Every step I took was carefully measured out and controlled. But just because you’re being careful with something doesn’t mean you’re actually doing it well, and I kept catching myself speeding up or walking in weird ways, then having to stop and force myself to slow down, so in the end it probably looked more unnatural than if I’d just run like I wanted to.

It wasn’t just the nerves, although a lot of it was the nerves. I may have been full of determination and pluck, but I was still shaking all over, and I could feel every heartbeat right from the top of my head to my toes. It was also the thing inside my jacket, which I was being really really extra careful to not think about at all so that I didn’t freak out and start screaming. I had a lot to distract me right now, but those distractions didn’t exactly make me feel any better, and every time I felt a hair on the back of my neck brush my jacket’s collar, I almost jumped out of my skin.

There were plenty of people around, at least, so that was one thing that I could sort of be grateful for. Not as many as there would be during the middle of the day, but morning classes were starting around now and the coffee shops were opening up, so I was always in view of a couple dozen people. Enough that it almost certainly wouldn’t attack me right here and now, I’d been told, which was almost very reassuring. Although I nearly wished that it would, in a weird way? At least then this would be over and done with sooner.

All of UoS was laid out messily, what you’d probably call ‘organic’ if you were trying to write a brochure about it, which basically meant that every building was thrown down someplace they had room, all different styles and ages and angles. Luckily there was a mostly straightforward and open path over to T Block, as well as a bunch of different ways you could circle around to it. It felt like forever, but it was really only five minutes-ish before I reached the doors and swiped them open with my student ID.

T Block was more student housing, this time all the smaller, cheaper rooms where you usually had to share, so there were a lot more people milling around here than there had been when I’d gone to Luke’s. Luring the monster out towards a building full of people was the exact opposite of the original plan, but we’d had to improvise quickly, and there was one good thing about T Block: it was where Gavin and Krystal lived, and also where Charity lived.

Maybe that was two good things. Depends on how you count it.

I had enough nervous energy to take the stairs two at a time, at least for the one flight I had to climb. I managed to avoid almost running into someone this time, though I did have to weave around a bit to find a gap, since there were two groups of people going down the stairs at the same time and not leaving much space in between each other. Then it was just a right turn and a little bit further down the corridor to get to Gavin and Krystal - not that I was actually going to see them, but we’d figured the monster probably watched our group for a while since it had to learn peoples’ voices, so it couldn’t hurt to visit the other non-magic people in the group to make it feel safe. Which was a super duper incredibly weird thing to be thinking.

Before I actually got there, I heard the sound of the fire alarm going off. Ow. Even though I’d been ready for it, it still hurt my ears. I was sure it wasn’t meant to be quite that loud, or quite that high-pitched. At least it sure got peoples’ attention. Folks started complaining, just barely loud enough that I could hear them even with the ringing going on, and slowly filing out of rooms and down the stairs. Through a few open doors, I even saw a few who’d just put headphones on and stayed in their rooms.

Then I saw what I’d actually been looking for. A tiny little sparkle of lights on a wall, so tiny you might think you’d just rubbed your eyes too hard and got spots in them, but if you knew what to look for you could make out the shape of an arrow. I followed it back the way I came, and past the stairs down, which were now a lot more full of sleepy-looking people than they were before.

There were more turns, including a couple where I doubled back on myself, and three more flights of stairs. I still had enough of those nerves to get up the stairs without feeling too winded afterwards, but I definitely wasn’t taking them two at a time by the end. Finally I reached a big, open space with a few tables scattered around it, comfy seats by those tables, big cushy bean bags in the corners (though one had holes in it) and lots of power points on the walls. As you’d expect, nobody was hanging out in the hangout space right now, with that bell ringringringringringing in everybody’s ears. The sparkles directed me to the space by one of the windows, so I stood there, looked out the window, and waited.

And waited.

