With Jack, Dominic, and Sierra and I gathered around the kitchen table for one, Dr. Reed put the coin in the middle of the surface and looked up at the rest of us.

I had already gotten a few too many people involved, so all the information she knew had to stay between the five of us. Any more was too risky, and I still didn't entirely trust everyone at the table.

"So how was Trailfest?" Sierra asked.

I bit the inside of my cheek. Was that really her focus right now?

"It was so overrated. It was just a bunch of old rich people eating caviar or whatever and complaining that we were too loud. We just gave up after a couple of hours. Who the hell wouldn't like our acoustic version of Fat Bottomed Girls?" Jack said.

"You guys do Queen covers? That's cool," Sierra said.

Dr. Reed laughed. "That's Trailfest for you. They just leave me off the guest list at this point."

Jack shook his head. "I don't blame you at all. That was a very different crowd than what I'm used to."

Enough small talk. "Can we talk about the coin now?" I asked.

Jack raised his eyebrows. "So you don't even care about how my gig went?"

I shook my head. "Honestly, I don't right now. Maybe later."

"Fine," Jack said and turned to Dr. Reed. "Can we please make this conversation all about Lindsay now? It's been a full three minutes since someone mentioned her coin."

Dominic laughed.

"Lindsay, relax a little. This isn't the classroom," Dr. Reed said.

So she clearly didn't know what the hell was the deal with the coin, then. And she was also blissfully unaware of the fact that classes really didn't put any stress on me. Only this coin had that power.

I laughed along anyway. Jack was already mad at me, and I couldn't afford to lose my one friend.

With all the uncertainty in the room, I picked up the main source of it all as Jack continued with how rude the people were at Trailfest. Was the gold worth something at least? There really wasn't much weight to the coin.

"They didn't even care that we were there for the most part until we played a song they didn't like," he said.

Wasn't that the point of the gig, though? To be background music for the rich people celebrating the Oregon Trail with food the settlers never would have dreamed of?

"We should have just stuck with the original gig we had scheduled. Rich people suck," he continued.

No argument from me there.

"From what Lindsay has told me, they just don't understand your style," Sierra said.

Jack looked down at the floor. "Thanks, but we weren't even really ourselves on that stage. We dialed everything down for them, and they still didn't like us."

How would he ever survive without the approval of a very small section of society?

I looked over at Dominic, and he was on his phone. At least I wasn't the only one who remembered why we were all in Dr. Reed's House of Bronze Age Artifacts.

"Can I ask a question that is somewhat related to the coin?" I asked.

"Seriously, Lindsay?" Jack said. "I wasn't done talking about Trailfest yet."

"We all agree that your band deserves a lot more recognition than you get. You know I've been saying that since I met you. That hasn't changed, but I have another concern right now. What's so difficult to understand about that?"

Jack didn't reply to that. That probably wasn't a good thing.

"So what's your question?" Dr. Reed asked.

"Is there any logical reason that the coin would make Sierra feel cold when she held it?" I asked.

"What?" Dr. Reed laughed. "I don't think so."

"No, no. She's explaining it wrong so I look like I'm the one who's losing my mind. Lindsay and I were arguing because I borrowed the coin from her for a good luck charm, and it got so cold that I had to drop it," Sierra said.

Of course, she left out a few details to make me look like a bitch. I set the record straight. "But when I picked it up, it was perfectly room temperature. I'm not saying she's crazy, but I'm definitely not not saying that."

"And is that the only weird thing that's happened with the coin so far?" Dr. Reed asked.

I nodded. "Pretty much."

Dr. Reed gave a small smile. "I don't know what to tell you girls. It might have been in your head because you felt guilty for stealing."

"Did you feel anything like that when you were stealing Turkish artifacts?" Sierra asked.

Dr. Reed's smile fell from her face. "Get out of my house. All of you. Out."

"So does that mean that you don't know what this coin is yet?" I asked.

"Yep, and with this new information, I feel a little less bad about that. If anything else out of the ordinary happens, let me know, and if it doesn't, then we're back to square one, I guess." She shooed us toward the door. "Now go. My show comes on in ten minutes."

What? "So we're just supposed to carry on like nothing is going on?"

She nodded. "Exactly. Consider this a scientific study to see whether the whole cold thing was real or not."

Well, what did I expect from trying to get the worst professor in the anthropology department in on this secret operation of ours?

***

After we got back from Dr. Reed's house without a single answer to any of our questions, Jack joined Sierra and me in our dorm.

"I can't believe I chose to go to that over Trailfest," I said. "She didn't try to answer anything. The only thing we learned is that she has a lot of super awesome artifacts from Titris Hoyuk."

"Super awesome stolen artifacts," Sierra said.

With the coin in its spot with my underwear, it would hopefully stay safe until we could collect more information (which there wouldn't be any since the clear explanation was that Sierra was just crazy).

"Well, it's not like you missed anything," Jack said. "So I guess we both got screwed out of the opportunity we wanted."

I shrugged and took a seat on my bed.

"I'm not mad anymore, Lindsay. I know you care about the band, and I was just pissed off that you're pretty much the only one who supports us all the time, and you weren't there," Jack said. "It would have been a lot easier to deal with all the negativity if you were there."

