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“Princes?” I mutter. “They are royalty?”
“Well, Ashton tried to give his title back, they say. The ungrateful brat. As if being a prince is a burden. And as for the lost werewolf prince, the one they call the Lost Wolf… He was taken as a child by the vampires, though it was only after he was released that anyone knew what happened to him. Some wicked tongues say that his family sold him in exchange for a lucrative deal. The werewolves are always broke. Not one good head for business among them.”
“Jason. A slave of the vampires.” I blink. “I knew that.”
“Of course you did. You told me all this.” She shoots me an odd look as we sit at one of the long tables. “Sure you don’t want anything to eat? Maybe you have low blood sugar.”
“Positive.” For some reason, my stomach is in knots. “What about Emrys and Sindri?”
“You told me that they had a hard time growing up in the courts. You set out to convince me that all four of them were framed for murder and that they are in fact good people and that we need to stop Ophelia from using them in her rituals—”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“They need to be punished.”
She puts her fork down. “Whoa, Mia, did something happen? Did they say something when you were visiting them?”
“Why, isn’t this what you wanted?” I ask, perplexed. “Revenge?”
“Well, yes, but… It’s like you’ve reverted to your past self, from when I first met you.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“You were convinced of their innocence in the murder accusations only, like, yesterday. Why are you so intent on punishing them now?”
“I’m talking about how they treat people,” I say, warming to my subject. “How they treated Ophelia.”
“And we care so much about how they treated Ophelia.” She grabs her fork again and jabs at her chicken. “Ha.”
She sounds sarcastic and I wonder why, but I’m distracted. Murder accusations? Faint bells are ringing inside my head. Didn’t I know something about that? Vanessa made me read something on her phone…
“So now the recap is done,” Vanessa says, “how about we talk some serious business?”
“Such as…?”
“Such as finding out how to break her enchantment on the boys and stop Ophelia from performing the ritual. You said something about going to ask an oracle?”
“Oracle?”
She shrugs, takes a bite of chicken. Chews. “You said it, not me. After you brought back the boys from their beastly forms at the lake. Hey, you still got my switchblade, right?”
Automatically I pat my pocket. “Yeah.”
…a blade, four beasts, four boys, an unbreakable bond…
“Good,” she says. “It’s a family heirloom. Don’t lose it.”
“Why did you give me a family heirloom?”
“A blade is a blade,” she says cryptically. “I figured you might have use for it.”
For what? Cutting wildflowers? But I don’t say that. “Well, I don’t remember anything about an oracle.”
“But you remember that you used my switchblade to stab the Headmaster and cut the lapels of his suit jacket, right?”
I’m staring at her. My memory is such a jumble right now. “Maybe.”
