theme—but instead he looked directly at her and held his hand up, palm facing the ceiling. Shannon could've sworn the temperature of the room changed ever so slightly, becoming just the tiniest bit colder. Slowly, Caleb's fingers started turning white.

"What—?" Shannon began. She didn't get to finish. She didn't know what she was going to say anyway.

Just as slowly and right in front of her eyes, tiny snowflakes began to swirl around above Caleb's upturned palm. She could see now what had turned Caleb's fingers so pale: ice. Crystals of ice twisted along his hand. The snowflakes danced in the air, a contained flurry of white. It was almost elegant. Caleb grinned as Shannon watched, transfixed, and then the snow and the ice all disappeared in a split second.

"That's amazing," Shannon said, a smile alighting on her face. "I don't know what you'd use it for, though."

Caleb shrugged. "Comes in handy sometimes. I never have to shovel in the winter, I can just move the snow with my hands. And I can throw snowballs at Jared whenever I want."

"Yeah, listen, you gotta stop doing that," Jared said. "Every time I go home with a soaking wet tee shirt my mother gets one step closer to death."

Caleb laughed. Ollie smiled around a carrot stick. Dexter shook his head, his face amused but also understanding.

Shannon cocked her head to the side. "I thought you weren't supposed to use your gifts without supervision."

Caleb put a finger to his lips, hiding a smile. "It's okay as long as no one finds out."

"Which is why you never do it at school," Allison said. "Someone would rat you out before you could take your next breath."

As if synchronized, Caleb, Jared, Dexter, Ginger, and Ollie nodded their agreement. Shannon smiled and laughed lightly. She could picture perfectly someone like Stephanie Procter or Pearl Horne waiting, fingers crossed, for someone to slip up.

"Guess it's your turn, Ginger," Caleb said.

Ginger gave a strange intake of breath that might have been a gasp or might have been a hiccup. Stutteringly, she shook her head and said, "Oh, I can't—I mean I really shouldn't—something might happen—"

"Ginger beats people up," Jared said, cutting through Ginger's incoherent sentences and smiling innocently at her.

"I do not!" Ginger said. Her ears were turning red, just barely noticeable above the darkness of her skin. She looked at Shannon and whispered, "I don't."

Shannon looked around, smiling bemusedly, waiting for someone to shed light on the matter. Caleb, Allison, Jared, Dexter, and Ollie were tossing strangely private looks between each other, sharing punch-lines to some great joke Shannon hadn't had the pleasure of hearing yet. Ginger's ears burned and she avoided eye contact with each one of them.

"Ginger's really strong and really coordinated," Dexter said finally. "It's really good for fighting. So the teachers say anyway. I've never seen her use it."

"We could've used some of your gift today," Allison said under her breath, absentmindedly running a finger over the cut on the bridge of her nose.

"Oh, no," Ginger said, still looking embarrassed but now a little horrified as well. "Stephanie hates me enough already. I don't need to give her any more reasons."

Allison nodded in conceit, a small frown displaying sympathy twisting her lips.

"So it's just you then, Jared," Shannon said, looking at him expectantly.

Jared smiled at her but said nothing. He sat calmly on the sofa, unmoving, giving no indication he was going to do anything. Shannon waited, wondering what he was up to, wondering if this was some kind of game he was playing. A few seconds passed in a silence that was stretching towards uncomfortable, and then, like a ton of bricks, it hit her.

"Your cuts are gone!" she exclaimed.

It was true; sometime, without Shannon even noticing, every cut and scratch on Jared's face had healed. No trace of the fight remained on his skin. For all Shannon could see, he might not have even been there.

"Yeah," he said, shrugging like it was no big deal. "I can heal myself. Nothing too big, though. I guess it's pretty nice."

"You guess it's pretty nice?" Dexter repeated. He rolled his eyes. "You're practically indestructible and that's just pretty nice."

"I'm not anywhere near indestructible," Jared said.

"You're still doing better than the rest of us," Caleb said, not unkindly. He still had the bag of peas to his eye. Jared shrugged sheepishly and looked away, examining the tops of his sneakers.

Shannon felt a little awestruck, sitting in the middle of the McKenzie House living room watching her friends do magic, or something like it. Her mind was casing every person she'd met at Briargate, wondering what they could do, what their gift was. It was a peculiar sensation, in honesty; she almost felt dizzy.

"So then Dean..." Shannon said, trying and failing not to look at the cut splitting Caleb's cheek.

"He did that, the son of a bitch," Allison said, nodding at Caleb. "The tree branch. Dean has telekinesis. He can move things with his mind. Pretty much the most common gift there is. He was probably mad because Caleb was kicking his ass."

Caleb shook his head dismissively, not saying anything one way or another.

"Worst part of it is if we told anyone what he did, he'd probably come back for seconds," Dexter said darkly. Something told Shannon that that was more than an educated guess.

"They probably ran right back to the school to tell everyone we hurt their poor, pretty faces," Allison said bitterly.

Caleb shook his head. "No. Too ashamed." There was the ghost of a smile painting his face; he looked satisfied.

There was something still bothering Shannon, a question she still had to ask. It had been nagging at her even before she'd met any of the people in the room, having taken root way back when David Sheffield first invited her to Briargate. It was so much louder now, impossible to ignore. She thought again of her parents, her sister and brothers, all so completely normal. Just like herself.

"If everyone at Briargate either has a gift or is related to someone who does," she said, "why did I get invited there?"

"I don't know, really," Allison said. She was looking at Shannon like she was some sort of unknown deep sea creature. Shannon hadn't been expecting much more of an answer, but it was still disappointing. Then Caleb cleared his throat.

