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There was a woman in his office. Ranjit Singh didn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other on women, but there wasn’t supposed to be one in his office. And this one looked rather angry as well. Was she a family member of one of the boys? She looked a bit young to be a mother, probably in her early thirties. Wouldn’t be impossible, but improbable for sure.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked, not sure how else to react.
“I’m here for a job interview?” she answered. “Sergeant Kerry Lewis. Apologies for being about two hours late, but this school is absolutely impossible to find. It must be build on a spiral of roads because Oxfordshire isn’t even big enough to drive around in for as long as I just did. My GPS gave up halfway through as well, just like my phone. Anyway, reporting for duty.”
Ranjit made an effort to not look too surprised listening to this story. This was Kerry Lewis? A woman? Well, that explained why he hadn’t been able to find him in the records of St. Churnley’s. There had been another Lewis, Colin, a few years younger than Kerry, but no Kerry Lewis.
She looked at him expectantly.
“I’m sorry, what?” was what Ranjit heard himself say.
“I’m here for a job interview,” she repeated. “Steward of Control. You need one, I am one.”
“Do you know where you are?” Ranjit asked, still trying to piece together how this situation had happened. Sure, Kerry was a relatively gender neutral name, so the mix up there was clear, but how had this Kerry Lewis, this woman with presumably no magical powers whatsoever, not just found the gate to the school, but driven up to it? For two hours? She must’ve gotten lost in the Plagueround, Ranjit reasoned, and somehow survived and still wanted the job.
“Aye, I’m at St. Churnley’s School for Cursed Boys. Are all questions gonna be that easy?”
“And you drove here? By car?” Ranjit asked.
“Yes,” Kerry said. “And before you ask, I do know my own name, and I can count to ten, if that’s the level of intelligence you’re looking for.”
“That’s not… that’s not what matters here. This school is magically sealed off from the rest of the world. There is simply no way for you to drive up to it. Did you go through the Plagueround?”
“Is that what you call it? That foggy forest with demon-creatures? The Playground? Interesting concept of playing you have.”
“Indeed, the foggy forest – did you traverse it unscathed?” Ranjit raised his eyebrows, impressed when she nodded.
“I’ve been solo-travelling the world for years now during my time off. I know how to keep creatures – and people – out of my car. The scorpion thing was a bit of a hassle, but nothing I can’t handle.”
Ranjit nodded slowly, trying to comprehend what she was saying.
“Could you give me a moment, please? I need to talk about this with one of my staff. If you’d be so kind as to wait outside of my office?”
“You’re lucky that I really want this job,” Kerry said as she stood up. “See you in a bit, then.”
She left the room and Ranjit quickly picked up his magical notebook to send Matthew a message, who came quite literally flying into his office not much later.
“Is that her, in the hallway?” he asked, sounding incredulous, and Ranjit nodded. “She drove to our school?”
“She did.”
“Wow… I eh, I feel like we only have two options here,” Matthew said.
“I’m not killing her,” Ranjit stated and Matthew’s floating eyes all pointed his way at once.
“Okay, we have three options, because that one hadn’t crossed my mind yet. Jeez, Ranjit, get your mind out of Hell.” Matthew’s eyes started wandering again. “What I was thinking – oh, is this a new thing?” one of his eyes had found an artifact that was indeed new, but Ranjit didn’t answer, hoping that Matthew would just tell him his ideas instead, which he did. “Sorry, what I was thinking, was eh, well, we have to fix security, and our options are to do that with her, so we know what she knows, or without her, which is probably a lot harder.”
“We can’t have a normal mortal teaching at the school,” Ranjit said. “That’s a massive liability.”
Matt was opening his mouth to say something when they both heard a sound from the hallway that sounded an awful lot like two kids getting into a fight. Matthew, being closer to the door, opened it and Ranjit quickly joined him, only to see that their intervention wasn’t needed. Kerry Lewis had jumped up from the seat she had taken in the hallway to stand between the boys.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she asked and the kids looked bewildered.
“Sorry, ma’am…” one of them mumbled while the other asked:
“Who are you?”
“I’m the new steward of control, so yous better get used to me,” she said with a confidence that made Ranjit doubt if he had accidentally already hired her. “What class do yous have now?”
“Ehrm… well it’s lunch, so…”
“So you’re in the dining hall then, not hanging out in front of the Hexmaster’s office, yeah? He’s got better things to do than break up petty fights.”
“Yes ma’am…” the boys said, before actually walking off in the direction of the dining hall.
Ranjit and Matt exchanged a look, or several, in Matt’s case.
“So…” Ranjit said. “Ehm…”
“Should I- you wanted my opinion?” Matthew asked.
“I do.”
“I think she can handle it.”
“I can,” Kerry supplied. “If I’m allowed to join the conversation? My interview so far has been about whether or not I drove a car and then I was sent outside. Is this some kind of weird test? Can you see out of all of those?” She pointed at Matthew’s eyes.
“I- yeah.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It’s… I’m used to it,” Matthew smiled and Ranjit couldn’t help but roll his eyes. So much for Matthew’s valued opinion, he just liked the lady. He cleared his throat.
“I suggest we move this conversation back inside of my office,” he said, ushering Matt and Kerry both through the door. When he sat down again, behind his mahogany desk, he looked at Kerry with a serious face. “Your job as steward of control would consist of helping teenage boys with supernatural powers to control those. Do you have any experience in that field?”
“Finally a normal question,” Kerry mumbled, before answering: “I have, in fact. My little brother was quite an unruly one. I’m pretty sure he’s still here somewhere, but I got to take care of him during summers. Kid grew the muscles of an adult weightlifter overnight and had no clue how to deal with them, but he trusted me and I tried keeping him safe and out of trouble. And then yous taught him magic as well, and somehow, I’m still alive. I think that should be proof enough.”
Ah, so that was the Lewis Ranjit had found…
“It’s true that sadly not all of our students graduate and are fit to go back into society,” Ranjit said.
“I get it, Colin was a handful, but I’d like to help make sure that even handfuls get a fair chance of not becoming a monster in the mist, you know?”
That made Ranjit smile, even if he tried to maintain his poker face. The school needed teachers with their heart in the right place. It had been the current steward of control, who was about to retire next year, who had helped Ranjit becoming what he was today, instead of a ‘monster in the mist’. And quite the dangerous monster he would’ve been, were it not for his teachers making him see the positive side of his curse. And even though he did still have a few more questions for Sergeant Kerry Lewis, they were more a formality than a necessity, since he had already made up his mind. And from Matthew’s expression, he was quite sure he agreed.