Those better spirits carried me through the weekend. I looked up Thruor and we spent some pleasant…to us…time sparring.

They lasted about five minutes after making it to school. They canceled first period and made us all gather in the gymnasium to hear a lecture about how they had no clue who had planted the bomb, but we should all expect bag searches, locker checks and other such moves designed to piss off and inconvenience everyone without actually catching the culprit.

Oh yes, and we had to hand in our cell phones, to be returned at the end of the day. I contemplated hiding mine and I noticed some horrified faces. Mostly boys.

I wondered what kind of porn they had on theirs. I’d already anticipated this and wiped everything not important. In future, I supposed, I’d just leave it at home. One girl near me started to cry.

“What’s wrong?”

“If my dad finds out I handed my phone to anyone he’ll…he’ll…”

I didn’t know her, but wanted to say her name was Fanny or Frances. “It’s not your fault. Let me know if he tries something…I’ll vouch for it being the school for you.”
That brightened her a little. “I’m not allowed to give out his phone number. It’s locked, but he’s still paranoid.”

“Let me guess, telemarketers send him into a flying rage?” At least I wasn’t getting the vibe that he’d do more than yell at her about it. “I’ll make sure I’m there when he shows up at the end of the day. You could not tell him?”

“I don’t intend to tell him, but he’ll hear other people bitching about it.”

“You could, like, remove the number from contacts first.” I grinned a bit. “I’m sure you know it.”

She blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that.” Then she started to mess with her phone.
At least I could solve one problem. One stupid little problem that didn’t really affect anyone. I’d bet none of this would…the bomber would just come up with something else to do.

Like, say, set off the gym sprinkler system while we were all in there. I was not the only person to flee the room.

Think like me, he’d said. Because he knew this was a trickster type. Who was out to cause as much trouble as possible. I still sensed nothing supernatural, which almost disappointed me. If it was, I could find them.

Or I could find a completely innocent person who happened to have magical talent or something. I reminded myself of that. The only people who scanned at all were Prue and, a tiny bit, Kanesha. Which I supposed was my fault.

It was only the gym that was affected. We milled in the corridors. Some people actually were finding this funny. Not so the girl who had been fiddling with her phone, which apparently wasn’t quite waterproof enough.

“It’s salvageable. Turn it off, dry it, and then…you need silica gel. Take it apart and then put it in a storage bag with the gel.”

She beamed. “Okay. That really works?”

“Worked for a friend of mine after he took a tumble into the reflecting pool.” That was code, if anyone or anything was listening. It might even be a threat.