Chapter 133: 105. Unfortunate Encounters

"It's just not the same," Melanie sighed as she looked around.

She and Cerys were cuddling together on the big bean-bag chair, while me and my girlfriend and my little sister sat on one of the sofas. Brooke Paige and Melody were on the other sofa. The only thing we hadn't bothered with was the circle of candles.

After a couple seconds the wolfgirl looked at my little sister and added, "Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate you doing all this for us Nina. And I'm glad we're not in your mom's way anymore, I'm sure she's happy to have her office back. This is really nice and all. It's just not quite the same."

"It's the scent," Cerys added with a smile as she gave her girlfriend a hug. "It smells different, but we'll get used to it. And seriously Nina, thank you."

It was Tuesday evening and the club was meeting at our place again, but we were down in the basement instead of the living-room. Except all Melanie's furniture and stuff was now down here too, after my little sister teleported just about everything Melanie owned out of the basement of her dad's place and into our house.

After the three of them moved some more stuff over Monday after school they ran out of places to put things in mom's office, which led to the idea of storing stuff in the basement. And that led to the idea of them just moving everything down there. And if all their stuff was in our basement then they figured they'd just sleep down there too, since that's what they'd been doing at Mr. Caetano's house.

So today after school Nina went back to their old place with the wolfgirls again, and this time instead of carrying stuff by hand she just teleported everything directly from one basement to the other.

Now it was half past five, we were about to begin another emergency meeting, and we'd probably order something for dinner afterwards. Except before the meeting officially began we were discussing Melanie's and Cerys's situation.

I told the wolfgirls, "Mom said she didn't mind you two being in the office, but I'm sure you're more comfortable in your own bed and with all your own stuff and everything. Anyways hopefully all this is just temporary, right? Maybe we can figure something out, find you someplace of your own where you're more comfortable."

Nina suggested quietly, "If you liked the other place, maybe we can rent that after your dad moves out? Then you can go back to your own home where you're comfortable."

"That depends on if the new owner wants to keep it as a rental thing," Melanie replied with a frown. "I have no idea if dad ever heard anything about that or not? But either way, me and Cerys don't make enough money for rent and everything. We can cover food for the two of us, and some clothes and stuff, but dad's the one who paid the rent and utilities and stuff."

"Keep the rest of us posted, whatever happens? We'll do what we can to help," Paige responded. Then she addressed everyone, "For now let's get on with the meeting, ok?"

Nobody commented or complained so our club leader continued, "So first thing on the agenda is our two podcast guys. They're still snooping around, they've been hanging around the school the past two days. That means we all have to be extremely careful what we do, and what we say."

"They already know about me," Melanie sighed. "And they know Cerys and I are girlfriends, they might suspect something about her too. And they know the two of us hang out with all of you. Well, except for Brooke and Melody, since you two aren't at school. But they have to know the six of us are all friends."

Paige nodded, "I know. Which is why we need to be so cautious. And that's going to make it really hard to investigate the Medeia situation. Fortunately we haven't had any more of those incidents, apart from Mr. Sanderson and Mr. Guthrie."

"Those are the only two teachers that are almost universally disliked," Kaylee commented. "The rest of the faculty are all pretty good."

Cerys pointed out, "That doesn't mean individual students can't have a beef with teachers everyone else likes. Like I used to joke about Ms. Hughes being evil? Sorry Melody, no offence. Anyways I just mean, there can be teachers everyone else likes but one or two students don't. So we can't assume this is over."

The shapeshifter didn't seem upset or offended, she just smiled "It's fine. Mom would say it's par for the course as a teacher."

"For what it's worth she's actually mentioned Guthrie and Sanderson by name," she added. "And she doesn't like them either. She's upset about what happened to them though. None of the faculty believe the incidents are connected, by the way. They think Guthrie had a stroke, and the bee attack was an unfortunate encounter with nature."

I'd actually forgotten that Melody's mom was our history teacher, but it was nice to get that other perspective.

Paige seemed to agree, "Thanks Melody. It's good to hear how the faculty are looking at these things."

"Cass, Nina," she said as she turned her attention to us, "Did you talk to your parents about Medeia or Hecate?"

My little sister nodded, "Mom said most of the ancient Greek gods were real, and a lot of them might still exist today."

"Some of them are probably still worshipped too," I chimed in, "Like we know Hecate is worshipped by some modern witches."

Nina continued, "They don't know about Medeia though, and they don't know what myths might have been real and what were just stories."

"Ok thank you both," our club leader responded. Then she announced, "Last night I spent some time going through the school's computers, I compiled a list of students who attended class with Mr. Sanderson on the day of the bee attack, and cross-referenced that with a list of students who had Mr. Guthrie prior to his incident."

