Author's Note: It's a recap episode! If you've read the first arc but you're fuzzy on the details, we'll be reviewing them here, adding in extra werewolf lore, and seeing a bit more how people feel about the supernatural events going on.

After getting a reminder from Rachel to meet up in Mr. Keaton's classroom Saturday afternoon, Victoria came to pick Taylor up from her room. As Taylor left her room with her laptop in her backpack, Victoria said, "Time for show and tell, I guess."

"What's up?"

Courtney emerged from around the corner from the shower room. She was in her pajamas after noon, which was a first, and her hair was clumped and spiky. She was always so cute, regardless of how dressed up she was or was not, but she never looked like she was trying very hard for it.

"Oh, hey Courtney," Taylor said with a wave, joining the other two to form a triangle.

"Heya T. It feels like I haven't seen you all week." She had a smile plastered on, but Taylor knew her well enough to see suspicion under it. "How've you been?"

"Oh, good, yeah." Taylor realized she didn't have much of an excuse on hand for failing to hang out with Courtney all week. They'd barely even spoken. "I've just, uh, been hanging out with Rachel a lot, I guess."

"That's lovely. I bet the two of you are really cute together - maybe the three of us could hang out sometime?"

Courtney was being nice in a way that put Taylor on edge. This is how she talked to other club members when she wanted something, but not usually how she talked with them. And if she wanted something, Taylor wasn't sure what it could be.

"Yeah, that'd be cool."

Courtney shifted her attention to Victoria. "You two doing stuff today?"

Victoria rubbed the back of her neck. It was a tell for her nervousness, but Taylor was pretty sure she had no idea when she was doing it. Courtney blinked and her eyes narrowed for a second, but then the look was gone as soon as Victoria started talking.

"Oh, yeah, you know. Just a . . ." Victoria glanced over at Taylor, "a photography project. It's due next week so we just have to get on it."

"Oh, huh," Courtney said, crossing her arms over her chest. She shrugged and said, "Hadn't heard anything about that."

"She's not buying it."

"Well. Good luck on your project."

"For sure," Victoria replied with a wave as Courtney walked past them towards her room.

Taylor's phone buzzed. The preview didn't include a contact name, but the message started with: Hey Taylor, it's Kate, I just wa...

"I don't think she bought it," Victoria murmured as Taylor swiped the message open.

She doesn't have to buy it if she can't guess what's really going on.

"What the fuck?"

Maybe: Kate: Hey Taylor, it's Kate, I just wanted to check in and see if you had any luck finding anyone else who got harassing texts / if you found out who sent them?

Oh, yeah. I'm telepathic now. I forgot to mention.

"You're . . . what now?"

Taylor glanced up at Victoria. "Telepathic."

Taylor suppressed the smug grin that tried to creep up onto her face, watching Victoria's face carve itself into shock and disbelief. She just turned her attention back to her phone.

Taylor: hey kate! yeah actually, i did. we're handling it.

Kate texted back quickly.

Kate: That's great! Kind of. Not really, I guess, but it's better you find them than not, right?

"How does it work?"

Taylor glanced up, the smirk impossible to deny this time. Like this.

"Can you hear this?"

Loud and clear, Tori.

"Holy shit."

Taylor: yeah, absolutely. and thanks for following up, that's really cool of you

Kate: Of course ^_^

It was almost half an hour after their agreed-upon meeting time when everyone was present and they got the projector working, but Rachel didn't waste any extra time before diving into her Power Point presentation. They put a lot of effort into it last night, and Taylor knew Rachel kept working this morning. This was probably going to be the best presentation she'd ever seen someone pull out of their ass in a matter of hours (which was how all of her presentations were done, historically).

The presentation was titled, Witches & Demons (or Oh my Fucking God Everything is on Fire What is Going on and What do We Do) prepared by Rachel D. Amber and Taylor N. Christensen. Rachel had just wanted to name it The Recent Fuckening but Taylor wanted to start them off on a lighter, less-ominous note.

"So. Hey there everyone. I wanted to get everyone together to go over the information we know about the supernatural events of Arcadia Bay. There's a lot to cover, so I'm going to start with a chronology from my perspective, and then Taylor will be expanding out conceptually. I will start with werewolves.

