Before the lanky one could say anything, the tiny one stopped her, looking warily at Victoria. "Chloe, hang on, you can't just go spilling stuff to someone who appears out of nowhere. What's your angle?"

Victoria wished she had thought to bring some of her fake credentials with her. For now she was just going to have to talk her way through this. All she needed was a lead, some little scrap of information that could guide her to the next key. Then she could leave these poor grieving students alone. "Victoria Chase. I'm an intern with a Seattle paper. They finally threw me a bone and gave me a story to work on. But I'm getting the feeling that there's a lot more to this than meets the eye."

She continued to stare her down with eyes narrowed. "Oh, really? I spent some time in Seattle, which paper do you work for?"

Shit. Victoria hurried to search her mind for the right name, but somehow she knew that the uncertainty showed on her face already. "The Stranger... I wanted to work for someone who actually covered real news."

"I'm calling bullshit." Both of them stood up, now looking on the verge of true anger. "What are you hiding?"

"You've got five seconds to explain yourself before I paint this quad red with your fucking blood, blondie."

Practically a blur, Kate appeared between the three of them, decidedly blocking Victoria off from the bitter attackers. "W-Wait! Hold on, she didn't mean any harm... Victoria really is trying to help." She glanced back at her, as if silently urging her to do something, though she really had no clue what that was. "Look, don't freak out, but she's a hunter."

They absolutely did freak out, especially the one whose name was apparently Chloe. "What, like it's not already bad enough to have Prescott creeping around here? Now we have another one? Why am I supposed to be happy about that? How can I possibly believe she'll be any help?"

"Because she could have killed me last night when she saw me transform and thought I was the one who... who killed Rachel... She could have let Nathan shoot me this morning when he still insisted I was the one. But she didn't. She's one of the good ones."

That didn't necessarily help her case any, and the other girl took a step forward. "Kate, you let a... a hunter watch you change? And you're just hanging out with her? Have you totally lost your mind? Y-You could have died..."

This whole argument probably could have gone on forever, and as much as Victoria understood that tensions were high when everyone was mourning... well... she still had a job to do. She cleared her throat and looked at them over Kate's shoulder. "Hi, excuse me, um, if you guys want to hate or distrust me that's totally cool. I just... would really like to solve this whole murder thing."

"Wait, murder?" Chloe started to deflate just a little. "So you really do think there's more to this?"

"Maybe we should sit back down..."

Things weren't exactly calm yet, but it was better now that Kate was around to mediate. Victoria did her best to explain the situation to them – the guild, the summons from the Prescotts, Kate being named a suspect, following her, the Disney-esque frolicking, going back to see Nathan and him pulling a gun. Some of this information did not serve to make them any more calm, but at least they were finally starting to understand that Victoria wasn't out to harm anyone.

The freckled one, Max, rubbed her neck nervously and attempted to smile at her. "I'm sorry about all the hostility but there's something you should probably know about this place."

Chloe looked instantly in Max's direction. "What? Isn't that, like, verboten or whatever?"

"Keeping it hidden isn't going to do her any good, and it will probably clear a few things up." She glanced back at Victoria, obviously super nervous about saying whatever was on her mind. "Blackwell is composed almost exclusively of students like Kate. Non-humans and creatures. The small number of humans we do have are magic users and druids. We even have a technomancer."

That information was probably meant to be more of a shock, but Victoria had been at this just long enough that it kinda made sense. "So are we talking like a Hogwarts/Xavier kind of scenario?"

"No, smartass, it's still just a school. But instead of exclusivity based on gender or race, it's... Jeez, I dunno what we're even calling it these days. Wyrdness?" Chloe shrugged, perhaps not too concerned with the terminology.

Victoria's brain quickly connected the dots and filled in the gaps. "Okay, so then you two are...?"

They all shared a look and then shrugged nearly simultaneously. "I'm a banshee," Chloe said plainly before motioning to her friend. "Max here is literally my manic pixie dream girl." Poor Max's face turned beet red, and Victoria got the impression she was being told more than one secret at the moment. "And Rachel is... fuck, was... a skin-walker."

She was starting to tear up again, and Max began rubbing her back soothingly. "Her mother's side of the family is native, and they've been passing down the ability for generations. That's why it's so weird that this could happen. She knew how to take care of herself. If someone came at her, she could've just transformed into a bear and ended the situation."

Victoria looked back out across the campus and then around at the other girls sitting with her. "Is it cool if I ask... I mean... I'm looking around and everyone here looks pretty human. I mean, that makes sense for anyone with shapeshifting abilities. But..."

Kate motioned out across the horizon to a lighthouse in the distance. "A mass variable glamour charm. It only affects humans' perceptions of us. Blackwell is a haven for its students, but the rest of the town, not so much. We already knew the Prescotts were trouble since they have enough money to just buy whatever they need. But to see just how vicious they are as hunters makes me... nervous."

"Makes me suspicious more than anything," Victoria muttered softly before looking back at Chloe. She was obviously the closest to Rachel. "Other than that, we don't really have much in the way of a lead.. Please, we just need a starting point."

