I shook my head. Until we found out who was missing, I didn’t know. “Looks like we will be going to the woods a lot sooner than we planned.”
Louis grabbed my shoulders. “That’s foolish, and you know it. The full moon is just a few weeks away, we need to wait it out until we are at our most powerful.”
“Our people don’t have weeks if they’re still alive!” I snapped.
“This was a calculated move; they took the witches for a reason, Rune. We have time on our side. They aren’t going to take if they don’t need something. It’s been senseless killing for months now. This is different.Think!”
“What if it’s a trap?” I finally asked after a beat.
“Then you would be walking into it half-cocked.”
“Fine,” I ground my teeth together.
The courtyard was full of chaos as everyone spoke at once. I closed my eyes for a minute to get my head on straight.
Louis moved beside me, already taking notes, and texting away on his phone. “Adelle just reported in—she’s fine. She and your mother are doing a sweep of the river path.”
“Good,” I muttered. “Keep me updated. I want to speak to anyone who saw it firsthand.”
“I’ll find them.” He paused. “And Rune?”
“What?”
“You should probably consider sending Maple home,” his voice was sad as he said it.
“Why?”
He looked down at his phone as another update came through. “Because if those wolves come calling, they’re going to find her first. I don’t know how I know, but it's a strong feeling. You need to get her out of here if she isn’t going to be able to help.”
My lips thinned out. “She came here to help!”
Louis patted my shoulder. “Has she managed to help yet? She’s a liability, a distraction.”
“I’m not making her leave,” I knew the moment I did that I would lose her. She would assume it was because I didn’t want her here, and that wasn’t it at all. We needed to continue on as if everything was normal. We needed to prepare for the masquerade. We needed to continue to gather supplies for the full moon, and then we would discuss the rest.
Adelle knockedon my door sometime after three in the morning. I wasn’t asleep because who could possibly sleep after all of that? She didn’t say anything, just climbed into my bed as if this were normal and fell into a deep sleep beside me. At least one of us could. I’d continued to lie awake beside her until the sun came up and she blinked her tired eyes open.
“Hey,” she rasped.
“You okay?”
She shrugged. “I’m really upset that we can’t go get beignets this morning.”
“We have plenty of time to try beignets for the rest of forever,” I tried to reassure her.
She closed her eyes, and just when I thought she’d gone back to sleep, she spoke again. “Today is my father’s funeral.”
“What?” That didn’t seem right.
She nodded against the pillow. “Rune bumped it up because he’s worried about everyone’s safety after last night.”
“What did happen last night?”
Was Rune okay?
Adelle sat up in my bed and ran her hands down her arms. “The Quarter was attacked by the mist wolves again. We lost two of our own. James and Jeriko— twins, did you guess that? And four vampires. We haven’t found bodies or any traces that they were harmed.”
“What does this mean for us?”
