Mia followed Whitney down the halls quietly. She felt like she should apologize to the other girl but the thing was, she didn't know what to apologize for. Having spent a lot of tine with Whitney, she could confidently say she was one of the girl's best friends. That meant she knew a lot about how Whitney's thought process worked. The witch was prideful, a side effect of the attention that had been heaped on her as a result of her exceptional talent. Her confidence was not misplaced too. Mia was certain that Whitney was the most skilled out of all of them that had been invited for the program.
But even with all her faith in her friend, Mia could not help but worry about her. There was a part of her that feared that the white haired girl may have gotten in over her head this time. After their fight that Friday night, Whitney had shown her the strange marking that had appeared on the back of her left hand after she had beaten her enemy. At first they had relegated it to the back of their minds as something to look into on a later date.
That was until Whitney had barged into her room early the next morning to show her the change in the marking. After a night, one of the black circles had faded away entirely like it had never been there to begin with. Whitney had been slightly relieved at that and had assumed that the rest of the marks would all disappear in their own time. But Mia had gotten even more alarmed. To her, the disappearance of one of the marks had seemed more like the beginning of a countdown of sorts. After all, they had tried everything to get rid of them in vain and yet one just happened to disappear in its own after one night. The fact that it had been one of the black ones that had disappeared only served to enhance Mia's suspicions. Those had been all but confirmed when another mark had faded away halfway through the day that Saturday. This time it had been one of the white ones.
At that point Whitney had begun to have her doubts on the simplicity of the whole thing. It was when a second black mark had vanished after Saturday night that she became very concerned. Both of them had in fact and since then, they had been researching every single magic symbol they could find. Yet they had found nothing.
Now it was Monday. There was only one white mark left and they had no more knowledge of the symbols than they had two days ago. Their lack of success had begun to worry both of them. Whitney simply chose to show her frustration through increased irritability. It hurt Mia to see her best friend like that and she actively refused to think about what their failure to resolve this riddle would mean for Whitney.
Whitney finally stopped to go into one of the female bathrooms and Mia followed close behind. There were a few other girls in there already but Whitney did not even spare them a passing glance as she made her way to one of the mirrors. Her reflection stared back at her through false gray eyes. A frown creased her snowy eyebrows as she sighed tiredly. Mia appeared beside her and placed a comforting hand in her shoulder. The two of them remained like that for a while, completely ignoring the presence of the other girls in the room as well as the stares aimed at them.
Whitney pulled up the left sleeve of her blue jumper and it was right there. A few inches above her wrist, the dark rope that went in a circle to close in on itself, its center empty now save for a single white circle. The circle itself had began to fade away, with a full quarter of it already gone. Whitney glared at it hatefully, summoning all of her willpower to prevent herself from trying to burn it off with her magic. Not that she had not tried that already to no avail.
"We have to tell them."
Whitney snapped her head sideways to turn her glare on her friend who had spoken. "No."
"Whitney come on," Mia pleaded. "They've dealt with these things before and they have a lot of experience doing so too. They might have a way out-"
Whitney's eyes began to let out a soft yellow glow dulled by the contacts. "I am not going to beg them for any kind of help."
"No one's asking you to do so," Mia countered. "Look, if you don't want to do it, then let me -"
"Hey dummies, in case you didn't notice, this place was already occupied before you came crying here!"
Both witches turned to the source of the disparaging voice at the other end of the room. There were four other girls staring back at them with unconcealed scorn and malice. One of them stood out prominently among them. Everything about her distinguished her from the rest. The way she held herself and communicated with the other girls made it clear that she was their leader. Even the clothes she wore were a cut above those of the other girls. Not unreasonably glamorous but still stylish enough that she stood out easily among her peers, it looked like something someone like Jade would wear. The girl was blonde and her blue eyes were filled with cold mockery as she sauntered over to the two witches.
As she approached them, Mia stiffened slightly beside Whitney and the girl's eyes immediately zeroed in on her show of weakness. Whitney watched the girl lick her lips and immediately moved to put herself between Mia and the girl.
The latter halted her steps and glanced at the girls in front of her with derision clear on her pretty face.
"Hey, you two are new here right?" She asked, a smile hanging on her lips. "Hi, I'm Melanie. Nice to meet you."
Whitney's eyes narrowed at the seemingly harmless greeting. Everything about this girl, Melanie screamed 'queen diva'. And as someone who was very familiar with people like that, Whitney was very much aware of what the girl in front of her was doing.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mia's hand nearly rise up to respond positively to the greeting. She quickly moved to hold down the other witch's hand while she glared at Melanie.
