Girls' Night Out by Jenna Black Page B

to me. Maybe someone who would come in later and hadn’t seen me arrive with a bodyguard in tow.
    Pretty soon, the classroom started to fill up, students at first trickling, then pouring in. I was used to being the new girl in school, my mother having made us move about a thousand times while I was growing up, and I knew there were a lot of freshmen, who were all as new as I was, but I still felt a pang as people came in in pairs or groups, or as friends were reunited after the summer break. I even started to feel a bit sorry for myself, sitting alone in the middle of the room with empty seats all around me. People who already knew each other were sitting in little clumps together, and the really extroverted strangers were striking up conversations, but the more introverted people, like me, picked seats that weren’t directly next to others.
    When the clock struck eleven and Professor Matheson stepped in through a door at the front of the room, about three quarters of the seats were taken, and there was still no one sitting on either side of me. I told myself it didn’t matter. It took a special kind of person to make friends with someone who never went anywhere without a bodyguard, and I was lucky to have any friends at all. I shouldn’t be hoping for more. I glanced back and saw that Finn had taken an aisle seat in the back row. He probably thought he looked more inconspicuous that way, but the people near him kept turning to peek at him when he wasn’t looking.
    The class started to settle down, conversations dying out as the professor arranged his lecture notes on the podium. The sudden hush made it easier to hear one of the doors at the back squealing open, and I—along with half of the class—looked over my shoulder at the new arrival, expecting to see an ordinary student running late, perhaps flustered and embarrassed by his or her not-so-silent entry.
    The girl who stepped through that doorway was anything but ordinary. She was Fae, with the typical height and willowy build of her people, but that was about the only thing about her I could label typical. The Fae are mostly blond, with a few redheads here and there to spice things up. The only naturally dark-haired Fae I’d ever met was the Erlking, the leader of the Wild Hunt, and he was one of a kind.
    The girl who stood in the back of the room, taking her time to look over the available seats at her leisure, not a bit flustered at being late, had long, jet-black hair with bright purple streaks in it. She wore a flimsy black camisole top—I would freeze to death wearing that in Avalon, where summer temperatures soared into the sixties, usually with mist or rain to add to the chill—paired with an ultra-short black skirt of fluffy tulle that looked almost like a tutu. The skirt revealed about twelve yards of leg, encased in purple and black striped stockings with a couple of artful tears in them, and calf-high unlaced combat boots. She finished off the outfit with about three tons of silver jewelry, including countless rings in her ears, as well as a ring through her eyebrow and a ball through her lower lip.
    Clearly, this girl knew how to make a grand entrance. The fact that
    practically everyone in the room was staring at her didn’t seem to faze her a bit.
    She was so striking that for half a second, I failed to notice the Fae man who’d slipped through the doorway behind her, and that’s saying something. He was built like a football player and dressed much like Finn in Secret Service chic. Everything about him, including his assessing scan of the classroom, screamed bodyguard, which made me even more curious about the mysterious Fae Goth girl. Her bodyguard narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Finn. Finn didn’t exactly look at ease, either, though he remained in his seat and didn’t in any way act like I was under threat.
    The Goth girl started down the center aisle, not in any hurry to take her seat even though she was late. As she approached, I felt