I felt something touch the inside of my upper arm, and bit my tongue so I didn’t cry out, though after a moment I told myself it was just my imagination. That might even have been true, for all I knew.

And waited.

It was probably only a minute all up, but it felt like forever.

“Hey Morgan, there you are!”

Gavin’s voice, deep and cheery, loud enough to be heard over the alarm. It was definitely smart enough to pick the right people. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry. Then I turned around.

There it stood, tongues drooping out of its mouth and dragging across the floor, dripping with so much spit it was making wet patches on the carpet. Being visible in the light of day didn’t make it any less creepy-looking, and now I could see exactly how freakishly smooth its skin was. It practically glistened. I was trying to come up with some kind of witty reply when it leaped.

No playing with its food this time. One second it was across the room, the next I was pinned up against the wall by its rubbery body, in a way that definitely should have been more painful than it was. My right arm was being crushed against the wall by my body, and before I had a moment to flail, it had grabbed my left arm with its weird stump-fingers. It was so strong. I couldn’t even squirm in its grip. Then just as quickly as it had jumped on me, it leaned over to allow some of its mouths to clamp down on my shoulder.

I’d known what to expect, but I absolutely wasn’t prepared for how weird that felt. Little jabs of pain that barely lasted long enough for me to even notice them, then a squirmy worms-under-the-skin sensation and coldness. At least it meant I didn’t have to do any acting, I really was trying to thrash and get away from that. And it also meant that I was way too distracted to notice the feeling of my passenger crawling down the inside of my sleeve and climbing out.

It was a spider, black and hairless with dark green markings, with legs that could touch both edges of my palm without even being fully stretched out. Once it had reached the end of my sleeve and climbed its way onto the outside, it scuttled across and gently dropped onto the monster’s arm. Watching that thing move was all I could do, but the monster at least seemed preoccupied with the ringing alarm and eating me to spot it. The spider moved back and forth for a few extremely long seconds before finally finding what it was looking for - an open mouth on the monster’s arm. It perched its abdomen on the upper lip, hooked the rest of its body around to get partially inside, then bit it on the soft tissue inside the mouth.

The reaction was instant. The monster howled with every one of its voices at once, and started violently flailing at the spider, dropping me in the process. The howling sounded more angry than actually hurt, but clearly the bite had done something, because its movements were suddenly all jerky and uncoordinated. It teetered on one foot, nearly falling over before finally finding its balance again, and actually cut itself on one of its long claws.

Now I could move again, I reached into my open handbag and pulled out a long, well-sharpened kitchen knife. It had only barely fit in there, and a part of me was still offended at the thought of blunting a good knife by using it on something other than food, but it was the best we could find in Luke’s room on short notice. I took a second while the monster was distracted to get a good grip on the handle, then thrust it straight into the thing’s skin. It felt gross and squelchy going in, and there was a lot more resistance than there should have been. I wasn’t even sure if I’d hurt it, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out. The moment I felt the knife go in, I ducked under its arm and ran.

I didn’t get five steps before it jumped at me again, but this time it missed. I could hardly even see it move, I just noticed something in the corner of my eye and then suddenly it was face-first in the wall to my right, hitting it hard enough to make it crack and knock some bits of ceiling down. Not enough to put it down for good, but that impact had to hurt, and it bought me more time to run. The arrows weren’t faint glimmers any more, they were great big solid red marks floating in midair. I followed one around a corner, and almost collided with Alex.

She gave me a pat on the shoulder. “We’ve got this from here. You did good.”

I couldn’t stop myself moving, so instead I kept going until I slammed into the wall and slid down it until I was on my knees. It hurt my shoulder, but considering half that shoulder had just been eaten off, a little pain wasn’t too bad. I took a moment to glance at it, and saw the last few bite marks shrinking and closing up like nothing had happened at all. The whole area was covered in blood though, and my dress wasn’t going to heal. At least it wasn’t one of my nice dresses.

