so they spend most of their off time bugging their mates. Oliver… I’m not sure I want to know what he gets up to.”
Oliver laughed, and flashed her a wicked grin.
Serina said, “I don’t have an idle personality. I like to go out, and Carmen usually comes with me,” she shrugged again.
“There’re a lot of procedures?”
Serina nodded, “For cleaning up, making sure the supernatural world stays covered up. When we can’t engage because it’s too risky, things like that. We don’t always have a witch handy for a privacy and concealment spell. The less we have to bug them and the sirens for a coverup the better. Most of the procedures are just common sense in hindsight, and not hard to remember.”
We pulled up in front of the brownstone, and I was a bit amused as they all piled out and escorted us watchfully to the door. We said our goodbyes and headed inside.
The rest of the morning was witch class. We were introduced to a few more concepts and facts about the world around us, but nothing that would help me do my job as an enforcer or come in handy during a fight. The spell we learned could judge the stability of a rock formation or a manmade building, and also predict its rate of decay. It was a little surprising just how much of the nature magic I’d been learning was grounded solidly in science.
I wasn’t sure how much the spell would help, unless an earthquake hit or I decided to take up spelunking, but it was what it was. Most witch magic wasn’t about violence and fighting, and most spells that were about violence were in the study of the four elements that we hadn’t covered yet.
The class was in the latter part of nature when I joined, just finishing up spells that work on human or supernatural beings. I’d have to learn the flora and fauna spells last when it came back around. Point was, a lot of the spells that I knew were about the world around us, and the laws that governed the earth and the rest of the universe for that matter. I had a spell that could check the air for toxins, the new one for physical stability of matter formations, and many other interesting things that had extremely limited applications.
In the afternoon after lunch with my mates, I spent about an hour with Carmen in the sparring room. Which was set up like a madman’s idea of a jungle gym. The two of us prowled around and sparred in our different forms. Carmen was a sneaky and dirty fighter, and as usual I had a lot of fun with it, even if it hurt at times. The pain of a strike always faded quickly though, as my magic shifted away any wounds almost immediately.
The rest of the afternoon I memorized the names and faces of the pack, and spent a little time looking through the database application we used to track and report rogue sightings and take downs. My mates were working on running the pack and companies, but it was relaxing knowing they were near while I worked.
I figured it’d be a week or less before I’d overcome the curve, and then I could spend my time doing the work instead of learning how to do the work. Regardless, it was a pretty good day, and nothing all that crazy happened.
Of course, we all knocked off work early, to get ready for the vampire dinner and dancing ball. It was obvious Stanton had come from an earlier time, where formal clothes and stately manners held a lot more value than the new casual business era. It should be interesting, to say the least.
Chapter Eight
It was close to six thirty by the time we were all ready. The bow tie and tux felt a bit odd, not to mention tight around my neck, but the slight discomfort was totally worth it when I got the first eyeful of my ladies as they came out.
My petite and sexy golden blonde was in a light blue dress that was multilayered and flowed down her body. It was a little snug around her bountiful bust with a conservative sweetheart neckline that went down to just where her cleavage started. The straps of the dress were wide, but they went over the edges of her shoulders and half on her arms. Below her breasts and around her waist, the diaphanous top layers fanned out