Chapter 137: 107. Moving In, Moving On

"Before we start the meeting I'd like to thank Melanie and Cerys for hosting," Paige smiled. "It's honestly kind of nice being back here again. I hope you two are happy to be home again?"

Melanie nodded, "Yeah for sure. Not that it wasn't good being with Tanya and Julie, and Cass and Nina. They all made us feel welcome and everything? But even with all our stuff there it wasn't really home. Not the way this place is."

Cerys added, "We'd say something about this place smelling like home, but right now all me and Mel can smell is fresh paint. I hope nobody else minds that? We've got all the windows and stuff open upstairs."

"It's not too much for you two is it?" Nina asked with some concern in her voice. "Our parents thought it was best to get the repairs and everything done all at once, instead of dragging it out."

Today was the tenth of June, it was early Friday evening and we'd all got together for our June club meeting. The wolfgirls had been back in their old place for almost three weeks, but for the last ten days my parents had been helping clean and renovate the upstairs.

They repainted all the walls, they had new carpet put down in the living-room and the bedrooms, they even got some new appliances for the kitchen and fixed up the bathroom and stuff too. They basically made it into a project or something. Some of the work they did themselves, other stuff they hired professionals to handle.

Now they were talking about getting new furniture delivered, since the upstairs was all still empty and everything.

"We'll live," Melanie told my sister. "Like Cerys said we've got the windows open, and hopefully the paint and the new carpet smell and all that other stuff will be cleared out in another few days."

"For what it's worth it looks pretty good upstairs," Melody commented. "Were you two going to move up there once it's all ready?"

The wolfgirls glanced at each other, then Melanie shook her head. "I'm happier down here, to be honest? When me and dad first moved into the place my bedroom was upstairs, but I liked it better down here. Anyways I think the idea was maybe Cass might be moving in with us at some point?"

She looked to me as she mentioned that last part, and I couldn't help cringing a little in my hoodie.

That whole situation was strange and I felt uncomfortable whenever I thought about it too hard. In fact it almost made me worry there was something else wrong with me at times, but I tried not to think about that either.

The bottom line was the wolfgirls were happy, they had their home back, and maybe after graduation I'd move in upstairs. Maybe not, I really didn't know if I was ready for that yet. Or maybe I'd just wake up one day and find out I'd already moved in. Kind of like how I ended up owning the house without really remembering or understanding how it happened.

I pushed all those unsettling thoughts aside though and shrugged, "Maybe? I don't know yet. Either way you didn't have to agree to let our parents do all that work upstairs, especially if it's disturbing you and Cerys."

"I said it's fine," the wolfgirl replied with a shrug. She glanced at Paige and added, "Anyways we're supposed to be doing the club meeting now, right?"

The tall brunette smiled, "Thanks Melanie. This is a bit of a big deal I think? It's our last club meeting of the school year, which means it's also my last meeting as club leader. An awful lot has happened since I took over, some good and some bad, and we've had quite a few surprises. I won't bore you all with a list since it'd be too long, and anyways there's a couple other things I have on the agenda for today."

"First up," she continued, "I've been keeping tabs on those paranormal podcast guys. Really Strange Stuff posted their big video exposé last week. The good news is they did not disclose anybody's names, and they blurred faces too. So it looks like they haven't outed anyone to the general public."

Paige sighed as she added, "The bad news is, they did include parts of several interviews? With Kimmie, Sylvia, Mr. Caetano, and more. And they included several non-identifying images and video clips, revealing the existence of demi-humans and werewolves. They also weren't shy about naming our town, so there's a good chance we'll see more paranormal investigators turning up in the future."

"I watched the episode with Paige," Brooke commented, "And there were a couple other interesting points. First off, this was 'part one'. Part two's going to be posted at the end of this month or early next month, so unfortunately there's a possibility they'll reveal some personal information next time. And they mentioned how they were arrested and deported, but they also claimed to have been approached and threatened by a mysterious figure."

