Thankfully, Drama class was nothing to stress over since I was there with my sister and both of our girlfriends. None of the girls in our class were any of those from Delilah’s inner circle either, though she seemed to hold some sway over most of the girls in school, especially in the higher grades, so them not being her direct flunkies didn’t mean much. The only thing of interest about the class at all was the lesson since today we were learning about voice projections, which we were told is a much-needed skill for actresses, particularly in theatre.

For our last class of the day, we all had different classes though, and I was worried about Delilah or one of her friends trying to harass Jess. Melody, Carmen, or Rose while they were on their own. I was lucky since my last class was Auto Shop, so the girls and I could stick together on the way to and from class. We wouldn’t need to worry about anyone in Delilah’s social circle being in that class either.

Carmen was probably the most vulnerable since her locker was practically on the other side of the school and she was a couple of grades below us. She shared a couple of classes with Bella, but not this afternoon. Other than that, the only class she shared with anyone else from our group was her magic class with me, and that was largely due to a fluke. Her only saving grace if something bad happened was that she could use the Salamander network to speak to me and Melody. Rose and Jess weren’t so fortunate, which had my worries flipping back to them once again as I made my way to class with Clarice and Trixie.

Distraction came in the form of class. More specifically, Mrs. Svenson spent the first half of class on the internal combustion engine, how it worked, and the newer hybrid and electric engines. She had us go over the diagrams in our textbooks so we could visualize what she was telling us too, but many of us had already read our textbooks cover to cover or already had some experience working on engines. A few of the older girls had taken the class before as well and were just looking to improve their skills.

After the lecture portion of the class was over, Mrs. Svenson led us all out the big garage door of the shop and into the back. Only one vehicle at a time would fit inside the workshop, but there was an area behind the building that was mostly protected from the elements by a corrugated steel roof and surrounded by a security fence to make sure nobody who shouldn’t be there could get inside. All seven of our project vehicles were out there waiting for us.

I was practically vibrating with excitement to get a better look at the Supra and start getting to work. I was almost distracted enough to forget how horny and uncomfortable I was. I might have preferred wearing coveralls to not get too dirty, but it was still yet another layer of clothing on top of my uniform when my mind was itching just to take everything off and get naked. At least I didn’t need to bundle up like the others did.

My classmates didn’t seem to mind too much and since it was January it probably could have been a lot colder than it was. It was minus twelve Celsius, so they probably wouldn’t be too bad off if they wore their gloves, something to cover their heads and ears, and the thermal coveralls that Mrs. Svenson had recommended they buy at the start of the week. We were all eager to get to work and had already downloaded repair manuals to our respective tablets or phones that included vehicle specs, possible replacement parts, and most of the pertinent information that we might need for the models in question.

Mine was a 2020 Toyota GR Supra, so finding cheap replacement parts from others of its kind at the wrecking year was less likely than the older vehicles that the others had chosen. I was probably going to have to buy a replacement for the front bumper panel and grill, as well as the driver’s side headlight, but the body damage was mostly cosmetic, and the work would be relatively easy. The hood wasn’t even bent out of shape, so it looked like the car hadn’t been going too fast on impact and the driver had likely been trying to brake after the engine and drivetrain blew to avoid a collision or hadn’t been going very fast.

The headlight, grill, and panel I was probably going to have to order new, and I would be looking at around five or six hundred for them. As for the engine and drivetrain, I was going to have to completely break those down and take them apart to see which parts could be cleaned and reused and which needed to be replaced. The engine was a twin-turbo beast that I was really hoping I could get working properly again, but it looked like the pistons were blown and the flywheel was warped.

It looked like the eight-speed transmission was in good shape, but it would need a little work too. I would have to get inside the shop so I could have a closer look at the drivetrain and inspect it for damage though. All-in-all though, it looked like most of the work was going to be taking apart the engine, cleaning and sorting parts, and then putting it back together once I had any needed replacement parts.

