Page 76 of Faerie Marked

I gestured toward my arm, still in a sling although I sensed the bone had knit itself back together during the night. “He tried to kill me by pushing me off a balcony. He’s going to come back and finish the job very soon. I know it.”

“Well then.” Wilson paused, leaning far back in his seat and crossing his feet at the ankles on the tabletop as though he owned the place. “I think I might have a plan.”

“Tell me,” I demanded.

“I have a feeling you’re right and he’ll strike again. You’re going to help me catch this perp.” He continued through my squawked protest: “We’ll use you as bait.”

28

Ineededallies.

After spending the morning bouncing theories and opinions off Detective Wilson, that was the takeaway message.

We needed people who could be trusted to help with the sting and takedown. I vehemently disagreed with Wilson calling in members of his pack to help but he insisted. He knew who to trust, and made a few phone calls to get those people to the academy property. He assured me he knew a way to get around the headmaster’s involvement. How to keep things under wraps until we caught the guy.

Yeah, right. Wilson hadn’t been able to so far, right?

I didn’t have many people I could trust with the truth here. In fact, there were onlytwoI felt safe sharing this secret with. Melia and the shifter nurse, Julie, and I didn’t want to include either one of them in a potentially dangerous plan. I briefly considered Professor Marsh and then decided against her involvement. She was too close to Leaves.

Detective Wilson insisted he would do everything in his power to keep us safe and I had to let him do his job.

I knew he meant what he said. I could sense the vehemence in his tone. The conviction in his every move. Still…

It was a big risk.

I knocked on the nurse’s door and walked inside without waiting for her to answer me. The woman never slept, apparently, because I found her at her desk scribbling away on a student’s file that she snapped closed the moment she saw me. Large eyes blinked in surprise.

“Have you reconsidered your ridiculous plan to catch a killer by yourself?” Nurse Julie asked. Then laughed loudly. “No, I can see it in your eyes. There’s no getting you off of this idea even if I tried. What do you want from me, Miss Alderidge?”

“I want your help.” I closed the door behind me to keep the rest of the world from disturbing us. Then I flipped the lock. Reinforced it with another pulse of magic. At least the magic came easier now than it had before.

Julie swiveled around on her stool and stared at me, her eyes narrowing until I almost lost them in her blue skin. “Hmm. You’re not wearing your potion spell. Didn’t we just fix you up yesterday? What happened?”

I shrugged. “I’m out of vials. Apparently, I have terrible luck with them and I’ve broken the spell more times than I’d anticipated. Which means I’m out in the open now because I don’t have an opportunity to go back and get more. I have no choice.”

“Oh, you foolish child.” Julie clucked her tongue, grabbing the file and standing to return it to its place in a cabinet on the opposite wall. “Seriouslyfoolish child. Give me a moment. Do not leave this room under pain of death.”

She stalked out through the door, shattering my magic with a thought, and returned a moment later with an eerily similar glass container to the ones I’d had in my wooden case.

I stared at it without blinking, then swallowed hard. “You…where did yougetthat?”

“My own stash I’ve learned to make,” she said haughtily as she shook the vial. “Where do you think I got it? I told you, I’m in a similar situation. Here, take this. I gather all the ingredients myself. When this is over, I’ll teach you how to make your own. And you will never have to deal with another witch in your life. It’s much better, trust me.”

I swallowed a smile along with the potion. It didn’t taste like burnt garbage and battery acid the way my old potion had. In fact, after I finished the whole of it, an aftertaste of flowers filled my mouth and I licked my lips to clean them.

Wow,somuch better than the sludge from Barbara. Worlds apart.

My skin wavered, shivering as the potion took effect, then settled along my bones. No dizziness. No stomach pains. It was a far cry from the effects I’d gotten used to with my own potion, where I felt like dying every time I downed a vial. And my wolf…she was still there. Under the surface and suppressed, but not numbed.

I breathed a sigh of relief. No more debt to that loon. “Oh, my God. Thank you.”

“There. Are you satisfied now?” Julie asked. “I assume you came for the potion?”

“I wish it was.”

She scowled at me.

After explaining the situation to Julie and extracting her agreement to do whatever she could, I left feeling lighter than I had since before my eighteenth birthday. Even going so far as to smile at whoever I passed in the hall.

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