Chatoyant College Book 5: Parents' Weekend

Chapter 12: The Sight

"Did what work?" Dawn asked blankly. Had her aunt asked her to do something on campus? If she had, Dawn had forgotten about it, which made it unlikely.

"Oh, you know what I'm talking about," said her aunt. "Or you don't, if it didn't work."

Dawn shook her head. "I guess it didn't work, then, because I can't figure out what you're talking about."

Aunt Pru frowned. "That's..." She shook her head hard, sending her long, dangling earrings jingling. "That doesn't make sense." She started walking again, at a pace that Dawn felt some difficulty keeping up with. Soon the statue that had been Marlin was in sight. Aunt Pru pointed to it. "That statue. You didn't tell me the whole truth about it."

Dawn stopped, her stomach churning. Now she really wished she hadn't eaten so much food. She had thought earlier that she might have to tell her aunt about the faeries, but now that the opportunity had actually arisen, she wasn't sure she could. "I'm not sure you'd believe my story," she hedged.

Her aunt walked closer to the statue, forcing Dawn to keep up. "Fine," said Aunt Pru, crossing her arms and staring straight at the statue, not at Dawn. "I'll talk first. When you were a baby, the first time I got to babysit you—you were about six months old—I rubbed a magic ointment into your skin."

"A magic ointment?" Dawn felt like she was repeating everything, but she couldn't work out what her aunt was getting at. What did her as a baby have to do with this stone statue? "Did I have a rash or something?"

Aunt Pru shook her head. "No, you were perfectly healthy. Actually, I thought there would be enough ointment for all my nieces and nephews, but it turned out there was just enough in the jar for one. You got lucky. Or unlucky, as the case may be."

"You didn't make the ointment yourself, then?"

"No, no. It was given to me by... a friend. Someone at Chatoyant College."

Dawn stood silently for a moment. Her aunt didn't offer any more information. She tried to work through what she had in her head. An answer occurred to her, but she didn't want to say anything unless she was sure she was right. But she had to say something eventually, and so she asked in as soft a voice as possible, "This friend... was a faerie?"

Her aunt turned to her, a bright smile on her face. "It did work!"

"You gave me the Sight."

"Yes!" Pru's happy expression slowly faded. She could see that Dawn wasn't as excited about this as she was. Dawn wasn't sure why she was so excited. It might be useful to be able to see through faerie glamours, but it had also made her and her friends targets.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, dropped her hands, and smiled, trying to look grateful. It was true that the Sight wasn't yet more trouble than it was worth. If she hadn't had it, she would not have been able to save Annie. "Thank you," she said. "I think."

"It's not as much fun as I thought it would be, huh?" said her aunt, trying to sound cheerful but looking chagrined.

Dawn stared at her aunt in disbelief. Fun? When would the Sight ever be fun? "I, uh, never thought of it that way," she managed. "Mostly I've tried to use it to keep me and my friends out of trouble, though I think a lot of that trouble was caused by having it."

Her aunt's brows drew together in confusion. "Why would it cause you trouble?"

Dawn tried not to shout. Her aunt was being terrifically dense. If she'd known about the faeries, why hadn't she known how dangerous they were? "Do you think the faeries like having someone around who can see what they really are?" she asked, controlling her voice as best she could, though it rose to a squeak at the end of the question. She took a deep breath. "I think I've been really lucky, all things considered. If you'd at least told me about it, I could have tried to hide it a little better."

Aunt Pru frowned slightly. "I just thought you could sneak around in the woods and catch them, have some entertainment for slow afternoons. Why would they even know you can see them?"

Dawn took another deep breath. Obviously, her aunt didn't know that some of the faeries were extremely dangerous, and she probably didn't know that there were faeries teaching, either. "Well, when I met some of them, I didn't know what to expect, and when I was surprised, they knew what was going on."

"You met them?"

"Yes." Reluctantly, Dawn explained the entire saga with Annie's kidnapping—making sure to be clear that if she hadn't had the Sight, no one would have ever noticed that Annie was missing—and, briefly, which of her professors she'd noticed were faeries. When she had finished, her aunt wandered over to a tree and sat down, crossing her legs and closing her eyes.