by Tara Shuler
“I promise we will get your mother back,” Alexi said. “But we must do it the right way of every one of us will be in danger.”
He was right, of course. I was overreacting because this was my mother, but it was unlikely that Dmitri would cause harm to her. He wanted me, not her. Without her, he had nothing with which to bargain.
He pressed his lips against my forehead, and I could feel his warm breath on my skin. His arms held me firmly against his body, and I began to relax further.
“Alright,” I said softly. “We will do it your way.”
“Preparations will begin at once,” he said. “Liam, contact the hunters and be sure they are prepared to leave as soon as we can. I will make our travel plans and contact Logan to see if his pack can assist us. And I must let Father Franco know what is happening.”
“What can I do?” I asked.
“I need you to try to figure out what to do about the crystal,” he said. “It seems to be a big issue, and it must be resolved one way or another.”
“I will do everything I can,” I told him.
“The rest of you,” he said to the crowd, “should being packing. You need warm clothing, rations for up to a month, and any weapons you feel you need. We will be taking the Council’s private jets, so there is no need to worry about airport security. Whatever you need, we can load up.”
“And continue your training in every spare moment you can find!” I added. “Every single one of us must be prepared, because we have no idea what Dmitri will do.”
The crowd began to scatter, piling through the door and spilling into the foyer as they left to make their preparations. Meanwhile, I needed to keep myself calm, so I decided to start packing and throw myself into training. I wanted to be practicing my abilities, but since they were nonexistent, the only thing I could really do was practice combat. Alexi had gone to make our travel plans, leaving Liam to watch over me.
“I’d like to do some combat training,” I told him.
“I need to contact the hunters first,” Liam said.
Max and Denise were whispering about something in the corner, and I called to him, “Max! Can you contact the hunters? Ask if they can be ready to leave very soon.”
“Sure thing!” Max said.
I turned to Liam and said, “Now can we do combat training?”
“Why not? I’ll have to see if anyone is available to train you,” Liam said.
“I can do it,” Kai offered.
“Won’t Alexi mind?” Liam asked.
“I don’t think so,” I answered. “He didn’t mind Kai helping me learn to use the crossbow.”
“Alright, then,” Liam said. “Let’s go.”
“Can we do this outside today?” I asked. “I’m really dying to get some fresh air.”
“I don’t see why not,” Liam said. “Surely Alexi wouldn’t object if you have both Kai and me with you.”
“Wait,” Jamie said. “Alice should eat something. She hasn’t had breakfast.”
On cue, my stomach began to grumble.
“I am hungry,” I admitted.
“What can I get you?” Jamie asked.
“Something sweet,” I said. “I need sugar. Badly.”
Jamie smiled and said, “I understand. I always want sweets when I’m anxious, too.”
She disappeared into the kitchen and I sat down to wait. Kai sat across from me and Liam beside me. I began to gnaw my fingernails, a habit I’d been trying to kick, but couldn’t seem to. I noticed Jamie had stopped doing it, and made a mental note to ask her how she did it.
Before long, the smell of frying bacon and something heavenly sweet wafted through the window from the kitchen, and my stomach growled louder. I began to feel nauseous and jittery.
“You don’t look so good,” Liam noted.
“I don’t feel well,” I admitted.
“What’s wrong? You’re all sweaty and pale,” Liam said.
“Hunger, I think,” I said. “I feel really sick.”
“Hopefully it won’t be much longer,” Kai said, craning his neck toward the kitchen. “Do you want me to go check on it?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to bother Jamie, but I was feeling really woozy. Kai hopped up and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a glass of orange juice.
“Jamie said it’ll be about ten minutes before your stuff is out of the oven, but she sent this and said it should help,” Kai said, setting the glass in front of me.
I picked it up and gulped it down with a thirst that could not be quenched. When the glass was drained of every possible drop, I slammed it down on the table and took a gasping breath, wiping my mouth on the back of my wrist.
“Feel better?” Kai asked.
I nodded. “I don’t know what happened, I was just feeling so nauseous,” I said.
“You haven’t been eating regularly,” Liam said. “You’re probably having blood sugar issues.”
I put my head on the cool wood of the table and closed my eyes. I needed to eat more often. That was it. Liam was right. I hadn’t been eating often enough, and with Jamie here cooking, I was determined to change that.
A few minutes later, Jamie brought me the most incredible caramel pecan cinnamon rolls and some bacon that was perfectly crispy. It was exactly what I was hoping for. I crumbled the bacon on the cinnamon rolls and Liam and Kai watched in horror as I ate.
“What?” I asked after I swallowed a big bite.
“Bacon on cinnamon rolls?” Liam asked incredulously.
“It’s freaking delicious,” I said, taking another big bite.
“It’s weird,” Liam said.
“Actually, bacon combined with sweet stuff is one of the big new things in the culinary world,” Jamie pointed out. “Bacon milkshakes, bacon jam, candied bacon… it’s a real movement.”
“A movement, huh?” Liam said. “Sounds like what I’d have if I ate that.”
I stabbed a bite on my fork and thrust it into Liam’s face, demanding, “Try it.”
“Ew, no,” he said, backing away in disgust.