Class ended before I knew it and we were all soon getting out of our coveralls and heading back to our lockers. I had taken long enough getting out of my coveralls and talking to the others about our projects that Melody, Camen, Rose, and my sister were all waiting for me. Thankfully, it seemed like Delilah and her friends hadn’t pulled anything today since none of them looked any more bothered than just being at school could account for, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they would try something soon.

After looking around to make sure nobody was looking our way, I gave my girlfriend a quick kiss. “How were your classes?” I asked the group in general after breaking off the all-too-brief kiss with a sigh. “Did anything interesting happen?”

Everyone except for Rose shrugged noncommittally, and the black bunny girl briefly frowned. “Delilah is in my English class with a couple of her cancerous growths… I mean friends, so that was fun now that she’s not just focused on you anymore. Fortunately. it was just glares being shot my way since Mrs. Simmons doesn’t allow talking in class for anything but the subject we’re discussing.”

“People are mostly ignoring me,” Camen said with a shrug, except those who want illusory tattoos once they think I can do something more than the Salamander mark. “If I had any interest in cars beyond driving one next year, I’d probably drop my boring Art elective and see about joining Auto Shop, so I could join you and the other girls.”

“You know, Carmen, it’s a useful class,” I told her seriously. “You can learn to properly maintain a vehicle and save on repair costs by being able to do a lot of the work yourself. There’s a lot of stuff that all drivers should know, not just gearheads like me. I mean, what if your car breaks down somewhere? You might be able to fix the problem yourself if it’s not too serious, rather than calling a tow truck and paying for expensive repairs. And if you could get in and maybe get a project car, then you could already have your own car for when you get your driver’s license this summer.”

“Well… you do make some good points there…” she reluctantly admitted.

I grinned as I grabbed her hand and started to pull the Healer back toward the direction I had just come from. “C’mon, Carmen! Mrs. Svenson is still there so maybe we can see if there’s still time to get you into the class. It’s not like it’s a popular one.”

Carmen allowed herself to be dragged along in my wake and my Auto Shop teacher was still there when I pulled her inside the auto repair shop/classroom. “Crystal, what brings you back so soon? Did you forget something?” The Dwarf woman asked with a smile.

“No, nothing like that, Mrs. Svenson,” I told her while pushing Carmen toward her. “This is my friend, Carmen. She doesn’t know much about auto repair, but she doesn’t like her art class and was thinking of dropping it and taking Auto Shop, if she could still get in. I told her it’s good knowledge for drivers to have.”

“Umm… hi,” Carmen offered awkwardly, her cheeks flushed.

Mrs. Svenson looked pensive for a moment, before looking Carmen over. “Crystal is right, the skills are useful for anyone with a vehicle and there is plenty of room for new students. You haven’t even missed much yet, nothing that your classmates couldn’t help you catch up with. You’re not afraid of getting dirty, are you?”

Carmen rapidly shook her head. “No, Ma’am, I want to be a doctor, like my mom. I know that can be a messy and gross job at times, but it’s worth it, and I’ve gotten used to the idea of getting blood and… other stuff all over me. A little grease probably won’t be any worse.”

“Good, a little grease never hurt anyone,” Mrs. Svenson told her with a grin. “I was hoping for up to a dozen students this year, but with Crystal, we’ve only gotten seven. Since Alex and I were hoping for a dozen kids, it would be well within our planned budget for this year to add one more. As long as the headmistress approves it, I don’t have a problem with you joining the class, Carmen.”

“So, I can get in… if Headmistress Collins gives me the okay?” Carmen asked, looking a little stunned. I guess I did kind of just drag her in here and strongarm her into this, but it would be good for her, and she was already becoming good friends with the other girls in the class.

Mrs. Svenson nodded. “Yes, if you’re approved and don’t mind going with the girls to the wrecking yard on Saturday, I’ll tell Alex to show you some of the other cars we had planned for project cars. Most of the older girls have quite a bit of experience working on cars so they can probably help you figure out what repairs need to be done and help you pick out the parts you’ll need if you’re willing to listen and learn. Crystal can tell you what you’ll need for the class, though we supply the tools and such, so as long as you get a good pair of thermal coveralls and the other items on the supplies list that I gave Crystal on the first day, you should be fine.”

