with silver,” Jetta said.
“You’re telling us we just sit there and watch them kill off the hostages?” Krupp asked.
“If you have your own werewolves on your team, you can have them scent the wolf and they’ll be able to tell you all about them. Male, female, old or young or Alpha. They’ll maybe get a feel for if they could Change and take them themselves. What do you guys think?” Jetta asked the wolf pack at the table next to ours.
“I think you’re mostly right. But if you’ve got an Alpha in there, you might just want to burn the house down,” Delwood said.
“You’re telling us there’s no way or no one to send in after an Alpha?” Krupp asked.
“Didn’t say that. A powerful vampire or certainly Chris Gordon. Personally, I’d love to see old Deeklan here go in,” Delwood said, smirking in my direction. Since most of the room had picked up on our mutual dislike for one another, there were some chuckles. Krupp and Mazar didn’t laugh, instead looking from Delwood to me as they realized at about the same time as I did that he was serious.
“Okay, we’ve run over the lunch hour. Let’s finish our food and gather for the next presentations at, say, five after one. We can do some more demonstrations and discussions at the afternoon break,” Gina said.
True to her word, she had some of the kids demonstrate their avatars at one break and also trotted out one of the telepaths and one of the psychometric kids to show their stuff during Wednesday’s breaks. The cops and spooks seemed a little freaked out after that Tuesday lunch, though. They interacted and asked questions, but it wasn’t as in-depth as I would have thought. Before, they had seemed pretty intense, while after, they seemed to just go through the motions and were decidedly nervous around many of us, the weres in particular.
My group got together on Wednesday night to discuss our essays for Gina. The witch pack filed in a few minutes later and asked to join us.
“Okay, is it just me or were some of these people sticking their heads in the sand?” Ashley asked.
“I’ve seen some of it before,” Ariel said. “They thrive on control and authority and when they’re way out of their elements, they either go nuts to find out more or they close down their mindsets and ignore what they don’t want to hear.”
“And distract themselves by being really creepy old leches,” Britta said. All the girls had experienced the creeper factor, but the twins, Ryanne, and Ashley had drawn more than their share of attention. Except Caeco, which Ashley noted a moment later.
“How did you avoid them?” she asked.
“I stayed close to Declan for the most part, but when he wasn’t around, I practiced my bitch face. I grew up around high testosterone types. You pretty much had to learn to shut them down. Dressing the part helps,” she said, glancing at Erika’s V-neck sweater with a raised eyebrow.
“What? I like clothes and fashion. I shouldn’t have to be accosted because I look good,” Erika said.
“We’ve talked about this, Erika. There’s a difference between looking good and looking available. Like, say, the difference between a businesswoman and a football cheerleader. One outfit says class and power, the other says drag me behind the bleachers,” Britta said.
Overall, the group had similar takeaways from the three days. First, the government was devoting significant resources to the supernatural world. Second, those resources felt the paranormal revelation was dramatically changing society across the globe in ways that no one yet understood. And third, those same resources were grossly ill prepared for the resulting problems that would inevitably arise.
“The analytical types are great at standing back and looking at this from a distance, but when they found themselves in the middle of us, they couldn’t handle it,” Tami noted.
“Yeah, the shit got too real for them,” Jael agreed.
“Tis not an easy thing to change yer worldview on a feckin’ dime, now is it?” Ryanne asked. “We all live it day in and out, yet I’m remembering more than a few banjanxed faces when we all started here just a wee few months ago.”
“Good point. Watching your roommate walk eighty-thousand pounds of dirt into a basement sure makes you think about honoring the roommate contract,” Mack said dryly.
“Talking of the dirt walking reminds me that we’ve got teams to form for the tourney, now don’t we? Gina’ll be wanting our rosters by noon,” Ryanne