"What do you want?" Whitney all but hissed at her.
Realizing that she had been outed, Melanie dropped all pretenses. The pleasantness in her voice evaporated and was replaced with venom when she spoke again.
"Listen here morons, I would advise you not to get too uppity around here. You never know who might be watching or listening."
Whitney seemed a bit surprised by the ease with which the other girl had threatened them. Quickly recovering, she schooled her face into an emotionless mask and leveled a pointed look at Melanie.
"You know it's pretty dumb of you to do this. Just like you said, we're new here. Which means you have no way of knowing anything about us or who we are. Yet the first thing you do is threaten us?"
Melanie's blue eyes hardened at how easily she had been called out by this girl. She glared daggers at Whitney until it became obvious that the white haired girl would not be cowed into submission so easily. Her gaze shifted to the girl behind Whitney and Melanie smirked darkly when Mia nearly took a step back away from her.
"So you think you're hot stuff huh?" Melanie derided, one of her hands reaching up towards Mia with malicious intent.
Faster than the girls that had surrounded them could follow, Whitney's hand snapped up and held Melanie's wrist on an iron grip. The former smiled dangerously at the diva. "Oh sweetie, you have no idea how hot I can get."
Before Melanie could make heads or tails out of her statement, she felt a very brief but extremely intense heat sear her wrist that was still in Whitney's grasp. The pain drew a startled gasp out of her and she withdrew her hand sharply when Whitney released her. Movement around her drew her attention to the fact that her group had already surrounded them. Refusing to show weakness in front of her lackeys, Melanie stopped gripping her strangely unharmed wrist and stood straight once more. Cold rage surged within her at the cocky smirk on Whitney's face and she felt the urge to wipe it off in the most violent way possible. But the memory of what had happened the last time she had made skin contact with Whitney was still fresh in her memory. She did not want a second demonstration of ... whatever that had been.
Her eyes soon fell on Whitney's wrist and the tattoo on it. Remembering how distressed the white haired girl had looked earlier when she had been looking at the tattoo, Melanie smiled sinisterly and backed away slightly.
"Nice tattoo," she mocked and felt a burst of happiness at the way Whitney's smirk disappeared.
Gesturing towards her posse to move out, she walked past Whitney on her way to the door. When she reached the girl's side, her voice dropped to barely a whisper. "I'd watch my back from now on if I were you."
With the most insincere smile conceivable, Melanie waved goodbye to Mia and left the two of them alone in the bathroom.
They stood there for a few more seconds before Whitney sighed. "Bitch."
********
"What're you doing?"
"Nothing important," Jade answered the boy who had just sat down beside her. "So how's your sleuthing going?"
Lee laughed lightly. "Okay first of all don't call it that. And yeah it's going quite well. Some of the guys said something about people getting a lot sicker recently."
"Hmmm. Well what're you gonna do now?"
Lee stretched his arms behind his head languidly. "You mean besides being awesome?"
"Idiot. I'm being serious."
"So am I," he replied. A sideways look from Jade had him caving a second later. "Fine, fine, I'll tell you. I was thinking of getting the identities of these 'sick' students. I figured if I could get them to tell me how they got ill, it would narrow down the search."
"Okay, that seems reasonable. Why are you here then?" Jade asked.
"I wanted to go to the hospital but I can't do that casually. We still have no way of telling these skinwalkers apart from normal people but they probably know everything about us."
"Including what we look like," Jade added, her head nodding in understanding.
"Exactly. Since we've already removed the curses from all the affected witches, they'll most likely be on guard against us." Lee paused to send a sweeping glance around the large hall. "If there is something going on in the hospital, they'll be sure to be careful with who gets in or out."
"I see your point," Jade admitted., dark eyes fixed on her teammate. "What's your plan then?"
The white haired youth clasped his hands together under his chin as he looked at Jade. "I need a way in. Untraceable and undetectable. And you're the best at that sort of thing. You in?"
The girl hesitated for a second before throwing her hands up in surrender. "Fine. But only because I want these guys gone even more than I hate hanging around you. They're just all sorts of wrong," she finished with a slight shiver.
"Great, let's get going -" Lee paused when his phone vibrated and picked it up to read the text on the screen. "Right after we finish this. Michael wants us to pick up his contact."