With that, we then hurried to the headmistress’s office to see about getting Carmen transferred out of Art and into Auto Shop. Carmen was worried about getting the okay for it, but it went a lot easier than she was expecting since we weren’t even at the end of the first week of classes yet. Once we were finished, we swung by our lockers to grab our backpacks, coats, and stuff. Melody and Jess were still there, but Rose got offered a ride home with Alison so she had already left with the Glaistig.

As we walked back toward the parking lot, where the Charger waited, Carmen said, “Thanks, Crystal, I kinda want to know why you and the other girls find this stuff fun, but I wasn’t sure about intruding on your thing. I’m not even sure I’ll be very good at it.”

I waved off her concerns as we stepped out of the building and into the winter air. It was snowing and that never failed to make me smile, so I was practically beaming when I told her, “It’s not just my thing, and it’s something we can talk about and have fun with together. Look at it this way, it’ll be good training for being a doctor too. It’s the same basic principles, just on cars instead of people. You need to do regular checkups to make sure your patient is healthy, and if they’re not, you diagnose what’s wrong, come up with a treatment plan, and then you sometimes need to get into their guts to do a little surgery. The surgery is just more often with wrenches than scalpels.”

“Ugh, now you made me think of getting in someone’s guts with a wrench to try and fix them. That image is going to be lodged in my brain for a while,” Carmen complained. She was smiling though.

“Huh, wrench and guts… that reminds me of the time…” Melody started to say with a far-off look in her eyes, only to be interrupted by my sister.

“Nope! I don’t want to hear it, Mel,” Jess protested. She didn’t really care for the few stories that Melody had shared with her about her time as a Paranormal hitwoman. I thought some of them were pretty funny, but then, Melody had a way of making everything fun for me.

“You’re so weird sometimes, Mel,” Carmen agreed, “but we love you anyway.”

“Hey, is it my fault if really nasty people died in hilarious ways around me when I was supposed to be killing them?” Melody countered with a smirk.

“I like Melody’s stories, they…” The words died in my throat as we turned into the parking lot, and I saw my car. Words had been spray painted all over the Charger in bright orange paint. One of the words was ‘Nymph’ but the others were various slurs like slut, whore, and cunt.

“Someone is going to die in a very not-hilarious way,” Melody said in a cold tone that was almost frighteningly calm.

I barely heard her. Everything but those words hastily sprayed on my car had faded into the background. My stomach felt like it was made of lead, tears stung my eyes, and my heart was burning with fury. That bitch was going to pay for this! I was held back from running toward my car as Jess grabbed me, held me in place, and took charge.

“No, I’m calling Mom,” my sister said firmly. “Sis, you need to think, we need to check and make sure that nobody cast any magic on or around the car. It could be booby-trapped for all we know. Mel, don’t do anything except stick with Crystal and hold her. Keep her from freaking out any more than she already is. We don’t know for sure who did this and they’re trying to provoke us. We need to go talk to the security, and maybe the headmistress. This had to have been done very recently, or Rose and the others would have seen it when they were leaving and told us about it.”

“I’ll go see if I can find a teacher or someone from security,” Carmen said as she ran off to do so.

Melody took over holding me and trying to convince me that it would be okay while Carmen ran off and Jess called Mom. “Calm down, Babe. We’ll get back at whoever did this, but your sister is right, you need to calm down and start thinking clearly. You’re the strongest magic user we have here and if anyone used any magic around here recently, you’re the only one of us who might be able to sense it.” The words were whispered gently in my ear as she stroked my long, white hair.

Still, it took her several minutes to calm me down and by the time she had, Jess was no longer on the phone and Carmen was returning with a security guard and a very familiar teacher with large, white, feathery wings. “I ran into… Ms. Norstrom… first,” Carmen panted out as she ran toward us with our magic teacher and the security guard close behind.

