our group would be at every briefing. The witches decided to copy our idea and do the same thing. At the end of each day, we would get back together and discuss what we’d each learned. Britta asked if we’d be opposed to including them. None of our group objected.
Monday started with a welcome breakfast for the presenters. The number of tables in the dining room had more than doubled overnight and when Caeco, Jetta, Mack, and I came down for breakfast, half the tables were full of dark suits and white shirts.
Mostly men, thirties to fifties, with a handful of equally professional-looking women thrown in. The newcomers either glanced at us and then ignored us or studied us with sharp eyes.
“CIA, FBI, DEA, Border Patrol, and every other letter combination you can name,” Caeco said quietly as we carried full plates to an empty table.
“How can you be sure?” Mack asked.
“One, I can hear them talking, and two, I’ve seen their types before,” she said.
If I had to describe them as a group, I would say they were all confident, or at least projected confidence. Most of them seemed to ignore us, choosing to talk shop with their peers. I say seemed because I caught a number of sidelong glances our way.
“What are they talking about?” Jetta asked, eating the strawberry off the top of her Belgian waffle.
“Most are curious about Arcane and us. There’s a table of CIA, NSA, and FBI that’s talking about the Coven and how hard it is to gather intelligence on them. That one table over there is almost silent, but the guy with the gray crew cut is General Creek, and the dudes in the ‘shoot me first’ pants are combat operators, so they gotta be DOAA,” Caeco replied.
I carefully checked out the people she had commented on. The biggest table had nine fully engaged guys and one serious-looking lady all in deep discussion. The eight-person table on the far side of the room had a couple of obvious soldiers with short, short hair, Oakley sunglasses, and those khaki tactical pants that tried to be civilian but screamed professional SWAT or military. The square cut middle-aged man wearing a blue blazer and standard khakis had to be the general. He looked up and caught me staring before I could look away.
“You absolutely suck at subtle,” Caeco said without looking up from her eggs and sausage.
“Yeah, dude. Really,” Mack agreed.
Delwood, Matthew, and three of the wolves rolled into the dining room, being loud and boisterous. They paused at the sight of Arcane’s guests, then went about gathering several plates of food each.
Since our side of the room had the most open tables, Delwood chose to head our way.
“Dickline,” he greeted me, smiling at Caeco and ignoring the other two.
“Dillweed,” I said back.
He sat at the table right next to ours, pulling his chair a little close. “What’s with the suits?” he asked affably.
“Alphabet letter intelligence. I think most of them are guest speakers. The hard cases across the room are Department of Anomalous Activity,” I answered.
The other wolves arrived and settled down to the serious business of breakfast. By their tilted heads and sniffing noses, I knew they were gathering their own intel.
“Old dude told his table to keep an eye on you, Doucheling,” Delwood said evenly, his tone curious.
“Thanks for the warning, Duffwanker,” I said back.
“Duffwanker?” he asked, clearly not up with my cleverness.
“Duff as in designated ugly fat friend,” I explained.
“Ahh. Nice,” he said, then headed back to the buffet with both plates.
We finished up and headed into the main classroom to grab seats. A man was in the front, opening some seriously heavy-duty equipment cases. I could see a multi-rotor drone sitting in one of them.
After a bit, the room began to fill with both students and government types. It was pretty evenly divided with us on one side and the intel people on the other.
One minute before nine a.m., Gina came in with Nathan Stewart and his assistant.
Adine Benally took a seat directly in front of the podium while Gina and Stewart headed straight for it.
“Good Morning and welcome to Arcane. Thank you, guest speakers, for coming. We are all looking forward to your presentations. My name is Gina Velasquez and I’m the Director of Arcane, which is a joint endeavor between Oracle,” she said, nodding at Stewart, “and the Demidova Corporation.”
The last part caused a bit of a stir among the suits and I saw a frown cross General