“Try it!” I repeated loudly.
He made a face and sniffed it, and then very reluctantly took it into his mouth. Ever so slowly, as he chewed, his look of horror evolved into one of ambivalence, and then finally he shrugged.
“It’s not half bad,” he admitted.
I grinned and said, “Told ya!” Then I cut off a bite and shoved it at Kai.
He ate it out of respect, but I could see the fear in his eyes. As he chewed, he started to laugh. He nodded his head, and when he swallowed he said, “Damn. That’s actually killer.”
“Ah, ha!” I chirped, satisfied. “See? I know what I’m talking about.”
I hurriedly finished eating, scraping the last of the heavenly caramel off the plate with my fork and slurping it up like ambrosia, and then I thanked Jamie for an amazing breakfast.
“I’m glad you liked it,” she said, blushing softly.
“Liked it? I loved it! Alexi has competition. I just might marry those rolls,” I joked.
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Liam said.
We snickered as we headed outside for combat training, and on the way, Liam asked Kai, “Would you mind if I participate, too? I need to brush up on some skills.”
“Not at all,” said Kai. “I don’t know all that much yet, but I think I can show you a few things.”
We spent the rest of the morning training, and the time slipped past the noon hour. Kai was a remarkably adept teacher, and both Liam and I learned a lot. I was shocked how much Kai had learned in just a few short months.
Exhausted, we headed inside for lunch. Jamie was sitting with Will and having her own meal, so I sat beside her and waited for her to be finished before I asked her to cook something.
“This crystal thing is really bugging me,” I said to everyone at the table.
“What crystal thing?” Jamie asked.
“That crystal thing lured me out of bed this morni
ng,” I explained. “It talked to me. It told me a bunch of stuff, but mainly that I needed to take it to my enemies. How the heck am I supposed to move that think to Russia? It’s huge!”
“Wow, I don’t know,” Jamie said. “Sounds like you’d have to get a specialty moving company.”
“That could take weeks to arrange,” Liam pointed out.
“Weeks? How in the… ugh!” I growled.
“You’ll figure something out,” Kai interjected. “You always do.”
We had a quick lunch and then started strategizing the trip. I was making a list of items I needed to be sure to pack when Jamie approached me and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Alice, I think I found something that will help with the crystal thing,” Jamie said.
“Really?”
“Look, I found this potion in the book, and if I can make it, it can actually temporarily shrink stuff,” Jamie said. “I’m a little confused on how exactly it works, but it says it displaces the object’s mass and rearranges particles or something like that. It’s all sciencey, but this could let you shrink the crystal long enough to transport it with us to Russia.”
“Hmm, and it’s only a mid-level potion, too,” I said. “Do you think you could pull it off?”
“I believe so,” she said. “Wolf’s Bane was much trickier and I managed that one fine.”
“Alright, let’s give it a go,” I said. “It doesn’t look too dangerous.”
“It can me, but I have to have a special material to work with it,” she said. “I can’t even pronounce this name, can you?”
I looked at the word in question and it had more letters than our local post office. My jaw dropped. How could we get this stuff if I couldn’t even pronounce the name?
“What exactly do you need it for?” I asked. “Is it part of the potion itself?”
“No, it’s the only known material that isn’t affected by the potion,” Jamie answered. “If we don’t use this stuff for stirring, mixing and containing it, anything we put the potion onto or into will just shrink and the potion will be useless.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “That actually sounds horrifying.”
“As long as we can find the equipment made with this poly… resin… what’s-it-stuff… it’s no big deal,” she promised me.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Maybe I can order it online or something.”
“Let me know, because I can’t even start trying to work on it without it,” Jamie said.
Liam said, “I have a friend who might know what this stuff is and how to get it. He’s big into science and chemistry. Let me give him a call.”
He pulled out a cell phone, which was unusual because I rarely ever saw Council members using them, and flipped through his contact list. Then he dialed a number.
“Hey, Oscar?” he asked. “Liam. Not much, just trying to find this weird material, and I thought you might know where to locate it.”
I handed Liam the book and pointed to the name, and his face blanched.
“Uh, Oscar? I can’t pronounce this shit. It’s about forty or fifty letters long and… yeah, that’s fine. I’ll email you the name. It’ll be a minute, though. I can’t type this very quickly. Alright, thanks.”
He hung up the phone and opened his email application and located Oscar’s email address, choosing to send him a new email. Then he began to arduous task of typing in the name of the material one letter at a time.
“Son of a bitch!” he cursed.
“What?”
“Fucking autocorrect just changed the name to ‘Polly resides purple house forty mules ate pistachios’!” he growled through clenched teeth.
I know he was irritated, but I couldn’t help laugh. “Oh, my god!” I cackled. “Polly resides purple what?”
Jamie snickered, too. She tried to contain it, but the hilarity of such a ridiculous statement was just too much to bear. She and I both just burst into riotous laughter, which was nice considering how much stress we were actually under. Even Liam finally snorted despite himself.
“Yeah, yeah,” he moaned, smiling faintly. “Let me try this again, after I turn off this bloody autocorrect!”