How was I supposed to respond to that?

"You want to see if we can find anything else like the coin around here?" I asked.

Jack blinked a couple times. "What?"

That was not the correct way to respond to him, apparently. And I wasn't quite sure how I was supposed to come back from that.

"That was a joke." I laughed. "Seriously, I really wish I would have gone to Trailfest just so I could laugh at all the rich people. I'm sorry I didn't."

Jack chuckled a little. "Well, I appreciate that."

What a recovery. Nicely done, Lindsay.

"So what are we supposed to do with the coin until Dr. Reed figures at least something out?" Sierra asked.

I shook my head. "I don't know, honestly. It's kind of hard to believe, especially since she's known as one of the best anthropologists in the department, but she's also one of the worst professors. She's smarter than a lot of her students think she is."

Wait.

For someone so interested in her work (but not particularly good at sharing it), she had to know something that she wasn't telling us then. She kicked us out pretty suddenly after Sierra made one comment about her illegal collection.

Maybe the information wasn't for the entirety of the group, but as the finder and keeper of the coin, I had the right to know what she knew.

Fortunately, I was the only one of the four of us that was also in her class.

"If you want, we can see how long it takes for something else weird to happen," Sierra said.

"Or we could go back to the pond to see if there's anything weird with the land. If Sierra's story is true, there could be some explanation that doesn't seem logical," Jack said.

I laughed. "Don't tell me that you're buying into that dumb idea too."

Jack shrugged. "I don't think we can count it out. If Dr. Reed doesn't have any sort of explanation, it could be because there isn't a logical one."

"What? Like a supernatural one?" I asked.

Jack nodded. "I don't think we should rule it out."

I rolled my eyes. Wasn't he supposed to be a geology major who dealt with real rocks and the real planet?

"Come on, Lindsay. You just blew off my gig at Trailfest. The least you could do is consider what I have to say," Jack said.

I smiled. "I have considered it, and it's not possible."

"I'm telling you guys. It's a demon coin," Sierra said.

She was a lost cause judging by the way she decorated her half of the room with her drawings of the murders, disappearances, and cryptids in various episodes of Buzzfeed Unsolved, but Jack definitely had a rational brain that I could get to.

And if I couldn't convince Jack, maybe my logic would persuade Mothman or the women killed in Salem for the crime of witchcraft.

"Look, Dr. Reed told us that she doesn't specialize in this area. Most of her work is in Turkey. It's very possible that she just hasn't seen it because of that," I said.

"She's been here long enough that she has to know the local anthropology at least a little. Do you still have my shovel here?" Jack said.

I reached down underneath my bed, and although some of the mud that had dried onto it crumbled onto the carpet, I pulled the shovel out.

"And grab the metal detector. We're about to get your money's worth out of that thing tonight," Jack said.

Sierra, Jack, and I headed back to the pond where we found the coin with the shovel and metal detector, and when we arrived at our secret place across campus, there was already someone there surveying the area.

I knew that skinny figure even though there wasn't enough moonlight to make out any individual features. Dominic.

The water in the pond was still enough to reflect the little light off its surface, and it peeked through the tall grass that surrounded it. Everything looked exactly the way we left it when we first found the coin, and as ridiculous as it was to notice something like that, it meant that the pond wasn't upset that we stole its coin or whatever. That was one piece of evidence in my favor.

I smiled.

"Is that Dominic?" Sierra asked me.

I nodded.

"Would you be mad if I talked to him?" she asked.

I hesitated. "Why would I be mad? It keeps both of you out of my way. If anything, you'd be doing me a favor."

"Really?" She straightened up her posture. "I just wanted to make sure."

I wasn't quite sure why she seemed to think that I was interested in him at all, but jerk who thought he was better than me wasn't exactly my type.

Although the day should have dried out the ground, Sierra's feet squished in the mud beneath her as she walked over to him to say hello. He jumped a little when she got close, but I couldn't hear what they were saying even though it was as quiet as it ever got on a college campus.

I turned to Jack. "So what will it take to prove to you that there's nothing supernatural at play here?"

He laughed. "Not much, honestly. Do you have the coin?"

I nodded. "It's safe in my pocket. Do you want to start looking again where we found the coin originally?"

"Sounds good." He paused for a moment as I reached down to turn on the metal detector. When I stood back up, he looked me in the eye. "Don't you think it's a little weird Dr. Reed won't tell us what she thinks?"

"You noticed that too?"

Jack nodded. "I'm not sure if Sierra and that guy from your sign language class did, but she knows more than she's telling us for sure."

He was definitely the person I could trust most in our little Fellowship of the Coin, even though I wasn't entirely convinced he was done being mad at me. But there were some things that were a bit more important than that. The coin—whatever it was—was my key to paying for the semester, which very easily could be my last if I didn't get my GPA up.

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Hello! I'm so sorry that this is late, but I had a busy week at school and didn't have time to think and write. Thank you for waiting, and thank you for reading!

So do you think Dr. Reed might have an idea of what's going on here? What about Sierra?