if I had somehow offended her or if she was tired of having to pretend to be interested in me. That made Caeco very happy but left me completely confused. I would have sworn we were friends, yet she blatantly avoided me.
The exact opposite was true of the rest of the witch pack. Somehow, I had become their best buddy or favorite guy in the school.
One day between classes, I stopped in one of the UVM campus eateries for lunch and spotted Mack in close conversation with a pretty girl. I waved and he waved me over. Her name was Alexis and she gave me a friendly smile when Mack introduced me. After the introduction, I went through the line to get food and discovered the entire witch pack had just arrived. They dragged me to their table and put me just about dead center of the group, chattering and laughing through the whole lunch.
Across the room, I could see Mack and his friend Alexis watching us, their heads close together, obviously conversing about us.
I asked him about it later when we were in our room.
“She’s a Psych major,” he said.
“But she seemed so normal,” I said.
“F.U. buddy. She’s hot and you know it,” he replied. “Anyway, she thought you seemed like a nice guy but was fascinated to see the witch bitches glom onto you that way, so I asked her for an analysis.”
“What did she say?” I pressed.
“Oh? Now you value the Psych major’s opinion?” he asked.
“Dude, you know that a lot of them are a bit… different. Doesn’t mean they don’t know stuff,” I said.
“No kidding? Really?” he asked, mocking me. I think I might have growled a bit.
“Now you sound like one of the wolves,” he laughed. “Anyway, listen to this… and remember, she’d never seen any of the witches before. She said that Erika wants to have your baby—her words, not mine—Britta is fascinated by you but not in a romantic way, Paige has a crush on you, Tami fears you, Jael is uncomfortable around you, Michelle has friend zoned you, and Zuzanna is wicked jealous of you.”
“Jealous? But what about Ryanne? She won’t say two words to me,” I asked.
“She said she really likes you,” Mack said. “Which if you remember, I called early on.”
“She’s wrong about that, but you left out her most important analysis… What did she say about me?” I asked.
“She said you were distrustful of them, but you covered it well. Said you were confused and uncomfortable by all the attention, which struck her as odd. Said most guys our age would just dive headfirst into the pool. She was amused that you were completely put off by Erika, said it reaffirmed her faith that some guys might be slightly deeper than a puddle. She thinks you may have trust issues,” he said, smirking.
“Ya think?” I asked. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, she wanted my number.”
I whipped a Nerf football at him, but he just caught it, spiked it, and did an imitation touchdown dance.
Chapter 31
Break week arrived along with somewhat milder temperatures and definitely longer days. The colleges were closed so we had no classes and our Arcane classes were to be replaced by workshops and seminars of all kinds for the first three days of the week. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were scheduled for family and guest visits and had their own schedule of events.
Sunday night, we hung out in the student lounge at the far end of the second floor and tried to figure out what we wanted to attend, as Gina was requiring essays from each of us at the end. The witch pack held court in the cluster of chairs and couches next to us, nearer the gas fireplace, and some of the wolves were watching college basketball on the big flatscreen mounted on the wall.
Some presentations were mandatory, like the opening remarks, which would feature Gina and supposedly Nathan Stewart, who had yet to make an appearance at Arcane since the semester had started.
Other time slots featured multiple concurrent topics such as Drone Tactics and Applications, Portal Development Frequency, Technological Advances in Portal Closure, Demonic Combat, Global Supernatural Capabilities, Implications of Mythic Species, Economic Reactions to Emergence, and Weapons systems for a New World.
Some parts of the weeklong schedule were filled by single presentations like National Security Issues in Post Emergence America and Pressure Points in Today’s Society.
The schedule and information packet that we’d received via email told us no fewer than a dozen times that we