“Did you call me ‘buddy’?” He murmured as he brushed a kiss on my head.
“I may have, but that’s beside the point,” I muttered mostly to myself.
Chris cleared his throat. “How’s Meredith?”
Any laughter I felt died.
“The same,” Dastien said. “She’s knocked out, and we’ll try to keep her that way for as long as possible. Did you learn anything?”
“Oh, they’ll break the curse. But only if I let them put the same curse on me and move there indefinitely.”
Dastien growled.
Whoops. I probably shouldn’t have said that aloud, even if it was bothering me. I would’ve been fine if they wanted me to stay and learn their ways maybe once a week, but foregoing the pack and letting her curse me—no way.
I could almost see the steam coming from Dastien’s ears as rage boiled along our bond.
Still, if I was going to have an equal relationship with Dastien, then keeping things from him—especially something like this—wasn’t the best call. If the situation were reversed, I’d want to know. “Claudia gave me some books, but unless I submit, and I won’t—”
“Damned right,” Chris said.
“And I won’t,” I said again, talking over Chris’ mutterings. “They can’t—or won’t—do anything else to help Meredith.” I started to climb across the seats to get back in the front passenger side, but Dastien stopped me.
“We’re still moving.” His deep voice rumbled with worry.
“So? I’m a werewolf and pretty much unbreakable, even if Chris wrecks.” I brushed a kiss on his forehead, and stepped over him, into the front seat. Just because he worried, didn’t mean I’d let him coddle me.
“Don’t wreck,” Dastien said to Chris.
“Thanks for the advice, dude. I’ll do my best.”
I snorted.
“Seatbelt,” Dastien said as soon as I sat.
Seriously? The guy needed to calm down. I was fine. I would stay fine. It was Meredith we had to worry about. I reached to the floorboard and pulled the three books out of my bag.
The first one was two inches thick with a navy blue cover and embossed silver letters on the front that spelled out McCondry’s Basics of Magic, Spells & Curses. The second book was small, about the size of a pocket guide. The cover was a dark brown and very worn-in, but it didn’t have a title. I opened the little book and a page fell out.
This book could seriously use a rebinding.
I placed the page back in and read the handwritten, tiny print. Different people had scrawled all over the page, crossing things out, making replacements, and underlining words. I wondered who, and how many witches, had owned the book before me, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that I had it. From what I could tell, these were actual potions. The boil-things-in-a-pot kind.
The last book was the newest. The hardcover had a glossy finish. A Practical Guide to Witchcraft was printed above the image of a girl standing with an odd-looking chemistry set. The spine cracked with newness when I opened it. I quickly flipped through the pages since I didn’t have to turn them as gingerly as I did the others. It looked like my metaphysics text, complete with exercises after every chapter, but from a bruja perspective instead of a werewolf one.
Weird. Were there even enough witches to warrant such a book? “How many witches are there?”
“A lot. Nearly a hundred times the current amount of wolves,” Chris said.
“What? Seriously?” I twisted to look at Dastien.
He nodded. “Almost every culture has some sort of witchcraft in it. To some it’s so watered down that it’s more like a normal religion and not all of them have powers. But there’s a pretty solid number of covens that do. Besides the coven here, the strongest ones are in Peru and Mexico. And the one in India is pretty good, too.”
“And the Egyptian one,” Chris said. “That one’s badass. But yours is really well known.”
And they were thinking about taking on the pack. Being that grossly outnumbered didn’t sit well with me. I’d have to see what I could do about mending things between the pack and the coven before the situation with Luciana got out of control.
I flipped through some more pages. If I was a betting girl, which I wasn’t, I’d bet this was the one that Luciana and the others didn’t want me to have.
“Anything good?” Chris asked.
“It’s too soon to tell. I’ll need help going through everything, but maybe. If there’s a way to fix to what’s going on with Meredith, we’ll find it in here.”