The ice cream place is happy to serve her ice cream.

Then home and try to get on that secretive website again as soon as nobody else needs the computer. She really hopes Kevin remembered the password right.

He didn't specify a case, but if she capitalizes "Aval0n" then it works!

This appears to be a hub site pointing to even better-hidden other websites for various species and specific local Avalons.

Oh wow. Oh wow. Notebook time: what do they have for general overview stuff? Is there a page with a comprehensive list of species? Is there a page on what secret magic people scientists have figured out about how it all works?

The website doesn't seem intended as, or have any obvious links to, comprehensive references. If she finds her nearest Avalon on the map, its individual site looks almost like a university website, with event listings and a map and some local news. The species pages mostly want more passwords.

Figures that they'd have a culture of not making lots of information available. Can she at least see what species pages there are to put passwords into? And do any of the events have clues in them, like "flying race: pegasi and phoenixes welcome" or whatever?

There is a long list of species ranging from pegasi and perytons to bugbears and bugganes! The events are not like "flying race", they're more like "council meeting" and "temporary library closure" and "concert" with a list of bands Margaret has never heard of.

Perytons? Bugganes? Maybe her taste running to lit fic over fantasy really is a problem. She pulls up a dictionary of mythological creatures in another tab and starts looking up the species she hasn't heard of. Is anything mentioned sufficiently reptilian that she can show a scaly claw and claim to be that? Because it looks like she's going to have to go to an Avalon in person to get any kind of science books.

There are wyverns. Other than that, pure reptiles are thin on the ground.

And are wyverns the kind with front legs and wings, or the kind with back legs and wings; it wouldn't do to get called out on transforming the wrong appendage.

Back legs, no arms, wings.

She hides in her room and practices turning one foot into a dragon foot and back. She practices saying "I'm a wyvern" and "I like this form a lot better, it's what I'm used to." (The second is a bigger lie than the first; the only thing about her dragon form that isn't awesome is the need to keep it a secret. And the inability to hold a pencil.)

She deletes her mediocre young adult short story; it's more risk than use at this point.

And the following Saturday, she tells her parents she's going to spend the day in the park and goes to the alley next to the abandoned movie theater.

There is indeed a sign that reads:

DANGER
ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

and is locked.

Deep breath. Adjust backpack. Check that nobody's looking. Knock knock?

There is a two minute delay.

Then a guy opens the door a crack and grunts, "Nearest bathroom's in the Walgreens."

"I'm not looking for a bathroom, I'm looking for the Avalon."

"The what?"

"The Avalon. Where the people without medallions live and the people with them go to visit."

"You don't look like an authorized personnel."

"Neither do you, right this minute. Doesn't mean we aren't."

He starts to shut the door again.

She sticks a hand in it. "I know about pegasi and perytons and bugbears and stuff. What more do you want?"

"You don't look like authorized personnel," he says again.

"Ugh, I hate doing this. Look down." Once he's looking: Shoe. Claws. Shoe again.

He opens the door a little farther and lets her in.