This was worse. A fight in the quad had turned into a mess with what looked like a boar.
“Is that a pig?” Ellie nodded toward it. The poor thing was surrounded by students who were waving jerseys at the pig.
“We are here for the witch, love.”
“But that poor pig—”
“Student,” a young man interrupted. He was sitting astride a nearby statue of a giant pig with massive tusks. The tusks held a leather backpack and a hoodie, presumably the property of the young man, wholooked up from his notebook. “He was a student a few minutes ago. The whole thing is fascinating. I’m chronicling it all.”
“Prospero?” Ellie looked to her side for help. “He’s… not affected.”
Prospero glanced at the young man and pronounced, “Witch.”
The young man chortled and then muttered, “Medieval superstitions. That’s new. I wonder if the delusion comes in stages.”
“He’s one of us—or will be eventually.” Prospero motioned for Ellie to keep walking. “We have a mission. He’s not it, nor is the porcine student.”
Ellie hustled to keep up with her wife. Prospero walked with an authority that made people part before her like a predator through a field of prey. Men and women separated at her approach, almost unconsciously giving her space.
And Ellie followed in her wake.
“He’s behind us,” Ellie said, glancing back at the young man, who had hopped down from the statue and was striding after them now.
“His life, his choices.” Prospero looked around, gaze drifting over the crowds of students as if looking for something particular.
“What are we tracking?” the guy said as he caught up.
From this angle, Ellie reevaluated him closer to midtwenties than traditional college-age student, probably a grad student. No one else seemed immune to the spill of debauchery across the campus. Maybe he would be useful.
“Magic,” she said.
“You’re not lying,” he enthused. “I know it sounds odd, but I can—”
“Tell,” Prospero cut him off. “Yes, we know. It’s a witch thing. You ought to take shelter somewhere until this is all resolved. Magic can be dangerous.”
He shoved his notebook in his backpack and slung it over his shoulder again. “I’m in. Where to, boss witch?”
“Step back.” Prospero pushed Ellie behind her just as a herd of person-sized pigs came charging through the quad.
The last few pigs stopped, and suddenly, the rest came to an abrupt halt and turned back. Within the next moment, a veritable wave of grunting and snorting pigs was running toward them.
“Steps! Go.Go!”Ellie called, grabbing Prospero’s hand and pulling her toward a stairwell on the side of a building several yards away. “Faster!”
“Magic them!” the student who’d joined them called out. He kept pace, but he had a chivalrous streak that had him at the back. “You say you’re fucking witches. Magic the damn hogs.”
“Can’t,” Ellie huffed. “Magic is forbidden here. Up up up, Prospero.”
“Tell that to them!” The man half shoved them up the steps in front of him as the pigs squealed in apparent irritation as their prey escaped.
Pigs aren’t predators.
But these aren’t really pigs.
And people? Sometimes people are predators.
About halfway up the flight of stairs, Prospero pulled Ellie closer to her side. “Are you injured?”
“No. You?”
