Right!  Chad had completely forgotten the things Ryan had done to get the information.  Hannah hadn't come out and told him, he had snooped and snuck around to get the information he had now told Chad.  Chad didn't care how Ryan got the information, but now that it had landed in his lap he felt the burning need to help her.  Chad and Ryan of course couldn't just land on her doorstep and ask her to join them, she'd be shocked and highly suspicious.  Chad was used to diving into things head first that he didn't consider the complications.

But now he needed a new plan.  Chad took to pacing again, trying to think of something to do.  "Ask her out?"  He came to a halt and stared at Ryan.  He knew Ryan was being serious but he couldn't believe it.  He crossed his arms over his chest, cocked a brow and stared at him.  "Seriously?  We just went over the fact that Hannah is smart.  One, do you really think she'd believe that I would want to go out with her, I who barely knows her.  Two, do you really think she'd want to go out with me.  She is a."  He rolled his eyes thinking of the right word.  "She's a genius, I'm not."  He did not consider himself stupid, but around really smart people he really noticed where he was lacking.  "Then dump her?  We want her to come and stay here, don't you think that will be a bit odd constantly running into her?  You might be right.  Most girls that I end it with never stay mad long.  But, that doesn't mean that I could be with them every day.  Live with them!"

He looked down for a moment.  "What if I asked her to help me with my tests."  He looked back to Ryan.  "They are coming up you know."  The testing was right around the corner and then he'd be out of Whispers forever.  That scared the crap out of him but was something that Ryan and him rarely talked about.  "She's smart.  Maybe it would be easier to see me as wanting her tutoring services.  I could still offer to take her out for her trouble, but then that way she won't have to think of this as anything romantic." 

Ryan listened as Chad offered up his plan, then he turned to offer him a look that Ryan offered people he felt were poor stupid sods.  "What the feck is in your head?  We can't just show up like we know she lives in that rat trap.  We have to trick her somehow."

Ryan always worked better from the point of view of being sneaky and getting away with something.  He'd also found out all that he had about Hannah by some pretty underhanded snooping.   He was sort of pleased with the fact that Chad had no problem with that.  It's part of what he liked about Chad:  He was only righteous to a point.

As far as a better plan, Ryan didn't have one.  He felt like he should.  He felt smarter than Chad most days.  It made up for the fact that Chad could often beat the crap out of him.

He paced the floor now, listening to the rain and trying to tap into his ever deepening pool of teen brilliance.  It arrived on time and he turned and face Chad.

 "I say we just trail her for her a few days, find out the places she haunts, and then you can bump into her at one of them and ask her out."

 Ryan would never in a million years ask her out himself. She was smart, but odd and rather shabby looking.   He'd not want that sort of thing tied to him.  He had a budding reputation at getting the sought after girls at school that he needed to maintain.  In Ryan's mind, this was a job for Chad.

 "You can tell me where you'll be and I can just sort of pop in.  You can dump her after a week or so.  Girls never seem to stay mad at you for too long when you dump them. By that time, we can work out the part about having her stay here and not in the dump she's in."

Chad did not like to think that anyone was in the same boat as he was.  He preferred to think himself the oddity.  That he was to be born, but was brought into the wrong family.  The only good thing that ever happened in that family was that he walked out and they didn't demand him to come back.  Chad looked like his father as a youth.  Young, and fit, not like the man he had become.  However, the image brought a ghost to the front of his father's mind.  A man who had beat his wife, drank to much and had been too rough with a kid.  He had vowed to do it better with his second, the little girl that looked nothing like him and everything like his beautiful wife.  But Chad was the constant reminder, and every year he grew, every year he looked more and more like that violent man.  Having quit the blue and the booze he had no other vice to free himself of the guilt and tension when seeing his son, so fights would be picked and eventually things would erupt.  When Chad left, it was with a plan to not return, and his family was happy to be rid of the past.

He hated to think that Hannah was in the same situation, whatever her story may be.  It made him want to know if someone had been harsh to her, or demanding, or if someone had harmed her in some way.  He didn't like it, it made him feel anxious, and he stood up, following Ryan to the window, watching the rain cut across and hit the window.  Chad didn't know what to do about Hannah.  He knew the girl, he had possibly talked to her less than a handful of times.  But he wanted her to leave that horrible place.  If Ryan wanted to bring her here then Chad planned to make it happen.