Chloe made a show of sighing dramatically. "American Rust. It's a junk graveyard. We hung out there sometimes. It's... also where she was... found... If you think something weird is happening, Kate can show you how to get there, and might be able to sniff something out."

Thank christ, finally something useful. Victoria got to her feet and smiled at Chloe as warmly as she could. "Thank you. I promise, if there's anything there, we'll find it." She pulled Kate up next to her and was about to walk off when Chloe grabbed her arm and held her back. "Um, go on ahead Kate, my car's in the parking lot." She looked back at the others, some fear starting to return to her. What the hell was this all about?

"I need to be very clear about something. The moon is full and I understand that there's a lot of power hiding in that adorable girl. But Kate is still just a teen girl, and an innocent, abstinent Christian cinnamon roll with a soul that is too pure for this world. If she gets hurt, or shot, or stabbed... if she comes back from this with a thousand yard stare... if you break her heart? I will hunt you down, and I will scream and wail and keen until your brain liquefies and melts out your tear ducts. Are we clear?"

Having faced down countless monsters, Victoria thought she had overcome fear. She was wrong. "...u-understood..." Her arm was rather roughly let go and she stumbled away to her car as fast as her legs would carry her. She found Kate leaning next to the vehicle with a face as red as a cherry. "You okay?"

"I can never tell if Chloe actually forgets how good my hearing is or if she just doesn't care..." Kate reached for the door handle and climbed inside, apparently having no interest further discussing the matter. Victoria was in agreement there. "Anyway, American Rust isn't too hard to get to. It's right off the highway."

Victoria figured her own guilt and fear about getting someone else hurt was bad enough. But no, having an entire cluster of students ready to gut her for one misstep was way worse.

The place was, in many ways, completely unremarkable. As far as Victoria could tell, it was exceptional only in that it was distant and uninhabited. But for a certain breed of loner, that was good enough.

Finding the place where Rachel's body was discovered wasn't terribly difficult. There were still remnants of police tape, and the hole hadn't been filled in yet. But just enough time had passed that they no longer needed someone around to guard the spot. There wasn't anything for Victoria to pick up on visually, so for now she just had to stand aside and let Kate do her thing.

The girl crouched down, then looked back at her with her brow knit together slightly. "Um, I'm not entirely sure how to say this. Can you stand a little further back, and more down-wind? There's already a ton of rust and metal everywhere. You're a little distracting." Kate caught on too late that she probably could have phrased that better and tried to course correct. "N-Not... I mean, not in a bad way. In a good way."

Victoria raised an eyebrow at her, smirking before she could gain control of her lips. "Distracting in a good way?"

"Not... Augh! Just... stand over there? Please?" Chuckling, Victoria moved over to where she pointed before the wolf girl died from embarrassment, keeping any further commentary to herself. Kate bent down and picked up some of the dirt, rubbing it between her fingertips and inhaling slowly. "That's her..."

Victoria frowned. "Even now?"

She took another whiff, sighing sadly. "Well there's... I can still smell her just a little all around here. But this is where her body was. It's more... sour. It brings back a lot of memories, but it also tarnishes them a little."

"I'm sorry. You don't have to do this. I'm sure there's something else we can do if this is too much for you."

Kate's head shook slowly and she grabbed a new chunk of dirt for another sniff. "No... There's more here... We need something to go off of. Wait... that's..." Surprisingly, she lifted her fingers to her mouth and took a small taste of it. "Shit."

One got the impression Kate didn't curse often. This must have been bad. "Find something?"

"Two somethings. You want the bad news or the really bad news first?" She stood, brushing her hands off and stepping closer.

"I guess start with the regular bad?" Victoria crossed her arms and looked back out across the junkyard. Even as actual information started to surface, she couldn't get that word out of her head. Distracting. I'm distracting. That's probably bad, even if it's good.

"Nathan's involved, which I'm sure comes as no surprise at all. Obviously I can't tell how or to what degree. But he was definitely there when she was buried." Kate messed with her hair a bit, taking one last glance at the temporary burial site. "The real problem is far more disconcerting. It's like... a non-scent. A void."

"I mean, there's some stuff that doesn't really smell like anything, right?" Admittedly, Victoria had no clue how much her puny human nose was incapable of detecting. But the idea of something like that not existing was bizarre.

"Even when we think something smells normal, it's still got something to it that makes it unique. Plastic, clean clothes, sterile hospital tools, they all smell like something. This is very clearly someone who has gone to great lengths to make themself undetectable, probably through magic. Which, ironically, comes across as far more obvious than if they had just worn a suit made out of dryer sheets. The only thing I really know for certain is that I've experienced that same void scent around Blackwell..."

The hunter gave an exhausted groan, rubbing the bridge of her nose slowly. "Well, at any rate this means we'll have to go back to find Nathan, and actually confront him on purpose this time. Instead of, y'know, him walking into the room and just drawing a gun on us..."

"He'll be at Blackwell by now. He wouldn't bring a weapon on school grounds, would he?" Kate looked hopeful. Victoria wasn't so sure.