Palace of Wolves

Chapter 13 --Thank you Nessie

The next day Oscar and Alex stayed with our group at school. To me, it didn’t seem like a very huge event but must have been important to the others. Seen as there were no tables out at break we stood in a corner uncomfortably close to the boy’s toilet, Alex looked slightly uneasy as they walked up.

“Do they know?” she whispered in Oscar’s ear, having to stand on the toes of her Doc Martin boots to reach it.

“Know what?” belted out Mia, so harshly Mia shied away. Even I flinched a bit; I was not expecting that tone of severity. Mia stared Oscar down.

“Oh god. Oscar you stupid arsehole! You told her!”

“Yeah I did. It’s my right to tell Alex and she didn’t freak out. Plus, in case you didn’t notice, she didn’t kill me!”

“I guess you do know then.”  Said Alex matter-of-factly, I guess she was trying to stay calm. “How did you find out?”

““Same way as Oscar,” sighed Mia, “You might as well know.”

“Wait,” Alex looked to Oscar and back to Mia, “Does that mean that you--”

“Yeah it does,”

“Any others I should know about?”

Mia tapped the silver badge that was pinned to her hair band.

“Anyone you see wearing this. The silver one”

“Hang on…does that mean all of you?”

“All except Ester.”

“That’s cool then. It’s nice to know there’s a small werewolf pack in my school. Anything else? Coven of witches perhaps. ”

As I didn’t know Alex very well, I didn’t know if this was sarcasm or not. Either way, I was surprised about how calm she was.

"Anyway, I always wondered why you always wear those badges. It's a pretty cool design." I had noticed that Mia had button badges on her backpack; they had the names of bands I didn’t listen to and an eclectic mix of skulls and butterflies.

“I can get hold of a black one for you like mine.” said Ester, "you know, if you want to show support for werewolves."

"That's pretty cool." She said as the bell rang.

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Five minutes later I was on my knees in the school library, searching the bottom shelf of the fiction section for a decent silent reading book for English. It reminded me, in a way, of the trips to the library with Josie. There was the same modern metal shelves which seemed to be standard issue for new or refurbished libraries and much of the same books. The thing was, it seemed lacking in personality: the large, school standard pin boards above the computers sat empty bar a couple of sad looking posters stating "It's cool to read" or similar rubbish. In addition to that, it was deserted. Only me and Lana had came from the class to check out books and according to her, outside of classes you where only allowed in if you entered through the door in the ICT corridor, gave the librarian a detailed explanation to what you had to do and if it was over 15 minutes into lunch.

"This library kinda sucks" I whispered to Lana after she had explained this.

"You’re telling me and you've not even seen the genre stickers." She pointed to a copy of the book Twilight; a sticker on the spine marked it as horror.

As we laughed a thought came to me; I thought back to a thing Dora had casually mentioned the day before

“Lana, what are hunter’s”