From where I’d fallen, I could still half-see what was going on. The monster was stumbling and swinging its giant claws at empty air, but that didn’t make it look any less dangerous, and Alex was keeping back at a safe distance. After staggering for a few seconds, it got its footing, facing us, and it screamed. Every one of its mouths was shouting at the top of its lungs (if it even had lungs), and it took time for me to realise that it was using words, every voice saying something different so they blended together into a single mess of noise. Then it turned around and ran.

We’d been guided to this area for a reason. The hangout space was big and empty during a fire alarm, but it also only connected to the rest of the building by a single corridor that cut along its length. I’d run out the way I’d come in, and now Alex was there blocking that exit. As the monster tried to escape the other way, it skidded to a halt as it saw Grace blocking that one. She looked calm, but you could feel how dangerous that calm was, like the moment of silence right before thunder.

It was hard to imagine these two fighting that thing, even after it had been poisoned, when I knew first-hand how strong and fast it was. But they were confident, and my shoulder was proof that Grace, at least, had some pretty impressive magic up her sleeve.

At some unspoken signal, the sisters both started stalking forwards. The monster snarled and spit at them, but it backed up, going into the centre of the hangout room. I could see two of the chairs had been smashed to bits during all this, as well as what looked like bean bag innards spilled everywhere. I had no idea when that had happened. It kept glancing back and forth between the two, like it was looking for an opening with its nonexistent eyes, but it didn’t find one.

Then it leapt out of sight, into the back of the room. Towards the window I’d been standing at when it caught me. I couldn’t see what happened next, but I heard smashing glass and a dull thud, and saw a familiar white-edged-with-pink glow spilling out into the corridor. Turned out that light Luke made wasn’t just for show. He could make it solid enough that even Grace and Alex working together had a hard time putting a dent in it. Solid enough that the monster bounced right off it, as I saw it come sprawling back into view a moment later.

That was the opening they’d been waiting for. Grace charged at the monster, moving almost as fast as it did, and landed right on top of it. Even though it was bigger than her and strong enough to punch a hole through a wall, it had to struggle to get out from under her. It squirmed until its arm with the long blade-claws was out from under its body and swung it around, bringing the claws down on her back, and she caught its arm with just one of hers, holding it in place. They both shook from the strain, but it didn’t budge an inch, and after a second she started to push the arm back.

Which bought Alex all the time she needed. Her hair grew out and spread, covering her body and her clothes, becoming shaggy and grey. She fell forwards as her limbs shifted, and all I could see from behind was a vague furry blob. Then she stood back up, now on all fours, and I saw the glint of savage teeth. The wolf that had been my friend just moments ago pounced on the helpless monster.

As horrifying as the thing was, as much hate as I felt towards it, I had to look away during those final moments. But even with my hands clamped over my ears, I couldn’t shut out the shrieks of pain that rose above the fire alarm. They sounded less and less human with every passing second, but the terror behind them never changed.

The others had insisted on escorting me back home after that, and I wasn’t going to complain. Well, except for Charity, who hadn’t said a word to any of us. All she cared about was getting her spider back unharmed, she’d been clucking over it and petting it and calling it a brave girl for half an hour straight, but she followed us while she did that. That was the weirdest thing I’d seen all day, which was saying a lot.

The downstairs living room was one of the other nicely renovated parts of the house, which meant it was also the dining room most of the time, and right now the coffee table in front of the TV was covered in Happy Donut bags. Like you’d expect from fast food, they were caked in way too much icing made with way too much sugar and nowhere near enough actual chocolate, and the donuts themselves were bland and stodgy. You could probably use them to anchor a boat.

I’d eaten three already, and was starting to nibble on a fourth.

Finally I asked, “So was this a normal day for you?”

“Yes,” Luke said, at the same time as Grace and Alex said no.

“My family have been monster hunters for generations,” Luke explained. “I was raised on this kind of stuff. It’s not like I do it every day, but it feels normal.”