If it had been any other girl he'd have said for them to dress up.  But he figured she'd prefer for them to dress normal.  "Lets just dress in our break clothes.  Go there tomorrow, after the rain.  We will just offer her to come here to relax.  Don't tell her its permanent.  That, or go there to talk to her about your headache, ask her if she'd come here to make you more.  Once here, then we can offer her a place to stay.  We can tell her she can stay in a different wing so she doesn't have to feel like we are too close if she wants privacy or she can have a room down the hall if she prefers company."  He didn't know her well but he hoped his plan would work.

"Its pouring.  We'd scare her tonight.  We'd scare any girl tonight."  He looked to Ryan.  He was itching to go right then but he knew if he acted on that, she'd probably refuse and take offense to them getting her at night in the pouring rain.  Once it was the morning and the sun was shining on things, she'd be a little clearer and so would they. 

But his gut was telling him that dump of place wasn't safe in a storm.  What if it flooded?  What if it was leaking?  It would be better to get her tonight.  They'd have the leaks and the problems as leverage.  And maybe it would be easy and she'd want to get out of such a dump.  He moved away from the window, not voicing his concerns but allowing them to feed on his conscious which was having a war on what best to do for the girl.

It worked.  Chad was in.  He wanted to fix it.  It was Ryan had banked on, not really knowing how to approach the situation alone.  He'd lured Chad into his life, but that was based on a shared love of horses,  few good fist fights and the fact that Chad was one of he few people who didn't walk away from Ryan.  It had earned Chad a place in Ryan's makeshift "family".  It was a new concept and one he didn't really give voice to, but he was building it and it was his.   It included Agnes, Chad, Reed and now it would include Hannah. 

"She's a stubborn thing," Ryan mused as he watched Chad tensing over the new information.  He was sure it stirred Chad's own feelings of being abandoned by his family.  Ryan didn't mind that Chad's family were a bunch of idiots because that secured Chad in Ryan's life and Ryan guarded that in his own ways. 

The rain was picking up outside and Ryan stood up, walked to the window and drew back the curtain to watch it.

"We can't exactly just show up and storm that filthy hovel she lives in.  She's liable to take offense."  Ryan was also thinking she might unleash some magick if she felt cornered.    She was odd.  It was true.  Clever, but odd. 

"Hannah Winter."  He nodded as he remembered the girls name now.  Alright, he still was confused as to where this was all going, but for the moment he kept his peace.  He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, legs stretched out as he lounged comfortably in his pajama pants and nothing else.  The girl was from Blacksod and poor.  He found it interesting that the poor family could afford to send Hannah so far away from them when they didn't have the money.  But then again his family had done the exact same thing.  His father did not make much money, and they were from Glenroan which was a north western city on the water.  His father a fisherman and doing whatever else was needed.  He was sent far, far away from them.  It suited him thought.  They wanted nothing to do with him and he wanted nothing to do with them.  He found his family here in Finton Hollow and this was where he planned to stay.

Chad nodded when Ryan said about investigators.  It was true, that was exactly what he'd have done if he were going to become an investigator.  Of course he wasn't.  He'd be able to join the Carrick Guard, not his true desire but at least he'd be closer to the job he really wanted.  At least it was something close to his dreams and goals.  "What?"  Chad was stunned with what Ryan had found.  She lived in Tangled Paths, and she was not wanted by her family?  But why?  He couldn't believe that the girl wouldn't be wanted.  Perhaps she was peculiar about things, and she had those eyes that looked like she was seeing right through you instead of just looking at you.  How could they do that to her? 

"That isn't right."  He shook his head.  There was a twitch in his jaw and he felt the anger rising.  "How could they do that to her?"  His hands had balled into fists and were now on his thighs pushing into his legs.  "I need to do something for her."  He felt he had to take care of her.  He couldn't let her be all alone and feel like there was no one.  He knew that feeling, he had lived with that feeling from being eleven and he hated it.  It was a horrid and miserable thought to let her be all alone with no one.  She didn't deserve that. no one did.

"Hannah Winter," Ryan said flatly.  He would have usually laughed at Chad's comment about him making moves on girls, but he was bothered by many things about this current situation.   He felt sure Hannah was like him-- a karcist.  He'd not heard her name spoken about in the circles of such people, but that meant little.  There were likely many who kept themselves hidden, from what Agnes had told him.  Ryan had kept himself hidden from Chad in terms of what he was.  It was for many reasons, but the primary one was his fear of losing his friendship.  Karcists were hated and feared.  Ryan despised himself at times, but more often he found his own powers intriguing and he wanted to see how far he could push them. 

