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Kai
Kai furiously wrote on his sheet of paper, the tip of his quill fraying slightly under the pressure. His normally neat handwriting was now more of a hasty scrawl, and he would probably have to re-write the whole essay later if he actually wanted Professor Torin to be able to read it, but at this moment he couldn't care less. He just wanted to find some distraction from the books of Dark Magic surrounding him. They seemed to have invisible eyes embedded into their chained covers, staring at Kai from nearly every angle and sending ants crawling up his spine. But this was where he was supposed to meet the others, so he would just have to put up with it.
His shoulders slumped with relief when Thorne and Cress finally arrived. For some reason, she seemed to be pushing him along, and he was carefully feeling along the bookshelves.
"Are you looking for Dark Magic spells for your pranks now?" Kai asked him light-heartedly.
Thorne rolled his eyes. "Please, even I have limits. I'm just trying to keep myself oriented."
Kai cocked his head to one side. "Why? You sense of direction's only shockingly bad on a broom."
"I'll have you know I'm a great flyer!"
"You spent one of last year's Quidditch games upside down the whole time!"
Thorne nodded smugly. "Exactly! Only a truly skilled player can pull that off. Have the others arrived yet?"
Kai raised an eyebrow in bewilderment. What kind of a question was that? "Is that a trick question?"
"No. I genuinely want to know if the others have arrived yet and are just being weirdly quiet."
"Well, no, they aren't here. It's kinda obvious."
Thorne shook his head bitterly. "Not for me."
"What do you mean?" Kai asked.
Thorne pressed his lips together tightly, obviously unwilling to answer.
Cress shuffled her feet uncomfortably. "You remember how Thorne made Sybil go bald?"
"Remember?" Kai grinned, "That episode in the Great Hall made my day!"
"Well, as punishment, Levana… caused Thorne to go blind." Cress mumbled.
Kai's jaw hit the floor. "What? I thought she would've just sent you to the dungeons!"
"Yeah, well, since that didn't work before she figured it was time for a more drastic punishment." Thorne suddenly grinned. "But hey! Now I can get out of writing essays since, you know, I can't see what I'm writing. And my parents won't be able to chew me out for flunking tests!"
Kai rolled his eyes, but a small smile twitched across his face at Thorne's attempt at optimism. "Figures you'd use a punishment as an excuse for not doing any work."
"And figures you'd actually be surprised."
Thorne cupped a hand to his ear dramatically. "Is that the sarcastic tones of Jacin Clay I hear?"
Jacin rolled his ice blue eyes and Winter giggled beside him.
"So Wolf's coming this time, right?" Jacin asked.
Kai nodded then, remembering Thorne, quickly followed by saying, "Yes, he's coming. Try not to say anything insulting, okay?"
"Fine. I'll just stick to how he's a danger to society in general."
Winter swatted him on the shoulder.
"Winter, that was a joke!"
"Better not say any jokes like that when Scarlet gets here. She'll send you flying into next week."
Kai looked up and grinned at the new arrival. "Hey Iko!"
She glared at him. "Don't expect me to smile back after forcing me to study. I swear I've read every book in the library on werewolves now!"
"All one hundred and fifteen of them?" Jacin drawled.
"Sure feels that way! Wait, you actually counted them?"
"No. Winter did."
"I wanted to see how many of the books in the library would attack me with claws and fangs." Winter said matter-of-factly, "Turns out, only dragon books do that. There are one hundred and twenty-seven books on dragons in this library."
Thorne whistled. "Damn, even Kai's not that dedicated to books."
"Why did you count them?" Cress asked Winter curiously.
"I was bored. I wanted something to do."
Iko smirked at her. "You do realise that the cure for boredom is doing something fun, not boring, right?"
Winter stared at her. "But counting the books was fun."
"You sound like Kai." Iko said.
A snigger sounded from the entrance to the Dark Section and everyone looked up to see who'd shown up.
Scarlet grinned at them and gave a short wave of her hand in greeting. Behind her, Wolf was twitching and shifting his weight awkwardly.
Kai smiled and waved them over. "Hey guys! Thanks for showing Wolf!"
The tall boy nodded and followed Scarlet to join the rest of the group.