Paige nodded, "Right. They claimed it was something like a 'men in black', a not-quite-human who tried to scare them into not posting anything at all. Which might be why they withheld the personal details? I don't know. I'm assuming nobody in Club Luna is responsible for threatening them? But I can't help wondering if maybe the council is already active here, and maybe one of them threatened the podcasters."

Kaylee looked around as she asked, "Nobody here threatened them right?"

Everyone shook their head or replied 'no', but I didn't think any of us would do that anyways.

Our club leader didn't have anything else to say on that subject, so she looked to Melody and asked, "You said you had something to share with us about the mystery cave?"

"Yeah," the shape-shifter nodded. "I heard back from my boyfriend Craig, he got some information from his buddy at college about that stuff growing in the mystery glyphs."

She had her phone out and started reading off it as she told us, "It's definitely a 'crustose' form of lichen, according to this guy. It grows at less than two millimetres a year, and based on the pictures I sent him he can confirm it's at least fifty or sixty years old. Based on that he's confident those glyphs were carved in the cave wall by the nineteen sixties, possibly earlier. Which proves that the glyphs cannot be a recent addition, and the cave itself can't be new either."

Cerys smiled, "That means those glyphs were there the same time they found similar ones in a cave in Kentucky. And both caves predate the crop circle from the seventies."

Melody added, "If the club's comfortable sharing the cave's location, Craig's buddy is interested in visiting it himself over the summer. He might even be able to get a more accurate date? He said something about 'lichenometry' as a dating technique."

"Thanks Melody," Paige smiled. "We can think about that later. Thanks to Willow we know there's some legitimate supernatural stuff tied to that cave, so I'm not sure we should be sending members of the public there."

She continued, "And that brings me to the next topic on the agenda. I mentioned this at the last club meeting, so you've all had a month to think about it. Now I'm going to go around the room and ask for your input. We'll start with Brooke, how do you feel about inviting Willow to join the club?"

The tall blonde replied, "I say yes, one of us should speak with her and see if she's interested. I think it's important to bring new people into the club, to keep it going. I'll still be around next year, but I have a feeling I'll be even less involved than I've been lately."

Kaylee went next, "After giving it some thought I have to agree. The club's going to get a lot smaller in the next couple months, and a sorceress might be a good addition to the team. I still have some mixed feelings about her, but overall I think we should invite her."

"Same," Melanie stated. "For the same reasons."

Melody grimaced, "I'm going to abstain. I don't know her, I've never met her, and I don't know if I'll be around much in the future anyways, so I don't feel like I should have a say either way."

Nina hesitated, "I don't know if I get a vote, since I haven't been in the club that long? But I think it's a good idea to invite her."

"Of course you get to vote Nina," Paige responded. Then she looked to me, "What's your opinion Cass? You've spoken with Willow a few times, do you think we should bring her on board?"

I nodded, "Yeah. I don't know her that well yet, Melanie and Cerys probably know her best so I trust their judgement on this. But after talking with her a couple times I think she'd be good with the club, so I vote yes."

Our club leader addressed the blonde wolfgirl next, "What do you think Cerys? Odds are you'll be the one to make the invitation, how do you feel about having her in the club?"

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Cerys shrugged, "I don't know her all that well to be honest? Most of what I knew about her was based on who I thought she was before, and I guess a lot of that was a mask or act she put on to fit in? She's only really been herself for the past month."

"Anyways the majority's already voted yes, right?" she added. "Five out of five, since Melody abstained. So I guess I'll try and talk with her about it next week."

Kaylee asked, "What about you Paige? You haven't told us how you feel about it."

The athletic brunette replied, "Personally I think she's a good candidate, that's why I made the suggestion at the last club meeting. My vote is yes."

"Cerys if you're not comfortable talking with Willow maybe I could help?" I offered. "We could do it together?"

She smiled, "Thanks Cass. That sounds like a good idea."

"So it's agreed," Paige stated. "Cerys and Cass will approach Willow with an invitation to join us. Maybe we can get her out to the next club meeting in July. Which brings me to the last thing on my agenda for tonight."