I was glad it was Ms. Norstrom since I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for me to try to use magic while I was emotional and not thinking clearly. Neither person needed to be told what had happened since, even if Carmen hadn’t told them before bringing them here, it was painfully obvious. The Valkyrie quickly took charge and called the headmistress, after telling the security guard to call his peers in the security office to access the camera footage for the area. I was kind of lost, still too angry and upset to do much but bury myself in Melody’s arms while the people in charge handled things.

Mom arrived in the club’s truck with Aunt Merry twenty minutes after Jess called her. Annika was going to double as the doorperson and bouncer until we got home so they had come as quickly as they could. Now we were all in the office of Headmistress Collins, along with Ms. Norstrom and the head of security, an imposing Sasquatch who was introduced as Mr. Henderson.

Thankfully, Ms. Norstrom had managed to remove the paint with Divine magic before it had set and bonded permanently to the paint job. Security had to take a few pictures first, for evidence, but now you wouldn’t even know that anything had been done to the Charger. I knew though, and it burned me up inside. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way either.

I had only seen my mom and Aunt Merry truly angry once before, when Carmen, Sorcha, and I unthinkingly bonded with our Salamanders. This put that to shame though. Both of them were livid and that was a little scary since Mom was usually either really cheerful or carefully controlling her expression. Nothing was permanently damaged thanks to Ms. Norstrom, but it was the principle of it, and that nobody was going to be facing any consequences for what was done to my car.

“I can’t believe you’re going to let those little shits get away with this,” Aunt Merry fumed. “You saw what they wrote on her car! Not only is this a clear case of harassment and bigotry, but vandalism as well! The Valk there might have been able to clean everything up, but it doesn’t change the fact that a crime was committed!”

“We know who did it too,” Melody agreed. “It was that spoiled bitch, Delilah. She’s been harassing Crystal since we started here and has called her most of those slurs to her face.”

“Can you prove it though?” the headmistress countered, far calmer than I would have been if I had a bunch of angry people in my office. “Unless we have physical evidence or proof by way of video or photographs, or witnesses come forward, my hands are tied. You could try to file harassment charges with the PDA, but they would also require proof.”

Of course, we couldn’t prove it. The two cameras in the parking lot that were pointed toward the Charger had ‘mysteriously’ shorted out just before the incident and the falling snow covered any footprints that might have been left behind by the time people started looking for evidence. No handy spray cans with fingerprints were found to incriminate anyone specific either. Delilah, or whoever she had put up to this, had been careful not to leave any solid evidence.

“You have to know those cameras were hit by someone with Lightning magic,” my mother pointed out bitterly as she clenched her fists tightly at her sides. “If my daughters and their property are not going to be safe here, then maybe I should withdraw them.”

“That would make Delilah happy, it’s probably exactly what she’s hoping for,” my sister said as she tried to be the voice of reason.

As angry as I was, I had to agree with Jess. Delilah was trying to drive us out of school so she could keep her pathetic little high school queendom. I had been reluctant to come to this school at first, but I was making friends, I loved the projects we were working on for Auto Shop, and I honestly felt that Ms. Norstrom could help me to get a better grip on both my Ice magic and Divine magic. Jess was feeling good about what she was learning in her shapeshifting class too, she thought that she might be making progress, and I didn’t want to take that away from her.

There was also the fact that I was burning for a bit of payback, and I didn’t want her to think that she had gotten to me. I wasn’t about to leave and abandon my new friends either. “Jess is right, Mom. Pulling us from school would only make her successful, and she’ll try even worse things to anyone else who doesn’t bow and scrape at her feet. We need to make a stand here. I refuse to let her think that she’s getting her way.”

The headmistress sighed as she looked over me and Jess wearing matching expressions of determination and cold fury. I didn’t care. Delilah wasn’t going to get away with this. “I won’t condone petty vengeance, girls. If you do something and get caught, her parents will go straight to the PDA and see that you face trumped-up charges.”

So, don’t do anything that can be proven through witnesses, physical evidence, video, or photographs. These were the rules that were set, and we could work within those if Delilah could. If that bitch wanted to play hardball, then I could play hardball too. I would have secretly dropped her in the middle of the Fire Plane if I wasn’t worried that some Salamander with poor taste might bond with her and regret it later. Not to mention she’d probably come back even more arrogant.

