Chatoyant College Book 7: Upon What Soil

Chapter 45: Vanished

"What do you mean, he's gone?" Dawn asked, baffled. "There's nowhere for him to go! Is he hiding in the bathroom or something?" She leaned forward through the window, looking around at the messy room, but there was nothing to see except rumpled bedsheets and things strewn around the room—clothing, beer cans, and what looked like leashes and accessories for a dog, though there was no other evidence of an illegal pet. Rico came up behind her and peeked through the window as well; he must have followed her when she had chased after Corrie, but at a more reasonable pace.

"No, this dorm doesn't have attached bathrooms," said Roe, who had entered the room, looking around. "Just like ours. I don't see anywhere he could have gone..."

"Did you check the closet?" Annie asked quietly from the doorway.

Corrie nodded. "First place I looked, once I was inside. It's not exactly a big room. I looked under the bed, too. He must have used some kind of faerie magic."

"Do you see anything weird, Dawn?" Roe asked, frowning and sticking her hand in her pocket.

Dawn sighed, leaning further through the window to get a better look at the whole room. She wasn't inclined to follow Corrie through the window and she didn't want to walk all the way around to get in through the door. She narrowed her eyes as she looked and tried to focus her magical senses (even though she had no practical idea of what she was doing), but nothing changed. "No," she finally said. "If he left any evidence behind, there's nothing I can see."

"Me neither," said Roe, taking her hand out of her pocket.

"I guess we kind of freaked him out," said Edie, standing in the doorway with Annie. "I can't really blame him for not wanting to talk to us."

"What does he have to hide?" Corrie said, still looking around the room as though there was something they might have missed, her eyebrows drawn down. "Even if he is the one who enchanted the stuff from the craft fair, none of it is really harmful. He could see that none of us are injured. Did we look angry?"

"You did kind of threaten him with the keys," said Roe, walking over to the bed. She looked down at it, frowned, then seemed to change her mind. "Let's get out of this room, I don't want to get caught here if he's gone for security or something."

"I agree," said Rico. "I'll get the window. Go out through the door, guys."

Corrie walked stiffly to the window to close the blind, but at least her expression had cleared somewhat. "I didn't mean to threaten him," she said with a wry smile. (That was good—it was never a good sign when Corrie wasn't smiling.) "I just wanted to, you know, say 'we know you're a faerie' without saying the word 'faerie' out loud."

"That makes sense," Dawn said, nodding encouragingly, though she had to admit, it had kind of looked like a threat. Then again, Brandon had looked like he could take all of them easily, iron or no iron. He was huge, at least in his faerie form.

When the rest of the group came out of the dorm a minute later, Roe was saying, "But you know that iron is a weapon against faeries, not just a way to break through glamour. You should—"

"Please don't argue," said Dawn. "It's too late to change it anyway. The only question is, what do we do now? We should probably wait until tomorrow, whatever it is, but we can try looking for Professor Lal. Or we could try emailing Brandon—his school email address was listed, right? That's less confrontational and we can explain the question without him interrupting, Or disappearing. Again."

Corrie, her arms crossed, kicked at a clod of dirt. "I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep until we've gotten some kind of answer. We can always try emailing Brandon tonight..."

"But we don't know where he went, or whether he'll have email access," said Edie. "I have a different idea, though."

All eyes turned to her. "What is it?" Annie asked.

"We should go talk to Leila. I have no idea if she'll know anything about this particular magic, but she might know Brandon—she pretty much knows all the faeries on campus—and if we bring her the items, she might be able to see what the enchantment is." Edie looked anxious, and Dawn didn't blame her. Corrie tended to react badly to the mention of Leila.

But in fact, Annie was the only one who reacted badly—and for soft-spoken, shy Annie, reacting badly just meant frowning and turning her face away from Edie. Corrie just grinned. "That's a perfect idea, actually. The only other faerie I can think of who likes us is Ever, and it's too dangerous to look for her. But how do we find Leila?"