“Monster hunters?”, I asked. “Is that like, a job or something?”

“Kind of. Yeah. Everyone with magic is in danger from monsters, but not everyone can defend themselves. Some people don’t get the kind of magic that’s useful in a fight,” Alex raised her hand, “some people don’t want to fight - which is totally valid - and some people just never learned how. So if they notice something stalking around, they call up a monster hunter to come over and deal with it. And they might pay for it, so it’s like a job. Granddad says that demanding money is a perversion of everything we stand for, but lots of people do it, and he still gets paid, he just doesn’t ask people to pay him so they do it out of the goodness of their hearts.”

“Huh. And your family doesn’t do that?” I looked to Grace and Alex. “Wouldn’t you be really good at it?”

Alex snorted. “Uh, yeah, we’re more likely to get monster hunters called on us. Believe it or not, lot of people don’t like werewolves.”

“Fear stems from a lack of education,” Grace said. “They’ll come around once they get to know us. Luke did.”

Luke made a weird face. “A lot of my family’s a little more, um, traditional though. Their hearts are in the right place, but they don’t see the difference between werewolves and monsters. And they’ve seen a lot of bad things done by werewolves, and other supernatural humanoids, so they’re not likely to change their minds. Not that that justifies discriminating against you, and plenty of people like me do bad things too, maybe even more, and I totally get it if you think it makes them bad people. I don’t think they are, but my opinion doesn’t really matter, because, you know, not a werewolf.” His speech gradually trailed off until all that was left was a panicked look.

“Well,” said Grace, “there’s only one way to find out whether their minds can be changed. Next time they’re in town, we can invite them over for dinner. I’m sure we’ll get along famously if we all just sit down and get to know one another.”

Alex shook her head slowly. “I will never understand what goes on inside your brain.”

Grace just smiled back, then gave me a look. “Still okay there? I know this must be a lot to take in.”

I took another little mouse nibble out of my donut in response.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Luke said. “We’re all here for as long as you need us. Or we can leave if you don’t need us. I won’t be offended, promise. We’ve never helped anyone through their first magical encounter before, so we don’t really know what we’re doing. Let us know if we’re hurting more than we’re helping, okay?”

“Mmm. No.”

“No? I, um. You should feel comfortable with…” Luke looked like his brain was about to freeze up again, so I stopped him.

“No, not no to that. I meant no, this wasn’t my first time.”

Grace nodded like she’d known all along, while the other two looked a little bit surprised. Charity was still too busy watching her spider, perched up on the ceiling eating a bug of some kind, to notice.

“Would you like to tell us what happened?”, Grace asked.

“Yeah.” That wasn’t a lie, I did want to, but it was a lie too because I also really, really didn’t want to. I’d kinda known this was coming since last night, and I needed to say it, but I also had a cold lump of metal in my throat just from thinking about it. Probably one of the poisonous kinds of metal, like lead or mercury or something, because it made me feel sick too.

Was it really just last night? It felt like way longer than that.

Everyone was staring. I needed to say something. Damn it damn it damn it.

“It’s fine if you aren’t comfortable, we can -”

“When I was in high school.” Once I got those words out, the rest started to follow all by themselves. “I saw someone - I saw my best friend get attacked by a rabid dog, in the middle of the city.”

You never really got over things, did you. I thought I’d got to the point where I could talk about it without tearing up, but I had to swallow a sob and wipe my eyes before I could say anything that sounded like a word.

“It wasn’t a dog, was it? Everyone told me that’s what it had to be, and after a while I started to believe them. I can’t remember what I really saw. I don’t think it was the one we just killed, but I dunno. Maybe it was. I didn’t even remember that I ever thought it was something else, not until last night. That was the Veil you talked about, right? It made me forget. Made me forget that I saw my best friend in the whole world get killed by a monster, right in front of me.”

Grace hugged me again. This time, Luke joined in.