Avoiding Alpha

Page 34

“Everything okay?” Dastien asked.
“As long as you don’t count grossing out our friends, then yeah, everything’s fine.” But I was feeling self-conscious about how much I was eating. “Merging witchcraft with what? Discuss options.” I waved my fork at them. “And ignore what’s going on over here.” I waved the fork at myself. I started eating again, but tried to remember to breathe between bites this time.
“We were talking about that before you got here,” Adrian said. “The only thing that we can come up with is combining types of witchcrafts. Assuming that, we have a few options.”
I wished they only had one option, but I’d take what I could get. “Tell me.”
“Basically there are incantations or spells, potions, and curses,” Adrian said. “Although curses are like a subset of spells and incantations, but with a negative connotation. Assuming we rule out the whole curse category—”
“Wait. Why are we ruling those out?” It seemed like a bad idea to rule anything out at this point, but what did I know? For once, I wished my parents had moved us to Texas sooner, but there was nothing I could do about that.
“Because curses are dark,” Dastien said. “They’re meant to hurt, and we aren’t going to do anything bad to one of our own.”
I chewed slowly as I thought. “Agreed. What’s the deal with the incantations and potions?”
“Well, sometimes they go hand-in-hand,” Adrian said. “Like what your cousins gave us to fight the vampires.”
They’d given us a bunch of little vials of herby-looking stuff. All I had to do was say the right phrase and chuck one at a vampire. As soon as the glass broke, the potion exploded. They were a pretty neat and had saved our butts. We wouldn’t have made it out alive without the magical assistance.
“Okay, and what happens when it’s just an incantation,” I said.
“Sometimes all a witch—” Chris stopped when Adrian cleared his throat. “Fine. Sometimes all a bruja needs to do is say something. Their magic plus their will makes the words true.”
“And potions are mixtures of magical ingredients that pack a punch,” Adrian said. “They can do any number of things—from make someone fall in love to transform a person from human to mouse—depending on what you mix in them.”
I took a break from eating. “So we need something like what I used in the cave. We should find something that mixes a potion and words to set the spell. And it should be one that makes her wolf hit the hay.”
There were some grumbles around the table.
“If you guys have a better idea that won’t kill her, then I’m all ears. But remember that we’re only suppressing her wolf to keep her alive until we come up with something better.”
“That seems really unnatural,” Dastien said.
“I know.” I took another bite.
“Are you sure you’re not trying this because of your own issues with changing?” Chris asked
I dropped my fork with a clatter. “No. I’m not.” At least I didn’t think I was.
We sat in silence for a bit, each of us eating and letting the cafeteria sounds fill the void.
After a bit, Adrian spoke up. “Can I see your Book of Shadows?”
Shit. I’d left my bag in Meredith’s room. “You didn’t happen to grab my bag, did you?”
Dastien shook his head. “Sorry. It’ll be fine there. No one’s going to mess with your stuff.”
Those books meant something to my cousins, and they meant something to me. Leaving them laying around felt wrong. “Okay,” I said, shaking it off. “I’ll grab them after.”
“I think there was something in your family’s Book of Shadows that could work,” Adrian said. “They weren’t specifically for werewolves but they talked about suppressing inner demons.”
Chris cussed up a storm.
“I know. I know,” Adrian said. “But to La Alquelarre, our inner wolf could count as a demon.” He paused to let that sink in. He had a point, and I was more than a little ashamed that I looked at my wolf as a kind of demon. It made me feel out of control, which was not a fun feeling. It made me angry and violent. Two things I’d never considered myself before.
“There are still a bunch of ingredients that we don’t have in storage. I’m not sure where we’d find them,” Adrian said.
“I could maybe ask my mom. Even if she didn’t really participate in La Alquelarre, my grandmother did. She might know where to find stuff.” I pushed the tray to the center of the table. “I think I’m done. I’m grossing myself out now.”