only makes him squeeze her harder. But when he reaches up to ruffle her hair, she ducks out from under his arm and twists it behind his back hard enough to have him squealing—not to mention coughing out a couple of pathetic blasts of ice—which has Jaxon, Macy, and the guy who came on the field with Eden, who I don’t know yet, cracking up.
“Are you done?” Eden asks, eyes narrowed.
“For now.” Flint gives her his most charming grin, and she just rolls her eyes. But she also lets him go.
“Anyway,” Flint continues, “this is Eden. And this”—he turns to the white guy dressed in navy track pants, a gray compression shirt, and a navy baseball cap—“is Xavier. He’s a wolf, but we try not to hold it against him.”
Xavier cheerfully flips him off before nodding my way. “Nice to meet you, Grace. I’ve certainly heard a lot about you.”
He doesn’t tell me from where, and I don’t ask. If he’s a wolf, I’m not sure I want to know anyway.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I answer with a smile. He’s got laughing green eyes and a wide smile that makes it impossible not to grin back at him. Eden may be cool, but this guy is F.U.N. It’s written all over him.
Add in the fact that my cousin keeps glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, and I’m only more interested in getting to know this guy.
“Is this everyone?” I ask, because I thought Flint mentioned there being eight people on a team.
“Mekhi will be here any minute,” Jaxon tells the group.
“And Gwen had a makeup test this morning,” Macy says. “But she’ll be here as soon as it’s over.”
I’m super excited that Mekhi’s going to be on our team—and just as excited that Macy chose Gwen to play with us instead of one of her other friends. Gwen was definitely the nicest when I met her whole friend group a few months ago. Somehow I can’t imagine Simone agreeing the way Gwen and everyone else had when Jaxon explained just why we needed the bloodstone.
It still feels strange to think of that time being a few months ago, since for me it feels like it’s been only a few weeks. But I’m trying to get used to it, just like I’m trying to get used to my memory likely never coming back. I hate the thought of never remembering those months, but I’m tired of worrying about it, tired of beating myself up over it.
“I hate that you can’t remember, too,” Hudson says, but it’s a soft tone, not his usual sardonic one. He wanders over to check out the wolf, no longer pretending to be captivated by his book.
I want to ask him what happened, want to beg him to forget what everyone says is good for me and just tell me. But now isn’t exactly the time, and how do I know I can trust what he tells me anyway?
“So what are we doing first?” Xavier asks, bouncing up on his toes like he’s ready to take off at any second. Take off for where, I don’t know, but I’m betting he’ll be an impressive sight.
“I think we should probably divide into teams and see what we can do together first,” Flint says, pulling a medium-size ball out of the duffel bag he’d dropped on the ground. “Macy, you want to enchant this thing for us?”
He tosses it to my cousin, who pulls out her wand and aims it at the ball as she murmurs what I assume is a spell.
“What’s she doing?” I ask Jaxon, completely lost.
“Ludares is half Keep Away, half Hot Potato, but with a bunch of magical twists. The first twist is that the ball burns hotter and hotter the longer you hold it, so you’ve got to get rid of it after thirty seconds at the most or you’re going to end burned right up. And shocked, because it vibrates, too.”
“It vibrates and burns you?”
“Yeah, which is why teamwork makes the dream work,” Flint adds. “The ball resets itself every time a new player touches it, so you have to move it around a lot. The only surefire way to lose the game is to try to do everything yourself. You can’t do it, at least not without causing some pretty serious damage to yourself.”
“How is this even a game?” I ask, baffled. “Let alone one they let high school students play.”