"She's from Blacksod.  No one knows much about her other than she's clever and likely poor."

Ryan had met the girl when she'd come to him with a remedy for one of his crushing headaches.  It was last year and Ryan had been plagued by them.  They were more severe than they'd been in the past, making him vomit and worse, bringing him nearly to tears.  He'd taken off at the dinner hour one day and sought seclusion in the woods, and she'd trailed him, approached him as one might a rabid animal, leaving the small vial of liquid a few yards away as she whispered, "It'll help.  Trust me."

It did help and then it was Ryan who'd gone to her.  It was not really friendship he was looking for and she was too peculiar for him to find romantically interesting.  He proposed a business deal, wanting to buy the potion from her so that he'd not feel he was relying on her good graces.  She'd agreed, provided that the deal was kept quiet at school.  Ryan agreed, save he'd told Chad and Agnes.

"I sort of got a feeling she was hiding something and I..."  Ryan paused for just a moment.  He didn't want to appear he felt in the wrong about anything he'd done recently.  "I decided to check into her a little, find out about who she is. That's what investigators do, right?"  He sat forward in his chair and tapped his hands on his knees as he spoke, a nervous energy forever building in him.

"I wouldn't want to find out she's some mental patient who really wants to poison me, right?  So I broke into her locker and found out some stuff, then I checked her school file.  It said her family did not welcome her return home, that she was to take a train to Tangled Paths for all school breaks.   I found a few addresses written in the file and crossed out and re-written.   Seemed strange, a girl not wanted by her family."

Ryan paused again, some connection finally working its way up in his mind as he looked at Chad.  "She's like you," he said, almost pleased. It wasn't that he was happy that Chad's family was a bunch of nutters.  He was happy that what bothered him about Hannah now had clarified in his mind and that Chad could fix this, Chad would want to fix this.   It also provided him an excuse not to connect Hannah to himself.  She was like Ryan, but she was also like Chad.  "Her family has tossed her to the curb.  She's been spending all her holidays in a crappy worn out flat in Tangled Paths.  She's living in a dump in a crappy part of town. I followed her."

Chad didn't like being compared to Agnes.  He was by no means some mother hen.  But he did want to be in on the big secret.  Chad returned the scowl, crossing his arms over his chest angrily.  But Chad knew there was no reason to rise up against him.  Whatever it was that Ryan went off to do, he was back and he didn't want anyone to know about it.  He also knew that if he waited long enough Ryan would tell him.  Ryan wasn't in the room for just any reason, he was here for a specific reason.  That meant that Chad would find out soon enough, he just had to wait things out.

Chad became pensive as he did not know how Ryan leaving and the girl that had helped Ryan had anything to do with each other.  "Yeah.  You think any girl that won't take your advances is odd."  He rolled his eyes.  "Heather Frost, or something right?"  He knew her first name had started with an H and that her last name had to do with the cold.  He was certain her name hadn't actually been 'cold' but it went along that same line.  "I remember her."  He wanted to know what was going on.  Had she given him more of the herbs but that she needed him to pick something up?  He wasn't going to jump to conclusions as he sat there wanting to know what this was about.

Ryan rolled his eyes when Chad seemed to demand to know where he'd been.  He scowled and leaned his back against the closed door.  "You sound like Agnes," he whispered, still somehow feeling she might turn up.  "I was out.  I'm allowed.  I'm boss of this place.  Master of this manor, remember?"

Ryan had wrestled control his family's estate from his drunken  and peculiar stepfather early last year.  The man was spending away Ryan's inheritance and Ryan had made a bold move to petition the courts for control.  He won with the help of testimony from Reed Shellgren and Agnes Croft.  Ryan was good with money, but he was still only sixteen.  The courts awarded him financial control of his family's assets.  The did not give him full autonomy.  Agnes and Reed were still his legal guardians, but Ryan saw that as just semantics. 

His stepfather was now residing in a mental hospital in Tangled Paths from what he heard.  He'd never been a very steady fellow and his relationship with Ryan's mother had been on the rocks and nearing it's end when she died.   The investigators initially thought it was him when the crime happened, but he had an airtight alibi.

 Still, Ryan had hated him from the start and would not see him waste away his fortune.    Ryan's  success in court, like everything he did, made the news last year and the gossip had swirled.  It was a highly unusual decision and many believed there had been some sort of corruption going on.  A child should not be managing the finances of an entire estate.  It was a disaster waiting to happen.  But Ryan had done well this year, in part to prove them all wrong.

