Emily took in the page. She . . . had no idea what that skill was supposed to do. Still, the fact that the girl had a status page that Emily could see meant something. She really was a product of Emily’s power. Not that that helped all that much, but it was a lead. Emily could Oogle that kind of thing.

She had learned something, so she tentatively crossed that off her list. She had a lot more to learn, but for now, other things were more important. “Um. Miss? Excuse me?” Emily asked. She reached out and shook the girl’s . . . the werebear’s . . . shoulder.

Bleary brown eyes opened and looked up to Emily. “Yeah?” she asked, before a yawn revealed large canines.

“Um. I have some questions.”

The girl sat up with a long-suffering sigh. “Okay.”

Emily licked her lips, then nodded. She could do this. A glance at her list to keep her mind on track helped. “Okay. So. First. Do you know how to hide . . . that?” She pointed above her head.

The bear girl looked up and, presumably, at the name hovering over Emily’s head. “Yeah. Just turn it off. Why?”

“Uh. I-I can’t afford to let people know. They would . . . take me, and make me do things, and maybe they’d want me as a Hero or something, and that’s a lot, and all I want is to go to school and maybe make one friend, or maybe two, and one day meet a nice quiet man and have a job I can do really well on my own, but being a Mask wouldn’t allow me to do any of that and—”

Emily cut herself off midsentence as a pair of arms wrapped around her waist and a head pushed itself against her ribs. “You talk too much.”

Emily didn’t know what to do. The girl was lying all crooked across the bed and was hugging her with surprisingly strong arms that she doubted she could dislodge.

And then the girl let go and flopped back onto the bed. “There. Now you’re better.”

Emily wanted to protest, but hugs were sort of nice. She’d never had any friends, or close friends at least, but her mother was the hugging sort and Emily knew that they helped sometimes. “Thanks?” she said.

“Yeah, sure,” the girl said.

Emily fidgeted. “Um. What about . . . Teddy?”

The girl blinked. “Teddy?”

“For a name? It could be short for, um, Theodora?”

The newly christened Teddy hummed, then nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

Emily reached for the girl, then thought better of it. The words above her head twitched, then changed.

Teddy

WereBear, Level 1

She felt something nice in her stomach, like when she finally arrived at home from school. It soon faded though as she looked at her list again. The words were, presumably, still hovering above her. “Menu?” she tried. “Um . . . disguise? Hide?”

Do you wish to hide your identity?

“Yes!”