After a brief pause she announced, "I know we've thrown out a lot of the club's traditions over the past twelve months, but there's one I think we should keep, at least for now. That's the subject of succession. Even if I wasn't going to be leaving soon I'd still be looking to hand the leadership role over to someone else, and the next person in line is Cerys."

The blonde werewolf blushed and cringed slightly. She asked, "Are you sure? I don't know if I'm ready for that kind of responsibility."

"You've got seniority in the club, and with Kaylee and I gone and Brooke being less active you'll be the most experienced member," Paige replied. Then she smiled and added, "And if I remember right, you promised that under your leadership Club Luna would be awesome."

That only made Cerys blush brighter. She grimaced, "I'll do my best."

Paige nodded, "I know you will. Just remember you'll be surrounded by friends, and you have a good relationship with the club sponsors. Being the leader sometimes means making difficult decisions, but you have lots of resources you can turn to for help. And I'll be around for two more months to back you up."

"Thanks Paige," Cerys responded with an awkward smile.

The tall brunette nodded, then announced "That's the last thing on my agenda. So before we wrap this up and get to the social part of the evening, does anyone have anything else they'd like to add?"

"Actually I do?" our next leader responded.

This time there was nothing awkward about her smile as she looked around and announced, "So I don't know how anyone else feels about this, but there's a psychic fair in town this weekend? It actually started earlier this evening, and goes until five o'clock Sunday afternoon. It's over at the fairgrounds, in the agricultural building. Me and Melanie were thinking of going over there tomorrow, so I'm wondering if anyone else is interested?"

"What do they do there?" I asked.

The blonde wolfgirl replied, "There's exhibits, some people are selling stuff, and there's a couple talks and lectures and stuff like that? They're even doing some seances."

"It's sort of about spiritualist stuff," she added with a shrug. "There'll probably be some ghost hunting, and other related interests, that kind of thing?"

Kaylee commented sarcastically, "That sounds like something Keith and Chaz would have been interested in. Too bad they got themselves deported."

That got some laughs out of both werewolfs and a few others.

"You're probably right," Cerys grinned. "Anyways I know it's probably going to be mostly fake stuff, but I thought it might be fun to go see. So I figured I'd ask if anyone else wanted to come along?"

I glanced at my girlfriend and little sister as I replied, "I'll go. I've never been to anything like that before, and it sounds kind of interesting."

"Yeah," Kaylee agreed. "I know we should really be studying for our exams, but this might be fun. I'm in."

"Me too," Nina nodded. "There was a lot of spiritualist stuff back in the late eighteen hundreds. Me and Socha went to a couple seances back then. It'll be neat to see how things have changed since then."

Paige smiled but shook her head, "It sounds like fun but I'm going to pass."

"Me too," Brooke said. "I've got too much going on right now to spend a day at a psychic fair."

Melody nodded, "Yeah sorry Cerys but I can't make it either."

"That's fine," our next club leader replied. "I know it's last minute and definitely not for everyone. But Cass, Nina, Kaylee, if you three are in that's perfect. It's open from noon tomorrow until nine at night. There'll be live seances at two, four, six, and eight o'clock. And there's lectures at three, five, and seven."

Kaylee asked, "When did you want to go? And how long do you expect we'd be there?"

"I'd like to see at least one seance and a lecture?" Cerys replied. "Plus there's all the exhibits and things? So two hours, maybe three? Depending how long the lectures and seances last."

She added, "As for when, I guess that depends what the rest of you want to do? We could go in the afternoon, like four-ish, then catch the lecture at five and the seance at six? Then maybe we could all grab dinner somewhere? Or we could get an early dinner then go for six-ish, catch the seven o'clock lecture and the eight o'clock seance."

It came down to which lecture we were more interested in, and the one at five sounded like the best option. A couple experienced ghost-hunters were going to be talking about their work and sharing tips and techniques and stuff like that.

At some point during that conversation Paige officially brought the meeting to a close, since we were already kind of onto the social stuff anyways. I drained the magic from the circle while the wolfgirls put out the candles.

There were drinks and snacks and stuff like usual, TV and video games, and some of us continued talking about our plans for Saturday.