UGH. Probably not. Fine.

You open the door to your room slowly. Part of you hopes Eva’s doing something. Of course, it’s nearly midnight on a Thursday (technically Friday), so that doesn’t seem overwhelmingly likely. As you enter, it is also not the case. Eva springs up from her desk to greet you. It breaks your heart a little to watch her suppress how happy she clearly is to see you. Jesus, should you just tell her? No, Andy told you, she’ll just rationalize it and get angry and start trying to PROVE she’s not … even though she is.

“Hey, how was Andy’s?” Eva asks, smiling gently. “I’d offer you dinner, but my guess is you already ate out.” You snort at the stupid joke, but it helps a little.

“You’re not wrong,” you say after composing yourself. You wonder if changing in front of her is bad now. Of course, you always have, so not doing it seems … worse, somehow. You dig through your drawers, looking for something sneaky to wear. Fortunately, while this particular color is almost half of your outfits, black is the other. Fuck matching. “She kicked my ass, though. I’m not sure if I know more or just have more bruises.”

“Hey, she’s gonna’ know more than the classes I took at the Y,” Eva responds, tossing her hands up. “I should go and meet her at some point, right? I mean, we’re in a pretty limited social circle environment, and it doesn’t sound like she’s spoiled for choice on company.”

“Is … that what you want?” The question is stilted. It’s hard to not make suggestions. Every time you even consider something direct, you feel like you’re enslaving her. “To get to know Andy, that is.”

“Um, yeah?” Eva answer, tilting her head and looking at you with mild surprise. “I’d kind of like to get to know the only other magic person besides us who isn’t a total psycho. I mean, she’s a MONSTER HUNTER. Whenever I’ve met that before, it was just fedora dudes way too into Supernatural. She’s the real deal, it’s pretty fascinating.”

“I’ll let her know, then. You’ll definitely want to work it out with her, though. She’s gone a long way to making her house look unwelcoming, probably doesn’t take sudden intrusions well.”

“Hey, whatever works.” You can feel her stare at you, not asking something she clearly wants to as you get dressed. “You going back out?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna’ head over to Kappa and see if I spot anything weird,” you tell her. You command yourself to grab a coat this time for appearances, just in case someone sees you. It’s a small miracle Andy didn’t kill you last night, you can’t afford to take risks like that.

“Oh, I’ll grab my coat-“

“No, no, it’ll be less weird if I’m alone when I get caught,” you argue swiftly. “Plus, it’s less likely I will be in the first place if it’s just me. You start adding people to covert ops, more bodies to keep track of and hidden, until you’re not so covert anymore.”

“… that makes sense.” You hate hearing how deflated she sounds in the face of your argument, but not nearly so much as you’d hate the idea of something bad happening to her because you wanted company on your stakeout. “I’ll see you before sunrise, right?”

“Count on it,” you **** out with a smile. She seems to take solace in that. God, if you’d never given her your blood … ‘She’d be dead,’ you finish in your head. ‘You almost killed her, and she’s paying the price for your fuck-up.’

‘Ghouls are meant to be used.’ You had hoped not to hear from this part of you tonight. ‘You’re giving her strength and durability and, from what Andy said, eternal life. WITH the sun, you don’t even get that. Food, full sensation, nothing pushing in her head for her to DO things. Normal life, plus. Doesn’t she kind of owe you? I mean, if you asked, she’d be naked before-‘

“Gotta’ go!” You hurry out the door, waving as you do. Unlike with Andy, waving feels … off. But you don’t want to cross any lines, and they’re all blurry now. As you reach the edge of the bushes near your hall, you experimentally call out to the shadows. There’s a slight chill as they rise up around you, just you this time. They cling to your skin, masking your presence as you stay in cover. ‘If only I could see through them …’ you gripe silently, the mundane darkness still a pain to navigate.

In a flash, you can. Everything seems … fine. Bright as day. You blink, purposely trying to turn it off, and the night slips back in. As you **** it back before moving on, you note that even the dim street lamps are swallowed up by flares of pure, white light. It’s almost like your vision is inverted instead of just keener, spots of illumination you can see across campus from here glaring and furious.

All the same, it helps you get to Kappa house without any trouble. You even spotted a handful of people moving back and forth, sometimes only feet away from you, but the shadows wrapping around you and the ability to move through the pitchest nooks and crannies let you go unseen. It’s a brief consideration that this doesn’t protect you from security cameras, if the police check them in their investigation … except that you don’t reflect any more. You’re not invisible, but as you turn off your night sight to peer into Kappa’s windows, you kind of feel like it.

For the most part, things seem … normal. A few more girls moving in pairs than usual, but that seems about right with people going missing. Atlee’s room is still dark, no hints of movement or anything yet.

Which tracks, considering you can see her downstairs talking to Jessica. The redhead clearly disagrees with Atlee about something, but silly you, you learned Hebrew instead of how to read lips. ‘Thanks, mom.’ All the same, Atlee seems … calm. Extremely calm, in fact. You’d expect the resistance her VP is putting up to be met with the occasional, barely-noticeable crack in her façade, but she seems to be listening genuinely. That’s … strange.

Whatever it was, Jessica seems unsatisfied, but temporarily mollified when she leaves. She grabs a jacket and heads out, God knows to where. At the same time she does, you can see Atlee greet another sister in the hall, put a hand on her shoulder, and guide her to come upstairs with her. Part of you wants to follow Jessica, talk to her, whammy her if you have to, figure out what’s going on. On the other hand, the light in Atlee’s room comes on, and you’re in a perfect position to see what’s about to happen.