(Slide 1) Werewolves: "During my sophomore year at Blackwell, I started a forest fire that came to be known as the Culmination fire. The following night, I had a vision about Arcadia Bay being destroyed in a terrible fire, and woke up with supernatural abilities, namely increased physical abilities like strength and endurance, a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and a minor healing factor. These traits are suppressed during a new moon and enhanced during a gibbous moon, during which I shapeshift into . . . well. A big wolf." Rachel used a laser pointer to circle fan art of a wolf that had clearly been drawn by a furry.

(Slide 2) Ritual: "A few weeks later, I had another vision that revealed a process by which I could make more werewolves. After talking it over with Chloe, I turned her into a werewolf as well, and we began to hunt mutated animals that started appearing in Culmination State Park. After Max moved back last year, I made her into a werewolf as well. Max is the one who realized that all of our abilities were suppressed during a new moon, because . . . well. We hadn't really tested it. We've mostly made a point to avoid using our abilities when it isn't the full moon-"

Victoria scoffed, "Max sure hasn't."

Rachel pretended not to hear. "So, originally, we assumed, incorrectly, that this was just standard werewolf stuff. However, thanks to a vision that Taylor had, and an encounter we had a few days ago, we've since realized that I'm a witch under the title 'Oracle of the Moon.'"

(Slide 3): Rachel moved onto a slide that was split in half - one side labeled Oracle, the other Moon.

"According to Wikipedia, an Oracle is 'a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods.' Sidestepping the whole concept of divinity there, this clearly fits in line with the guiding visions I've been having over the past two years. However, if they haven't just been instructive, but actually precognitive - as in revealing the future - that's a bad sign. However, I'm led to assume that I'm not being shown things as 'the future' so much as 'a possible future' that we have been tasked with preventing."

Victoria cut in again - "Tasked by who, exactly?"

Rachel replied with a radiant smile and a, "Great question! That leads me to the second half of this slide - the moon."

Victoria looked flabbergasted at this response, but Rachel just continued on:

"The moon has been interpreted in mythology to be a deity dating back approximately 7,000 years, with the oldest records of human art depicting the moon showing up in Ireland. Deific interpretations of the moon vary, but common themes include sorcery, femininity, life, time, and wisdom. Considering my ability to conjure a bow - we'll get to that in a bit - if it were a literal deity guiding me, I would have to guess Artemis, goddess of archery, who is occasionally represented with lunar symbolism. For clarity, I don't think that's what's happening here, but it might serve as a point of reference for the role I'm supposed to serve."

Rachel continued onto a new slide labeled (Slide 4): Witches that was covered in what looked like selections of a Pinterest feed plus several anime girls with bows, staves, and swords.

"Now, Taylor is going to take over and guide us through what we know about witches, and what our objectives are. Taylor?"

Everyone was pretty settled in by now. Victoria sat the closest to the projector, carefully reading through all of the descriptive text that they'd prepared and occasionally rolling her eyes at the images Rachel had picked out. Max had dragged one of those desk/chair combos next to Chloe and leaned against it, keeping her eyes up on the slide show (most of the time). Taylor was surprised the two of them hadn't been asking more questions, honestly - maybe it was just the class-like setting that made them feel like they couldn't interrupt. Chloe, on the other hand, sat with her feet up on Mr. Keaton's desk, glancing between the screen and a notebook she was doodling in. What sort of life do you have to live that even this presentation becomes mundane?

Taylor sat in a chair to the side of the screen. She glanced at her first note card and began:

"So, witches. What are they? First I want to talk about how I first found out about witches, and then break down the details we know."

"On Tuesday of last week, I had a run-in with Zach in the girl's bathroom. He had cornered Juliet about breaking up with him, and he was getting kind of scary, but when I confronted him, he looked all messed up. He looked like a silhouette or shadow of himself, but larger, and with fire inside his body, kind of like so. When I saw him, and he saw that I saw him, he knocked Juliet out, said that I was a witch (because I could see this shadowy figure instead of just Zach), and tried to attack me. When I tried to defend myself, I was suddenly holding a staff, blasted him with it, and then the weird, shadowy stuff got pulled into the staff. A few days later, I had a vision, where I learned a bunch of stuff about what being a witch meant."

