Monsters, p.35
Monsters, page 35
part #2 of Gwen Farris Series
The next weeks were tense, but survivable, and after a while almost everyone forgot to be mad at the Vernors, just focusing on her being from a different place. That was oddly popular and a lot of attention got placed on it, which was off-putting to her and made her feel shy and self-conscious. Beth and Heather kept joking that if she kept talking to the press about it all enough, they’d eventually get tired of her and leave her alone. So far it hadn’t happened, but she hoped the next best new thing to come along would soon, because talking about herself all day long was getting boring.
On the good side it meant that she could finally learn to use magic openly. It was being set up for her to be tested, so they could find out if she actually had anything she’d be good at in particular that way, and she didn’t even have to fake her accent all the time anymore. Billy moved in to the bedroom across from hers, without asking anyone, or explaining to the Vernors who he was to her. She kind of thought that Ethyl suspected he was her lover, which was both funny and had to be stopped, before a rumor grew out of it. Mainly because…
Eew.
The public programs came together without her for the most part, including the Students Service, which was run by Dominique Goebbels and Erica Westmorland directly. It was as close to school integration as the Kingdom had ever come. There were some complaints about it, people not wanting their kids to meet Westmorlands in person, but so far Gwen hadn’t had to tell anyone off. That was coming, no doubt, but until it did she just wanted to bask in the relative peace and success of the program. One in every three school kids from the ages of nine to sixteen had joined up and were learning to find explosives, report them and stand local guard duty. At first people laughed at that part, the neighborhood watches of children, but crime dropped by over fifty percent in some areas in the first weeks and stabilized there. Sure it was mainly petty crime, but that meant the constabulary had more time to work on serious things. They even had some summer camps set up for the city kids and some jobs helping with the military for the older ones that were interested.
It was largely a good thing, but Gwen really only had one thing on her mind as the days passed. She had to find Erin Debussey. Personally.
Find her and kill her.
Because she was the only person in the world that knew for certain that Katherine Vernor had done everything she had on her own, and there was just an off chance that Doctor Debussey was smart enough to convince the world of her innocence, if given enough time.
If Gwen wanted to protect her new friends and family, that couldn’t be allowed. Not at all.
So she spent most of her time practicing fighting and learning everything she could about her new world, because sooner or later, she was going to do it. She was going to find the biggest monster this world had to offer and take her down.
Even if she had to become a bigger one in order to do it.
P. S. Power, Monsters
