But Bonnie’s mind was clearly on something else.  “Look, Nicky,” she said after we were safely inside the car, “promise me something in the future – if someone comes up to you and wants something and won’t listen when you say no?  Use your somni magic to just make them walk away.  That’s it.  Nothing huge, just make them leave you alone.  Believe it or not, women can be predators, too – even human women.  Don’t assume just because she’s human and got a pretty face that she’s harmless.  I’m not saying that one was necessarily bad or anything – probably mostly just drunk – but don’t let people walk all over you.  I know you’re used to it some because of how you grew up, that you had to do what they wanted and couldn’t refuse them, but that’s not true.  You can – you should.  If you’re not comfortable with something, tell them no, and enforce it.  You’re a free person, Nicky – you’re not at the beck and call of a coven anymore, even if you do join the one here.  If they change to where you’re not comfortable with them, you can leave.  Same with a job, same with, well, anything – you don’t have to just ‘put up with it,’ you can say no.  And your abilities let you enforce that, too – so do it.”

I was kind of surprised at her passion.  “I wasn’t going to let her take me, I just wasn’t sure what the protocol for that was.”

Bonnie shrugged.  “There’s no particular protocol, it depends on the situation.  For you, the easiest thing might be somni magic, but just be careful – like, don’t tell someone clearly drunk to drive home, you know?  Or if you do suspect they might be dangerous, maybe you can, I don’t know, tell them to go to the police station and turn themselves in?  Although I suppose if they haven’t done anything yet, that’s not really going to work,” she mumbled to herself.

I got the point of what she was saying, though.  “You think it’s okay to just use my somni magic that easily?”  I asked hesitantly.  “For my own benefit, I mean?  I wanted to learn to control my magic, but knowing that I can basically put someone under my control is kind of terrifying, especially knowing that there’s basically no one supervising me, if you will?  It’s just an awful lot of power for someone to have, without any sort of oversight.”

She threw me a compassionate look as we stopped at a traffic light.  “Look, I obviously don’t fully understand because I’m a shifter and, well, we don’t have that kind of magic, but what I can say is…don’t forget that concern, but don’t let it control you, either.  You can use your magic, you can do it ethically, I’m sure of it, but that fear you have?  That’s what’ll help you from going too far.  And yes, of course you can use your magic to help protect yourself!  What I’m suggesting isn’t even going to affect these people at all.  It’s just making them leave you alone, that’s it – or, well, if you tell a drunk person to get a taxi home, you actually might save their lives, or maybe another person’s.  I would be careful about using your magic to just make your life more comfortable, as it were – you know, getting people to hire you rather than earning the job on your qualifications, that sort of thing?  But keeping yourself safe, keeping others safe, that’s perfectly fine.  Don’t feel bad about using your magic for that.”

I appreciated her advice.  Bonnie was a friend, she wasn’t family like Dana and Lola, so I felt like she would probably be a little less biased in my favor than they were.  She still cared about me, but she wouldn’t turn a blind eye to issues.

“So?”  She demanded.  “Promise me!”

“I promise I’ll use my magic to make people leave me alone when they don’t listen to ‘no,’” I dutifully promised.  “And maybe even if I see others in the same situation.  I’ll try to think of using my somni magic more often for general safety reasons.”  Since she seemed satisfied with my promise, I switched the topic, curious.

“I didn’t think wombats would be that, um, aggressive?  Is it normal to just charge people?”

Bonnie chuckled a little.  “Kind of?  People think of wombats as cute, but we can be quite large, stocky, and short-tempered.  You don’t really want an animal that size charging you, with teeth big enough to cause some damage.  Okay, we’re not the most dangerous thing out there, but we aren’t to be sneezed at, either.  It wouldn’t work as well against a supernatural, but with humans?  Most humans aren’t thrilled at the idea of a 50-80 pound creature charging them.  The instinct for most humans in that situation is to run away and leave the wombat alone.  That works just fine for me.”

“And being a wombat won’t, well, raise red flags?  They’re not native to the area.”  I wondered how shifters dealt with that.  It didn’t seem like they just tried to live in areas native to their shifted forms, but humans might notice a wombat wandering around town.

“That can be an issue,” Bonnie agreed, “but tonight it was dark, the lady was drunk, and she didn’t get a good look at me while running, so I don’t think it’ll be an issue.  Otherwise, sure, it’s a concern.  People would notice a wombat, so I have to be careful where I shift, but honestly that’s true for a lot of shifters – a deer might be native to the area, too, but they can’t shift in town, either.  Avenglade’s nice because they do have a shifter park where we can shift and run if we want, so that’s good.”

She sighed deeply.  “The apartment complex is nice, too, because it’s all supernaturals, but the owners like to keep it short-term leases so new arrivals to town have someplace safe to stay.  I can’t say that’s a bad policy because all of my community who moved here wouldn’t have been able to stay together if it weren’t for that, but now we’re approaching the 6-month mark and we have to start looking at moving out.  Some of the others have already started apartment hunting or even buying houses.  We tried to brainstorm to come up with a way to keep our community mostly together, but there’s just nothing that’ll work – we don’t have the money to buy a subdivision or something, and otherwise it’s too difficult to keep more than a dozen families together.”  Her shoulders slumped a bit.  “We’ve come to the conclusion that we’ll have to separate, but at least we can try to be on the same side of town and see each other often.  Without the safety of being in a supernatural-only community, though, it’s just…hard.  We can’t just shift at will or use magic for everyday stuff like we did back home.”