(Slide 5) Transformation & Weapons: "The first and most obvious detail of witches that we've seen is their ability to transform into a pre-existing outfit and summon a weapon. I have a staff, Rachel has a bow, and Victoria has a sword. Each of our weapons has a gem embedded in it that appears to generate the rest of it when we want or need it to."

(Slide 6) Magic Gem: "Here are pictures of the three gems we've got so far. Mine appeared first and is red. We looked into gemstone cuts a bit and found out that that this one is called a Radiant cut. This is particularly interesting because the Radiant cut was invented in 1976 by . . . Henry Grossbard . . . suggesting that this stone was cut not that long ago. Rachel's is white-ish - what was the word?"

Rachel tagged in, "Opalescent?"

Taylor snapped her fingers as she remembered and said, "Yes! That's it, opalescent. The cut appears to be Marquise, originally commissioned by . . . King Louis XIV for Marquise de Pompadour."

Taylor glanced up at Victoria for her French pronunciations, and Victoria gave her a small nod.

"Neat. The last stone we've found is a bit stranger because we couldn't find instances of stones cut like this, but Victoria's gem is a dark blue, roughly cylinder gem. There are noticeable lines but Rachel and I weren't really sure whether or not to call the planes facets? We honestly don't know that much about gems."

"Anyway, these gems appear the first time we transform into our witch outfits, along with our weapons, and may potentially power some of the abilities we've been getting. Which leads me to my next slide."

(Slide 7) Powers & Theme: "Each of us has a title that suggests a certain theme as well as a role. In addition, we also seem to have unique powers - I'm not sure exactly how connected that is to our title. Rachel covered herself pretty well, but my title is, apparently, 'Child of Darkness,' which other than making me sound like Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way 2.0, seems pretty accurate. My powers, aesthetically, share a strong resemblance to the demons we've been fighting called 'shades' - my staff sort of oozes out, like, smoke or mist, and I can shape that into corporeal objects. In a vision I had, it was implied that I might actually be drawing power from the same source they are - I'll get to that in a bit - but it looks like I can only hurt the shades themselves. In addition, I seem to have a weird smattering of psychic abilities, I guess? I can make people do things, like leave a place or give me an object, but they seem to retain at least some memory of me doing that, so it's not a very subtle tool. Also, I can speak telepathically with Rachel and Victoria, which is just as freaky as it sounds!"

"Now, Victoria hasn't had the chance to fight yet, but we do have some pretty solid ideas about what she can do. Her title is 'Warrior of Storm and Skies,' which is firstly bad-ass, but secondly definitely more fight-y than 'Child' or 'Oracle'. It looks like she can cause rain (unconfirmed), potentially other weather effects (unconfirmed), and share emotions through eye contact (confirmed?). In addition, unlike my staff and Rachel's bow, which sort of shape darkness and light into weapons, Victoria's actually just got a literal sword that she can like, stab people with. We're not really sure if it does magic yet."

(Slide 8) Evil God: "Okay, so. Twice now I've had visions where I've spoken with a raven who has tried to fill me in on what I'm supposed to be doing. Here's what I've gleaned."

"First, they referred to Arcadia Bay as being the prison of a god. I don't have a whole lot of details about this other than the fact that the shades we've been fighting serve him, and that it would be like, really bad if he got out of this prison. Apparently, he can be released through, like, violence or destruction or something. The Raven specifically told me that Rachel's vision of the burning Arcadia Bay is a potential vision of what happens if we don't stop them. Oh, they also told me that the whole weird double moon thing that happened last Thursday? That's what woke the god up and why we've become witches, probably."

(Slide 9) Our Side: "Yeah, okay, so. This diagram I made is supposed to show some of the ideas the Raven explained to me about witches. First, there's supposed to be four of us in total - the three of us, referred to as 'the Coven', and a fourth who may or may not be on our side. The four witches are split into two sets of two - me and Rachel make up a light/dark pair, and Victoria and the fourth witch is supposed to make up a . . . well, the fourth witch's title is 'Guardian of Time', so some sort of water/time pair? I think the Raven referred to it as 'time and tide?' The relevance of these pairs isn't super clear to me yet, but the Raven suggested that these pairs are complementary opposites. Lastly, there is supposed to be someone called 'The Maiden' that so far we don't know anything about, other than she is supposed to be explicitly linked to Arcadia Bay's survival, and we're supposed to protect her."