Besides, that wouldn’t work. If she disappeared now, I’d be the number one suspect after today and her friends would probably lie and say they witnessed something that didn’t happen. Nope, we needed to be smart and make sure that nothing we did could come back on us. “Of course, Headmistress, we’re better than her, we should act like it,” I answered as sweetly as I could manage.

There were no promises there, nor anything that would count as a lie. We would be better than Delilah and beat her at her own game. This was no petty vengeance either. Delilah had incurred a debt with me today, and Fey always pay our debts. I tried to turn the subject away from any thoughts that I might do exactly what she didn’t want us to do. “So how are we supposed to get to school now? We shouldn’t be punished with inconvenience because she gets away with anything at this school.”

I may not have mentioned Delilah by name, but I knew very well that Headmistress Collins knew exactly who I was talking about. It was enough to bring a guilty expression to her face before she winced and looked away. I had a feeling that she knew exactly how bad Delilah was and either couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about her. That could be due to a lack of evidence, pressure from Delilah’s wealthy parents, or more likely, both.

“I would suggest you girls make other travel plans to get to school tomorrow,” she replied. “The cameras in the parking lot won’t be repaired until Monday, and I can’t guarantee that something like this won’t happen again before then.”

“You’re missing the point. I don’t trust parking my car here, period, not even once the cameras are fixed. They didn’t exactly help this time around,” I pointed out caustically. “Until I have your personal guarantee, in writing, that my car will never again be at risk of being spray painted, firebombed, or otherwise vandalized by certain parties, I will not be parking it here. As long as I think that someone might so much as write rude messages in the ice on my windshield, I will not drive here. So, either something needs to be done to actually protect my property while I’m here, or I will get Melody to teleport us here through the Infernal Plane every day.”

~Or the Fire Plane,~ Melody replied mentally, letting me know that she was following my thoughts exactly. Then she made a point of shrugging as she said for the benefit of everyone else in the room. “That’s doable. We, and our uniforms, will smell like smoke and/or brimstone, but I don’t remember seeing anything like that mentioned in the dress code, so we should be good. It might not make a good impression on our classmates, teachers, or anyone else who happens to see, or rather smell, us in these uniforms though.”

“You could bring another car,” the woman behind the desk pointed out with a sigh.

“No, we couldn’t. My project car for Auto Shop is going to take a lot of work to get running and this is the only car that we have available to us right now unless you want to provide another for us. Even if we did have another, the same thing would just happen to it and I’m not risking anyone’s property being vandalized again by the poor little rich girl. I shouldn’t have to be dropped off and picked up like some elementary school kid when I have a perfectly good vehicle to drive in, especially when I’m the victim here. So, either my property is respected and protected here, and I get a guarantee for that, or we come to school smelling like hellfire barbeque every day for the foreseeable future.”

She didn’t want to sign that guarantee, especially after I showed her exactly how much my car was worth in pristine condition like it was. She just couldn’t let the school be accountable for that much money when there was no way to guarantee this wouldn’t happen again. To be fair, I would have balked at potentially covering the cost if it was damaged too since it was in the six-figure range, and that was without the sentimental value attached to it.

Ms. Norstrom had offered to place protective enchantments on the Charger, but that much active Divine magic would bring far more attention to it, and me, from other Paranormals. As a Nymph, that could put me under a microscope and place me in potential danger from the Paranormal criminal element, something that she and Headmistress Collins could see when Mom pointed it out. It was why Mom hadn’t done it herself, not that she could tell them that part.

We left disappointed, but it wasn’t anything that I wasn’t expecting. Mom and Aunt Merry were both proud of me for sticking to my guns on this though. They seemed even more proud when I told them I wasn’t going to take this lying down and would repay the debt owed. I’m pretty sure that the headmistress thought I was bluffing about the teleporting bit and would find another way to get to school or borrow a less valuable car, but she’d find out tomorrow that I wasn’t. I had drawn my line in the snow, and I was going to stick to it.