"I have an idea, actually," he said casually. "I think maybe someone found out you were marked and wanted to keep an eye on you."

"You're marked?" Ollie gasped. The carrot stick she was holding split in half as she looked at Shannon, her big green eyes so wide and alarmed they seemed to take up half of the girl's pale face.

"Was," Caleb said hastily. "She was marked. It went away."

"Went away?" Ollie frowned.

"I'm sorry, what does that mean?" Ginger asked. "That she was marked."

Shannon looked uncertainly at Caleb and Allison. Truthfully, she didn't know what to say. She didn't know if she wanted to say anything. Slowly, Caleb began to explain.

Ginger, Jared, and Dexter's faces didn't show much emotion as Caleb explained what a Follower was and how it acted. Ollie gnawed on a carrot like her life depended on it, but it was obvious she already knew everything that Caleb said. Shannon wondered if she read the same books that Charlie Mouser did.

Shannon picked up when Caleb was done with the technical stuff, describing her encounter in Dyer's Park. She'd grown tired of the story, tired of recounting it. Her stomach twisted into knots every time she thought about what it meant.

"But this mark went away?" Ginger asked when Shannon had finished. Shannon nodded solemnly, holding up her right palm as proof.

"Well that's good, isn't it?" Jared said. "It means the Follower's not trying to kill you anymore, right?"

"I guess so," Shannon said, not certain by any means.

"Shannon," Ollie said, putting the carrot sticks down for the first time since she'd gone to get them, "when did the mark disappear?"

Shannon looked at the ceiling. "September, maybe? I think it might have been right before or after school started. I can't remember exactly."

"Kenfield," Ollie said, nodding as if her suspicions had been confirmed.

"What?" Shannon asked.

"Do you remember Dr. Kenfield being at the beginning of the year banquet?" Ollie said, tossing the question out to the entire group. "Allison, you asked me why he was there. I didn't know then but...well, Dr. Kenfield works a lot with...dead things. Animals and stuff—things that died mysteriously, a lot of the time. Sometimes people cast spells on animals, just for the fun of it, and it goes wrong." She looked at the ground. "Sometimes on people too." She picked up a carrot stick and took a tiny bite. "He works on preventing things like that. I bet he figured out how to...'unmark' you, I guess."

It took a moment for the group to digest the idea.

"You might be right," Allison said at last. She still had that deep sea creature look on her face as she looked at Shannon.

"But then why didn't they just have him do...whatever it was he did?" Shannon asked. "Why did they invite me to Briargate?"

"Keep you safer, maybe," Allison said.

Shannon nodded slowly. Barely aware she was doing it, she traced a finger over her palm where the black mark used to be. She thought she could almost feel it, still lurking somewhere beneath the skin.

"I don't like the idea of a Follower being out there on top of everything," Dexter said, glancing at a window. "We already think there might be vampires in Clearwater."

"You too?" Caleb asked, not seeming very surprised. Shannon didn't miss Allison frowning unhappily.

"Seems likely," Dexter said. "All the animals that keep dying—probably for blood. And don't forget that Ockham's Guide to Vampires and Creatures of the Night was placed underneath the cow head in the West Wing lounge. Seems almost like a sign."

"I don't know," Allison said doubtfully.

"Well there's gotta be something doing all of this," Jared said. He frowned thoughtfully. "If there are vampires out there, do you think one of them marked Shannon?"

Six pairs of eyes were suddenly upon her, considering. Allison's deep sea creature look had transported itself onto every face.

"I don't know," Caleb said. "Why have her marked? Why not just...you know, kill her and drink her blood?"

"Thanks," Shannon said, grimacing.

"Sorry, Shannon, but it's true. Why would a vampire want to send something else to kill someone? And why you specifically?"

"That's true," Ginger agreed.

"Do you think someone marked Sarah Benadine?" Ollie asked suddenly. She was gazing out a window. It had started to snow.

"Maybe," Allison said slowly. "Could be."

Shannon saw a picture in her head—one she'd imagined more times than she could count—of a pretty blonde high school student lying in a pool of blood, a library in chaos all around her, reflected in her unseeing eyes.

In the contemplative silence, the front door opened. A sweet-faced girl with long, wavy, dark hair stepped into the living room. Her eyes were blue, but they were wide and attention grabbing, just like Ollie's.

"Hello," she said, surprised at seeing so many people.

"Hi, Eve," Ollie said. Ginger, Jared, and Dexter greeted her similarly. Ollie looked to the other three, saying, "Shannon, Allison, Caleb, this is my older sister, Evelyn."

They each gave their own greeting.

"Goodness, what happened to all of you?" Eve cried as she looked closer at them. "You all look like you got hit by a truck."

"Rough morning," Jared said.

"Right," Eve said. She walked over to Ollie and ran a thumb over one of her scratches. Something in her eyes seemed to say she knew exactly what had happened. She squeezed Ollie's shoulder, patted the cat, and took one of Ollie's last carrot sticks.

"I'll just be upstairs," she said to no one in particular. "Don't get into too much trouble."

"I can't make any promises," Ollie deadpanned. Eve laughed and headed for the stairs, disappearing up them without another word.

No more vampire, Follower, or monster talk of any kind took place that day after that. Evelyn O'Brien had broken the spell. It was doubtful the subjects went very far from any of their minds, however.

A pretty blonde high school student, trapped in cloud of death.

***I call this "Info Dump: The Chapter". Ugh, I'm so sorry, this goes on forever. I have no control. Anyways, thanks to everyone who voted and commented :)***