This time he finally managed to type it correctly, or at least something close enough, we hoped. He sent off the email, and all we had to do was wait. About fifteen minutes later, Oscar responded.
That stuff is pretty hard to find, but I think I can sneak some out of the chem lab at school. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll text you.
Liam showed me the email and I relayed the message to Jamie. “Oscar says he can possibly sneak some out of his school’s chem lab. Might be a couple of hours.”
“Alright, I’ll read up on this potion in the mean time,” she said.
She sat down with her potions book and began to read and I decided I’d better practice with my crossbow. It had been so useful against Carson that I figured I might as well keep practicing it, and I had nothing else I could really accomplish at the time.
Liam followed me down to the shooting gallery and watched as I performed target practice endlessly for well over an hour.
“Hey, Oscar wrote back,” Liam said after I’d been shooting for a while.
“What’d he say?” I asked.
“Hold on, the reception is crap down here,” he grumbled. “Email is loading. Ok, let’s see. He got it! He wants us to meet him at the Georgia Tech campus.”
“Alexi isn’t going to like that,” I said.
“Maybe not, but we need this stuff, and we haven’t left the compound in ages,” Liam said. “Let’s go before he notices.”
“No, I can’t do that to him,” I said. “I’m going to just tell him we’re going. Besides, I’m Chancellor. He can’t really stop me.”
“Whoa, ho, ho! Look at you!” Liam said, his eyes wide. “Standing up to dear old husband, eh?”
“I told him the other day that I’m his wife, not his daughter. And he agreed. It’s time for me to make some decisions of my own,” I said. “But I still want to tell him about it before we go.”
“Alright, then let’s find him,” Liam said.
We found Alexi in the library. He was flipping through a book that was thicker than the Atlanta phone book and scanning the pages as though he were looking for something urgently.
“Alexi?” I called to him.
His attention turned to me, and he lit up with a smile, reaching for me. I approached him and took his hand, and he pulled me into his lap and hugged me tight.
“What can I do for you, darling?” he asked cheerfully.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” he said. “Old maps.”
“Of Verkhoyansk?” I asked.
“Indeed,” he said. “What did you need?”
“Liam and I are going to Georgia Tech,” I said.
“As students?” Alexi asked, confused.
“No… to pick up this rare material Jamie needs for a potion,” I answered.
“Oscar managed to nick some from the chem lab,” Liam explained.
“Oscar,” Alexi muttered, making a face. “You plan to take my wife around that… person?”
“Oscar’s not a bad guy, Alexi,” Liam argued.
“Oscar flirts with every female who comes near him,” Alexi groaned. “You can go, but Alice is staying here.”
“I am not!” I snapped. “I want to get out of this place for a while!”
“We will be soon enough,” Alexi said firmly. “If you cannot wait until we leave for Russia…”
“I’m going!” I shouted, jumping from his lap and whirling around to face him. I waggled my finger in his face and said, “Remember, I’m your wife, not your daughter. If you want to come with us, I’d be glad to have you. But I am going, and that’s final!”
He sighed heavily and then threw his hands up in defeat. “Fine,” he groaned. “But if you are going around that Oscar person, I am definitely coming with yo
u.”
Alexi had bought new cars for the Council. These were black, just like the older models, but they had new security features that made them much safer. He decided to drive rather than have one of the Council members take us, because everyone was currently in training.
It took us nearly five hours to make our way from Savannah to Georgia Tech. It normally would have taken only four, but traffic was heavy and they were doing construction on the highway.
We met Oscar at his dorm room, and the moment he saw me he ogled me like a piece of meat. He smiled wide and said, “And who is this?”
“This,” Alexi snarled, stepping in front of me, “is my wife.”
“Oops, gotcha,” Oscar said, backing away. “I didn’t know.”
Alexi eyed him suspiciously, and Oscar turned his attention to Liam. He handed Liam a cardboard box.
“If anyone asks where you got this…” Oscar said.
“I won’t involve you, don’t worry,” Liam said. “I owe you one.”
“No, you owe me about ten or twenty,” Oscar said. “Do you have any idea how tight the security is around here? I could have been expelled for this.”
“I get it,” Liam said. “I wouldn’t have asked if this wasn’t important.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” said Oscar, clapping Liam fondly on the back. Then he leaned over and said, “Besides, the chick is hot. How could I refuse?”
I saw Alexi’s jaw begin to clench and release, and his hands balled into fists. Fortunately, he contained himself and said nothing.
“Thank you, Oscar,” I said politely as Alexi tried to nudge me from the cramped dorm room.
“You got it, sweet cheeks!” he called after us.
Liam followed, and as we made our way down the hall with the box of equipment, Alexi said, “Do you see what I mean about him?”
“He’s a flirt,” Liam admitted. “But he’s harmless.”
“Well, I am not,” Alexi said. “It was all I could do to keep from assaulting him.”
“Assaulting him? Alexi, he was just flirting!” Liam said. “He didn’t touch her. He didn’t even really look at her much.”
“The few moments he ogled her were enough,” Alexi said.
“Well, at least we have what we came for and we can go home,” I pointed out.
“Yes, the further I get you away from that bum, the better,” Alexi agreed.