(Slide 10) Our Job: "Now, as a coven, our job seems to be to prevent the shades from causing enough violence and destruction to awaken the evil god dude. We don't really know how much that is, but so far I think we've done a . . . pretty good job. I kinda just threw this picture of Queen Beryl in because it reminded me of the plot of Season 1 of Sailor Moon. We apparently do have a fail-safe, which again, I'll get to, but spoiler alert, it's a little like the end of Season 1 of Sailor Moon."

(Slide 11) Roles: "Now, on top of our small supernatural abilities, it looks like we have specific roles as a team, including the Time witch we haven't met yet. 'Darkness' - me - can exorcise the shades. Once they've taken enough damage, it looks like they get pulled from the body of the boys they're possessing and they go into the gem in my staff. When we fought Nathan, I got like, one hit on him, but it apparently wasn't enough, because the shade disappeared without being exorcised."

"Now, 'The Warrior of Storm and Skies' is supposed to conjure a storm. I don't really know how that works, but the Raven showed me what it would look like, as a sort of alternate reality to Rachel's burning vision."

"Then, the 'Guardian of Time' is supposed to either guard the Maiden like we do, or 'leads her to her death' if we fuck up and the imprisoned god gets free. Apparently she's connected to Arcadia Bay in a way that would make her death stop the God from getting free? I don't know how it works, exactly, but it seems sketchy and I was advised specifically to try and prevent that, because it would basically just delay instead of stop his whole plan of getting free."

Rachel chimed in, "Also, it looks like I'm supposed to help us prevent things from ever getting that bad. Seeing visions, making other werewolves, etc - I think I'm supposed to be more proactive, whereas Taylor gets rid of shades if things go sideways."

"Wait, wait, wait - can you back up a bit?" Victoria asked. "To the whole storm-conjuring bit. What?"

"Oh yeah." The storm was one of those things Taylor felt fine talking about, as long as she didn't have to think about, as long as she didn't have to see it again. Any time she let herself remember the cold rain and the massive waterspout, it was like it was happening right then and there.

"So, in my very first vision, when I met the Raven, they told me I needed to delay 'my enemy' until a storm came. They also showed me what the storm would look like - basically a massive waterspout (like a tornado over water). It was the biggest storm I've ever seen . . ." She shook her head to clear the thought away. "Anyway, the Raven told me that the Storm was Arcadia Bay's way of making sure the god couldn't wake up, so long as it was called before 'the eclipse'. We don't really know when that's supposed to happen, though."

Chloe raised her hand. Rachel and Taylor glanced at each other for a second before Rachel said, "Uh, yeah Chloe?"

"Yeah, hey." Chloe dropped her feet from the desk and sat up. "Just a small observation here but that seems like a bad fucking plan. Like, Nathan and Warren are the only two left, right? And there's five of us, not counting witch #4 that's supposed to show up. So you exorcise them and we're gucci, right?" She made big gestures with her hands as if to make the question innocent, but Chloe looked straight at Taylor the whole time, and it was clear the 'bad fucking plan' was considered hers.

Taylor blushed, embarrassed. "Well that's . . . just all they said. I don't really get how this all works."

"Huh." Chloe replied, leaning forward on the desk. She drummed her fingers loudly on the desk for a few seconds before saying, "So, you've got a spooky dream where a carrion bird talked to you and told you to completely fuck up the town, and you think we should trust them?"

"Well I - I don't really know . . . what else to do?" Taylor's face felt hot but the rest of her felt cold. She held her arms close against her body, rubbing her upper arm.

"Well how about-" Chloe started.

Rachel cut in, "Chloe. Hey."

Chloe cut off and Rachel continued, "We're still trying to figure things out. How about we focus on Warren and Nathan before dealing with all this god stuff?"

"Is Chloe right, though?" Max asked, rising to perch in her chair. "Like, do we just have to handle those two and any more 'Shades' that crop up?"

"I think so?" Rachel replied.