She continued, "Both incidents happened during the second period, just before lunch. That might be a coincidence, but it meant there were only a total of four classes worth of students to search through. Sanderson had a grade nine class first thing that morning, then grade eleven when the bees swarmed. And Guthrie had grade eleven yesterday morning, then grade twelve during his 'stroke'. So if we're assuming a student is responsible and they saw both Sanderson and Guthrie the days of their attacks, that means our list is nineteen grade eleven students."

Cerys pointed out, "That includes me and Melanie and Nina."

"Actually it was twenty-two including you three," Paige agreed, "But I think we can safely cross you all off our list of suspects. So nineteen of your classmates."

Brooke asked, "How do you plan on investigating them, while we're all under scrutiny from those reporters?"

"I don't know," the tall brunette sighed. "Right now the best I can suggest is keep your eyes and ears open. Cerys, Melanie, Nina, you three will have the best chance of seeing or hearing something since we're talking about your classmates. I'll post a list of the nineteen potential suspects to the group chat, and maybe you can keep an eye on them or something? But again, we all have to lay low. As much as we need to put a stop to these attacks, we have to keep ourselves safe too."

Melanie sighed, "That's not going to be easy. Especially now that those guys know about me."

Paige looked sympathetic as she replied, "I know Melanie. Cass and Kaylee and I will be watching and listening too, but you three will have the best opportunities since you share classes with these people."

"I sure wish there was something I could do to help," Melody said.

Brooke agreed, "Same. With all this going down at the high school it feels like the two of us are going to sit this one out, unfortunately."

Our club leader pointed out, "You've both helped already. Brooke you found where those guys were staying, and Melody you gave us some insight on how the teachers are handling things. Anyways all our hands are tied on this, thanks to the reporters. We just have to hope nobody else gets hurt while we're trying to track down this priestess, and the student who summoned her."

There wasn't much more to be said at that point. We all reviewed the list of names Paige came up with, but I didn't even know most of them. Same with Kaylee and Paige. So other than just generally looking out for the unusual, it was all going to be down to the wolfgirls and my little sister to hopefully stumble onto something.

Paige finally brought the meeting to a close, then we ordered wings and wedges for dinner while we got into the social part of the meeting.

• • • • •

Wednesday morning Cerys and Melanie set out for school with me and Nina, and like usual we met up with Kaylee just before the ravine. Except this morning my girlfriend wasn't waiting by herself, standing next to her was an attractive foxgirl with a big smile on her face.

The foxgirl's tail was slowly swishing back and forth while she and Kaylee talked. Then when she noticed me her tail started wagging even faster, and her smile got wider.

"Good morning!" she exclaimed as she hurried up to me and gave me an unexpected hug. "I came by to thank you. This is wonderful and perfect, and I swear you've saved my life again!"

My sister and the two wolfgirls watched in surprise, and Kaylee didn't seem to mind that someone else was hugging me. In fact the way my girlfriend had been looking at the foxgirl I was left wondering if maybe she had a thing for foxes after all.

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Meanwhile I grimaced slightly as I responded, "You're welcome Alyssa. I'm glad you're happy."

"I am!" she grinned as she finally let go of me. "This is perfect! It's better than perfect and I'm in your debt Cassandra."

She hadn't actually changed all that much, her face was the same and over-all she looked pretty much the same as before. Her hair was different now, it had turned into an auburn colour. And the biggest differences were the two fox ears sticking up ontop of her head, and the big bushy auburn tail that was still wagging happily behind her.

"It's fine," I mumbled. "And anyways we have to get to class, ok? Take care of yourself Alyssa."

She nodded, "You too Cass. And Kaylee, it was nice talking with you this morning. You girls all have a great day!"

We wished her a good day too and stuff, then the five of us finally got moving again as we cut through the ravine. Cerys and Melanie didn't say anything about that encounter but my little sister asked, so I gave them all a really brief explanation of what Alyssa said on Monday when me and Kaylee ran into her.

I was cringing a bit as I explained the situation, I kind of expected someone to have a problem with it. They didn't though, Nina and Cerys and Melanie just accepted it for what it was. Even Kaylee seemed ok with things, and once again it left me wondering if she liked foxes. Or foxgirls.

By the time we got to school things were pretty much same as usual, except we had a substitute teacher for gym class. Ms. Fletcher was an athletic woman in her thirties. She was tall, with short dark hair and bright hazel eyes that didn't seem to miss anything.

She had us all outside doing track and field stuff, and even though she didn't know any of us she could spot the kids who were slacking off and not putting the effort in. On the other hand she didn't let anything slip by, so when someone managed to trip me while we were running laps around the field she had him doing fifty push-ups instead of just ignoring it like Sanderson would have done.

At lunch time we all sat together to compare notes and stuff. There wasn't much to report though. Melanie was the only one who'd heard anything remotely suspicious, which she shared with the rest of us as we ate.

