“The truth is I got kind of distracted.”
“What do you mean?” Jonathan asks.
“Her eyes,” I say. “And Carolina too.”
“I know what you mean,” Enrique says. “They look you straight in the eyes, and you forget what you are doing, right?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“It talks about that in my book,” he says. “Dangers of other shapeshifters. The power of the werewolf. Carolina, she’s a werewolf, like her father.”
“They’re mentioned in mine, too,” Jonathan says. “It says werewolves and vampires can hypnotize you. With a werewolf, you forget everything and just see the forest. And with the vampire, it’s even worse. You just get caught in their gaze and you can’t turn away.”
“Is there a way to protect yourself?” I ask.
“Garlic,” says Jonathan. “You can chew it or put it around your neck.”
“Basil too,” says Enrique.
“I can just cover my neck with pesto,” I say.
“Dude, that would keep any girl away, even if she wasn’t a vampire,” Jonathan says.
“So,” I say, “are we worried about zombies or vampires?”
Enrique and Jonathan look at each other over the light of the candles, then nod their heads in unison and say together, “Both.”
“Why?” I ask. “You don’t think Karen would hurt us, do you? She’s nice.”
Nice? Who am I fooling? If there’s anything Karen is, it’s not nice. Just for a moment I remember her lips on my neck...
“Karen is nice?” Jonathan says. “To you, maybe.”
“Not just me,” I say. “She’s all worried about what’s going on with the vitamins.”
“Eternal Cleanse.”
“Yeah,” I say. “She can’t figure out who Zach is getting it from. Or why he’s doing it. What’s in it for him?”
“I’m not sure why he’s doing it, either,” says Jonathan. “He talks about cleansing. And now the chalkings and the warnings. He’s planning something big, but what?”
“Wouldn’t we all like to know,” I say. “But anyhow, Karen is all right. She wasn’t always a vampire. She’s changing now, like us, right?”
Jonathan nods. “What do you think we should do?”
Right now I need a pill. My hands shake as I turn away and pop open the black glass bottle. The pill goes down dry and bitter. Out of the corner of my eye I see my friends do the same. We can’t go on like this. What happens when we run out of faerie drug?
Now the two of them stare at their clueless leader. I remember what Blaine Whelan told me about how dangerous it was for us all to be together. That we could hurt each other.
“Well?” Jonathan asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know what’s going on. My parents are hippies, not werewolves. And now Whelan wants me to join their clan, and...”
There’s a hard knock on the door. Enrique stands, holding a finger to his lips. You can smell his musk, his jaguar sweat. The wolf in me comes forward. I can’t help it: I want to grab hold of him and fight for dominance. The hair sticks up on the back of my neck and I can smell my own wolf musk, and then Jonathan’s fox musk, too.
“Enrique?”
It’s Enrique’s big brother, Andres. He’s eighteen and looks like Enrique if you added six inches to Enrique’s height and shaved off his Mohawk. Andres is already working full-time at their uncle’s garage.