Iko cast an uneasy glance at Kai. "Cinder's not going to be coming so we should probably start now."
"Why isn't she coming?" Kai asked worriedly.
Iko hesitated. "She's… not feeling very well. I promised to fill her in on what we talked about later."
Kai frowned. It didn't sound like Cinder to skip out on one of their meetings just because she was sick. She was way too stubborn for that. Did something happen? Was she alright? Maybe he should go check on her. But Cinder wouldn't want him to cancel the meeting just because she wasn't there. She would've said so! Right?
Hesitantly, he suggested, "Maybe we should call this off, just until she's feeling better."
"No way." Jacin said firmly, "Winter and I have some serious news, and now that Wolf's finally here we might actually stand a chance at figuring out a plan to get the werewolves out of the forest. I'm sorry Kai, but this can't wait."
Kai glared at him, tempted to argue further, but Cress cut him off before he could speak. "What serious news?"
Jacin scowled. "Professor Park. Winter told me the other day that he saw us talking about getting the werewolves out of the forest."
Kai felt the blood drain away from his face. "So the school knows then?"
"Not yet. Cress managed to erase Aimery's memory of seeing anything, but he definitely knows something's up. You've all noticed him looking at us funny, right?"
Everyone nodded.
"I just thought he was being his regular creepy self." Iko muttered.
Jacin shook his head. "He knows that we did something. He can't remember what, but he does know. Now we just have to hope that he won't figure out there's a blank space in his brain and get it fixed."
"It's my fault." Cress murmured softly, "I messed up the charm!"
Thorne squeezed her shoulder. "Hey, don't be like that. You did the best you could. I doubt any of us could've even cast the charm."
"Thorne is right Cress-friend." Winter said, "If any of us did it we'd probably erase the wrong memory. You did a great job."
One by one, the others chimed in their agreement, and Cress managed a weak smile, though her eyes were still dark with guilt.
Scarlet cleared her throat. "Well, after that depressing stuff, I think we could all go for some good news."
"And you actually have some?" Jacin asked, "I'm dying to hear it."
"I'm pretty sure Jacin was being sarcastic just then but I really am dying to hear some good new right now." Kai said desperately.
Scarlet grinned and threw an arm around Wolf's shoulders. Kai couldn't help but notice that his ears turned bright red.
"Wolf here found out how the school forces the werewolves to transform when it's not a full moon!" Scarlet said proudly.
Kai grinned. Finally, they had a lead! "Great! How does it work?"
Wolf bit his lip awkwardly. "I don't know all the details exactly, but they use a spell that requires moonlight gathered from this tree…"
"The Star Tree?" Jacin guessed.
"Yeah, that. So the other night I took some Wolfsbane potion and gathered some."
As he spoke, Wolf took out a small jar from his pocket. Kai recognised a piece of one of the Star Tree's vines, its leaves wilted slightly from being away from the main plant, but instead of golden orbs of light, the faintly glowing beads resting under the leaves were silver.
Jacin scowled. "While this is all well and good, it doesn't actually help us figure out how to get rid of the werewolves."
Kai grinned at him. "Sure it does! If they need moonlight from the Star Tree to make the spell work, then we just need to alter the Star Tree's magic so it can't gather moonlight."
"He said, as if it were easy." Scarlet muttered.
"I think I might be able to do it."
Everyone turned to look at Cress. Her pale cheeks flushed pink under their scrutiny, but she continued, "I've had some practice altering the functions of magical objects. I might be able to alter the Star Tree's magic slightly to keep it from collecting moonlight."
"What about stored moonlight?" Iko asked, "I know that if I were using a spell that required a certain, rare component, I'd store tonnes of it just in case I lost access to my source."
"I can try looking for it." Wolf suggested, "I can sort-of sense the moonlight, so I'd probably have the best chance of finding their stash."
Kai nodded. "Great! Now we actually have a plan!"
Iko stood up. "I'll go tell Cinder. She'll be pleased that we're actually making progress."
"I can do it!" Kai said quickly.
Iko raised an eyebrow, but grinned and made a flourishing motion with her arms. "Well, who am I to keep you away from your crush?"
A/N: I think you can tell who our star couple will be next week.
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