"Stacey Gill made a comment this morning in math class," the ravenette wolfgirl half-whispered, "She hoped something would happen to the replacement math teacher since he was even worse than Guthrie. And she's on Paige's list."

I grimaced, "How could anyone be worse than our resident math ogre?"

Cerys replied, "Brace yourself but the substitute they sent to teach math is none other than Mr. Graves. Remember him from last year?"

That led to several groans around the table.

"At least our new phys-ed teacher is ok," Paige responded. "She seems tough but fair. Better than Sanderson anyways."

Then she added, "Thanks for the update Melanie. I'll see what I can dig up about Stacey tonight, but in the meantime let's all keep monitoring things. One idle comment's probably nothing, so we won't make any assumptions just yet."

After that the conversation at lunch was mostly just normal stuff again, until we all headed off to our afternoon classes. At the end of the day all six of us met up again, and ended up talking as we made our way out of the school. Except since Paige lived in the opposite direction from the rest of us we all wound up standing around just outside the doors.

"Any more clues or information this afternoon?" Kaylee asked. "I got nothing, unfortunately."

The rest of us all shook our heads. Cerys added in a dejected tone, "The only vaguely magical thing I heard was Gord Potts, Kyle Harding, Harrison Pearce, and Danny Bradley making plans to play their Dungeons and Dice game Friday night."

Melanie was about to add something when we were interrupted by a familiar voice with a southern accent.

"Excuse me Miss Caetano," that podcaster guy said as him and his friend approached with their cameras out and recording, "We're still hoping you'll give us an interview? What's a real live werewolf doing attending high school? How many of your friends are also werewolves? Are all werewolves trans? What other supernatural creatures are real? Have you ever met a vampire? How about ghosts, or fae?"

The two wolfgirls were immediately tense and on edge. Melanie looked like she wanted to hit the guy or something, but fortunately Paige moved in front to shield the werewolves. Kaylee did the same, while me and Nina stayed back next to our friends.

"You still don't have permission to film or photograph us," Paige stated. "And this is school property. Please leave us alone, I won't ask again."

Kaylee added, "No filming, no pictures, you can't record or use our voices. Just leave us all alone."

Like before it was Keith asking the questions while Chaz stayed back a couple paces and taped everything. And it crossed my mind that we couldn't use magic to get rid of these guys without that being caught on camera. Then it also occurred to me if we did that, we could use magic to erase or destroy the camera memory cards.

I forced myself to push those thoughts aside, since I knew even if I could pull it off without getting in trouble from these guys or the council I'd still have to face my parents. And they were way scarier.

Meanwhile Keith was talking about the public's right to know the truth, he wanted to see Melanie shift and was trying to convince her she'd be famous and how that would somehow be good for her. At the same time Paige and Kaylee were both arguing with the guys that they had to stop filming since we didn't agree to this stuff.

Then the door behind us opened and one of the teachers emerged.

Ms. Fletcher the substitute gym teacher frowned and demanded, "What's going on here? Who are you two and what do you want with these students?"

"I'm Keith Wilson, this is Chaz Varela," the tall slim one responded smoothly. He pulled out one of his stickers, or maybe it was a business card this time and offered it to her as he added "We're the hosts of 'Really Strange Stuff'. We're investigating some unusual events here ma'am, and we're trying to interview these young ladies here."

Chaz added, "We have permission to film on school grounds, we spoke with the principal last week about it."

Miss Fletcher approached and took the offered card. She looked it over, then pulled something out of her purse and showed it to Keith and Chaz.

It turned out to be some kind of badge as the gym teacher stated, "I'm Sergeant Fletcher, and I'm going to have ask you two gentlemen to turn off your cameras and recording devices and come with me."

That caught all of us by surprise, but at the same moment I realized a couple guys in uniform had just come around the corner of the school building, and just like that the internet podcasters were hauled away.

The two guys were protesting and arguing, while Ms. Fletcher and the cops confiscated their cameras and phones and everything.

"Wow," Paige commented quietly. "So that just happened. I wonder what that was all about?"

Melanie was still listening with her enhanced hearing. She replied just as softly, "It sounds like they're being arrested for lying on their customs declarations? Apparently they claimed they were visiting Canada as tourists."

"That actually makes sense," Kaylee responded. "Coming into the country for work would be a lot more paperwork and might even require a work visa, which takes time to get? But lying to the customs and immigration people is a federal offence."

Nina asked, "So they're going to go to jail?"

My girlfriend shook her head, "I doubt it. They'll probably face a fine, their cameras and stuff might be seized, and they'll probably be booted out of the country."

"Good to know," Paige stated. "And with that problem hopefully resolved, we should be able to focus all our attention on the Medeia issue."