Previously on "The Otherworlders" - The girls got the briefing for their mission, and Fiona's already cranky because it involves attending a fancy ball. The mission is also going to be tricky because the last time Fiona and Ava were together, Fiona rebuffed Ava's attempts to become friends, or at least become friendlier towards each other. Ava is still unaware of Fiona and Farid's history.

Meanwhile, Patrick has recruited Jake and Aidan to help him break into Headmaster Pierce's office to retrieve the key to the Prius so he can go back home and speak to Stephen's mother and find out where Stephen's hiding out.

**********

Aidan is kneeling outside of Headmaster Pierce's office, picking the lock on the door, "You know, when you said 'a little side project'..." He glares up at Patrick. "...I didn't know you meant breaking and entering!"

"Shhh! Seriously! Keep your voice down," Patrick quietly pleads.

Aidan scowls and then gets back to work. After a minute... "Damn!" he says.

"What?" Patrick asks.

"There's a charm on the lock."

"Okay, well, then..." Patrick gestures anxiously. "Uncharm it!"

"It doesn't work like that," Aidan says as he sits back on his heels. "The Headmaster might have used any one of a dozen spells and applied it to the lock, which means there are — I don't even know how many ways to try to open it."

"Just start running the spells then!" Patrick replies through gritted teeth. He's starting to lose his cool.

"Patrick," Aidan sighs. "If I did that, we'd be here all day."

"Fine! Fine!" Patrick throws his hands up and begins to pace the hall, and then after a moment, he returns. "Do all the spells take the same amount of effort, or magic, or whatever?"

Aidan thinks about it a moment. "Well, no, some are fairly simple, while others are pretty complex. Those take a great deal of time and energy."

"Okay, how about this? On our mission, didn't you say that most of Pierce's magic was being used to protect the school?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the case." Aidan replies. "But what has that got to do with..." Suddenly, his eyes light up. "Oh... Ohhh... Ohhhhhh! I see where you're goin' with this." His smile widens. "That's good, Patrick. That's really good!"

Jake leans in, frustrated. "Dudes, it's like you're speaking Greek. What the hell is going on?"

Aidan turns to Jake. "You see, Patrick here, has astutely deduced that in order to conserve his magic, Headmaster Pierce probably used one of the more basic spells to protect the lock."

He turns back to Patrick, "I'm impressed that you'd pick up on that. I mean, I really didn't think you were the type to—"

"Aidan! Focus!" Patrick booms.

"Oh, yeah! Right! Right!" Aidan gets back to work. "Okay, let me try out your standard, everyday locking spell."

He wiggles his fingers in front of the doorknob and chants, "Ut in tenebris nocte hac stricta!"

Nothing happens.

"Hmmm..." Aidan strokes his chin. "Okay, maybe Pierce went with your garden variety double-locking spell. "Nemo intrare sine clavem," he chants.

Still nothing happens.

"Aidan," Patrick says, his blood pressure rising. "If Pierce just went to go get coffee or something, then he's probably coming back at any minute. Please, do something! Now!"

"All right! All right!" He waves Patrick back and then takes a calming breath. "When in doubt, you can never go wrong with the classic: Aperta sesame!"  He throws his arms up in a flourish like a birthday party magician and...

Click. The lock slides open.

"Wow!" Jake says in awe. "Aidan! That was sweet!"

"All in a day's work," Aidan replies coyly.

With a sigh of relief, Patrick pushes open the door. He looks back at the guys. "I'll be like a minute or two, max," Patrick tells them. "You guys keep your eyes peeled and if Pierce comes back... JUST STALL HIM."

"Got it!" Jake says.

"Yep, got it!" Aidan agrees.

***

Patrick slips into Headmaster Pierce's office and closes the door behind him. He heads straight for Pierce's desk, pulls open the middle drawer and...

Damn!

The keys aren't there.

Patrick's shoulders slump. What if Headmaster Pierce took the keys with him? Patrick shakes his head, lamenting his bad luck, then in a panic he begins to scan the room.

