“So, that’s how I ended up here.” I’d gone through three trays of food while I was talking. Mr. Dawson sat straight and started to speak, but I held up a hand. “A few questions for you guys before anyone says or asks me anything.”
“Please,” Donovan said.
“I’m still feeling drained, even with the food I’ve eaten. I’m not around the gris-gris, but it’s still weakening me. I need that gone before tonight. Any ideas?” If I was going to beat Mr. Hoel, I was going to need all the strength I could get.
“Did you bring it with you?” Donovan asked.
“Yes. It’s in my messenger bag in the backseat of my car. Wrapped in a sock.”
“We’ll burn it. Best way to release whatever’s got a hold of you,” Donovan said. “As for the jars, I do believe setting the power free will bring it back to you. It takes a lot to pull it from you—as you saw. It’s contained for now in the jars, but once we break the seals, the power should be yours again. You’ll be right as rain.”
I stared at the table and swallowed. Dastien reached for my hand under the table. “I can barely hear Dastien and I can’t talk to him in my head anymore.”
“It’ll all come back. You’ll be whole again,” Mr. Dawson said.
“Will I?”
“We’ll make sure of it.”
“As one of the Seven, you need to figure out which wolves we can trust,” I said to Donovan.
“Sebastian has been working on it. It seems Rupert has a good number of wolves supporting him. About half.”
“That’s more than I’d thought,” I said. This didn’t bode well for tonight.
“I thought we fixed the problem wolves months ago,” Mr. Dawson said with a frown. “The ones who acted out with Rupert were punished, but now…it has to go deeper than we thought. Someone more powerful than him…”
“What about the humans?” Chris asked. “If there is a war, we’re going to need to alert them.”
“I think telling them now is a bad idea,” I said. “We’re going to have a battle. There are two outcomes, we win or we lose. If we win, then any that get away will lick their wounds before coming back. Luciana said some covens were with her, but I met a witch from Colorado who said her group was with us. Luciana could be full of it, but there will be some who will back her, even if we defeat her tonight. So, we win tonight. Then, we slowly out ourselves in a good light to the humans and prepare them for the dangers of the supernatural. Then, when the big war comes, we try to handle it as under the radar as possible. If we lose tonight, then it’s all moot. We won’t be around to worry about anything.”
I flashed back to my vision. The sounds of battle surrounded me. I heard Mr. Hoel yelling at me. I could almost taste the iron of my blood filling my mouth.
“Tessa?” Dastien asked.
I blinked. “I’m fine,” I said.
“Liar. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He was right. I wasn’t fine, but I couldn’t tell him all about my vision. Some things were left better unknown. If he was distracted during the fight, it could cost him his life.
If that nightmare came to pass, then I’d be glad that we hadn’t tied ourselves together, and the ceremony was interrupted. Dastien would have to find a way to survive. “I’ll be fine.” It was a less of a lie. One way or another, I’d figure it out. “So what’s next?”
“You need to rest,” Dr. Gonzales said. “Let your body heal.”
“We’ll cook up some potions to fight the vamps and we have a few anti-witchy spells I researched while you were gone. One blinds them for a few minutes, so they can’t cast anything at someone. Another one is a blocking spell. I can mix those up,” Adrian said.
“I’ll grab your stuff from the car,” Chris said. “We’ll burn the gris-gris in the lab and get started with Adrian’s spells.”
I checked the time. It was two in the afternoon. “But class is still going on?”
“I’ll kick them out,” Adrian said. “Some things are more important than teaching the freshman metaphyiscs.”
He had a point. “You’ll come to my room?” I asked Dastien, but I was sure of the answer.
“Of course.”
“Do you want me to come?” Meredith said.