"I'm . . . not so sure," Taylor added, pulling everyone's attention again. Chloe looking at her again made her anxious, so she chose her words slowly: "This . . . wasn't in the slide show, but . . . the Raven told me something. That I have to 'find the Maiden before your enemies take their true form, or you will all die' . . . they didn't really go into detail on any of that, though."

"Ugh, this fucking Raven again," Chloe whined, rubbing her temples melodramatically. "We don't have shit for information to go on to find this 'Maiden' and the stakes are only, 'rocks fall, everybody dies?' What the fuck?"

Victoria took a wide look around the room so obvious it was clearly meant to (and did) draw everyone's attention away from Taylor and Chloe. "Well, for one, it looks like everyone who's been a player in this has gone to Blackwell, right?"

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Despite the fact that it was incredibly obvious, that detail had completely eluded Taylor, and she just sat blinking for a few seconds in disbelief at her own stupidity.

"That's . . . true, huh," Max said. She looked up at the ceiling and counted something silently on her fingers, though her lips moved along with some imperceptive words. "That's really weird."

There was a loud buzzing from Max's pocket. She didn't notice at first, but after a few seconds, it finally seemed to sink in, and she checked her phone.

"Shit, sorry guys, I gotta go." She stuffed the phone back in her pockets, grabbed her bag, and left with a little wave and a "See ya."

They sat in awkward silence for only a short moment, still on the final slide of the presentation, before Chloe announced, "Well, I'll keep out an eye for Nathan. Rip him a new one if I see him and let you guys know. Later."

"Later, Chlo."

"Bye, Chloe."

"Yeah, see ya," Chloe replied, out barely a minute after Max.

Even though Taylor was relieved to have Chloe out of the room, being left with only Rachel and Victoria quickly erased the whole 'demon fighting' context from her mind. Rachel was doing her best not to look at Victoria, who was just on her phone, waiting for nothing in particular.

Will they even be able to get along?

Victoria sighed. From the looks of things, she was busy playing one of those mind-melting 2048 games. She said, "I don't really see what choice I have. It's play nice or die, right?"

"Yeah, that's the spirit, Victoria," Rachel replied wryly.

"Hey!" Taylor yelled. Everyone was acting like assholes today. She got that that was all their thing and whatever, but her ability to care was dangerously close to empty (the things Chloe said had taken most of it out of her, to be honest).

Rachel and Victoria both looked to her, startled. She felt like she should have some follow-up, but her frustration was eating up all her wit, too, so she just stared them down, hoping to get the point across through eye contact alone.

Victoria broke first. Groaning, she said, "Okay, okay, whatever. If we want to do fucking team-building exercises or whatever, why don't we just do something we all like? What do we all like?"

Everyone paused for a moment to think. Then, Rachel offered, "Well, we all like photography? Maybe we could do photography lab together?"

Taylor glanced at Victoria with concern, but whatever Victoria was feeling, she was making a point to avoid looking at anyone and cluing them in.

Taylor said, "Um . . . photography lab is kind of time Vic and I try to spend together, just the two of us, if we can. Could we do it next weekend? That way we'd have more time anyway."

Rachel frowned, but if she had a complaint, she didn't voice it (or clearly think it).

Victoria shrugged. "That works for me, if it means anything."

"Fine, yeah. I can do that," Rachel replied, nodding gently.

"And I guess . . . we could go shopping? That seems like . . . neutral ground?" Victoria offered.

That clearly gave Rachel an idea, though, because she stood up from her chair and put her hands on the computer desk and said, "Yeah! We could get new witch outfits!"

Victoria blinked a few times. "What?"

Taylor chimed in, "Oh yeah! Rachel and I figured out last night that you can take off and put on new parts of your witch costume. Like, we switched jewelry just to see if we could, and we can."

More stupefied blinks. "I'm not going to have to fight in that ugly-ass suit?"

Rachel snapped her fingers into finger guns and said, "Not if we go shopping, you don't!" and fired off two finger-shots.

"Huh. Works for me," Victoria said, finally closing out of her game and putting her phone in her pocket. "Let's go tomorrow, we can hit up some stores I like in Portland."

She stood up and looked between Rachel and Taylor. She said, "Come to think of it, your themes are light and dark, so you should be good to just shop at like, Hot Topic, right?"

Rachel rolled her eyes, but for once it seemed good-natured. "Ha ha. You're soooo clever."

