he had gotten out any comments about gays.
“So, what do you think this combined class is about?” Jetta asked in a very obvious attempt to change the topic.
“I heard that Jenks got in a lot of trouble for failing to control his class,” Ariel chimed in.
“How’d ya hear that?” Mack asked around a forkful of mac and cheese.
“I have connections in Oracle. One of them texted me asking for dirt about what went down this morning. She works at headquarters in Nathan Stewart’s office and heard the Director cursing a blue streak about Jenks and his ‘incredibly bad judgement.’ Apparently he was on the phone with somebody high up in the Demidova Corp. She never found out who. But the whole thing is a big deal.”
“So why, if mixing weres and nonweres resulted in mayhem in the morning class, would we mix them in the night classes?” Mack wondered.
“So we’ll learn to get along,” Justin said. Everyone stopped eating and looked at him, startled that he’d spoken. He looked around at the rest of the table and shrugged his big shoulders. “Stands to reason is all,” he said.
“Justin, what’s your major again?” Mack asked.
“Poli-sci,” he answered without looking up from his chicken alfredo.
The rest of dinner passed with fruitless speculation about our class. We all headed down early and found a set of folding bleachers had been set up on one side of the open space. The concrete floor over much of the room had been marked with white chalk lines that I couldn’t quite make out.
The rest of the kids filtered in, sitting in clumps on the cool metal seats. By mutual unspoken agreement, Delwood and his wolves sat on the opposite side of the bleachers from me. Surprisingly, the witch pack sat on my side, just below my group. Most of them even nodded to me or said hello.
At five minutes to seven, Gina came in, followed by Miss Berg and Mr. Jenks. The two teachers took seats on the bottom level of the bleachers and Gina stood in front of us.
“The first day we assembled upstairs, I mentioned that this whole thing was an experiment. We’ve never put so many kids of such wide-ranging talent together before. Mistakes were bound to happen, and they did,” she began. “But learning is about making mistakes and then overcoming them. Finding what does and doesn’t work. Trial and error. So we go forward and learn from our mistakes. Find opportunity in failure. With that in mind, we’re going to change up things a bit.
Monday nights, from now on, we’ll hold a combined class, down here, with a guest instructor.”
Mondays? Rowan West, my aunt’s restaurant, was closed Mondays. Oh shit.
“We are very lucky to have an extraordinarily gifted witch who has consented to instruct you. Her family has been practitioners of the Craft for hundreds and hundreds of years. Please welcome Ashling O’Carroll of the Clan Irwin,” Gina said, pointing one hand toward the doorway.
My aunt swept toward us, dressed stylishly in designer jeans and thick sweater, with calf-high brown boots.
I forget how young my aunt is, but she was only about sixteen when she and my mom fled to America. She looked more like one of the young associate professors or teaching assistants up at the campus than a successful restaurateur or accomplished witch.
“Good evening to ye all. We met under different circumstances this morn, but the thing that stood out to me is that ye could all benefit from a different perspective,” she began. Most of my classmates were listening intently, the witch pack literally on the edge of their seats.
“As Mrs. Velasquez mentioned, me name is Ashling O’Carroll, but I was born Ashling Irwin. For those of you that would have no way of knowing, the Irwin witches are fairly well known among the circles of Ireland.”
“Fecking right they are,” Ryanne muttered loud enough to be heard. My aunt flashed her a smile, then continued on. “After this morning’s meltdown, we decided that maybe I could shed a different light on things as it were. So I’ll be teaching ye some and I suspect ye’ll be seeing some others come here now and again.
“Now, it was apparent to me, at least, from the fiasco that shall remain unmentioned, that none of ye know all that much about each other. Things that work well for training a shapeshifter don’t work much at all for witchkind or psychics, now do they?”
She turned and waved at the lines on the floor