His irritation with Chad was passing.  Ryan liked the concern Chad had for him, though it was nothing he'd never openly admit.  Chad was looked out for him.  He guarded his back even when Ryan stirred up bucket loads of trouble at school.   He was the sort of person that Hannah needed, Ryan thought as he sat down in a chair near the bed.

"Do you remember that girl who made me some herbal stuff for my headaches?  You know, the odd girl from Rowan House.  Dark hair.  Old uniforms.  That one?"  Ryan decided to just get right to the point of things.  This situation had him troubled and he wasn't sure exactly what it was he wanted to do to fix it. 

Chad had been rather curious as to why Ryan had gone off to Tangled Paths.  But Ryan had not filled him in at the moment.  His mind wandered from some foolish infatuation, some girl, an enemy, something to buy.  Going back to his old home.  But nothing felt correct, nothing felt right.  He did not want to worry about his friend, but the sinking feeling of him being found in an alley way made his mind buzz.  Agnes had brought up tea to help Chad sleep, though Chad fashioned the lie that he was already worried about finals and getting into the school to be in law enforcement.  She had talked to him briefly about his mind and his heart and that he'd do fine.  The truth was that worry was always on the back burner.  Chad didn't exactly have money to go to the prestigious school and what was more, he didn't even know if he'd get in on one of those grants Reed had helped develop.  This year he was doing the best possible studying and attempting to get the grades required.  But he was having a most difficult time with English and the teacher hated him.  At least that is what Chad believed. 

Chad did not have the time to think of that old bird woman as he heard a mild creek outside of his door.  Both Ryan and Chad had those creeks outside their door for a darn good reason.  He was out of his chair when the door cracked open and Ryan slipped into the room and shut the door with a muffled click. 

"Where have you been!"  He whispered but with Agnes in another wing there really was no reason.  "You couldn't have told me what this was about?"  Ryan kept his share of secrets but usually it always came out.  And he hoped this would be one of the times that it came out.  He wanted to know what kept him and why Chad couldn't have joined him.  If both had been late they could have created a lie together that would have at least kept Agnes from looking at Chad the whole night in her manner that always made him feel like he was being punished without her saying a single word.

Finton Hollow Day School- Children attend this elementary school from age 6-12.  It meets from 8am until 2:30pm and teaches the basics of reading, writing and math.

Derrybridge Academy- From age 13 to age 17, students attend Derrybridge Academy. This is a boarding school situated at the far Northern tip of the city and a two hour train ride from Finton Hollow Center.  Students from throughout the state of Carrick attend this school.  It is free to in-state students.  Out of state students pay a fair tuition.  Some local children spend weekends with their families, others remain on campus until the formal school breaks.

Students are randomly assorted into three houses in order to foster healthy competitions for sports and academics.  These assignments also indicate their dormitory placements and school colors. 

The House of Rowen (colors: deep green and white)
The House of Alder (colors: orange-red and black)
The House of Willow (colors: deep blue and yellow)

Students continue with their academics, but also train in horsemanship, farming, fishing, boatmanship, living skills (ie cooking, sewing, money management, and how to shoot a rifle). 

This world is still gender stratified-- women still being seen as belonging in the home. The girls learn all the homemaking skills and boys learn the outdoor work.  Everyone learns to shoot a gun and ride a horse.

Students with appropriate skills may also take classes in medicinal plants and healing, business management, pre-law, law enforcement and investigation.  Competition is stiff for these classes and some feel that the more privileged students generally get the placements.  This is likely true, as there is a high cost to attend the Lissard College.  The internships for  investigators,  healers, and nurses are also costly and also extremely selective.  The academy is offered grant money for qualified placements which has lent to this sort of slanted placement of students.    Reed Shellgren aimed to rectify this and to raise money to help those with lower income to have some doors opened to them, but it has been slow going and some of his recommendations have been rejected simply on the grounds of the student's families not being the right caliber.

Recruiters for employment and for the university will visit the school and ask for recommendations from the administration for students in their last two years who look promising.   Those who make the cut go into internships and to college.  The others enter the job market in lower-level jobs.  These include elementary teachers, nursing assistants, deck hands, dock workers, farm hands, shop assistants, secretaries, taxi drivers, waitresses, general cops, and so forth.  Some also enter into family run businesses.






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