“It does seem harder for some supernaturals to live with humans.”  I looked out the window into the darkness, kind of glad that I didn’t tend to have those same issues due to the kind of supernatural I was, but feeling bad for Bonnie and her community at the same time.  “But, best of a bad situation, right?  Avenglade’s pretty nice for supernaturals and has a lot, so the kids should be able to have supernatural friends at school and all that.  Plus, you like going to bars, and that’s not something you could do in a small town.”

Bonnie paused for a second.  “Well, that’s true,” she admitted slowly.  “I guess I’ve been looking at the downside, which, granted, is a lot.  We lost our town and we’re not thrilled about having to split up, but you’re right.  Again.  You were right before about being grateful for just surviving, and you are right again that we could try to appreciate the good parts and be optimistic instead of wallowing.”

“I’m not trying to say you’re wallowing!”  I immediately tried to correct that, feeling guilty.  “It’s hard losing everything like that, I’m not trying to downplay it.”

“No, no,” Bonnie waved off my apology before I could utter it.  “I know that, you actually understand better than most, but I have been wallowing.  It’s easier to focus on how different things are and complain about that instead of trying to find a way to make this new life work.  Sure, it’s not ideal, but you’re right – Avenglade is a good town to come to.  The council took care of our living expenses for the first six months, did you know that?  That was part of their offer of aid.  They also helped get us in touch with supernaturals in town who are employed in careers similar to ones our community members have.  Several of us got jobs from other supernaturals or at least were able to get employed at a business where another supernatural works and can help us learn the ropes.  Because of that, we’ve been able to start saving again and just, you know, trying to recover.  Trying to figure out what the future is.  Honestly, I should be praising the supernaturals here more rather than just complaining.  They’ve really helped us all.  A lot.”

I hadn’t realized they’d helped them that much, but then, Violet had helped me a lot with the coven and Henry and even the apartment complex, so it did seem to me like the council – or at least some members of it – were very helpful to others.

“What do you do?”  I asked.  “You haven’t gotten a job yet, and we’ve been here almost three months now.  Most of the others in your community have gotten jobs – does Avenglade just not offer what you do?”

She shook her head, frustrated.  “No, it’s just more like my function was erased.  I used to be the main contact between our town and outsiders – humans, mostly, but sometimes other supernaturals.  I’d be in charge of making sure we got what we needed when it wasn’t something we could handle in town.  I did a lot of internet searching, trying to find the cheapest item that was still good quality, or finding the nearest repairperson who handled whatever obscure thing it was, that sort of stuff.  When I wasn’t actively handling things we currently needed, I tried to keep up with things we might need in the future and get a head start on figuring out where we would get them from.  Living where we did, we couldn’t just run out and grab something easily, we had to plan months in advance sometimes.  So I needed to plan for what might break next, as it were.  Sort of a coordinator, I guess?  There’s places that skills like that would still be useful, but it’s kind of hard to explain what I did accurately.  I talked to another supernatural here that the council had suggested soon after we arrived, and he just thought it sounded like a jack-of-all-trades sort of thing, so he didn’t get it.  I tried a few coordinator jobs, too, but they just see that I came from some remote town and assume I don’t know what I’m talking about.  It’s been a lot of dead ends.”

I hadn’t realized she was that organized, but at the same time, it kind of made sense.  Bonnie was worried about her entire community and trying to help them all set up their new lives, helping them figure out daycare and schools and everything.  She was still serving that function, even if she didn’t realize it – she just wasn’t getting paid for it.

“I don’t know what I want to do,” I volunteered forlornly.  “At least you have some skills.  I don’t even have a formal education.  Dana’s signing me up for some testing to see if I can even get into a GED class, but truth is, I just don’t know what I would even study if I went to university.  There’s so many possible interests and I just don’t know what I would even want to do.”

“Good news about supernaturals is we can quite possibly have more than one career in our lifetimes.”  Bonnie stopped in the apartment complex driveway, waiting for the gate to open before pulling around to the parking lot.  “So you don’t need to narrow it down, really, but you’re right.  Figuring out what we want to do with our lives is hard for everyone.”

We were kind of all in the same boat – Bonnie, Dana, Lola, and me, trying to figure out what we wanted to do with our futures.  Lola at least knew she wanted to study communication with a minor in psychology – she wanted to see if she could find better ways to communicate with supernaturals whose first instinct wasn’t to like her.  Or Dana.  Or me.  She wanted to find a way around all that awkwardness.  It seemed to be more of a personal thing, though, rather than a career, but hopefully she would still be able to find a career after that, right?

I headed back to our apartment after bidding Bonnie goodnight, thoughtful.  Lola told me how her testing went and which colleges she planned to apply for, and I made a mental note to talk to her and Dana in the morning about staying in Avenglade permanently.

I just hoped they’d both be okay with it.