"I'm fucking hilarious," Victoria replied, deadpan and straight-faced. Then, cracking a smile, she said, "But I'm going to head out, too, unless there's more, you know, 'Coven' stuff we're supposed to work out?" She put air quotes around 'coven.'

Taylor and Rachel glanced at each other, then Rachel said, "Nah, I think you're good. Plus we can just like, text if something comes up."

"Lovely. I'll see you two tomorrow, then. Bye Sweet T."

"Bye Tori!"

"See ya later, Vic."

Taylor sat down on the computer desk in front of Rachel, doing her best to swing her legs underneath it.

"Hey you," Rachel said, patting Taylor's knee in greeting.

"Hey you," Taylor replied, finally at ease and smiling. "What are you plans for this evening?"

To Taylor's dismay, Rachel grimaced. "I've . . . got to study, actually."

Taylor pouted, and Rachel rubbed her leg to comfort her. "Aww, don't be sad. I've just been so busy with all this witch stuff and being all wolfed out last weekend that I'm getting behind."

"Ooh yeaaahh . . . last week was the full moon, huh?"

Rachel nodded, now mirroring Taylor's pout. She grabbed Taylor's hand and kissed her knuckles. "Yeah . . . and I messed it all up and asked you out on the first night of the full moon like an idiot."

A whole bunch of disparate pieces of information came together all at once. She thrashed their hands up and down for a second and said, "Oh! Oh oh oh! That's! That's why Max was sick! And why Victoria saw her naked in the woods! That's why you were acting so shady!"

"Y-yeah?" Rachel said, bemused. "I thought that was, like, known? With the big reveal of me being a werewolf and everything?"

"No! Not at all because I'm dumb! I thought you had like, a big scary secret or something."

Now Rachel just looked confused. "I'm . . . a werewolf?"

"RACHEL THAT'S AWESOME, DON'T BE A DOOF!"

"God, you're cute." Rachel stood up, dropping Taylor's hand in favor of cupping her cheeks in her hands and kissing her.

Unfortunately, Taylor interrupted it when she started laughing. "What?" Rachel asked, pouting even more adorably now.

"It's just - just - you were just a closet furry."

"I'm - I'm . . . I'm not."

Taylor put her hands on her hips and insisted, "You have a fursona."

"I - I," Rachel was flustered. Taylor wasn't sure she had ever seen her flustered before. "I didn't get to like, design it! It just happens!"

"Okay, so you're furry-adjacent then."

Rachel glared. "You. Are. Infuriating." She kissed Taylor's forehead, "- and rude -" and her cheek, "- and pretty-" and her lips, "- and I like you. You menace. You absolute rogue."

"I like you, too," Taylor replied, grabbing a fistful of Rachel's shirt and pulling her back into a kiss.

When they finally broke apart a minute later, Rachel was flushed. She laughed nervously. "Ha. Yeah. Okay. Um. Cool. This seems like where I should bail if I'm gonna . . . chill out."

It took Taylor a few seconds to catch Rachel's meaning, but when she did, she quirked her eyebrows and gave a smug smirk. "That's probably smart."

Rachel nodded, closing her eyes to compose herself as she took a step back from Taylor. She picked up her bag, and Taylor took a moment to look Rachel over slowly, the way Rachel did to her that made her both self-conscious and also really happy.

"You're kind of easy to work up, huh?" Taylor asked, back to swinging her legs and looking her most innocent.

Rachel glared as she stood back up. She flipped Taylor off, but before Taylor could even mock offense, she opened her hand up, kissed it, then smooshed it onto Taylor's cheek.

"I've got a thing for cute girls, sue me," she said, backing up towards the door.

"Oh, I would never. Later, Rachel."

"Bye, bae," Rachel said with a final wave, and then Taylor was left alone in the drama lab room.

It didn't take long for loneliness to set in, but it didn't manage to cripple Taylor's good mood immediately. She decided to try and salvage it instead of going and spending the rest of her evening in her room doing homework (or, more realistically, doing nothing).

Taylor: hey danny! you free? wanna get food or something?

Dana: Oh hey Taylor! :) I'm studying rn but I'll be free in a couple of hours if you want to hang out?

Taylor: that'd be great!

Dana: Cool - I'll text you when.