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Dastien pushed a piece of hair behind my ear. “No. We will honor his sacrifice. We can’t bury his body, but we’ll have a service for him. I’ll always be grateful for what he did.”
I squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”
“Come on. Let’s go get this over with. And then lets come back. I’d like to spend the next day or ten in bed with you.”
I blushed.
“Mind out of the gutter. We’ve got time before the next full moon.”
I scoffed. “You’re so old fashioned.”
He kissed me again, and I lost myself in it. I was fully breathless when he pulled back. “I just want to be respectful. But that doesn’t mean I can’t hold you.”
“Deal.”
***
The cafeteria was always the place to meet on campus. Apparently, that hadn’t changed in the little bit that I’d been gone. Weres sat around eating, but one table stood out from the rest.
Claudia, Raphael, Shane, Cosette, and Elsa sat together, along with two other girls and one older lady.
Beth, Tiffany, and Yvonne.
There was a ring of empty tables around them, like no one wanted to get too close. I was a little disappointed in my fellow Weres, but it wasn’t all that surprising. They’d just been attacked by a bunch of witches.
I spotted Meredith, Donovan, Chris, and Adrian at another table and they waved me over. I held up a finger. “One second,” I mouthed as I moved toward the witches.
As I pulled out an empty chair, their hushed conversation stopped. “Hey.” Dastien stood behind me, letting me take the lead.
“Hi,” Claudia said. Her eyes were swollen and ringed with red.
I stared hard at the linoleum for a second. I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew I should say something, but anything I could come up with felt insubstantial. Meaningless. “I’m sorry about Daniel. If I could’ve…if I—”
Claudia reached out to me. “Don’t. He knew what he was doing. He stayed back to get the three of them. They played along with Luciana. But he knew who you were. Who you were meant to be.” Her soft, understanding words only made me feel worse.
I wasn’t worthy of that. I’d cost Daniel his life.
A tear rolled down my cheek, and I quickly brushed it away. “I didn’t ask him to do that. Why would he do that?”
“Because he believed in what we were doing. Because he knew his mother had to be stopped and you were the only one who could do that,” Raphael said.
Dastien squeezed my shoulder. You okay?
I grabbed his hand. I will be. I cleared my throat. “I also wanted to thank you. You opened the jars?”
Claudia gave me a small smile. “Had to be done. Otherwise, the night would’ve gone very differently.”
I snorted. That was an understatement. “Does anyone here have any idea what Luciana was calling up?”
“A high-level demon,” the older woman, Yvonne, said. “Luciana went dark some time ago, but I swear, we here had no idea it was this bad. Daniel made his sacrifice just in time. Otherwise, we’d all be dead.”
I noticed the tables filling up around us, and fought back a smile. They’d come to like the witches. They just needed some time.
“We couldn’t have fought it?” I wanted to be extra clear.
She shook her head. “Not and lived.”
“So what do we do?”