Maybe the keys are still in the office and just staring him in the face? His gaze skims over the mahogany desk, the fancy side tables sitting next to the couch and the armchair, then over to the bookshelf and... bingo!

Patrick spots the keys sitting in a shallow bowl on the middle shelf and moves quickly to grab them when — from the other side of the door — "Headmaster Pierce!" Jake practically shouts. "Hi! Good to see you, sir! Um... Aidan and I, we were hoping to catch you to ask you about...

Patrick bites his lips as he realizes he's got only seconds to find another way out of the room. Other than the main door, there's no other means of entry or exit other than... the window.

Patrick sighs with resignation and heads over there. He opens it up and leans out over the ledge. By his calculation he's about 30, maybe 35 feet above ground. He closes his eyes, curses his fate and sucks in a fortifying breath before climbing out onto the ledge.

Grabbing the handle, he eases the window closed behind him. Then, hugging the wall, he inches out of sight. He can hear Headmaster Pierce, Jake, and Aidan still talking right outside the office door.

"Well boys," Headmaster Pierce says, "I'm so glad you've taken such a keen interest in the history of Levitation and Telekinesis. You know, many students don't care to dig into the actual history behind these spells and incantations and I think that's a shame. Quite frankly, I could talk about them for hours."

Out on the ledge, Patrick rolls his eyes. Frickin' hell! He's going to be out here forever!

He looks down and, stomach churning, begins to get dizzy. Plastering himself even harder back against the wall, he starts to breathe in and out, very slowly and very deeply, just as his therapist had taught him in order to deal with his long list of phobias — the fear of heights, being at the top of that list.

When he opens his eyes, Patrick sees Ava coming up the path, dragging a small rolling suitcase behind her. He silently prays that she doesn't look up and see him because this is one of those situations he just doesn't want to have to explain to anyone, least of all Ava.

But with her Shifter senses on full alert, Ava stops and looks around as if she's being followed. Then, she looks up. Her mouth gapes open as she sees Patrick, out on the third floor ledge of the Annex building, outside of what looks to be Headmaster Pierce's office. Confusion clouds her features.

She crinkles her brow and mouths, "What the hell?"

Patrick shakes his head and mouths back, "Don't ask."

Ava frowns skeptically, then she points to Patrick's left.

He looks quizzically back at her, and she points more emphatically to his left.

Reluctantly, Patrick leans forward and sees that Ava's pointing to the open window in the room next door. He nods his understanding.

With sweat trickling down the sides of his face, Patrick leans back against the wall again and then scooches inch... by inch... by careful inch, towards the window until he's close enough to swing his leg in and pull himself inside.

Inside the office, Patrick falls back against the wall, catches his breath, and gives a silent prayer of thanks to the gods for saving his butt.

He turns and gives Ava a thumbs-up before he carefully closes the window. Then he heads straight for the door. Peeking out into the hallway, he makes sure the coast is clear.

He sees Headmaster Pierce, Jake, and Aidan still standing outside of Headmaster Pierce's doorway.

Jake catches Patrick's eye and nods, letting him know that he's good to go, and as Jake and Aidan try their best to extract themselves from the conversation, Patrick sneaks out of the room, down the hallway, and heads straight for the garage.

***

Inez and Fiona are sitting on a bench in front of the school waiting for Ava. There's a town car waiting to take them to the train station. Fiona is sipping water from a water bottle and Inez has a long stick in her hand and is drawing figure eights in the dirt.

"So, have you known Aidan and Cameron a long time?" Fiona asks.

"Oh, yeah." Inez nods. "since elementary school."

"Are they friends?" Fiona inquires.

Inez sits up. Thinks about it. "No, not exactly," she says. "I mean they're friendly with each other, sure, but they hung out with totally different crowds back at school. Aidan had a small group of friends who were into comic books, video games and sci-fi conventions. Cam was captain of the soccer team... and the golf team and the tennis team too, if I remember correctly."

Fiona slides Inez a skeptical gaze. "Golf? Seriously?"

Inez crinkles her nose. "Yeah, I think that was his dad's doing."

"Hmm... So... What's he like?" Fiona asks casually. Since she's trying to play it cool, she takes a long sip from her water bottle.

"Who, Cameron?" Inez asks.

Fiona nods.

"Oh, he's great!" Inez exclaims. "He's really sweet and very easy going. A bit cocky at times, but not obnoxiously so. He's super-smart, but really lazy. And Cam's also a bit of a... oh, what's the word I'm looking for?"

Inez looks up at the sky, searching for the right word, then she nods, "Yeah. Cam's a bit of a man-whore."

Fiona spits out her drink. Coughing, she wipes away the water dribbling down her chin. "Excuse me? What was that?" She coughs again. Hearing that term coming out of sweet, little Inez's mouth completely throws her for a loop. Luckily, she's drinking water today and not blood.

Inez starts to backpedal. "Oh, don't get me wrong! Cam's not a man-whore in a predatory sense. Oh, no, no, no. Hmm." She tilts her head. "Maybe lothario is a better term for what he is." She shrugs. "It's just that back at the Enchanted Academy, girls were always throwing themselves at him..." She rolls her eyes. "Like, ALL the time. And, I guess Cam just had a hard time saying no."

Fiona barks out a laugh. "Oh, I'll bet he did!" she snorts.

Inez laughs with her and then looks at Fiona intently. "Why do you ask?"

Fiona shakes her head. "Oh, no reason. Just curious."

Inez nods and then begins drawing circle eights in the dirt again. "Want to know something funny? Cam is still friends with all of them: all of his ex-girlfriends, all of his hook-ups, all of the girls who crushed on him, like, really, really hard. It's pretty remarkable, given the sheer number of them!"

She taps her chin. "There was one girl... oh, what was her name?" She looks up at the sky again. "Amanda! Amanda Peterson! Yeah... he tried to break up with her before lunch one day. And there's this big plate glass window in the cafeteria that looks out onto the atrium where they were. And when things took a turn for the worse, we all watched as she dumped a 32 oz. Diet Coke on his head."

Inez laughs again, then her laugh fades into a sigh. "But despite that, Amanda still ended up throwing him a birthday party when he turned seventeen. She said it was because her parents were out of town, and she was looking for any excuse to have a party at their new mansion."

Inez smiles. "But given that, by the end of the night, Amanda had gotten rip-roaring drunk, stripped down to her underwear, and performed a ten minute burlesque routine on top of her father's Steinway grand piano, all the while claiming it was a..." Inez raises her hands to make air-quotes. "...'birthday present' for Cam, I'm guessing she had a whole other agenda all along."

They both laugh as Ava walks up to them, rolling her bag behind her. "What's so funny?"

"Oh," Inez says, "I was just telling Fiona about—"

"Nothing!" Fiona interjects, standing abruptly. She gives Inez a pointed gaze. "We weren't talking about anything important, right, Inez?"

Inez slowly stands as well, and with a look of befuddlement that evolves into understanding, says, "Uh... Yeah, that's right. It wasn't anything important at all."

Fiona clears her throat. "We'd better get going or else we'll miss our train." Fiona extends the handle on her roller bag and starts for the town car.

Ava, feeling like she'd been intentionally shut out of the conversation, looks to Inez. Inez just shrugs apologetically and starts for the town car as well.

Ava frowns as she chews her bottom lip. The tension between her and Fiona isn't getting any better, and even though she has no idea what's behind Fiona's dislike of her, she's got to find a way to turn it around if they're expected to work together. And she's got to do it fast.

**********

A/N - Okay, a little late on the promised time for publishing; but so far, I've posted the past two chapters on the day I promised I would! I think I'll be able to post at around the same time (or earlier) on Wednesdays and Saturdays by 5:00 PM Pacific regularly.

Fingers crossed!

Enjoy and see you next week!

~ Paula ❤️